Chaturbate Fail
 

I've been busy working on my own projects, but noticed the chaturbate skin and posts here and looked into the program to potentially promote it.

I think this is a perfect example of where a company fails to plan properly and doesn't get the guidance they need in an area that they appear to have little to no experience in.


I'll keep this simple and to the point. You pay people, up to $1 during your promo period when they make a free account depending on the country they are from. I think the first place you failed is making this crystal clear to affiliates. Most think of your site like most cams sites where they will make commissions from sales, and they look at your site as one big traffic leak. I understood what you were doing, but most people here obviously did not, so that should have been crystal clear from post 1.

After the looking into it, the only way I would send " free joins" to the site is via an api where I know I am getting paid to deliver each member. Simply sending them to the front page of the site via an affiliate code is crazy imo.

Any affiliate with a little knowledge and experience will notice your lack of chat host online and know right away that they going to lose a lot of money sending traffic to that site. Since they are only paid when a person does a free register to the site, what incentive does a surfer have to join something (even thought it is free) if there is no girls online to view. However, what will likely happen in many cases is the surfer doesn't see anyone online (or anyone worth chatting with) but he does see a ton of ads to other cam sites, some of which even look like hot girls live on cam right now, so what is the surfer going to do??? A free join to your site because he wants to waste his time to enter in his info so he can chat with no one, or click a banner and go to another site that actually has live girls on it? Which in that case you making a lot of up sells and the affiliate isn't even making his $1.

Having little to no selection of girls online does help the site make a lot more money and affiliates less, because the site basically is one big up sell. I really don't think this was intention. In the long run it benefits Chaturbate more to make the site sticky and get repeat users vs just being a one stop shop to up sell affiliate traffic for free.

I am sure they spent, and I assume wasted, a lot of money by paying for the skin here and launching a site with virtually no one live, a couple recorded videos and a few dudes. With any cam site, even free ones, you need to have a good selection of girls live before you even think about trying to get affiliates.

It's amazing to see companies work on big projects, spend lots of money but fail to get the proper guidance needed to make sure they do it 100% right. One little thing wrong can fuck up the whole project. In the future, find someone (there is a couple people here for cams) that has a lot of experience in niche that your project is in and hire that person to make sure everything is done correctly. And if you did hire someone who did not point all of this out to you then they should be fired. This is a huge mess up for a cams site, especially one looking to get affiliate. Even if it is a "free" cam site. :2 cents:

This is the biggest issue when launching a cam site. Having enough chat models online and getting the traffic starting to flow at the same time is probably the roughest part.

When a chat model is on and there is no one on the site is making her leave.
When a surfer is on the site and there is no chat model on is making him leave.

You have to launch with your own traffic sources and/or purchased ad spots to get some regular models before you do a major launch and try to get affiliates.

I feel bad for them. Like will76 says, they had some bad advice, or shot the wad without any expert advice.

Probably would have been a lot better yes.

How much traffic/girls would the cost of the skin bought them?

Cam sites are incredibly hard to start. Several other people here with decent budgets have tried to launch a cam site and failed. In all cases, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

You would think it would be common sense, to launch a cam site without girls live (or very few) would be like launching a tube site with 5 videos, or a dating site with 10 profiles. The part that most of these people fail to appreciate is exactly *how* hard it is to get the traffic and chat host going at exactly the same time.

With a dating site its no big deal, you can fake it with tons of fake profiles until you build it up with real people. For a tube site or membership site you just upload a ton of content and then set more to auto upload and you finished. In those cases the "site" side of things is very easy, you build it and you are done with it. Then you focus 100% on traffic and can send traffic slow or fast, it doesn't matter the site will still grow. For a cam site you can't just build the site and then forget about it like you can basically do with all other types of sites. When you dealing with a cam site if you don't balance the traffic with models online you going to crash and burn very fast.

I bet they could have paid someone a fraction of what they spent on the GFY skin to give them the proper advice they needed to launch this right.

I made $0.02 with my first 1500 surfers sent.. stopped the traffic then.. not quality traffic obviously, but worth alot more than $0.02 elsewhere :)

its a live cam site or recorded cam site?

Probably a fair bit, the people running white label cam sites are weary of newcomers as they have been burned before. So its cash and carry, till you get established. Perhaps they did put the cart before the horse, angling for affilates, with no girls:2 cents:

Very good post. Cam sites are hard because

1. Developing a decent cam software is not easy. Trust me, been their.
2. Traffic and Talent has to be live at the same time, its like the chicken and egg situation
3. 90% of your revenue comes from 10% of your customers so you need to be able to treat those 10% better ...think Vegas.
4. Users will see through if the site is scam (recorded models, same model in 2 spots etc)

Right now the site every one want to beat is MFC, use that as a benchmark before launching your own.

Honestly I do not know how Chaturbate makes money on free registration, i assume the hope is emailing the user and up selling some stuff. I signed up with a unique email, no emails yet. Good luck to them.

I sent 1200 and made $0 - So, you did better than me. :1orglaugh

You can't blame them for trying ...

I think chaturbate is just getting enough traffic, after they had enough traffic they will switch to their own company which they have their own models already. :)

Yeah. I played around with Chaturbate for a day and will be pulling all my links. What a joke. I can put together a better cam site in 30 seconds.

$9.62 for 4873 blind hits so far. Not the worst I've tried. Pretty good considering the low amount of online performers.

:1orglaugh

neither. i suspect it is an upsell to other higher paying camsites camsite.

One of the chicks on Chaturbate seems to be a recording... didn't look at the other one, but she probably is too.

I clicked Sign Up and Fling.com popped out like corn.
I think 99% of the surfers will click on the banners instead of making a free account. (will76 is right)
But i saw a girl online earlier, she's cute. And next thing i know, there were 200 other people chatting with her at the same time. So i put my zippers back and left.

They are either videos or live teaser feeds from other cam sponsors. What's funny is the winners of their broadcasting contest are their own videos.

punker should jump in front of a cam and kick start this mofo in to high gear!

never could see that coming.

the model is kind of ingenious however. people are going to send traffic trying for the email sign ups. of course hardly anyone will sign up, but traffic will click on the ads. great way to get mostly free traffic to your site/banners.

would expect nothing less from the weg boys.

I think Headless would do much better than barbie.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I would think it was.

chaturbate reps are avoiding this thread at all costs... scrambling to think of what they should do

biggest problem is lack of models online

If it was intentional and this was their business plan, then it is being short sighted and even more bad thinking on their part that could have been avoided by hiring someone with a lot of knowledge and experience with cams.

If they have lots of real girls on the site, then visitors will register and will come back often. The site will grow. The more a visitor comes back the more they are exposed to the ads and are more likely over time to click one of them and join it too.
This would make them, the site owners more money and would make affiliates more money by giving the traffic they are sending a reason to join, generating a much better conversion ratio.

When the above happens, affiliates will be happy and will send more traffic, making the site more money. Everyone is happy. What is happening now is the few who are trying them out are not going to be happy with the results and quit and the site will get lot of bad press, causing less affiliates to try them in the future. Sure they get to make quick pops from the people trying them out, but they would make 100x more money in the long run if they site functioned as advertised.

So, that is why I don't think it would be their intention to just throw together a bs site with some recorded videos on it and the occasional *real* (unattractive) girl so they could make a couple bucks from affiliates while they send traffic to them for a short period of time. It would incredible stupid and short sighted to do so. Their concept is good, but only if they execute it.


what they should do is put on 10 - 20 live girls asap and keep at least 5- 10 on at all time. *real* girls, failure to do that proves they either have no clue what they are doing about cams and/or got in way over their heads.

If I wanted to build an AVS network, I would seek out the best AVS person I could find that would be interested in making some extra cash to provide his guidance on my AVS project.

Insert: Dating, Tube, TGP, Membership site, Cams, SEO, etc... above where AVS is. If you are venturing into something new and spending a lot of money why do these companies time and time again just try to wing it. Get some help!

When they announced this a few weeks back I said the same exact thing.

Their response was that this was not going to be an affiliate program, so I needn't worry.

It worked for Claudia
She kicked ass

I agree with what you are saying but these are not necessarily newbies you are referring to by any stretch.

http://i.imgur.com/mWd2b.png

Dont be SILLY... Its GREAT !

I agree and that just proves my point even more. This wasn't a bash the chaturbate crew thread, just my amazement at how people jump into projects and spend lots of money about things they obviously don't know much about.

You say they weren't newbies... newbies to what is key. Are they newbies when it comes to cams sites? because that is all that matters in this current situation. Just because someone is successful in running a pay membership site or a dating site doesn't mean they going to be a guru and very knowledgeable in every aspect of all adult online businesses.

One of many recent examples, cyberage dave. They were probably one of the best when it came to AVS sites, much less were they newbies. I am sure he made millions from his AVS network over the years. So he tries to start a tube site, fail. He spends a lot of money to start a cam site, fail.

The point is we are all newbies when we do something for the first time no matter how much success we have/had in the past from other things. It's either ignorance or over confidence that causes people to think they can take on new projects ON THEIR OWN that they have little to no experience with and be successful with it just like the other stuff they have done.

