Affiliates and watermarks
 

I've been experimenting lately and have been amazed at how many people will type in an url from a watermark. It's about 1% absent any on video other enticement or incentives.

It's pretty clear that for the last half to full decade where url watermarks have been popular affiliates have been getting screwed out of sales. I guess this is also part of the answer for how a sponsor will claim 1:500 when affiliates are claiming 1:2000. 1% of affiliate impressions are going to the sponsor as a type-in and these people are highly motivated to buy. When they do it is stripped of any affilaite code and the sponsor gets the full share. I've always suspected it but never confirmed it until now. :/

I really wouldn't call it "screwed out of sales". Like if it's the sponsor's intention to screw affiliates with putting his url in HIS footage.

Exactly. Especially considering the sponsor is the one spending hundreds of thousand on the content, website hosting, affiliate program, and so forth. It's good business for them to watermark their own images to keep them from being pirated.

:2 cents:

Possible cause for visitors typin the url:
they get tired of getting redirected 4 times or more to other sites because the affiliate thinks that a traffic trade is more important then to send his visitor to the content of his
preference right away.

That is why Bang Bros blew up when they did. They were one of the first to truly brand themselves on their content.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!!?!!

You mean that a surfer who sees content he likes gets tired of having to click the image 10 different times, closing 30 different pop ups and jasmin live chat or moaning windows trying to see the actual content?!?!?? Who would have thought that USER EXPERIENCE would play 'any' factor in profitability.

:upsidedow

Uhh... ugh, ugh... uhum... yes... i think that's what i said:1orglaugh

that fucking cocksucking jasmin live popup/under whatever the fuck... always the last window to close before shutting down the computer.......................................... .................................................. .................................................. ......................:upsidedow

Watermarks definitely work. That's why people go out of their way to remove and replace them with their own and such like that. Also why some tubes won't allow them unless they're a sponsor, right?

I remove the watermarks from tube sites and replace them with my sponsors sites.

To prevent uploaders to cut off our watermarks and replace them with theirs, from now on we will be watermarking all our content like this:

http://31.media.tumblr.com/7ebf5210d...5b9o1_1280.jpg

Our apologies to all our members for the shitty but neccesary new user experience.

The deal is supposed to be that the affiliate puts up the content and gets their commission for any sales they send. From the affiliate perspective anything less is not ideal. Assuming the affiliate gets a crappy 1% CTR from a text link or banner under the content and the sponsor watermark gets 1% then this means the affiliate is losing out on at least half of the sales they are technically responsible for.

I guess this is just another reason why a lot of affiliates have left adult? Increasingly the standard affiliate model is antiquated not only for the sponsor who now gets much of their traffic from tubes but also for the affiliate themselves who is increasingly cheated out of the commissions they deserve one way or another.

No question about it. They work.

Actually I was on a site today that I was looking to borrow a photo from and onmouseover it came up similar to this. If you didn't put your mouse over the image no watermark. Mouse over hideous watermark.

Could be. 1% of every affiliate impression for "free" is huge. Especially in 2003 or 2004. That is a ton of money they would have got for technically nothing. The problem is previously that money was almost certainly the affiliate's. The surfer would have clicked the affiliate link instead.

we take 35% for revshare and collect money from rebills on pps sales.

does this make us criminals too? Or should we not make any money from sales?

I have you on ignore but saw it since I was logged out.

No, that is different. But in the early days there weren't urls on affiliate content or banners. As that changed the deal became worse for the affiliate who saw 1% of impressions leak out for free to the sponsor. I'm not sure I would call it criminal but it is unethical and largely taking advantage of the ignorance of affiliates even though practically everyone does it.

I guess that is part of the reason why most adult paysite affiliates are long gone. I won't put up another piece of content with someone else's url watermark on it from now on. But then again I don't even use sponsor content. It's largely worthless. No one seems to want it. They want the whole thing for free.

Sometimes it is fun to be proven right

Yes if you said about 1% for type ins you were right. And that is completely without incentives or things like telling them via audio type in the url. I would think 2-3% is possible.

One solution would be to include the affiliate code in your link. I know how to do this with CCBill, and some of the NAT's programs.. Like this:

http://refer.ccbill.com/cgi-bin/clic...in.com/gallery

Cookie gets set and you get credit regardless if the user types in the URL.

