Why have most affiliate forums died?
 

Anyone have a clue?

Algo change?

Shift to FB groups or Skype groups or Slack or Discord?

Fundamental changes in the business. Being "an affiliate" as a primary business model was always fraught; the power imbalances are too large, the opportunities for the affiliate to be screwed are too many. In a fast-growing highly-competitive era, this was balanced by competition for affiliate traffic, and program reputation (among affiliates, especially on boards) was important, which limited the scope for programs to grasp and steal. Once the growth and competition went away, in a world of declining margin, too many programs (not all by any means, but vast majority) came to see the affiliate percentage as an unwelcome cost. Perceived affiliate value declined, temptation to steal (because hard times) went way up. Result? Strong pressure on affiliates to diversify into other business models, and (for those of us who retained affiliation as part of our model) vastly reduced incentive to participate on boards, because their primary value (social and tech conversation aside) was to keep the programs honest. That's gone now. Nobody's honest unless that's their actual business ethic (somewhat rare) and even they don't care about affiliate boards because affiliates are a much smaller chunk of their revenue. All this vastly oversimplifies, but it explains a big chunk of the change, in my opinion.

As we get older, the newer generations don’t grow up with message boards, they grow up with things like Discord.Traditional message boards like GFY are becoming extinct...as sad as that sounds. The few younger ones that join also probably get the idea that these message boards are just unscrupulous people hustling their products, and not providing any actual advice. They wouldn’t be fully wrong, but the message boards like GFY do a lot for the industry as a whole, and the joining process should be encouraged, if not made easier.

Many boards are from sponsors like Porno Junkies from Platinum Bucks, Medium Pimpin board from MP, Adult City from... damn I don't remember the sponsor...

I think they made them for affiliate help but they made whole communities there with tons of posts and many registered members.

Boards still working in some biz (mainstream), but I think adult biz had changed.

Also, I think total biz had changed with platforms and models who do own biz now and they don't work for another. Also YouTube is a good source to find everything u want.

Tubes. Tubes wiped out affiliates because they were a runt without a tit. Pay sites were forced to seo better, and that was the death knell.

perfectly said

Google algo changes wiped out a lot of affiliates too. The business model of running large networks of cookie cutter TGP sites all with the same FHGs came crashing down around 2011 - 2012 and a lot of them didn't know how to do anything else.

i fucking hate discord

coz fat, mentally unstable idiots turned up and posted 'i like poo' in every thread:2 cents:

Affiliates are pretty much gone now. It's just not worth it now. Fifteen years ago you could open up a few TGPs and make money. Now... I have ten sites and they dont' even pay my mortage.

Also, we have all moved over to the secret room on Skype.

This right here.

If the site has no real value, then it's not worth going to. Applies not just to adult but to any niche, really. The smart affiliates that are still in this business run sites that are unique and have something that keeps organic users coming back.

Are we talking specifically about adult affiliate forums?

The Bros underground facebook took over the forum crowds.
It is invite only and cost 100 USD a month.

It's interesting that dying and small program owners, and those who have never been anything other than a rep and small affiliate think affiliates are no more or "dead".

GFY doesn't offer any value mostly because of what I said above. The most active posters here have no idea what the current market is like (despite what they themselves are willing to admit), some were never anything other than a rep anyway, and the rest are beer money guys. And because of that, a lot of us won't share anything just to have some dip shit who's been a has been for the past decade and is more interested in running their mouth rather than contributing in a positive way.

GFY may get the fly by from guys like Shap once every 6 months with some interesting insight or whatever, but outside of that, it's guys blaming tubes for their own shortcomings and other horse shit.

There are Discords, Slacks, other forums, FB groups, Twitter group messages, Telegram groups, sub-reddits, etc., with actual value offered - especially for someone newer to the game.

And without value, any new users who are serious will leave quickly or never come. I don't know of anyone with any real sites / networks / programs who view GFY as anything other than a cesspool, and it's been like for a decade.

