Kinkydollars/BondageBank/SadisticRope clusterfuck (BondageBank affiliates take note)

[Forkbeard]

Kink.com and BondageBank guys, we love you long time but something has gotten screwed up recently and your affiliates aren't getting the notice they need to protect themselves.

TLDR version: If you ever promoted SadisticRope via BondageBank as managed by Kinkydollars, it appears you are no longer getting credited for sales via those links, and you may have lost any rebills you had coming. Neither program is answering questions about these problems in a satisfactory way.

Here's the long version, in order, starting with ancient history:

1) Sometime in 2008/2009 the Twisted Factory / Bondage Bank family of sites (most prominently, Fucked And Bound) went moribund, with no new updates and auto-rotation of old content. However, such sales and rebills as remained always got paid promptly.

2) In October 2012 XBIZ reported that Kink.com was taking over affiliate management of the BondageBank affiliate program, under the direction of Kink.com's then new affiliate manager, Robert Levy. That same month I started corresponding with Robert at his BondageBank/TwistedFactory email as he sorted some minor issues for me. He is very pro. I have seen assertions here on GFY that Kink.com actually owns TwistedFactory now, but Robert's emails to me characterized the transaction as a management deal only.

3) In March of 2013, TwistedFactory announced the launch of the Sadistic Rope site under the BondageBank affiliate program. That same month Robert (via his TwistedFactory email) was urging me to promote it, which I did (lightly).

4) As I only just recently discovered, in May of 2013, Robert Levy moved on to Really Useful Cash. If Kink.com or BondageBank have replaced him, I haven't been able to find any press about it.

5) On June 17 of 2013, I got a KinkyDollars affiliate newsletter: "Sadistic Rope has moved to Kinkydollars. Sadistic Rope has moved over to Kink.com. Now you can promote the site just as easily as you can the rest of the Kink family of sites." There were no details and no information about functionality of old links, protection of rebills, et cetera.

6) On June 19 I wrote back to affiliates@kinkydollars and to [email protected] (not knowing he'd moved on) with questions about these things. Other than the KinkyDollars autoresponder, I got no response.

7) Simultaneously, I noticed that there were no longer any stats visible in the BondageBank NATS for Sadistic Rope. So, no record of whatever sales I made for them, and no way to tell how many active rebills I might have had. (In reality, I think I only had a few sales - on light promotion - and I have no idea whether any rebills were due me.)

8) On July 3rd, having gotten no response from either program after two weeks, I wrote back to both email addresses.

9) On July 5th I finally got a vague response email from "Al" at Kinkydollars saying "You will have to get link codes from Kinky Dollars and you should not be losing anything you gained in BondageBank." This was the first time I twigged to the fact that Robert had moved on and that (apparently) nobody is checking his old email (advertised as the primary affiliate support for BondageBank) at BondageBank.

10) I immediately wrote back to Al asking when the BondageBank link codes stopped working and what had happened to the traffic and sales since then (considering that the link codes are still forwarding surfers to Sadistic Rope). So far all I've gotten from him (on Monday, July 8) is a "I will do my best to answer any concerns you may have" response. Nothing in regard to my specific questions. I replied saying I was still waiting for the answers to my questions but there's been no response.

11) Also on Monday, I logged into BondageBank and asked my questions in detail via the support web form there (as no support email is listed any more). I didn't get any response, not even via autoresponder.

It "feels" like the deal between KinkyDollars and BondageBank may have collapsed, perhaps at the same time as whatever caused Robert Levy to move on. Kink.com has apparently picked up its marbles (the Sadistic Rope site that was supposed to reinvigorate Twisted/BB) and gone home. Does BondageBank still exist as a going concern? That's unclear. But I feel that both programs (which means KinkyDollars, until and unless they make a public statement that they aren't responsible for BondageBank affiliates any longer, if that's indeed the case) have a responsibility to provide good notice to affiliates regarding the need to change links and the availability of stats and rebills. Because right now, as far as public statements go, BondageBank affiliates with problems have no reason to think they aren't still relying on the KinkyDollars affiliate management team as was announced with great fanfare last October.

Currently:

1) The installed base of BondageBank affiliate links to Sadistic Rope are still taking surfers to Sadistic Rope at Kink.com. The KinkyDollars affiliate stats are not showing any hits for this traffic.

2) The Sadistic Rope stats at BondageBank are GONE. There's no record of Sadistic Rope available to affiliates in the BondageBank stats. That raises the question of whether rebills were interrupted and (if they were not) whether BondageBank has access to them and/or intends to pay them to the appropriate affiliates.

3) Bondage Bank has sent ZERO communications to affiliates about this. So far as the world knows, these communications were a KinkyDollars responsibility because (until we hear different) KinkyDollars has advertised that it is managing the BondageBank affiliate program.

