The Affiliate & the program owners
The Affiliate & the program owners
I notice some of you say 'the business we are in', but surly the affiliate is different to the program owner.
And surly there are two types of program owners.
1. The one with Exclusive content - shot in house.
2. The one with purchased exclusive/non exclusive content.
Often my experience is that many affiliates are naff. I go onto there sites and there blog looks bad. Full of pop ups. Not a nice design. Too many links. In fact often you leave as quickly as you arrive. Yet they will tell me **** website is cheating them as they get loads of hits but few if any sales. They get upset when I say your site looks crud, and I know people do not stay on it. I think affiliates must think that if they stick rubbish up that that will excite people. They forget that porn is a product. You must be able to sell it. Could you imagine BMW making any sales if its only promo was crappy looking blogs, with tiny pics of the car?
Also while we have vast amounts of hits to affiliate sites, I often see then still promoting the same few sites as everyone else. Again if you promote a site that's so heavily promoted, chances are many of your visitors will have already joined that site your promoting. In other words promote a site that's under promoted.
I promote many sites. Yet I get more sales for my own sites - though I promote them much less. Why? Its not that my sites are better designed, or have better content, or more content. Its for one reason, not many promote them. And from my experience more a site is promoted the harder it is for me to get sales. For instance a few years ago I put up a fling banner and got sales with ease. Now next to nothing in sales. Of course there may be other reasons, but to me it comes down to fling being promoted on every blog, tube, tgp and so on. Members will sign up only once.
Again affiliates say to me why should I promote your sites when others offer 70% or more. I point out that you were moaning that your sales ratio is 1:60000 yet surly logic would state that if you promote my sites and the ratio is say 1:500 then you will earn more.
Then program owners.
I still am amazed how many sites look dull. And seem not to offer the customer what he or she wants.
Websites need to think of themselves as a mix of DVD and magazine. You need to imagine who your site is closest to. I.e., met-art sites I would say are closest to playboy magazine. I say this as playboy sold well, so by definition you know in theory that you have a product that should sell. But often the presentation of the site is poor. If you have a playboy type site surly you should have a site that excites people. Playboy covers often were clothed, but you want to open the mag up. I wonder how many sites make you really want to enter inside the members area.
Often people launch a website and we all go, wow, great stuff. Yet the truth is the site looks great, but, you would not be too bothered to look inside. Imagine if you will it was on a newsagents stand. Would you pick it up existed. I suspect you would not. Yews the site looks hot, but nothing wants you to go to the members area even if it was free.
The re-bills.
I* notice often people post stats of how well a site sells. Yet do people post how a site re-bills. Surly its best to promote a site that re-bills month after month than a site that people join then leave. Unless your doing it of course on a single membership basis. But why promote such sites that pay well for a single sale? You know inside it will be just up sells. Sure, short term you make cash, but just think how much your loosing long term. I have members of my sites that have been members over two years.
What is the effect of tube sites and tgp's?
Yes, guess what, it will loose sites sales. But sites that have there content free all over. For years I amuse myself to see how many sites give there content away. For instance how many solo sites have free pics and vids in there own promotion of the girl using toys or having sex or whatever level she works up to. Now thing again if that was a magazine. I would not open it as I have seen the pics of the girl nude, time to move on. Now you may say you need to give content away free - so be it. But if this is the case then playboy would never have sold a copy as it for years had the model on the front non nude. Guess what - it sold.
Of course you could make the point that your free content may have lost you sales but you got for more hits from it and so got more sales. and there may be some truth to that.
However, I would put forward the augment that sites that have much less free content (i.e., you cannot find it on tubes) will have better sales ratio than those sites you find the content all over for free.
Just to finish off -
I posted an idea on another forum, to stop password trading. Basically the idea is that when someone signs up to your site, your site generates a individual personalized login page. It would have something like welcome [username and real name plus home address]. It could also contain how long there membership will last and other info. This way it would reduce the chances of people selling there password/username as if they did they would be giving out there home address and name. I would think ccbill and nats could easily add this.
In fact another idea.
I also had an idea today of pay-per-use, rather than monthly pay. Not sure if its been done but the customer would pay per gig of content, rather than a monthly use. So if for instance he may only download a film a month. His membership would last ages then once his limit reached he would just re-bill. A high user who downloads everything would pay more, as his limit would hit its limit very quickly. A bit like pay as you go mobile phones. Pay for what you use. It would mean that even if they reached the limit they could still log into the members area after even a year to see if there are updates or something else they want to see, and if they do they just pay a top up. It would mean far hipper customers and in the long term more cash for the website owner.
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