Partnership Program Shams
 

Something I noticed at Internext was how pretty much everyone and their brother has their own partnership program.

I understand that a partnership program will help you get traffic and signups... and 30-50% of the pie is better than nothing... But is it really worth it for the webmaster sending traffic?

It's happened quite a few times in this industry.. small webmasters have lost several hundred, or even several thousand, dollars a m onth in recurring revenue because the owner of the partnership program couldn't afford to run the sites anymore.


How many of you send traffic to small partnership programs?
Would you still send traffic to a program that you know the owner to make less than you? I'm referring to those guys who have a program and make less than $5k/mo. Unless you ahve exclusive content.. it's almost impossible to run a paysite on less than $5k/mo

Nowadays........

everyone is a webdesigner
everyone is a hosting company
everyone is a content provider
everyone is a programmer
everyone is running a partner program
everyone is a traffic broker
everyone is a camgirl site

Olddays....
you did all the shit yourself.....

Is this relevent to this post? I dunno, but I noticed these trends throughout the years. Personally, I am amazed at all the content providers now. and all the resellers posting here.

Times have obviously changed, but nowadays you are more likely to get scammed then in the past. And you are right about recurring, and companies going broke. Which is why I would only push sites that pay per signup.

Busty Amateurs springs to mind.........as far as recurring losses when they shut down.

p00p -

So is the trend. Busty amateurs came as a surprise to many people. they had a good following and a large webmaster base.

Personally, I will send to a few small programs, only when I know and trust the owner personally. There aren't a whole lot of people I can say that about. One thing I have learned in this biz is to trust noone totally.

agreed. and p00p, i thought busty's as well...

I have trusted people in the past (some of them post here) and have been fucked over royally. I would send traffic to small programs, some of them are original and good. But I would only want to be paid for the traffic, or per signup. No recurring...that can work out good in the long run, but can bite your ass as well. I would rather take a larger per signup then a smaller recurring. I remember when we were with DMR our sites were recurring at about 98%. It was crazy. Joe Surfer is smart now, there are more sites, more niches, etc. and I think if a guy recurrs more then 3 months he forgot what site he signed up for, or how to cancel.

I used to trust people in this biz years ago. But we have been burnt so many times, I trust no-one but myself now. Unfortunate as there are some good people in this industry, but they are few and far between.

quiet, I understand why you keep to yourself. Most people you meet in this biz want to fuck you over some way or another. We have met a lot of 'quality' Edmonton people who are scumbags. Fuckups that I would be willing to take the charge to beat their asses.

I want to fuck quiet over with a big rubber strap-on.

:glugglug

the fucker would even enjoy it.

I have only been fucked a twice in this industry. Not bad for as long as I have been in. But each time I lost a shitload of potential $$$. Live and learn I guess. I am still a trusting guy... but i am VERY cautious.

Things to watch out for in these small programs:

1) do you get exit traffic credit to other sites in their program?
2) are there any "outs" on their tour leading to places you don't make money? This happens a lot with amateur sites
3) are the members areas good enough to recur?


can you think of anything else to watch for?

My first fuckover was from Galaxy-net.

:drinkup

lol. Damn p00p./ You've been around a long time.

did you used to have a different handle?

i hated galaxy-net. terrible fucking hosting.

Thew whole galaxy-net ordeal went down in 1997 if i remember correctly

most i've been stiffed for was like 150 bux. i'm very paranoid, especially with programs i've never dealt with before.

I had a different handle, I was posing as a woman, as most guys do nowadays. My guy at galaxy-net was a Russian called Marcan or something like that. Cool dude, and he always told me the good ship was sinking fast.

It was 1997? Wow that was a long time ago. My first processor was Validate in 1996.

For the dude that was stiffed $150, we got stiffed over $20k by DMR as well.

We are still doing well, live and learn. I reckon over the years we have been screwed for over 100k. We take risks, some work, some don't. But for all the money we have been screwed over, we have made it all back big time.

Good questions, with our program, you get control of and credit for you exits, there are not 'outs' or 'traffic bleeds', and our members areas recur because we shoot our own exclusive content.

Take a look . . .

Poop,

I can remember that like it was yesterday..

There hosting was a rip off, and finally they screwed ppl over on there processing. Some of my friends lost 6 figs or so.

but as far as processors fucking, DMR was the worst around. Millions gone in breath!

--------------------------------------------------
My first fuckover was from Galaxy-net

Wow, DMR. Flashback time. I had forgotten all about those pricks. A lot of people got major fucked by those rat bastards.

What happened to them finally? Anyone know??