Pain in the ass to do it this way, but it would ensure you're not losing sales to type-in's..

Dammit.. GFY keeps truncating the example.. Just add the URL to your gallery, video, photo, etc after &HTML=

That works. :) For a tube you can also do the old 1x1 iframe at least up until some of the latest browsers. It's the same thing except some will call it cookie stuffing. I don't think it's possible to do in nats as don't they not set the relevant cookie on the first click? I'm not sure.

I was just surprised how many type it in. I'm definitely going to use this to my advantage with some projects.

No, actually it's the same. Without sponsors making money off of webmasters work there is no sponsor, there is no revenue, there is no pay check showing up weekly. This whole thing works because we make money with sound business decisions. Do you think we pick these numbers out of a hat? Calling it unethical to brand OUR OWN CONTENT is ludicrous. Why shouldn't we brand it? We paid for it, not you. We pay webmasters to get our brand out there, which is the whole point isn't it?

You can knock off the ignore act. We all know you read everything anyway. You are a masochist and enjoy the daily abuse it seems. Why else would you start daily troll threads about aff programs and lie about not being and affiliate anymore... We know you are, we know you can't sell, we know your numbers are completely conjured. Move on.

Oh, and I think most of our top sellers use either fhg's or 'sponsor content' in one form or another and hit me up quick if there is an error or something doesn't look right. It obviously still works.

Whatever, PR Glen. You're the reason they have ignore lists...

http://andyvance.com/wp-content/uplo...-tough-guy.jpg

https://gfy.com/image.php?u=81288&dateline=1319224963

http://www.pajiba.com/assets_c/2010/...x223-13955.jpg

http://images.wikia.com/glee/images/...lling_Eyes.gif

How are you not embarrassed to realize something so obvious after so many years?

yeah I was kind of wondering this myself too. Check some of the tubes, they are filled with watermarks (domains). There is a whole affiliate side of people doing exactly that. Watermarking videos and uploading.

PS, also think about why you can not promote Babes.com or Bangbros.com and always had to take the babesnetwork.com or bangbrosnetwork.com links as an affiliate ;)

There is simply NO WAY for a Sponser to determine where a type-in "originally" came from so this is why affiliates will never, ever, ever ever ever get paid for type-ins. This is true for mainstream as well.

Show me HOW I can track down that type-in to YOUR affiliate page/code/banner/link etc and you'll get credit for it. But simply cannot be done.

To be honest I had never previously attempted any promo using watermarks. I had always expected something like 0.25% or maybe 0.50% might type it in at the most but I am shocked by what I am seeing.

Yeah I remember people complaining about that. I remember good old 12clicks once saying something like "Ohhh! how many people will type in that tiny url!" to an affiliate complaining once years ago.

sponsor gives me content in exchange for 1% of type-ins. Seems pretty fair to me, and how it's 'screwing me' I've no idea. It just isn't.

I don't pay my sponsors' processing costs, hosting costs, production costs, shooting costs, content costs, banner costs, etc costs, but I'm not 'screwing them' by getting 50% or more on revshare.

People who see it as 'us' and 'them' are never gonna win.

There used to be no watermarks. So it was never a concern. I think there is a line. Some go as far as to put a giant url on banners. That is really crossing the line I think.

All you can do is either not have the url watermarks (but use a company logo) on affiliate content or else you can allow your affiliates to put their own watermark there to a domain which redirects to their affiliate code. The problem with the latter is what if the affiliate decides they no longer want to use you as a sponsor? I guess a possible way around that is for you to own the domain.

For an affiliate this is definitely something to pay attention to I think. 1% of all impressions is pretty big. You need all you can get these days.

Well to be fair, the way pornhub/youporn/etc do it. You set up a folder & a redirect for each affiliate. Not saying that's ever gonna happen, though on the other hand now I've just typed it out and given it a few seconds thought, you *might* get a LOT more productive affiliates if you offered it :thumbsup

50 sales, and you can get your own sponsor.com/affiliate link to watermark content, spread that content how you want. Thinking out loud :)

Compared to when the url wasn't there it is being screwed over. Now that you think it's okay now why not make the url bigger? Why not put it on the banners too (which some already do)? You see where this is going.

If you don't deserve credit for that 1% of impressions you are sending because you aren't paying processing costs then why do you deserve anything at all?

