How spoiled all of us have become.............
 

I mean really?

Don't you remember when you would do it all yourself? Though some of you still do, and those guys usually end up making the bigger bucks, but god damn... hosted this, hosted that, free servers, POTD, MOTD, GOTD... and now RSS so you just take one snippet of code and have your site fed with content!!! Then you have some programs that will even build, code and submit your galleries for you daily!!!

All the while companies are paying out more to affiliates, giving away prizes and spending more money, to do more work, to earn less profit. Have a car, win cash, here's an Ipod, fuck my wife, earn $75 per trial join and then 100% of the rebill for life!!!

Insane how this business has evolved. :helpme

It's just too easy to get into the business now. In theory, if you get with the right company, the only thing you have to do is sign up and cash your checks.

Where could it possibly go from here?

There's no money in porn.

nope there isnt! :1orglaugh

I think affiliates need to quit being such bitches and EARN their money from now on. Fuck "free" anything. Pay for your own shit, or fuck off you lazy nutsacks!

I like that line :thumbsup

Theres no barrier to entry, 100 noobs all trying to grab a peice of the pie and theres only so much pie to go around. Not really a good thing unless you are one of the guys at the top.

Imagine if the same scenerio happened with Wendy's...
The cashiers would just stand there bitching about how much they make and that they have to actually touch the burgers and money, until the owners give in and all they have to do is just stand there, smile and earn more than the owner.

Fucking lazy shits.

I have spoken on this before. Usually with great debate.
Aside from those affiliates with large amounts of steady traffic at their disposal. What very well could and probably will happen is that program owners will realize that they are already paying to do everything, so why not pay people to do the rest of the work as well and cut out affiliates (small guys).

This thread is full of some of the worst non-car analogies I've ever fucking seen.

http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje35/me03.jpg

Poppycock...

ADG Webmaster

I could see that.

Very true...

reply comming soon as my outsourced underage filipino grunt shows up to type it for me.....

Omg bahahaha :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

You know the real wake up call? Try asking for or expecting *anything* with mainstream sites/sponsors. They'll laugh you off the internet and basically tell you to get fucked. :1orglaugh

LMFAO!

DH

well I think it is a good point that we spend less and get more :)

hmmm, so you and your buddy own a program, you sit down and decide to get some traffic in order to make $$$, you and your buddy can think of 10 traffic sources, you get 10 Indians and you get that covered

you and your buddy own a program, you concentrate on getting affiliates, they come up with 200 places to get traffic from, with all things equal I think this is your better option

the reason programs come with more and more candy for the affiliates is because there're about 1 million programs right now as opposed to NastyDollars and ARS couple of years back

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...ght=submitting

:(

And if they did not make money doing all of this for us, they would not do it.

This is not a thread about making money, it is a thread about how spolied we have become.

It's just too easy now. :2 cents:

Not up for a full scale debate on this issue right now. Will go over a few areas though.
Private and invite only programs already exist and many do very damn well.
Consolidation and technology has made it easier to get at traffic sources.
Assuming someone gets 10 indians as you put it, that is 10 people working full time just on getting traffic for you. Compared to a affiliate pool whom are often very fickle with their traffic and rarely put in more than a few hours per program per month if that.

All things are never equal either.

Oh please!!
Thats called progress.

I guess we should walk or ride a bicycle instead of driving the car.
Yup, we're lazy.

if each of those Indians makes 10 sales daily for that program, then they will soon get out of working for that program, and start working on their own....

and they will register on GFY, say "I can send 10 sales daily, who wants my traffic?" and other affiliate program owners will suck their dicks

I will syndicate your RSS feeds, but only if you allow hotlinking, and only if there are 15 posts in every feed. It must not be pinku. You will have to update your RSS feeds hourly.. and for that I will give you an iframe. KAWAII! ^_^

You will always loose some, attrition would be a given. Same time though for many security trumps greed.

lol :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

i guess my point was, imagine how good the program owners used to have it? Did the pendulum swing too far? I do not own a program so no idea.

It all means nothing if they don't have the traffic...And anything short of sending a check just to sign up will mean that it still is very hard to make a dollar if you don't know what you're doing

its true I have talked to many owners that said they pay out 100K a month in affiliate checks they could take that same 100K and just pay employees to do it and stop taking affiliates and end up with more

ahh the GOOD OL DAYS

Dear gawd someone else agreed with me.
Typically the stance I took is an impossible debate. Affiliates of course always argue that they are needed because without them they do not get their traffic and its x amount of hits they normally would not get and so forth. Why turn down traffic, why have 10 people instead of 10,000 affiliates, and the list goes on and on.
Then rarely will program owners ever chime in of course.

Of course the other issues never get spoken about aside from affiliate payouts, such like:
Fraud.
Time spent on affiliates.
Advertising costs to get affiliates.
Hidden affiliate costs.
Potential secondary producer rulings with 2257.
Potential liabilities company is exposed to with affiliates.
Etc.

the good ol days? your join date is 2006 buddy

Interesting thread.

