Why do paysite owners depend so much on affiliates...?
 

I am a paysite owner and I have never understood why people open paysites and depend on all their traffic and sales from affiliates? Seems like a rather unprofitable business plan, or shall I shall...not as pofitable

when I open my paysites I get them listed in SE's for the right keywords, I promote them myself like mad, getting links, getting tons of traffic myself...then I open them to affiliates...cause the raw sales are what matters the most in my business model....yes, I love affiliate sales, they bring in a nice amount of money a month, but raw sales are what drives my site, and what makes me the most money....the only money taken out of a raw sale is 10% for billing....with an affiliate sale there is almost 70% taken out after it is all said and done

so, why do I hear so much about people wanting so many affiliates all the time and not wanting an SEO more? Are people just lazy and want to create the site and don't care about promoting it themselves?

if you wanna make the most money from a paysite, hire or learn SEO and do it yourself and depend on raw sales as your main source of income, don't depend on affiliates....

don't take this as me bashing my affiliates, I love them and they work DAMN hard to bring in a lot of money for me and my wife....but when I see an affiliate making more sales than I do, I immediately work harder myself to match that, cause if they can do it, so can I.

this is more out of curiosity than anything.....

LOL :1orglaugh

Because if you can have great and huge affiliate, they will be in mesure to bring you about 100-200 times more signups then you could generate yourself ... making the 30 % that goes in your pocket 3000 % of what you would have made ;)

Look at ars, you needed to generate 2-3k of signups daily to be in the top 5 webmasters ... thats a LOT of money

Here's my theory: people think running a program is easy and the traffic just comes pouring in.

100 affiliates making 10 sales a week is 1000 sales more a week than if you wouldnt have them, even though you only make 30% :glugglug

You should always try and get a high amount of both own sales and affiliates sales ofcourse :)

The responses in this thread already validate my theory.

:glugglug

Many people have their own ways of operating their sites and still be successful. I have always believed in " Don't fix it if it is not broken."

So if there are paysite owners depending on affiliate traffic and they are happy with where they stand, then i say leave it be. Even though doing what you suggested here would increase their monthly income. I have to say i understand where your curiousity comes from.

Are you stupid?

Jace, What sites do you have that are pouring in the joins? Tabitha's site? I don't think so.

Because 30% of a sale you don't really have to do ANYTHING for is better then 90% of one you have to chase with your own money / time.

Its doing both that makes paysites profitable.. only so much you can do inhouse.

There's no money in SEO dammit, everyone get out of SEO!
WG

What programs do you know of that rely mostly on affiliate promotion to survive? I'm not specifically asking for a program name, but give me a general flow chart of what you think those who rely on affiliates soley do in business.

Open a program and put out 100 hosted galleries then call it a day?

that is just one of our sites, and yes the joins do come very steadily for it...enough to live off of very comfortably.

my other sites do pretty well too, and the affiliate traffic is nice, but nothing compared to the money made from myself doing the SEO for them

and just to clarify, I was just curious in all this....I have built up a nicely successful business model by learning SEO, and targetting very specific keywords that show up in the top 10 of yahoo and google, and making far more off that with my paysites than any of my affiliates have made for me

and yes, that extra money affiliates make is nice extra money, but even with my top affiliates they still don't beat the 100-150 joins a day I get from google and yahoo, those are golden....

so I guess the main thing for me would be to wonder why more people don't learn and master SEO and get that guaranteed golden money instead of (like someone else mentioned) building a site, putting up 100 hosted galleries and calling it a day...

Keep the good stuff a secret, Shhhhhhhhhhh!
WG

haha, oh i agree with that......i can tell people 100 times that I depend on SE for my main income from paysites, but people never believe it or they never learn the right way to do it, so you and I should not even be close to worried (ecspecially you...haha)

I see a free lunch at Fogo in your future in exchange for a seo class. lol

nigga please.

haha....i think wiredguy would shoot me in the foot if I showed you much...haha

:)

:1orglaugh

Quantifying market potential is enough to warrant a bullet :)
WG

You ingreat after I have been begging sponsors for things to give away since you promised a raffle lol.

I think the topic is off the mark here.
Why do you assume paysite owners depend on affiliates "so much".
There are lots of paysite owners out there who don't even have an affiliate program.

Also, all of the "big" programs don't need affiliates at all. Sure affiliate traffic is nice because its traffic they wouldn't otherwise have, but they're doing hundreds if not thousands of joins every day on their own traffic so if all their affiliates died tomorrow in a nuclear explosion the big programs wouldn't have to fold.

Now if you're referring to the noobs who buy a content CD and a $100 tour from a designer in the Phillipines and then come to the boards and beg people to promote them..........well then you're talking about noobs who won't be here in 6 months, and they're not worth talking about.

:2 cents:

10% Nice

WiredGuy:

Totally agree! Everyone needs to fuck off and join linklists or something instead of cluttering up search engines! :winkwink:

:winkwink:

and for us wee lads what is SEO?

Stora Enso Oyj

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SEO&...=on&z=m&q=l&c=

Sex Entertainment Operations

I phrased it wrong, I don't think programs depend on affiliates, but it amazes me at the length some program will go for affiliates....
I could join a program right now and not have to pay for a thing and make a nice chunk of change, because everything is provided to me for free to promote them....not one start up cost at all....with this type of business model you don't make much off an affiliate after expenses...but yet I see program come here all the time and BEG for affiliates and offer them ANYTHING they want, and I just think that is obsurd...your paying them, and giving them the world? all this for around $8 a sale after your expenses....wtf?

yeah, add that $8 up 1000 times and there is a nice amount of money per day....sure, but if you learned to do what your affiliates making 1000 sales a day are doing, now THAT is money...

holy shit, that's nuts!

Are you saying that the top 5 webmasters at ars generate 2000 sign ups a day?

:1orglaugh

whats up with ars now-a-days dont they have a new plan they are puttingin effect now

2000 $ of signups ... my bad . But if you cut that with a 25 % profit margin ... thats a lot of money from 5 affiliates :)

$2k a makes a whole lot more sense :)

Greedy sheep????:glugglug

I doubt the numbers are that high.

Laziness. :2 cents:

Hmm.. SEO eh..? scribbling on notepad :thumbsup

Then you just as much rely on a 3th party as people that rely more on affiliates then you.

Google and yahoo decides one day not to put your links up anymore just because they feel like it ... what are you going to do then ? :2 cents:

thats not a theory
that's a reality

BTW

I do agree that pay sites should do more about SEO .. it's sad to see when you build a gallery with just a few keywords and limited listing on tgp's .. that 2-3 weeks later you stand on page 1 in a search engine, with keywords special for that site .. and that site isn't even findable in the first 5 pages... :helpme

bingo

What else do you do besides se to promote them?

no money in SEO ,

its all about gallery posting now
get into that an youll be rich i tell you , rich beyond your wildest dreams.


:winkwink:

pipecrew always got hate in his blood

We've always relied on ourselves to generate traffic and maintain a very comfortable living. It wasnt until recently that we decided to push our program seriously. IMO having a program helps us to grow bigger without adding extra staff, and helps enhance our branding, which is very important in the niche world.

jace. when you get back to atl hit me up. im going to fly down and pick your brain for a month.
thanks.