Sponsors and cropped image watermarking on FHGs
 

So, I'm starting up a FHG site and I was wondering about this.

I'm using TGP Rotator (which kicks ass, by the way) and I use it to grab an image from the FHG and then crop it online. Then, I proceed to watermark it with my site's name and place it on the front page. The image links directly to the sponsor's FHG.

Sponsors seem to have mixed feeling about this watermarking. Some say it's OK and some say it's not allowed.

I'm going around asking my sponsors one by one if this is OK.

What's the rule of the thumb regarding this?

the rule is, unless you want alot of lawyers up your ass, you shouldnt do it

Technically you dont own the content so NO its not allowed

Well, how about leaving no watermark at all then?

I really don't see why TGPs can't do this. I mean, it's not like they're claiming that the picture is theirs, they're claiming that they went through the trouble to crop the thing and that the image is hosted on their server or stolen from their server.

Anyone who types in the watermark address is going to end up in the sponsor's FHGs anyway...

Take Bang Bros, for example. Their images are all watermarked with their sites names.

Say I go through the trouble of manually cropping the image and leave their watermark on it. Then, the image gets hotlinked or stolen from my TGP and ends up in some forum. People see the image and they type in the address that they see in the pic, leaving me out of the circle and getting paid jack shit for an image I cropped and hosted.

you're not really this dense are you ?

It's real simple.

Content is subject to copyright laws.

Sponsors lay out their rules for licensing content to be used by others.

Follow the rules of the individual sponsors.

Watermarking according to specific sponsors is a lot more work and it breaks the "uniformity" of th TGP. I basically had two choices:

1) Watermark everything and dump the sponsors that don't allow it

2) Watermark nothing

I'm going with #2 and recropping all my thumbs because apparently most sponsors frown upon the custom watermarking.

Try to see beyond copyright protections and focus on what we're all here for: MONEY

I don't really thing that my previous post is that bad. Any publicity is good publicity. I mean, ePassporte is still going strong, right?

The more exposure your girls get, the better. If I had a paysite and some dude wants to grab an image from me to attract revenue to me, that's fine by me. If he's an affiliate and wants to watermark it for the sole purpose of knowing where that thumb came from, that's fine by me too, but he has to link that pic to me (FHGs) so that I can make money.

I really don't give a shit where he posts it, as long as it's done with a clear intention of bringing in traffic and making more money.

An entire different situation would be if, for example, someone is clearly stealing the content for his own benefit, while cutting out the sponsor of the deal. If I were to use the free content that sponsors give out to make my own pay site, well, that's no good.

The way I see it, sponsors should let affiliates watermark the free content that is hosted in the affiliate's server, mainly because after the surfer reaches the affiliates site, the next step is the sponsor's site.

TGPs are all about sending traffic to the sponsors. No surfer browses TGPs just to stay in the TGP. Hell, you can watermark the pic with "Do not click here" and if the chick is hot, the sponsor will get the traffic which, as I said before, is the entire point. This applies specially to the whole TGP - FHG relationship.

Am I really that dull? Doesn't anyone agree with this point of view?

I'm off to crop some thumbnails to keep it on the safe side... =/

if your program doesn't allow for cropping watermarks out for the thumbs that are displayed on the TGP index page lmk so I can pull all of your galleries.

There's no way in hell I'd leave watermarks on the thumbs. It looks like shit.

I use big thumbs, 320x240. A small, text-only, watermark can be placed and read perfectly.

you're a moron

What else is new?

I saw most of the girls I'm promoting now for the first time in non-porn boards.

Spend the time and money to learn how to create a site, pay for the hosting for it, build traffic for it, purchase custom licensed content for it, pay affiliates to promote it, and maybe, maybe you might have a different perspective on this matter.

Helix, my point of view in no way contradicts the fact that if the sponsor makes money, the afilliate does too. The main objective remains unchanged: send targeted traffic to the sponsor.

Again, it doesn't matter which watermark is placed in the thumbnail as long as that thumbnail leads directly to the sponsor's FHG because nobody goes to a TGP to see thumbnails. The point is to get people to click on them! If your thumbnail gets posted somewhere, the affiliate's TGP gets the traffic and then sends it to the sponsor, this way the affiliate doesn't get cut out of the deal.

Hotlinking happens, that's no novelty. I'm proposing a model in which the affiliate doesn't get fucked if the thumbnail is hotlinked elsewhere.