It boils down to supply and demand. The supply of traffic is nowhere near the demands of the programs. Unfortunately all thoughts are based on all affiliate programs being all created equally, when they most definately are not. Some programs truly put new time, money and resources into creating new content, new tools, etc to increase (or hold on to) their market share. I would love to see someone post a list of the sites and programs that have been on autopilot for years. Programs that because of timing and age would never need to release a single new concept, site or take on a new affiliate. The smell of old internet porn money must be a wonderful thing :upsidedow

My guess is in the next 2 years the amount of total adult programs will double, with most selling well package non-exclusive content. Competition will be fierce, and only those with an established market share and deep pockets will make it through. The programs that seem to fair the best are the ones that understand the exact formula to best monetize the traffic.... which is on the border of being cleaver / and finding out exactly what shennanigans affiliates are ok with in regards to their traffic.

Ultra niche programs will fair the best, or mega programs that have been around since the golden age of internet porn. There will be many more new threats along the lines of Zango because the desperation will be there from new programs with nothing to lose. Many programs will go through the same thing that happened in the mainstream porn DVD world (and continues to happen).... complete market saturation. Only the strong will survive. And big programs will continue to swallow up the small programs, even just for their traffic.

I can see things getting MUCH more competitve. How about affiliate credit for: cross sales, upsells, exit sales, member rejoins, etc? Unfortunately the most of the success programs at that point will be the ones that can make all those claims, not follow through with them, and still leave their affiliates smiling.

Just a possible direction the business could take in the new few years, and all reliant on the fact that most programs CANNOT generate enough in house traffic to stay afloat :2 cents:

if you have rock solid exclusive content and solid affiliate tools you don't have to give away the farm. you be fair, pay fair and watch everyone else give away more than their model allows. i feel for the cookie cutter programs that don't have the resources to shoot their own stuff and share content with 5-6 maybe more programs. it is business though, so i guess my feelings really run skin deep.

:2 cents:

So why don't thye hire people to generate traffic and have affiliates?

This seems like a very dense road to travel down. What would be the upside of getting rid of affiliates? Hiring people to source traffic would inevitably lead to them moving on to create the own networks.

There will always be a need for affiliates - it's like saying car dealerships don't need salesmen, they can just have a eftpos machine at the door.

One would not need to get rid of established affiliates in a program. Could just mean an raised entry bar for new affiliates.

The other side to your arguement about moving to create own networks, that again boils down to traffic vs content arguments.

I wonder how many affiliates have started out relatively small and with the help of programs have grown large and become loyal to the program? Creating barriers for entry is a good and bad thing.

I suppose what i'm getting at is that there will always be demand for affiliates. Webmaster traffic is as valuable if not more so than surfer traffic.

My Righteous Rant, published in the most recent XBiz World:

Is it too easy to get into adult?

In the past, I have heard people complain that it is just too easy to get into the adult Internet business, when compared to the startup costs usually associated to an offline business. You can get free hosting, domains for $7.95 (or less), free content, RSS feeds, FHG's, etc. Seriously, all you need is a computer and with a little effort one can turn a profit with little or no expense.

Usually, I would just blow off the comments as coming from people that were concerned with the additional competition. Heck, most of those complaining probably started off the very same way. Yours truly got into this by responding to an AOL spam telling me that for $25 (or was it $50) I could make millions selling porn on the Internet. Of course, I was getting a sub-sub-sub subdomain and splitting whatever sales I made with the company that spammed me. But heck, $500,000 ROI on a $25 investment sounded pretty good to someone as broke as I was.

While many of us used those early opportunities to get our foot in the door it seems like today's newbie thinks that the money should just roll in like it was 1996. As I am writing this I am trying to put myself in their place as far as the thought process, but I am having no luck. So I will give a "hypothetical" example of what set off this rant.

Newbie buys $15 worth of traffic that is to be delivered in 30 days. A week passes and the guy is bitching on the boards that his traffic isn't coming fast enough. I understand that in some third world countries $15 will feed a kid for three months, but I don't think they are worrying about their Internet connections at home, so I don't think this newbie really qualifies to be discrediting a company after a week. Hey, if the traffic isn't provided by the time the 30 days ends, go for it, if you must.

While this is just one example, it doesn't seem a week goes by that some new guy, operating on a shoestring budget isn't out slamming an established, respected company or webmaster over some pittance, when it is usually an error on their part, or maybe they just did not read the TOS, or the mail isn't delivered on Sunday.

I know being scammed is a drag, and it doesn't matter who you are or for how little, it isn't right, and you should not tolerate it. However, approaching the person or company before taking it to the boards seems to be reserved for individuals that have been around a while.

I can't help but think that if it was a little more difficult to get started in this business that people would treat it more like a business and begin acting "businesslike."