Affiliates payouts, what's fair? (BUSINESS THREAD)
 

As it is now June and the 75% Rev Share has come to an end I'm setting the payouts for the future on the paysite. So asking your honest opinion on what is fair, looks honest and shows we are rewarding affiliates for the work they do.

The paysite traffic generation is mostly from affiliates, we get some from the content stores but not enough to make a big difference, around 1,000 uniques a day. We know for a fact a lot of members are coming back to join again and pick up all the new content, but must have come in the first place from affiliates. However we get a lot of join from "Type In Traffic" and this has to come from affiliates efforts because we do so little ourselves for it.

So Eva and I crunched the numbers and came up with the following formula. We will offer Rev Share or PPS payout options. We can afford them and feel there will be enough left to have the occasional "Bumper Payout Promotion" days. Tell us what you think.

The figures are based on per month.

1 to 25 joins = 60% Rev Share or $25 PS.

26 to 50 joins = 65% Rev Share or $30 PPS.

51 to 75 joins = 70% Rev Share or $35 PPS.

76 to 100 joins = 75% Rev Share or $40 PPS.

As I said this will allow us to offer extra bonus payout days. It also allows us to buy in lots of content, besides shooting it, to add appeal to the paysite.

As we build and get alternative income sources we will be able to put this up.

Some one give me some ideas.

The tiered structure you have going looks good paul

Interesting thread, I'd like to hear some more comments on this.

Seems to be pretty fair. It´s depending a little bit on the average amount of rebills a signup delivers. 60% revshare is $17.97 (maybe you have to cut processing fees), so $25 for pps is average, I think.

For paid tgp spots a gallery has to make 15 signups (assuming the spot costs $200 + bandwidth). So it´s quite OK if the conversions are like this. There are bigger programs which don´t offer more pps.

More than fair Paul, those numbers will attract attention.

PPS based on FULL month joins? So actually per per active?

That really does depend on where the traffic comes from. Some are sending lots of 1.5 months memberships and others are sending lots of 3 month memberships.

The average over the whole lot is 2 months. The thing that allows us to pay out this amount is the "Unknown Traffic" that has got great ratios and just arrives.

What Eva and I did in the beginning is sit down and budget for the site. Hosting, management, processing and affiliates, support, etc. At the moment the affiliates do not get what we budgeted for them at 60%. So this is trying to get it straight and hopefully encourage some more to send traffic.

We do have a second processor, MVC, which is not included in affiliates figures. But they pick up less than 5% of the joins and we've included that in the base rates of 60%.

I thought about using pps or revshare. Using revshare for bought tgp traffic means more signups required or a good rebilling amount. So I´m testing revshare programs for rebills before I use them in bought spots. That´s why I asked for.

That's what we hope.

Does your PPS system include trials aswell or just monthly memberships ?

those payouts look great Paul. not many places offering up to $40 PPS through ccbill!

reminds me I need to update the fhg's from your site

We don't do trials. My overall feeling about them is not very good. Maybe we will experiment with them. But my fear is if the numbers who upgrade to a full membership are not very good it has to involve shaving to make it pay. $25 for a $5 sign up means every sign up has to upgrade or if half upgrade those who do have to stay 2 months to break even. Or you have to upsell and cross sell at a very high rate and I do not see this happening. Or it comes out of the affiliates pockets in shaving or drop out of traffic.

The new pay scheme is simply going to allocate the amount of money we budgeted on paying affiliates to the affiliates. Maybe paying 50% rev share would allow this.

Don't tell me what other programs do, because we have cross sales in the site, but they do not do well enough to justify paying $25 out for a $5 trial. If someone has any suggestions on what to offer the members that will pay this well then they are welcome to hit me up on ICQ.

But got a new idea for exit traffic that we will be trying out in the next few months. It will be for those who only want to spend $5 to $10 and it will not be included in the affiliates payouts in the beginning.

If it works then we can move it into the affiliates payment system and we Will know how much it's worth.

if you would pay out $40 per with no min, you would attract more webmasters.

First, there is nothing wrong with the scaled amount you have listed - it looks fair and on par with other programs. I think programs that offer too much just looks suspicious or desperate for affiliates - which just is a sign that their current affiliates aren't converting as well as they should.

Good luck.

Sounds very fair and reasonable to me Paul, trials certainly do not work out for every site but you cant judge untill you have tried it.

If this new pay sheme works out for you and your affiliates then that's fine for both :)

You need to find out which affiliates are responsible for this traffic, and give them the credit.

You need better software.

What if this is type in traffic from the content affiliates are using, people returning after 6 months, people who delete cookies and others I can't think of.

We can spend lots of money on new software or we can just up the payments. Spend it on software or give it to affiliates. Tough call.

and he would attract even more if he paid a bajillion dollars per signup on trials. that doesnt mean its in his best interest though.

those free joins i just look at it as part of the payout structure. ive heard that they account for 20% of joins. just up the % on the revshare if you think its fair.

100% rev share would be fair :winkwink:

that is asking a lot

Those numbers are very fair Paul! When i go live i will be putting you on the exit console for shizzle! :)

Thats just perfect ! I gotta join your program... (i prommised you that like a year ago in amsterdam, still gotta join ;-))

Exactly what we've done and will continue to do.

We have the review site very close to going live, on exit from the paysite the surfer will be offered the chance of looking at this site.

Any money this site take we will add to the over all kitty of the "Paysites" side of the company and adjust affiliates payouts or % accordingly.

Then in the near future we will be looking at what a surfer to the review site is actually worth and how to tag him to an affiliate. Then we will look into an affiliate program for the site.

Also in the pipeline is another scheme for sites. We will test it from the review site, content store traffic and on exit traffic. Again once we know the value of a surfer we will consider an affiliate program.

Over the years many have questioned my way of expressing myself and board personality, but no one has questioned my honesty. It is my firm belief that paying affiliates more for their traffic will get more of them to send traffic. This we will continue to do.

We know we get traffic and sign ups from the content stores, we get members returning and signing, we get type in traffic, we get SE traffic for "Paul Markham". All this has been taken into account when we calculated what we could afford to pay affiliates. we have left a little for "Promotions"

If the amount we can afford goes up we will adjust it.

I don't see any reason it should go down. But willing to listen.

The only problem with your method is that it assumes all affiliates are equally responsible for the hahaha8220;untraceablehahaha8221; revenue. Different promotional strategies and traffic sources will result in different amounts of type-ins etc.

For example, an affiliate advertising using text links will bring in much less type-in traffic than an affiliate using your watermarked content. Using your method, the text link guy gets more than he deserves.

Fully understand this and if you can come up with a solution please tell us.

The situation is we get this traffic, we profit from it, so we want to pass on the profits because it has to come from affiliates efforts.

Are we unique or is this a usual thing about traffic just arriving and not being associated with an affiliate? It only really started to snow ball this year.