I agree with forkbeard. Having said that contacts on GFY made me 6 figure sums, but that was a few years ago.

I nearly stopped using it when it turned into a political shiftfest

I've been in the industry as an affiliate for 6 months, having spent many years as a mainstream affiliate mainly using SEO. From what I have seen so far, I would agree with what you wrote. Looking on Crakrevenue only the top 200 are making enough to make a living on and only the top 50 are making a good income of ($10k+ a month).

In my short 6 months in the adult space, my SEO based site is already in the top 200 earners. And I am pretty lazy, that only consists of about 1 or 2 months of actual work (50 articles and 10 links built).

From what I have seen, SEO in adult is really not difficult, you would be struggling to get the same results from SEO in mainstream niches. I think many people here would do well to learn SEO from mainstream SEO based blogs.

I was, can't speak for anybody else.

I think there were a couple of years when I never even logged in, or I'd maybe check every fourth month or so and nope out when I saw the front page completely shitted up with racist alt-right nonsense "news" links. Didn't start coming back with any regularity until they cleaned it up.

I want in that secret room please. Sounds kinky :D

I never got an invite

Shift to other medias with better moderation and better UX.

On Facebook for example, you can build your own content/brand and moderate it as you wish... if you're being trolled on Facebook, it's because you're letting it happen because you have the power to blacklist/mute whoever on your own posts easily.

Forums are open, that's the good part about it, but if the forum is poorly moderated it will become toxic, if it's not properly fed in content and animation it will die out.

And then in terms of UX... few forums can compete with the apps of Discord or FB...


Now some affiliate forums are managing really well to compete... but they're not in the adult business to my knowledge.

Where do you see Crakrevenue top 200 affiliates?

Are affiliates tied to some kind of exclusive contract with Crakrevenue or something? Aren't they allowed to promote anyone else?

I have been abused by many around here for stating this precise thing for at least a couple of years. Affiliates are as important today as horses and buggy :2 cents:

You do realize how top 10 tubes are also affiliates ?

Didn't say they were.


On the dashboard you can usually see earnings needed until top 50, earning needed until top 200 etc. You can't see everyone's exact earnings.

i find most people still working in this industry these days are honest and work hard. scammers are rare and gone quick now. it was different a decade ago. the industry got a lot smaller (not including OF "models" and cam performers).

:2 cents:

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I'm not really talking about the scammers and fly-by-night outfits, who proliferate in boom times and leave seeking easy money during bust periods.

My metric for many years about the honesty of an adult company was quite singular: do they, or do they not, treat affiliate money with the same fiduciary caution as they treat their own money, making it a top priority to make sure that their affiliates get paid in full, every penny, on time, and without demand?

Very very few companies have met that standard over time. Of the companies I deal with, I can count the "honest" (by my standard) ones on my fingers. Special shoutout here to Colin at Wasteland/Spicecash (longevity award), Kink.com (who have more than once clusterfucked things on the tech side that cost me money, but who always pay timely the money showing in the console) and Stockroom (currently unusable due to affiliate links that take 90 seconds to load, but I've only ever had to chase one payment from them in fifteen years).

I love the adult industry. It has a lot of hard-working forward-thinking people and companies. But affiliate funds, aka "non-recourse loans given to us by people we don't know who live a long way away, so fuck 'em", are a temptation that most companies in my experience have failed to resist when their cash crunches eventually happen. Often they paid cheerfully for years when it was easy, but when it gets hard? That's when character shows, or more often, doesn't.

I know you didn't, I was just pointing out that the fact that only 200 Crakrevenue affiliates make enough to live on doesn't really mean much. At worst, it means that 200 adult affiliates are making enough to live on from one single sponsor. I would be joint bottom on their list because I signed up a couple of years ago and haven't made a single sale. I make enough to live on as an adult affiliate from the other 25+ sponsors that I make sales for.

200 making enough to live on from one adult sponsor sounds like a lot to me. It would suggest that there are thousands of adult affiliates making enough to live on. In that case, we can ask where they are and why it's the same 20 or 30 people posting all the time here.

