Yeah, someone's rates have to come down, but do you really think it's the whores'? For most internet pornographers, paying webmasters costs a WHOLE lot more than production costs which would be fine/make sense except when they pay 1) huge per-join payouts, on 2) free joins or trials, 3) and that traffic is sent by giving away ridiculously massive quantities of free porn (thereby decreasing signups -- I'm not fighting the reality, just acknowledging it IS a factor to our bottom line, way more so than paying talent), and 4) the way they manage to turn a profit even after they pay affiliates millions is by scamming surfers in ways that can only be described as criminal and only hurt ALL of us:
http://www.gfy.com/it/867499-trafficgigilos-free-sites-10-sells-shit-credit-card.html
plus the follow-up of stats with screen shots:
http://www.gfy.com/gfy-hall-of-shame/873319-opinions-stats-post15140237.html
(see also any number of threads about pre-checked cross-sales, etc.)
Something's gotta give, for sure, and with the economy tanking cuts have to be made everywhere, but cutting back on what the models/whores are paid wouldn't even begin to balance things out. The more obvious place to look is 1) cutting back these ridiculous payouts, 2) cutting back the freebies, and 3) cutting out free joins and trials completely.
People (not talking about you, Robbie) need to stop being so greedy, constantly thinking about how to suck the CUSTOMERS *and* the whores dry, and actually place real value on the products they should be selling instead of paying web"masters" exorbitant amounts of money for giving it all away for free so they can rip-off the people who entrusted them with their credit cards.
Note: I know not all sponsors do that shady stuff and I'm NOT saying affiliates are worthless (well, some of them are, and worse) and shouldn't be rewarded FAIRLY -- most of our affiliates are awesome and I am fully aware they could make more money more easily by sending traffic to the big bad guys instead of small sites like ours that can "only" pay half on the sales instead of some grossly inflated amount that can rarely be sustained in an ethical way on a long-term basis (ie without raping customers' credit cards). I do appreciate our affiliates and I don't blame anybody for taking advantage of the way the system's set up -- I just don't think it's built to last.
I know you (Robbie) are a sponsor AND an affiliate/webmaster and so am I, so before anyone gets all defensive let me just say I too love getting paid $35+ per easy-as-hell-to-send join. I know from experience that it's WAY easier (it's still "work", I'm not saying it's not work at all) to be a webmaster than to be a whore. WAY.
If *more* value were placed on the whores, not just in the amount they're paid but in the end products where they appear, there would be less free porn/more actual TEASERS, less giving-it-away-for free or $1.99 for three days where you can rip the whole site, people would pay to join and see more of the girls who do have big names and/or personality and/or are great models (not as easy as Mr. E thinks). I'm not retarded -- I understand this isn't a perfect world / it's not going to happen, but I can at least hope people will be rational and recognize that if we're going to sit around on this board complaining about who's expecting to be paid WAY too much, it is the webmasters and there are countless threads to prove it.
I don't care how nice you are or how many hours you spend at the computer, you do not (nor do I, no matter how pleasant it is) deserve $40 for sending a surfer who signs up intending to spend zero to $5 and will only spend more if you trick him into it/steal it from him. This is not an attack on webmasters, I'm just trying to help people COMPARE AND CONTRAST.