I feel like speaking about the influx of recent program closures.
 

Yes, sales are down. Yes, some smaller processors seem to be paying just a little bit later then usual. Yes, recurring memberships are at a bigger decline. Yes, conversion ratios are unbelievable (and not in a good way).

From what i've seen, many closures are because the pay per sale math is completely out of balance. You cannot, with any reliability (in this economy), calculate how many members WILL occur, WILL upsell, WILL take on further debt with affiliated sites. Our customers are smarter. Paying an affiliate double/triple/quadruple the cost of a membership is risky business. You can have a few months of bad math and be busted and broke. I will not insult anyones intelligence in regards to how well their program does compared to mine. Programs like 'abbywinters' take an EXCELLENT approach to promotion. I was even declined by their process, however it proves a good point. If your hiring a sales staff to promote your brand you don't want to allow EVERYONE to plug you and perhaps tarnish the brand your trying to maintain, grow and establish. Traffic in the masses does not guarantee success.

Whats my point? Keeping legitimate sponsors in mind who roll with the punches, perhaps we should shift to a partner model - much like www.nichepartners.com has since day 1. If we make 30$ you get your share - you earned it - if your promoting to the right people, maintaining our brand, selling us in a way to promote retention, then we have a great partnership that will be profitable to us both. If I was to do pay per sale program now and offer triple the amount to you guys to lure you to my program and play that math game i'd be putting up a splash page of my failure to reasonably soon. Oh, and btw, with a list of angry people wanting cash to ;)

Maybe i've shot myself in the foot - but those of you who agree, you know where to find me :)

:2 cents:

Good post. PPS is on shaky ground but revshare might show some vulnerability as well. Specially if the recent "regulatory environment" in Washington re bank/credit practices translates to regulation of auto-rebills.

PPS is the devil's playground.
Revshare remains.
Do the math.

Excellent post. :)

Nice post and excellent read.

Thank ye fine sire.
:pimp

Good post, thanks :thumbsup

Your right $5 submissions, this will make revshare harder, but will wipe out large pay per sale programs indeed.

Nice quip, but the big boys don't do revshare. So if you want to waste your time with someone who just woke up and wants to start a turnkey redirection trick and sell 1000 web submission link software, by all means create a partner program. If you want the truckload of sales in a day, you better bust out your wallet, they dont do revshare

I couldn't agree more. Payouts that seem too good to be true are typically just that.

Sam Rakowski
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An open person shows his face
He must be king in human race
Sales are down is a common thread
To make more money win a bet
Increase revenue, decrease expense
Measure profit to the pence

I agree with your points

You couldn't be more wrong. The equation is still the same, just the numbers have changed. If you look at your stats you'll see "X%" rebill each month. It changes from month to month, but when you compare them to prior months and then prior years a pattern emerges. Less members upsell and less members recur, but it still follows the laws of averages.

I do mostly blogs these days. I can tell you exactly what my sales will be. Every January traffic will dip slightly, and sales will drop - Christmas bills becoming due. Every summer traffic drops and sales drop - Starts in June, and comes back in September. However, this year surprised me - June was down, but July is turning out to be my best month ever. But this might be because I'm being rather aggressive about expanding my network.

I agree with a lot of your pints amateurcanada. The buyer is wiser today and has more options. Getting the buyers today to support unrealistic payouts is getting harder and harder.

The companies who closed due to the new rules good fucking riddance. The affiliates who were unpaid deserved what they did not get. Both made it harder for honest people to make a living.

I think closing your program to anyone is a bad idea. If you want to run it like that give people a lower percentage or payout until they reach so many sales per month and then bump them up. Seems fair and you can still advertise your regular payout.

No closures here mikesinner, infact we have expanded and are releasing several new unique sites and retaining features to keep people interested. Porn is fun but we need to adjust how we sell - keep the math in check and reasonably profitable.

I agree with this too. Nice post, even with it's promo intentions ;)

I know I know - useful info for a price lol. Nice movie exporter tool - I remember checking you out when we designed ours lol ;)

Well the trend is definitely that the xsell programs are going to shit... good :thumbsup more money for the real revshare deals

I agree Mefo! :D

I'll stick with PPS. Lifetime revshare doesn't mean what it used to.

Right, but this type of affiliate is someone you know WILL send X number of sales in a month or you can shitcan his ass. So you can write a budget based on 6 whales, 4 semi-whales and 20 that are grouped into being very consistent... Then gamble with the remaining 18% of your business.

So Mr Whale #1 can negotiate a PPS of $42 paid up front on 1,600 sales that month. The smaller guys can do revshare and when they can do 400 to 500 sales in a month consistently, they too can negotiate for something more lucrative.

Oh and Lexi's thumb is broken
http://www.cameltoecanada.com/index....OjI6Ng,0,0,0,0

V Rocks:

Definately! We secretely negotiate PPS deals for high performers - but the ratio is finely tuned to ensure profitability. (thanks for the missing link on our discount site)

Baddog:

This of course is a good option - we carry more overhead etc. as we ship out free dvds and other fun ways to retain members - in the long term we do pay more but its all about how fast you want to get paid - BELIEVE me instant gratification has always won me over heh.

I like sales.

As a webmasters stand point, unless I have a white-label where I'm building clients, it's too risky to do a rev share with a sponsor. I want my money now, I let you worry about the rest. The most I'll trust you with is 2 weeks of commissions. If you've run a program long enough you know your numbers and what you can pay per sign up. If a webmasters referrals are not meeting your baseline then you have the option to asking them to switch to a rev share. It's over all performance that you should care about anyways.

How can you get any sales from a site such as cameltoecanada.com with a shitty old design and full of 404's images?

It's because they all relied on selling their xsales to third parties to be able to do pps. When the banks made stricter regulations about this and the biggest xsell buyers stopped taking them (and didn't payout the last months of xsales), exactly at the same time when they got tons of money frozen at Webmaster Checks they had no option but to close their affiliate programs.