Paul Markham

Saw on this board and another one complaints about people closing their affiliate programs, sites or the support they get and it made me think.

Where affiliate programs going in the future?

Sponsors have never had it so tough. Many have already cut the amount of shooting they are doing, or the amount of content they buy in or have shot for them. Saw a thread recently with programs talking about sharing exclusive shoots. And still some are struggling. So where do the cuts come next?

Common sense will tell you that some are no longer making a ton of money from affiliate traffic. Those cutting back would not be cutting if they were.

Now all the sponsors can jump in telling us it's all fine.

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DEA - banned for life

under..not too many poeple these days cant find free porn..and that number is shrinking everyday.

Domain Diva

I see it like this.....

At one point affiliates had the lions share of traffic so hooking up as many affiliates was the name of the game.......but now the traffic is held by a few huge tubes and other major traffic centres such as traffic brokers ...and of course not to forget more paid advertising slots available on such places as google..youtube etc...and even twitter are trying ad slots.....

Bottom line is its easy and less time consuming for program owners to simply place an order, buy huge amounts of traffic and thats it done.....

I think the affiliate model will always stay around but not in a huge way as it once was.

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Barefootsies

For those who are viable, they will partner and merge with other programs and providers. Those who are heavily leveraged or in debt will go out of business.

However, I would expect a shit load of ugliness for those being forced out. I would expect no less then them going down kicking and screaming. While not all will resort to fraud, I would expect a lot more complaints on forums for the next year or eighteen months.

By year's end, no less than 30%, should be gone/closed/no longer accepting affiliates, etc..

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Agent 488

affiliates aren't going anywhere. just the shit scam and badly run programs have gone tits up. the affiliate model is alive and well in porn and the rest of the online marketing world.

has brazzers - maybe the one company who has the traffic to really do away with affiliates - done away with them? no.

sortie

Exactly where I probably said a long time ago and was called an idiot.

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pornmasta

2009 June 1-->11: img411.imageshack.us/img411/3253/2009ccbill.jpg

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(new sales only)


if the problem is free porn, why there is more visitors who went to my pages?

Paul Markham

Will mainstream sites take porn adverts in any numbers?

Bottom line is Tube traffic does/will suck donkey balls and will never support the number of sponsors on the Net today. Maybe a lot less sites will survive, which in itself will pose a problem.

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pornmasta

bandwidth is too cheap

Agent 488

yes it is happening already. it wont be those who are trying to protect a big corporate brand but there are plenty of products and companies that will take the traffic if it converts.

cardinalvices

As the question goes:"Where do you see affiliate programs go in the future"
I predict a more strict rules for webmasters. Webmasters that send shit traffic will not be tolerated. We will see a trial period for webmasters, and if they aren't falling into certain quality criteria, they will be dropped off the programs. Free content? It will always be there. Cheap bandwidth? It will only get cheaper.

As Da Vinci once said: The Key is to think of something new that isn't copied yet.

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pornmasta

if bandwidth is cheap i don't see what is the problem with shit traffic as long as there is some sales...

Agent 488

a couple programs who got their traffic from black hatters and spammers go down and it's "the end of the affiliate model" ....

GetSCORECash

The affiliate model will keep working for a very long time.

Even if affilates represent a small portion of any program expect them to be around for as long as a website remains open.

RevShare rules don't be fooled by PPS.

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gideongallery

you before or after content producers finally realize how to sell content as traffic.

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Vjo

Affil progs have been going out of biz forever. Unless they reinvest in new sites, bound to happen eventually.

Affiliates otoh are still the true workers in the trenches who sell at a commission and will always be in demand. Why wouldnt they? Free traffic, free money, if your product sells.

But the level a paysite must be to compete has risen so yes as bf said 30% of paysites out of biz this year is about right.

It is mostly due to some really nice paysites on the market now days. Designed for higher res.

as Robert Blake said..

"that's the name of that tune"

Vjo

I dont care how much you have behind the curtain. If your tour on my monitor looks like 800x600 or even a little bigger. I am thinking .. "old shit". True or not.

I go to the next tour and it is nice big res images, new.. who is going to sell.

If you dont have a 1920 x 1280 monitor as a wm today you are like driving a mo-ped alongside baddog. bad metaphor I know

Some tours have split images. Most dont but maybe yours does.

Paul Markham

The worse thing that happened was BW dropping to the prices it is today.

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Vjo

Yep absolutely. If it would reverse itself, this biz would be great again and way easier for us non tubers. I would even give up my brokers too. And my whopping margins

Higher b/w combined with some nice high def video chunks available only for a price and maybe folks are paying again in mass.

But someone said it is going lower. So I still love my brokers. And I'll keep buying lots of pasta and potatoes.

BV

If my Aunt had balls she'd be my Uncle.

Vjo

Once b/w costs set the playing field, any idiot could see, "time to give away full movies".

Just those who had the balls to do it, bought a script and did it. But someone was certainly going to give them away. So indeed blame bw costs in the historical record.

Still it is the footing the whole thing is built on. It may be cheap this year, will it always be cheap.

So the tube model is not fully on solid ground. It is bw's bitch.

Paul Markham

With lower margins there is less money to invest in new sites, unless they use old content. A decent new site cost money, especially for content, before it can be marketed.

Sponsors pockets are no longer deep.

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gideongallery

dam the natural evolution of technology.

the world would be so much better if we could stop it.

yeah right

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datatank

You actually sounds like you kinda know what you are talking about here. Good job.

Do Youtube or twitter sell adult ads? I did not think so

BestXXXPorn

Affiliates aren't going anywhere for a long time... it would be like trying to remove retail stores from the world and only sell direct...

