Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Markham
For Program B to rebill at that rate costs money on content. So are affiliates willing to pay to allow the site to create such content? Try to create great content and pay out 50% or even 25% to affiliates.
Why do you assume a program paying out 10% doesn't drive it's own traffic? Explain what skills you have that demand 25%.
How much skill is required to write blogs, submit galleries, tubes, etc?
Of course if the product is so good they can buy traffic why bother with affiliates?
Models, Cam girls, amateur are proving that driving traffic is not the skilled job you think it is. OF is showing you how it should be done. This business is in sharp decline because we paid far too much for traffic the sites can't convert.
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As others have said, nice trolling.
To briefly answer your points ... Of course, it costs a program money to create content to keep high retention. It also costs a shit load of money/time to generate QUALITY traffic. A prospective affiliate owes the program NOTHING. The progam owners are SELLING a product to the affiliate, NOT doing the affiliate a favor. The program owner is marketing his product to affiliates for a reason ... a business relationshi which will make both parties money. There are a shitload of other programs for the affiliate to market as alternatives. An affiliate program owner's first SALE is to the affiliate.
I have come across a few (mainly ccbill) program owners who have given some very funny excuses for altering their terms ... including switching to NO rebills. :D ... one once wrote me a gigantic mail detailing why he didn't think just putting up a link on some page essentially was worth more than the few bucks of an initial sale. It had echoes of a lot of the stuff you post, but with more swear words in it. I wrote him a very brief reply back. "Good luck with your business model."
As to your other point, I don't assume programs don't buy their own traffic. Where did I say that? What I said was, in adult (not so much mainstrean) if a program is only offering a 10% cut to affiliates, I would tend to assume either ... a) they don't know what they are doing or b) they have a product which they are saying converts and retains so amazingly that I don't believe they need affiliates. They should just buy ALL their traffic rather than going into a business relationship with affiliates ... IMO.
Of course, other people can have different opinions and maybe they'll get affiliates at 10%. Good luck to them.
All your other arguments about how much it costs to run the program, to maintain quality content, to have a pretty girl to make the coffee and lift her skirts are to the affiliate 100% irrelevant. He/she doesn't care. You can say he/she can fuck right off then, and have every right to do that.
If you can find other affiliates who will take your 10%, great ... good business. If you can't, welcome to the cold hard world of supply and demand. Then adjust your percentage, or do as I originally said ... take your incredible program that converts/retains at a level where 10% would be viable ... skip the affiliate and the tools and the staff necessary to maintain it ... and just buy ALL your traffic. Simple.
You take these threads like people are arguing with you philosophically or something. Nobody really is. It's just business. You always argue like the program owner is the only one with a product to sell. That's basically your error. Both the program owner and the affiliate are SELLERS in this business arrangement. They both have to convince each other on terms they are BOTH happy with. You argue that affiliates are ten a penny and if one won't take 10%, there's plenty of others who will.
The market will tell you if you're right ... and when you don't get enough affiliates, you will show them all how wrong they were, take your OWN money, put it where your mouth is and prove everybody wrong by buying ALL your own traffic at market rates (with no guarantee of any sales return). And then, you will laugh all the way to the bank and tell everyone else what suckers they were.
And I won't grumble at your success or roll in stinky schadenfreude lost. I'll say, well done, Paul. Great business. You were right all along. And we'll all live happily ever after ...