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I may get flamed here, but -
I met Francis and a couple of his partners years ago at Internext Miami and they seemed like ok people. At the time they were selling a service that would have introduced us to possible investors. I declined the offer but not because I smelled a Rat, it was just something I wasn't interested in at the time. Good meeting, learned alot, nice people. No hardcore sales tactics.
I met up with Francis again at Internext Vegas. Again no hardcore sales of any kind. "How's it going?" etc etc. Thats it. Same for Internext Miami this past summer.
A couple of weeks ago though, I received a phone call from a sales rep who told me he worked for iPorn. He was extremely bad at his job. I don't know who I felt more badly for: Him, or whoever his boss was. He was terrible.
He was offering me advertising on iPorn for I forget howmuch. $5000 I think. When I asked him what kind of value I was getting for my money though, he could not answer me. What are the stats? How many views will I get? Is this Pay Per Click? Exactly what are you trying to sell me? He had no idea.
So then I asked him if I could test his traffic. "Let's put an affiliate code up for a couple of days - paid if you want - so that you and I can test the traffic together to see if we can convert it. If so, I'll buy in".
To me it seemed like a perfect offer. I did not suggest that his traffic would not covert, instead, I said "Let's see if WE can Convert YOUR traffic". (I was careful to say it exactly this way).
He refused, and instead kept falling back on who the other advertisers were. "Look we have Video Secrets up there! We've got to be good! Why would they advertise with us if we weren't good?" I tried to explain to him that this was exactly the wrong kind of sales pitch to toss around.
I went on to explain that we will gladly pay for advertising as long as we can convert it and make money with it. I told him we did the same with Wildline and spend $30k a year with those guys and we have been their FAVORITE client for the past 3 years already (Hi Johnny!)
It really wasn't his day. I was READY to spend money. I was in a GOOD MOOD, ready to try out a new source of traffic, etc etc. Francis doesn't have the best reputation in the industry but then again so what we've all had shit thrown around at one time or another. If the numbers made sense, I was ready to rock. But nope. This poor guy just kept digging his hole ever deeper. He was the worst salesman I had ever talked to.
Anyway, thats my story with iPorn. I sincerely hope that all the stories about them aren't true. Maybe a post from one of their reps in this thread may help clear things up a little.
If anything, there's lots of lessons to be learned here. Always trust your gut. If a deal seems to good to be true it probably is. Try hard to make the best product possible and offer it at a fair price and you'll do alright.
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