However, the affiliates that don't offer anything besides reposted sponsor content, keyworded blog entries, and outdated tgps will go to the wayside. These methods all rely on generating one time traffic and don't offer anything the sponsor doesn't inherently have already. You've gotta play smarter than that...

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sortie

True, true, true I think.

The search engines will probably also start pushing those sites down the list.

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jackknoff

Affiliates programs that can generate long term traffic will be around for a long time. Those that deliver crap traffic will go to the wayside...


Jack

Chosen

I don't look far into the future

VHNet

I read an article in Website magazine that showed companies WITH affiliate programs saw about 30 - 40% increased (or more) revenues vs. those that didn't. This was mainstream, of course, but...it seems silly to discount the value of a well run, mutually beneficial affiliate program.

(Hopefully) affiliate programs will remain. Are some changes needed? Maybe.

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ShellyCrash

I talked about this with a handful of different people across many different areas of our industry at Xbiz earleir this week and was surprised to hear the sentiment echoed so often, there is a growing concern affiliate programs are on their way out.

Some people were leaning towards shifting priorities, backing off affiliate traffic and putting stronger focus on in house traffic generation, and while I agree on some level this should always be a part of your game plan, my experience with that is long term someone will not do for you what they could make more money doing for themselves - as an affiliate. Think of it along the lines of how the best SEO guys in the world don't work for anyone but themselves, same with inhouse traffic generators.

I think what's going on is a combo of artificially inflated payouts and changes in the landscape.

To put together a good affiliate offer most of the time you are going to have to do a loss leader, where you offer a payout that is a little bit sweeter than the initial upgrade price. This puts the co at a loss for the first month- which for the majority of us doesn't put you in a bad spot on its own. When fuzzy practices (like prechecked cross sales for example) started coming into play some companies started factoring this in when calculating their offers. IMO this artificailly inflated the payout amounts because the accounting is no longer based on the strength of the core product being marketed / sold.

The second factor is traffic generation is becoming increasingly more complicated, and I think that's always going to be true from one year to the next. I agree with what BestXXXPorn is saying, you've got to be a little smarter than you were previously. A good example going back to inhouse traffic generation is some of the people who have worked for me at past companies have left to do it on their own; some are still out there kicking ass years later and some have actually taken a step backwards and are flipping burgers.

The guys who failed are ones who couldn't come up with their own ideas, they took what they learned from the company and then duplicated it a thousand times over and ran it into the ground. When the old methods stopped working they had no idea where to look or what to do next. They couldn't innovate on their own, they could only do what they had been trained.

The ones who succeeded took what they learned as a solid base and continued to build off it. They didn't put all their eggs in one basket and continually tried new things and developed new methods.

Mainstream affiliate programs and CPA networks seem to be showing some pretty steady growth. I think in adult we are experiencing climate change. The card companies have tightened the belt when it comes to billing practices, some companies can't afford to operate the way they used to, and there's going to be some fall out from that. Some programs won't survive, but I don't think the sky is falling.

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Paul Markham

This has always been true and truer now than ever before.

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Agent 488

post one program who is able to generate at this time the traffic and revenue of their affiliates combined.

if anything i've seen a couple programs who went in that direction change course when they found traffic generation and seo not that easy.

Boss Traffic Jim

No Matter what happens, everyone still needs traffic to survive. The sources are drying up so get it now while you still can..

Ethersync

Good post

james_clickmemedia

I agree with what you are saying.
I know that good quality traffic is being controlled by fewer and fewer people.
The saddest part of doing business today is the amount of time spent on fraud prevention & the damage it can do to ones business if not monitored thoroughly.

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Rochard

There seems to be a lot of concern about where programs and affiliates are going. And they aren't going anywhere.

A handful of programs folded in the past year. It's not like the sky is falling down. These were programs were barely making money from the start, or otherwise making money mostly from multiple cross sales.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, we are in middle of the largest recession we'll see in our lifetimes. The local Wendy's and the local Chilli's closed two years ago, but I don't sit around wondering when the entire food industry is going to stop serving food to us.

Our industry is going through a difficult period just like all other industries.

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datatank

Is there a store next door to the local Wendys and the Local Chillis giving away the same food for free?

Barefootsies

Awesome post!!

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Enough Said.

"Would you rather live like a king for a year or like a prince forever?"

Roald

THere you have it, inhouse traffic generation sounds really good and all but face it most programs don't have a clue about how or what.

Perhaps programs should focus on their affiliates differently. Base the ammount of time you put in each one on the amount of progress you see in a certain time frame. Give them all the basics and focus on the ones making you more money. Stop wasting time on affiliates demanding everything and not delivering anything.

The affiliate model will not die, it will change yes.

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ShellyCrash

Thanks for the positive feedback, guys.

Sorry I've been offline most of the day, gall bladder decided to fuck with me.

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gideongallery

i love how cry babies keep trying to comparing the distribution of digital goods to physical goods.

a better anology would be dam video cassette allows you to watch tv show when you want rather then waiting for the rerun.

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The Porn Nerd

There will always be affiliates because the cost of entering the adult business - the startup costs - are next to nothing, and infintesimal compared with (most) "mainstream" projects.

Of course, how many affiliates will be consistently earning their LIVING from being an affiliate EXCLUSIVELY is really the point, I think. Those numbers will continue to fall because, let's face it, while you're trying to "make it" it takes hours and hours of concentrated focus, and when you're making $13 a day ppl tend to burn out. The 'established affiliates' will have to decide how much - or how little - profit they NEED to survive, thus determining how long even they will play this game.

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