marketing hits and misses : (
 

Last season of Surreal Life, one of the guests was former playmate Andrea Lowell. Incredible publicity and her website could have gone bonkers with subscribers.

Instead, you go to http://www.beautifulandrea.com/ and her CCBill affiliate system is a banner farm with ref code. Pathetic. Not to mention insufficient content that is rarely updated.

Wonder if she realizes the potential she missed on this one.

Anyone have a similar story or the converse, a huge hit?

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Without having any specific site names right in my mind, there are tons of ccbill sites like that. It's disappointing.

For example, I'll see a banner somewhere for what looks like a great latex site. I'll go visit the site, and see an amature-ish looking site.

Which is okay, so I sign up.

Only to find out that they have maybe a couple of banners,... no content for me to use,...no anything. They just want me to put up a link to them.

That might be fine and dandy for affiliates with a ton of traffic in their own network. However, I am one of those people that this board derides...I build alot of galleries. So taking the time to signup to a site that has no tools in place for me to heavily promote them is a waste of my time.

www.stoned.com is one

This whole industry is full of nothing but amateurs. There are very few true professionals. Many of the ones who made lots of money only did so thanks to being in the right place at the right time. Some are catching on and learning a lot about how business really should be conducted. Most aren't. The most unlucky ones will see themselves go from riches to rags in a not too distant future, much thanks to not being able to adapt to the increased competitiveness of the industry. There are many hungry newcomers with solid business knowledge. These will eventually push out the dinosaurs that don't hurry up and grow a brain before it's too late.