If I wanted to spend 10K's of thousands of dollars and months of my time to build a amateur "home grown" type site the first thing I would do is try to hire you for your advice, likely you wouldn't want to share it but I would then work down from you till I find someone, perhaps your biggest affiliate who is willing to share his years and years of knowledge with me for a fee, so I can make sure to do my project right so it can have the best chances for success.

If you talking about a small project or a hobby then learn as you go and try to wing it on your own, make mistakes and learn from them. But if you spending 10K - 20K for a GFY skin to get affiliates, obviously spent 10Ks of thousands of dollars on your new project and a lot of your time, then why wouldn't you spend a couple more bucks to buy the knowledge and experience that you lack (on this particular project) so all of your money and efforts wont be wasted ??? When you working on a project this big you can't afford ANY mistakes and it is way too costly to learn as you go.

You have a point, but I think that is only the tip of the ice sculpture.

Let's face it.


Bro power is just not what it used to be.


(As an aside, I have always been very forthcoming about helping people out if asked for advice. I don't really worry about giving away secrets because there aren't really any. Sometimes folks take the advice and run with it - one example being Jeff from Busty Amateurs who listened to our advice and three month later we saw him blow up big time to the point where I had to admit a tinge of jealously...

However, most will never ever do much with the feedback, advice, consultation because when they realize actual work is involved they fall apart. And of course, in the BA story, the final chapter ended with the program going down in flames until it - and my jealousy for that matter - were fully extinguished.)

At the end of the day, people should see the site name/domain name and run.

Chaturbate?

Really?

I agree most people who post to GFY " What do you think about my new site" or looking for a site review are not really here looking for advice, they want confirmation from others that the project they put together is great. They want praise not constructive criticism and advice on how to make it better.

However, large companies spending 10K's of dollars on a huge new projects, should seek expert advice and if they paying a decent amount for it, they should give it a lot of consideration. I'm not talking about, a phone call, or icq conversation but hiring someone to fly out to meet the employees, owners etc. spend a week with them in several meetings, going over the entire project type of advice. That is what I would do at least if I was starting a new large expensive project and had little experience in that particular area.

I do give them props for the site. It looks nice, is laid out well, software looks good. Overall I think they did a good job (except being so heavy with the ads right from the start). The concept is sound, and is proven to be a winner (cam4.com which the site is closely modeled around) has been around for 5+ years and have proves this concept works. It's just the execution was terrible and it is not conducive to affiliates the way it stands now, which since they are obviously looking for affiliates is a huge mess up.

It could be worst, camfuze.com says " Partner program: What are the ways I can receive my payment?
We pay through ePassporte." :Oh crap

Here is some quick free advice for Chaturbate. If you want to have an affiliate program, you should either pay for the hit like camfuze does (http://www.camfuze.com/pages/partner.html)

"CamFuze gives you opportunity to earn money sending visitors to our site. We pay up to $1.50 per 1000 unique visitors using Google Analytic statistics."

Or you should set up an api for the site and pay per the lead.

OR don't display ads on the page if the surfer is coming from an affiliate url. Only display ads once that person does a registration.

There is a couple ways you could do this right, if you want to.

To pay for the free registration, even if you did have a lot of girls online is still going to turn a lot of potential affiliates off. Not to mention you have more ads from day 1 then camfuze and cam4 has put together.

Ya the domain is a big turnoff for me here also.

That's what I'm talking about.. going to pull my cock out right now :pimp

I actually like the name. Not ashamed to admit it either.

Clearly this is a glory hole cam site... I see a huge hole and a pair of tits in that pic. :thumbsup

:1orglaugh

I like the name too. It's brandable, they explain it, and are making up a new word. It shouldn't have many typos, once you see it once you should be able to spell it again without messing up.

I don't see what about it turns people off. Is it really that much different than any of the other names out there? Do names really "turn people off" other than the few exceptions if it was to imply something sick like scat or worst "young" people. I always looked at domain names as having the following: easy to remember, short, and be some what descriptive of the site. Seems like they did well on all 3 counts.

its a shame. could of had potential to be something big but with a launch like this, no one will promote them

Exactly.
I remember when Lensman tried to get cams.com / adultlivenetwork.com going.

Girls not making money from traffic leave. Customers that do not see cam girls leave!

A cycle that needs lots of planning and deep pockets.

i'm surprised anyone actually sent traffic. it's gotta be one of the stupidest things i've ever seen.

: )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) ))))))))))))))

The domain is great, the execution is amusing to say the least.

I like the name too.