WARNING: business discussion thread Affiliates programs why?
 

I often wonder why almost everybody who decides to startup a few paysites
is also playing the affiliate game. In todays market I think unless you have
very deep pockets and a VERY LONG BREATH they will only cost you money
and decrease the chance on success.

Just think about it for a minute.....software, staff, freecontent, cheaters,
support, handling a hurd of mostly ignorant webmasters for approx 30% of
each sale? Unless you´re doing a HUGE volume, have really good average
retentions and realise that it will take you a LONG time till you actually
see profit it will only cost you tons of money, time, patience, drama, etc, etc.

Now if you use HALF of that budget or even less.....buying traffic and marketing
your sites yourself which is a fraction of the cost and will make you a LOT more
money unless you´re REALLY clueless.

Your content won´t be oversaturated....you won´t piss off customers by
attempting to cheat them and thus ruining your chance on a sale or worse
getting complaints from people that DID fall for it.

You can carefully select traffic sources and sites where you want to
promote your sites reaching a MUCH more targetted audience which
will improve conversions and member retention.

I can keep on going sprouting more arguments which will even proof my
point more. Yet everybody seems to just jump on the bandwagon and do
the exact same thing as everybody else.

Of course there are exceptions.....and funny enough I don´t know ANY of
them who fail.......

Am I missing the point here or am I just damn smart :winkwink:

Discuss! :pimp

I guess I picked a wrong thread title......:1orglaugh

I like your thread :)

and I would like to know why

me too :thumbsup

And I like Your thinking.. :thumbsup

It must be damn difficult to start up an affiliate program today,
and just like You wrote; profit margins must be a hell of a lot nicer "Your" way... :2 cents:

Propably results in much less sales overall, but more profit on each sale.

exactly and for a fraction of the operational cost.

100 affiliates doing 10 sales per month each is another 1000 joins a month that you wouldnt have had if you promoted it your self, most programs that start out do promote thier own sites hard too. But mainly I do agree with you that affiliates is not always the way to get the $$

30% of a sale? I think you're being generous.

Servergenius is a genius at servers.

good thread needs a bump

How long will it take till you have 100 affiliates that do 10 sales a month.
How much will it cost you to get there, how much time, how much money
and how much hassle.....and let´s not forget you only get 30% of those
sales.....and from that you´ll have to pay ALL operational costs.

I´ll guarantee you if you would spend only half of that money to buy traffic
and market your sites yourself (or even with some staff) you have a LOT
more profit a LOT faster, for a FRACTION of the costs, better retention
and less work than through an affiliate program.

Of course I´m talking now....not some program that started in ´92

that´s what you get from a sale from than all your costs still have to be paid......
it´s even a LOTworse if you do p.p.s. With p.p.s. you lose until you can play the
big number game.

very good thread indeed

Its all about balance. Your own traffic, other people's traffic, it all adds up to $$$

It is simple. You need volume to make the big bling. Lets say your monthly nut is 10k for content hosting and scripts etc. You do 10k in sales and you break even so you need to do 100k and even though your nut goes up lots of stuff is fixed or sliding scale and thus you keep more if you are big.

If you do it yourself, you still have to work but you will not get that big whale that likes your stuff and drags in 5 sales a day for 2 years.

don't follow the "hurd".

sometimes the simplest way is the best way!

i think he means pre-everything else (cc processing/bw/content/etc)

going to be in fl?

Unfortunately not....too busy at the moment. I´ll be at webmaster access
in Amsterdam :winkwink:

Then again ... why not start your own affiliate program once you're pushing a certain ammount of sales ? Give yourself the trouble and make more money ?

Thats the way:winkwink: :winkwink: :winkwink:

An excellent thread. And yes I think I can only second the thoughts of Servergenius.

I guess you could......perhaps even have a handfull of selected affiliates by invitation only.

My program is small and has been online for a year now. It is growing all the time, and I like what I see. Even though I know what you are talking about. It sure takes a lot of time and money. And getting good affiliates are not easy.

My two cents...ServerGenius
 

hey ServerGenius, your thread title is fine... I read your first comment and I think your right!

Most of marketing on the Internet is "smoke and mirrors" and you hit it on the head with your statement.

I have seen countless business that look like they are doing very well for themselves just to go under within a year or two; this includes adult associate programs.

Don't get me wrong there are the real pros out there, but even for them to "swim up stream" and to bump into stupid people, can be a bit much even for them... Perhaps the really smart people don't bother with those who think the world of themselves and who causes problems for others!

What do you think makes adult webmasters successful... ;)

a) actual skills
b) friends
d) just dumb luck...

ServerGenius - well what about shaving all the affiliates like many do - this way you increase your margins and in essence are fucking off all the affiliates anways.