My actual potential losses here are very slight, but I consider it a really important obligation for trustworthy programs to provide notice when they break affiliate links and put rebills in question. I have tried diligently to get useful responses out of both of these programs and I finally decided that some public disclosure was necessary, in case there are other people out there with BondageBank SadisticRope links who might otherwise not learn about the problem.

Sorry this was so long, but I wanted to be precise. I've got a long history with both of these programs and I value our business relationships. Unfortunately, the only thing that will fully protect affiliates is public disclosure about the nature and effect of the recent changes, and that doesn't seem to be forthcoming from either program. Given that their business relationships seem to be in disarray and Kink.com recently lost its affiliate manager, I of course assume that this is all a matter of oversight and lack of planning rather than anything deliberate. But it still needs to be fixed in a clear and public way.

[Cyber Fucker]

Interesting...

[Fat Panda]

seems something is going on and they are deflecting

[Forkbeard]

Actually, affiliate support at KinkyDollars was in disarray for a time before Robert Levy took the job, with various people doing a fairly slow and vague job of responding to affiliate tickets. My sense at the time was that assorted folks with other jobs were trying to handle affiliate support on an "other duties as assigned" basis.

My guess is that's what's happening again since Robert left. Which means that they may simply not have anybody in a position to comprehend -- or with the authority to mitigate through public communication -- the damage that's been done by whatever happened to the Bondage Bank deal. I don't see any reason to suspect deliberate malfeasance here, but I do fear that the impact on affiliates simply wasn't considered when the decision was taken (probably at a high level) to move Sadistic Rope. That's a deficit that Kink.com needs to remedy.

[bns666]

kinky dollars was the topnotch golden sponsor for me for years which made me tons of monies, but something obviously happened over night in early 2012 so rebills disappeared and new sales were very sporadical since then.

bondage bank had its spike but nowhere close, huge drop came when they stopped updating their paysites.

[bluebook18]

Thanks for sharing

[mn]

Super good sponsors when I used them. Then support went bad, they wanted to take over domains of affiliates sending huge number of sales and a few more things I wont mention here. I wonder what happened, guess I will never know.

No longer with them. One of the best sponsors I have used. But something went wrong, very wrong, some years ago.

Edit: I speak of kinkydollars now. Bondagebank when they operated by themself never had any problems.

[Forkbeard]

I am still doing good business with Kink.com, though nothing like the glory days. In fact I've had a little bit of sales renaissance with them the past few months.

Bondage Bank was always solid, especially when Tony Pirelli was handling the affiliate side. (He used to be KinkyDollars affiliate manager back when they were still Cybernetbucks.) I haven't heard from him in a few years but according to the XBIZ article I linked, he was still a principal as of the time they made the deal with Kink.com last year.

[Simon]

TLDR version: If you ever promoted SadisticRope via BondageBank as managed by Kinkydollars, it appears you are no longer getting credited for sales via those links, and you may have lost any rebills you had coming.

I've promoted both of these sponsors since they opened their programs, and while I'm not happy with recent changes or with how bad the conversion ratios have become, I do want to add one piece of good news here.

In my email today was a message from BondageBank letting me know that one of my SadisticRope signups had just rebilled and I was credited $20.97 on the $34.95 recurring charge.

I'd definitely like to see both of these sponsors get their affiliate support in better shape, and take care of several things that I think are affecting conversions, but I'm glad to see that at least the rebills on BondageBank signups aren't being lost with SadisticRope's transfer to the KinkyDollars program.


.

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by SimonSays

I do want to add one piece of good news here.

In my email today was a message from BondageBank letting me know that one of my SadisticRope signups had just rebilled and I was credited $20.97 on the $34.95 recurring charge.

Simon, that IS good news; thanks for sharing it. It sounds like BondageBank may be tracking and crediting the SR rebills even if they aren't showing any SR stats (a very strange choice in my view).

I've never had email notifications turned on in my BondageBank account; this sounds like it might be a good reason to turn 'em on.

[TubeSubmitters]

Originally Posted by mn

Super good sponsors when I used them. Then support went bad, they wanted to take over domains of affiliates sending huge number of sales and a few more things I wont mention here. I wonder what happened, guess I will never know.

No longer with them. One of the best sponsors I have used. But something went wrong, very wrong, some years ago.

Edit: I speak of kinkydollars now. Bondagebank when they operated by themself never had any problems.

Quoted for the truth, kinkydollars

[Forkbeard]

Time for an update. Still no further response from either program.

However I did get a wild hair, and ransacked my old emails for all the contacts I ever had for Tony Pirelli. One of the emails still works. We've now had a friendly and professional exchange in which he declined to comment on any of my questions and concerns except to refer my BondageBank questions to John Sander at Kink.com's marketing department.