Well Krl,

the story goes, 2 of the main ppl stayed in ND, 1 went on to try another type of billing scheme in mainstream I belive, but it didn't make it long, forget the domain name off hand.

Friends told me some ppl started suits, but I guess it didn't go far. I am sure they are living real nice :( LOL

Old DMR... I think I am one of the few who actually got a majority of their money out. I got 80%, so I consider myself very lucky.

Of course I also had Sick'em Sig in my corner - and the guys at DMR were terrified of him. ( Sig was with my company at the time, and handled legal issues.... he is now CEO of DirectNIC)

Wonder if any other processors will be biting the dust soon? ICPT is down 75% past 3 days in the market....

Sharky I will have some things coming out soon, wanted to have it ready by the show, but was not happy. I will mak sure you are the first to get a crack at it!

Plugger, I like your sites... I will be contacting you Monday - we are always looking for fresh sites, with unique content to send traffic to!

Sharky,

There is a lot of money to be made with amateur partnerships but you are right that you need to make sure they are sending your traffic to a tour without any leaks.

Amateur sites are some of the best converting sites around. That is sites featuring a single girl. Exclusive as you can get! :)

Exclusive = money!

Hugs,
Danielle

I'm not sure if it's fair to say that you are more likely to be dicked by a small player partnership (revshare) deal. I woudn't suggest that anyone sends all their traffic to one place. I reckon spread it around... you never know when someone is going to get divorced and taken to the cleaners or some poor bugger drops dead (leaving them unable to pay their hosting bill...)

Spread shit traffic around ... problem solved :glugglug

This can be true of PPS programs too though........almost all of them now have email collectors and don't pay on all of the exits (I'm not knocking that practice, just stating it's not exclusive to partnership sites).
So, whether it's a pay per signup or a partnership program, bottom line is you have to TRUSt who you're sending your traffic to.

I run an amateur site, and i do have a partner program in place.
if anyone would be interested i can certainly message you my site url and if interested still we can discuss program terms and such.
at present i only have a friend signed up under the program. its not something i advertise yet, and as such its bound to make a few people a good bit of cash.

It was interesting to read Sharky's point of view. I'm looking at it from the other side

We run an amateur site too with a partnership proggy all handled through our billing company. We have offered incentives and we hand out free content and still the guy who gets the most traffic to the site and the most sign-ups is me.

I guess the 80/20 rule really does apply and now we're looking seriously at alternative ways of getting traffic to the site.

I prefer high % paying partnerships -they can keep their exits.

paramount

:2 cents:

I look forward to it mike!

Is this what I had a preview of the other day?

They convert and retain like crazy!!!
But you have to make sure you send to a site that isn't going to go under 6 months from now.

how do you know that??? You don't

My first fuckover was by Rick from Kristy's Teens. That's a long time ago.

And a good second was Terry TropiXXX..

Old times.. ;-)

Greetings,

Art

well me i send almost all my traffic to a partnership program.


fir me to promote a program it has to have these items

1 of course it has to convert and retain

2 no leaks in traffic, and use a third party billing co.(no shave)

3 i have to be able to get a hold of the owner at anytime

4 the owners should relize if i can't make money.he/she does not
make money.
5 the owner must relize this is not a game.it is all about making
money

so to get all that is promote
www.gspotmoney.com

Good advice. Let someone earn your trust and respect do not give it away.

p00p
Good point, but few can do all those things well. Best to be a master of one trade, than a jack of all trades.

It really depends on "whom" you're sending traffic to rather than how you're getting paid. (revshare, per sign up, per active, per click etc etc)

Most people in this biz who know what they're doing can spot a newbie when they see one. When they look at a paysite and a partnership program you can tell whether or not the owner knows what they're doing.

If you can't tell by looking, trade email or icq or get on the phone with the people running the program and you'll be able to tell pretty quickly if they know how to make money.

On the Busty Amateurs note, one thing I learned from that situation was to control as much of your traffic as you can. Build your own tour or copy the sponsors tour and serve it yourself, so if something like that happens again you don't have to change the links on 10K pages, you just have to switch one page and you can still make money on that traffic. (Even if you do lose your rebills, which would really suck)

Small company doesn't mean unreliable or that you'll get fucked. We're relatively small, but have been around since 98. We're here for the long haul. :)

Our sites are clean, give credit on exit console hits and convert and retain quite well. We will set up custom entrances for you, return your exit traffic if you prefer and work with you in any way we can to make our relationship successful.