They cant do anything about it so you benefit big time.

alot of affiliates become your friends. I have been online for 7 year adult. before hosting and design online for 4. 11 online total. I have friends also known as 'affiliates/webmasters/owners/partners' we enjoy what we do and make a enough money to do it...
I have several stories about your topic I would like to share.
I have had affiliates that would signup and start sending 800,000 unique visits a day from 1 guy ;-) with-out warning.

this will cause your sales / traffic / bandwidth / chargebacks.refunds / customer support and other related issue?s that will need more attention, some deals will work while you try and make others stop ; I have had an affiliate that converted 1/60,000 on a free trial. while my avg was 1/230 overall (more then 750 joins a day) - I was loosing money with this affiliate.

the more you know about the traffic affiliates have the better you can create your product to target and convert it ;-)

The bottom line is yes you are forgetting something, Affiliate's become your friends and your friends become your affiliates, after you have been online and have some history with them. you only need affiliates if you have a paysite, vod site or are a studio then it would make you more money... :thumbsup
try and stay ontop of your affiliates and run reports often on your bandwidth /sales conversions... see who is going what and give assistance when needed ; you will know your product better then anyone ;-)
Educate...

I think you're right but I also think it's good to have a few good affiliates you choose, and not an open sign up. This way you have good people sending you traffic you can count on converting, paying them for their efforts, and also you have yourself doing your thing.

Bad seed - Amazon.com in the day couple years ago, had the largest affiliate base online, everyone and there brother were promoting books from amazon.com on a % rev-share.

one day after running the program for 3-4 years amazon decides to STOP and not payout any of the affiliates rev-share commissions, have no affiliate program at all.

so they did it and then they become HUGLY profitable, and then came out with a better new and improved, lol affiliate prgram, only to repeat the STOP agian i'm sure.

....

Unless you know what you're doing.

Rules are only good if someone follows them. If not, you can stick'em up your ass.

Were a brand new program and I already have a lot of affilaites oing over 10 sales a month each

For how long? Next brand new program might easily see your active affiliate base shrink in half. It's all about fresher sites and better mousetraps.

so why doesnt WiredGuy start one?

IMO all the affiliate programs are the same anyway, I don't care at all when someone starts a new one

software: ccbill, stuff: 0, freecontent: easy to make within minutes, support: 1 hour per week, if you make a good promo content area, affiliates will find everything within that and dont email you

Let's be real... your scenerio isn't the norm. In theory it sound sounds good.

Im not talking about a norm and im not talking within a certain time frame, all im saying is it doesnt have to be such a pain to setup the affiliate part of it when you already have the customer part fixed....

It sounds easy.....but you won´t make it that way....unless you consider
making it means doing $1000 per month with a few of your buddies.

Nowadays to do even revshare is already hard. Affiliates want Pay per Signup.
Affiliates don´t settle anymore with ZipContent as free promo content. You
need freehosted galleries, movies, free hostingk, gifts, bonuses, etc, etc
while the majority won´t even make any substancial sales no matter what
you give them. They´ll blame your content and sites for their own failure
and move on to the next program faster than a hooker drops her panties.

Of course this doesn´t apply to everybody and there are small successful
programs that actually are working......but I´m talking about the majority
who unlike what they want you to believe fail......or are struggling really
hard to stay alive.

:2 cents:

And no I´m not a bitter webmaster who had this scenario happening to me :winkwink:

Genius, can you check your icq for me for a sec... i'm trying to bother you... AGAIN.

Done and fixed :winkwink:

Yes, and if you SHAVE 1/2 of those sales, then what is the profit?

Oh. I see... we forgot for a second that almost everyone under the sun shaves these days.

I think Andriej is closer to $1k per day than $1k per month :D

if it really takes him only a few hours per week to manage the program, then even better for him :thumbsup

Let's not forget about branding and type-ins from affiliates banners fpa's and fhg's containing the url.

There are pluses to both sides.

Of course I don't doubt that.....I don't say it can't be done coz I know it is.
I'm talking about the majority that pops up these days....not the clever guys
who actually really know what they are doing and have the sources to make
it work.

You only benefit from that once it really works.....not when you're starting up
have to find GOOD affiliates and actually really getting them to send a substantial
amount of traffic to your program.

Most of the people you see open up their own programs don't just "jump in" but instead have been pushing traffic to other programs for a few years. At some point in time they say "I can do this on my own and keep more of the money". And they do. Some do well, some fail.

I know of someone right now who has been pushing traffic via TGPs for the past two years. He's making enough money to support himself full time and is working full time on his own program. The first day he opens he'll send himself forty sign ups and he'll have a dozen hand picked affiliates that will send maybe another forty signups on day one. And this is before he goes public with his new program.

So all he needs to do is shoot or purchase some content, build two or three sites, an affiliate site, zip up some content for promo purposes, make a few banners and half page / full page ads, and kiss a little ass. And bingo, he's making more money over night.

Everything has 2 sides, ofcourse there will always be those who succeed and those who fail, the question is who are you gonna be? :)