Then I remembered the solid-looking twitter rumor that John left Kink.com at some point prior to late March.

Uh oh...

The way I speculate about this, Tony and John were both quoted in the XBIZ article from last October that announced Twisted would "hand over management of its affiliate program, Bondage Bank...to Kink.com's marketing team." If that were an ongoing arms-length management deal as described, you'd expect the Twisted guy to know about changes at the top of Kink.com's marketing team.

However, if it was in fact just the public face of a private company sale, the fact that the Twisted guy doesn't know about changes at the top of the marketing department responsible for Twisted affiliates would make more sense. He'd have no reason for ongoing contact.

Increasingly, it is indeed looking like Kink.com remains responsible for the BondageBank affiliate problems. Come Monday or Tuesday, I'll go back to trying to get answers from KinkyDollars support.

[Forkbeard]

OK, it's time for an update.

On July 16 in response to a narrow and specific question, I got a response from an unnamed person at KinkyDollars support stating that "Kink.com is still managing the affiliate program and responsible for affiliate support of Bondage Bank". This response acknowledged that there had been a "gap in support" at Bondage Bank due to Robert Levy leaving and Bondage Bank being "subsequently not configured to send responses." This (I was told) has now been fixed; "We are monitoring the Bondage Bank internal support queue daily, if not hourly, and will do our best to give you the best support possible." (However, I never did get any response to my July 8 support ticket filed via the Bondage Bank NATS, so I am uncertain whether this is actually so.) I was invited to file my questions via KinkyDollars support, and I immediately did so.

No response to those questions has come in via the KinkyDollars support email.

Yesterday, however, I got an email from Justin Byson at Kink.com, who identified himself as the new head of marketing at Kink.com, replacing John Sander. I don't honestly know which of my many avenues of attempted communication triggered the email, but he resolved all of my specific issues regarding the Sadistic Rope move between programs.

He confirmed that Sadistic Rope traffic sent via Bondage Bank links "will not be tracked/credited" (I took that as a euphemism for the present-tense "is not being tracked/credited"). Further, he was careful to ensure that I feel adequately compensated for my own losses, if any. Finally, he said that he was working to get email notice out to other Bondage Bank affiliates by the end of the week. Assuming that happens adequately, I'll consider the problems that triggered this thread to have been fully resolved.

I do still have questions in my mind about whether Bondage Bank/Twisted Factory still exists as an independent business entity. But I'm resigned to the likelihood that those won't be answered.

[Forkbeard]

FWIW, I finally got this somewhat inadequate notice today from Twisted Factory:

On 7/30/2013 4:37 PM, Twisted Factory wrote:
> Dear Affiliate,
> This is a notice that Sadistic Rope has moved from BondageBank to the KinkyDollars affiliate program. Please join Kinkydollars.com and update your links for promoting Sadistic Rope.
> We would also like to give advanced notice that Fucked and Bound will also be moving to KinkyDollars on October 15th.
> Thanks to all of you who have promoted Twisted Factory over the years. We love your traffic, and we even love sending you payouts!
> Best regards,
> Twisted Factory

Back in the day I don't think any program could have gotten away without admitting that the notice was many weeks after-the-fact and without explicitly saying "your old links will not work, you must change them". But it's 2013, and standards are lower now, sadly.

[RyuLion]

Lots of things have changed ever since Terry stopped working at Kink..

[RyuLion]

and yeah, I used to convert less than 1:800 with them back in 2005-2010

[Roald]

Kink support has always been a mess. a shame really.

[signupdamnit]

It doesn't seem smart to rely on these people for income going forward. It's been a long time since the conversions I've seen from their sites have met my expectations for fetish traffic. They used to be one of my favorite programs back in the day.

Just another sponsor showing the pattern

1. Lots of content on tubes and partnership with tubes
2. Affiliate conversions tank
3. Support tanks
4. Shady type things begin occurring
5. Program fizzles out

It happens too often.

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by Roald

Kink support has always been a mess. a shame really.

It used to be excellent. But that was when they cared about affiliates more than their tube partnerships. Blunt but true.

[Roald]

Originally Posted by signupdamnit

It used to be excellent. But that was when they cared about affiliates more than their tube partnerships. Blunt but true.

For me personally it always sucked (and still sucks) monkey balls. We still do xxxx a month with them no complains there but it could be so much better if they cared a bit more.

At least thats my experience.

[Crazy Enough]

kinky dollars changed so much from a very good reputation to a very bad reputation. I don't promote them because I've read so much bad things that made me scared.

It's a shame because they have the best extreme websites. Amazing content, poor support for affiliates.

[Startzone]

> We would also like to give advanced notice that Fucked and Bound will also be moving to KinkyDollars on October 15th.

Maybe we could get more info so to change the links????

So Bondagebank will be closing down?

[Startzone]

LOL............or not...........no answer