I'm in the top 200 on Crak and it's nowhere close to my #1... but it would definitely be enough to rent a decent apartment in my area + make a small car payment, eat + pay some hosting bills.

I make an extremely good living in this industry as an affiliate and I can only think of 2 other people who post at least once a week with sites around the size of mine (and one bigger - wankawonk). There are a wholeeeeee lot of sites in between wankawonk and myself in adult. :winkwink:

Skype has been notoriously buggy over the years but I guess it's the goto alternative for a boomer like yourself instead of discord or telegram

There was a lot more opportunities and affiliates back then.

You had guys making a living of gallery submitting, running tgps/linklists, doing blog networks etc

A lot of that is gone now and there aren't many low to mid level affiliates around, the big ones probably doesn't bother with forums like these..

The idiocy of submitting TGPs to a few websites every day and getting 50% for a join was always wrong. Sites should have been doing it themselves and paying a wage. The problem was most sites couldn't afford to and had to pay out after they were paid.

The question should be why were there so many Affiliate boards?

I guess you are right, but most tubes are pushing dodgy content, hence the whole PH issue.

This sums it up really well. Most of us who want to help usually end up being drowned out by Paul Markham type posters. For the new people coming into the industry, it's hard to tell the difference between actual webmasters and the trolls.

Because of Facebook I think.

Is that like a van where you get free candy? :1orglaugh

because there isn't much of us left :)

When an activity gradually changes from opportunity to liability you tend to stop doing that activity if you're an able-minded business person.

The people working aren't chit-chatting for the most part. And if they are, they're doing it elsewhere (E.g. Whatsapp and Telegram groups, smaller, more filtered boards, workshops). Others' inability to control their emotions over topics like politics and continuing to bicker and beat a dead horse drove many of us away. Not just from boards, but from social media for the most part.

As online marketing and ecom in general shifted over the years from "a blindfolded monkey could make a living" to "this is actual work that requires focus, effort and a team" people have less and less time to waste. Consolidation within these industries (ours included), newer platforms and ways to engage also play a big role.

Some also smartened up to the anticipatory dopamine effect.

If you're still doing the same old same old, it's time to remind yourself of the simple truth that's highly relevant to anyone running an online business - "The only constant is change."

Pretty much. There's ways to communicate with anyone in this business now whether it's on a forum or chat, and it seems like finding them is easier through chat since it's more instant communication versus the GFY method I was used to where someone is like "hehehe I may know them, what's in it for me?".

As in many other verticals I think the forums got hit from the explosion of social media.

In the past forums were pretty much the only way to connect and communicate with others, but now we have a lot of other alternatives for this that.

But I miss the power of forums where even now you can find past topics pretty easily if you want to read some, where on FB groups, Telegram, Discord, and so on, you can't even find something written last week.

So yeah, maybe social media helped with alternatives but not so much with quality from my point of view.

There are many good points here that I agree with. Boards were used to communicate between industry people but it suddenly became useless to post or even buy ads as the returns were never near the price paid - so without that - boards died.

Few remain but yes I remember years ago when there was at least 20 boards out there saturated with industry posters - most of them sales reps trying to make a name for themselves and companies not sure where else to get webmasters to sign up. Times change - I don't blame tubes as much rather a shift in ways to better spend money as affiliate sales from webmasters don't count as high as they use to for programs and sites.

^^This^^

hey Chief Program Director! your site no worky..

:helpme

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This topic turned out having several smart, constructive interventions... that's most of what I expect of a good message board, so thank you ;)

Is the Xbiz forum not open to affiliates? I applied last year but was rejected... :(

It could also be due to BAD MODERATING.... case in point: ************ used to be THE giant mainstream aff forum. Now dead.

It could also be about CLUELESS restructuring .... The********** was sold to a freelance platform and most traffic pulling members left

Lmao oh man are these censors from when gfy used to censor any other board url?

How thehun make money?

Yes, XBiz.net is open to affiliates.