The whole point of the deal used to be that the affiliate gets their cut on the business they send the sponsor. Over time the rules have changed for the worst for the affiliate. Just because it is the normal thing now doesn't mean it is right or that everyone has to accept it. Like I said I think this stuff is why so many moved on. It's so common now to come up with ways to take from the affiliate and then you can justify it with "they don't deserve anything anyway".

I do that with YouPorn, XHamster, etc but this would not work for all affiliates, especially non-tube affs. Also, I've found that even tho there's a watermark that says www.website.com/XHamster the surfer will not type-in the extension (the /XHamster part). But it does help a little for affiliates, yes.

And I would offer affs who send consistent sales their own watermarks and help set them up with domains, too. But no one has asked. LOL

But again, ALL this is fighting over 1% and, as I stated, there's simply no way to track type-ins period.

And NOT having watermarks? Idiotic. Why not just hand the keys over to the pirates without a fight then? Finally, with the major tubes, they're using MY content to sell cams, dating, even their own HD upgrades and paysites so if I can get some type-in/branding/exposure from them then at least I, the provider of the content, can get something back. And I would say that I, the Sponser, have more to bitch about - WAY more than 1% - with what I go through with major affiliates then affiliates should do regarding type-ins.

I doubt many are going to bother typing domain.com/subdirectory though. Most will probably just type domain.com. So it'll lose some effectiveness.

Letting the affiliate pay the first year of a real domain and then transfer ownership to you is probably better where it redirects to their affiliate code and they maintain it. Or just trust them and let them keep the domain, if you want. After all they are trusting you to pay them too.

OK, so no watermark. How about titles? How about credits? How about images with names on them? A surfer can figure out how to find a website from these things even without watermarks.

We also used to give out 30 second clips for MGPs and free galleries but no longer do. So what? Bottom line: If you, the affiliate, cannot cope with losing however many type-ins you may lose then yes, you should not be an affiliate. But try being one for mainstream then come back realizing in adult, when you get ass-raped, at least we provide some lube.

Watermarking content has been standard since what? 2000?

If it's a big concern of yours AND you've gotten permission from your sponsor, why not buy a domain, redirect it to your link code and use that domain as a watermark? Problem solved.

Personally I think it's OK as long as there is no url. Some are still going to type it in Google or what have you but it will be less. The url encourages it.

I don't actively promote paysites any more beyond what I already have up. But I would definitely pay attention to this if I did going forward. It's too much to ignore especially when other ctr has tended to decrease. An affiliate could also leverage it for their own promotion. The trick is they just can't (ethically or legally) use sponsor content without permission. :) It also doesn't hurt to be aware of what is happening.

Yep that is what I would do (if they allow it - there are potential issues). Also I think for ffmpeg there is a module to strip watermarks and then you can replace it with your own. So for affiliate tubes they could do this if the sponsor allows it. Then it's an easy extra 1% of impressions just like magic. The problem is though the sponsor loses that free traffic. :)

I did this a few years ago with youtube. I did setup a folder that just redirected to a paysite with my aff-link, then I just added a watermark to a lot of videoclips and uploaded them.
My record was 14 sales to mayorsmoney in one day. ;)

Yep. :) This is what I'm saying. It's useful information for all types of affiliates. Although it also kind of shows that in a way we've been getting screwed a bit due to the same effect.

Not what I was prove right about

See Sig

Cool. Another thing is one of those "sharing" programs that people used to use (do they still?). So you just watermark videos or pics, stick them in the shared folder and let the program run 24/7 on your home PC(s). People will download them and in turn, share them. Best to use a whole domain I think and link your root to your matching sponsor site. Ideally, get permission to host tour page one yourself so it's seamless. YMMV

I did this back when you could use wmv-files to open up popups when people used windows media player. The traffic was crap but I used it for trades on my TGPs.

Can't wait to see what he figures out after another 12-15 years.

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

It's kind of funny that you follow someone around and complain about them complaining. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me and immature but what do I know.

If you want to call someone names you ought to be direct about it. Lest that makes you what you claim the other guy is?

Thread Translation : Beware, advertising works!!!

P2p? Actually I forgot I did do that a long time ago but just on some photos. I had no real way to track it since I just sent it to a general domain I had already in use. I set up a p2p program on a server I had running and just did it that way. The gnutella network probably is still around just almost dead and a shadow of it's former self.

In the early days, affiliates bought content.