Explain to me how to be an affiliate in 2 years...
 

This question applies to both adult and mainstream.

1) According to some quick research I have done, 40 percent or more of 3rd party cookies are already being blocked.

2) This: https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1101008

..and blocking tracking will only get worse

4) Google encrypting more and more searcher making it harder to get SEO data

5) Programs not paying.

6) Conversions have dropped since I have been in the game from 1:32 top the present shit rate

If you were to build right now from the ground up an online presence as an affiliate, what is the most bullet proof way to do this?

I don't want to hear how great your program is, just how one can be sure to get credit the the OVERWHELMING vast majority of sales - lets say 95% or better that one is due.

Online tracking is not going anywhere, because EVERYONE needs it.. in one form or the other. Cookies might be blocked, but there is and always will be other ways.

it's more an more up to the actual programs to make ends meet so they can pay the affiliates. What is alarming is the level of stupidity among actual affiliates whom require massive payments and good conversions. $50+ for a signup?

There's not many mainstream affiliate programs (retail) paying more than 5% of the order value (usually before taxes + shipping). So you'd be lucky to get $5 for $100 order. NOT $100 for $5 order which seems to be the norm what affiliates expect.

So I'd say, the way to survive in affiliate business is to optimize the traffic and be prepared to when (not if) programs lower their rates to more sensible levels.

Imho.

I think you either have to sell the product yourself, or find a program that can monetize your traffic better.

For example, say a paysite gave *you* a section on that site. Call it Sueshe Boy. Now Sueshe Boy has become part of that paysite. Now you, the affiliate/partner, need to get traffic to your section of site. So you can optimize your section of site for Organic, you can drop links if you like to your section, drive traffic to your section, whatever it takes.

No third party cookies, no bad CTR, 50% of site sales. That is a different way of looking at affiliate marketing.

You can email at partners at judoporn [..] com if you want to understand how we have set something up to adapt to the evolving affiliate market.

Try mainstream. I just make a lot of sales this weekend selling shoes on Pinterest boards.

Also, maybe try planning on being a site owner in 2 years. That way you'll get all of your sales without worrying about cookies or programs not paying out. :thumbsup

You will be hearing from me.

Colmike7, I am 99.9% mainstream now.

I did have an adult prodcut. Trademarks, patent the whole 9 yards and i got ripped off by my Chinese manufactuerer.

What was the product? Would you be interested in retrying it, just with legit first world manufacturer?

I'm whitelabeling the fucking shit out of any site I can and using easy to remember/brandable domains in the process. It's working.

So many knock offs the train has left the station long ago as well as the fact I was one of 4 partners. 3 of us had 15% and the man who 55% died, then his wife and the other 2 are so fed up they just don't give a shit.

A living could be made just going after all the knock offs...http://www.google.com/patents/US6328675

Taking the ball to a convention got me into the internet biz so I am very grateful...

IMHO affiliate tracking as we currently know it is going (and needs) to change.

Rather than the cookie or session id methods that so many processors and programs use currently, I really believe that we're going to see a transition to 'actual' affiliate url linking, meaning that each affiliate will be given a URL to send traffic to, not get given an affiliate ID and a linking code.

Something akin to this...

http://youraffiliate.domain.com

It really is the easiest and most secure way or tracking where a sale comes from, can't easily be manipulated (unlike cookies and sessions) and will make sales long term from the search engines once such urls are listed in the SERPs.

Another option that has been used in non-adult randomly throughout the years, is embedding a code into a meta tag (kind of) that is back-tracked via the affiliate program to credit the sale to an individual affiliate.

For the most part, adult has become stagnant with how we approach a lot of the business models we take for granted, there hasn't really been *ANY* advances in the adult industry for a good 10 years plus, we (the industry) used to drive the technology of the internet, now all we can do is rip-off business models used by mainstream companies to the extent where we are slowly but surely killing the porn business because we've become complacent over the years and abused the technologies that were good for business to the extent that surfers hate them... DRM for example.

I agree with branding a good domain and using white labels to keep most of your traffic, especially if your buying hardlinks and traffic.

It's hard enough to generate traffic these days...so no sense throwing it away.

Nice thread, but at the same time it makes me lol because some have been saying adapt or die for a while, and everyones been shrugging it off as a joke, now that they're dying they're begging how to adapt.

You don't. You either run your own stuff or you get paid by CPC/CPM or for ad space.

Unfortunately the average affiliate is dumb and apathetic. I can say this because I'm an affiliate too. But the point is nothing will ever be done because affiliates will never force the issue. They will just pick their noses and bullshit each other online about how they are rich and things are better than ever. Sponsors don't care. If the tracking fucks up and takes 40% of sales from affiliates then that just means 40% more for them without having to pay affiliates. Tracking has been getting worse with each passing year. At the very least honest programs would be upping the payout or the revshare percentage slightly to compensate but do you see this happening? :upsidedow

So the answer is to not be an affiliate if the terms for being one are no longer appealing.

The joke there is that most of these companies are doing something to take your surfers and send them to their site. It happens over and over again. It's played off as an accident but they know exactly what they are doing.

FYI, I see lots of back ends of affiliates and advertisers besides my own. Across the board, if you average conversion rates for direct response affiliate marketing S2S will get 10-20% more conversions. In my offers, I try to make the tracking 100% accurate by using S2S. I have no problem paying out for real traffic. I would never steal conversions, that is why I never rely on cookie tracking.

Also, if people stop using cookies as the standard, know what comes next? Everlast cookies and computer fingerprinting, both are much more evasive processes on peoples systems with no way to block them, at least in the foreseeable future. So I think people should stop bitching about cookie tracking and leave it as is.

:1orglaugh

good thread

Most won't want to dulute thier branding this way, I agreee this makes plenty of sense...

How does this make sense? Example:

User who leaves site affiliate1.cumdumpbabes.com is going to go back to cumdumpbabes.com

This doesn't accomplish the extended timer of the cookie.

So if we are just talking about tracking, don't do sub domains, just pass information to the website like cumdumpbabes.com/?affiliate=1

This still doesn't accomplish the extended time of what cookies offer so the way to still achieve this is:

1. Use cookies for extended time conversions but not direct conversions

2. Log IPs for extended time conversions (but you miss out on those whose IP changes)

3. Use fingerprinting (not widely available technology yet and requires tons of storage)

4. Use evercookie (not widely available yet)

Best case scenario in TODAY's environment is directly pass the affiliate code for direct conversions + option 1 or 2.

Switching to this will directly increase your conversions number by 10-20% over cookie only tracking.

Your question has a lot of validity. Time for a change for sure.

Mike, Can you explain how you use pinterest? Do they allow affiliate links on the pics or do you have to link them to one of your blogs?