Also, we just added Epoch as an affiliate option, so you can use the Ibill or Epoch program now. We can't brag big numbers... we only pay out about $10k / month to affiliates, but that just means our program isn't saturating the market and you can get people's attention with our exclusive content.

Thats a fact Lenny..

I lost 10k a month in recurring revenue that I spent
building from 1998 to 2001 when Busty closed.

I wasn't happy about that one.

I run a small paysite Photonudity.com and I've been doing this for over 5 years. Do I make a lot of money? Not right now although the first few years I made over 80K each until my processor got his Visa/MC frozen. But I've never fucked anybody over, I don't even touch the partnership money (all through CCBILL), and I don't skim or cheat. Yes, my front page loads slow, but I have recurring members over 4 years old, so they like the site. I only pay percentage, sorry, but until this thing gets back to where it was in the old days (which may be never), that's all I can afford. But if you're looking for a site without pop-up hell, hi-res quality images, some feeds, and one where the webmaster returns e-mails the same day, check me out. I'd appreciate it. And the front page will be updated for faster loading within the next couple of months. That's Photonudity.com

vik

I try to keep my site as clean as possible, minimize links, and I manage to retain fairly well, even after I lost a ton of rebills due to the visa reg's, I still have guys rebilling at each of the price points my site has gone thru...I opened Oct 7, 2001 @ $9.95 a month by Feb 2002, I was at $15.95 a month...as more content got added I changed to $24.95 a month and added my affiliate program. I still have guys rebilling at $9.95 a month, $15.95 a month and (of course) $24.95 a month.

On another note, anybody can open a partnership
program, but not everybody can open a per signup payout
program.

I wouldn't push any site using Ibill. Judging by the amount of rebills we have lost the last couple months, I don't doubt affiliates pushing IBill processed sites are losing all their rebills too.

Bullshit! It is easily done, with zero money in the bank, zero money to invest. :thumbsup

The obvious concerns about Ibill lately are why we added Epoch.

If Ibill goes under, we'll lose a shit load of :2 cents:

As would your affiliates. Tsk tsk....Forsight is priceless, you should have used it. I saw Ibill problems early 2002 and ditched them then. You didn't? :(

I have to give props to Khy's sites, they do convert. I send a little traffic their way, and do very well.

Yeah I think IBill will be gone sooner - they are the processor who I think is closest to the situation DMR was!

Sharky, yeah I gave you a preview - thing is I was not happy with the setup - so I did not launch, I have some things I need to work out - including back-up processing and such. It will get there though....

Hi Art,

dang haven't heard Terry's name in awhile.

this biz aint going anywhere guys and gals. We see webmasters and programs coming and going on a regular basis.


Amateur sites are sure going to be around for yrs and yrs.

we have been doing alot of Japanese sites lately for some reason.

Tour in English, and tour in Japanese.

peace

todd

Why do you think so many people are sticking with iBill? I heard iBill brought 200 blank checks to Vegas tgo pay webmasters who weren't paid yet and complaining. Last I heard, they only used 9 of em... Seems like there is a lot of bitching in public, but when it comes down to it people aren't bitching to iBill.

When I was starting my affiliate program I simply did not have much idea how everything should look like (I had many traffic leaks in the tours etc.).
But luckily I was approached by some webmasters who helped me out - they wanted to promote my site because they just liked it and they were really very helpful with some new marketing ideas.

I'm always open for any suggestions how to make my preview/tours better for the partners - in the end the more money they make on my site the better for me.

And about going down... well in case of 'one girl amateur sites' it's rather not the financial side of it. It happens when the girl gets bored with this biz or (more often) she splits up with the partner who helped her with the site (or just approved of what she was doing).

Nice site Marie

:)

Get rid of Globill.

True dat...

thats how we started but realized we'd better focus on the one thing we did well instead of the shotgun approach :)

So we ditched everything else and focused on privatefeeds.com

That was three years ago and we couldnt be happier ;)

...of course, loosing re-billing isnt a worry with us... or a 3rd party processor going under; since we use 4.

and the owners can be reached at all time... and we dont have traffic leaks...

Ill stop now before my ego stops fitting through doors ; )

Um.. What I would suggest is send to per sign up, and take the quick money. It's like winning the lotto.. You have the option of getting paid half as much up front, or the whole amount spread over 30 years, or whatever.. Say you win $100mil, and opt out for $50mil. You could take the $50mil and reinvest it in another stuff and make a lot more than $50mil more in 30 yrs.. Same concept :)

Get your quick per sign up $ and reinvest it in other stuff to make more money.. make it mushroom.. then just get your own sites or whatever.. shrug.. my :2 cents: