The one. The original since 1996. ALSscan

Does he know for sure?

Maybe calls for some pics. :winkwink:

I agree they pick up some free traffic from branding, but this has been talked about and happening from day 1. And you would like to think that they take in account the free joins they get when they decide on how much they want to payout to affiliates.

There are reasons why most sponsors have much better conversion ratios then their affiliates, and type in traffic from branding is a lot lower on the list than other things like..

- The fact that most affiliates send garbage traffic.
- Some sponsors don't buy traffic and make a lot of their sales from good placement of their sites in the search engines which converts a lot better.
- Lost cookies, expiring cookies, signing back up with a new credit card, depending on the company, there is lots of ways that affiliates get ripped off and lose credit from sales they send that make the sponsor's conversion ratio look so good.
I am sure there are several other reasons I am not thinking of at the moment right off the top of my head.

dean, google did the same thing in making thumbnails for the content as well for google images. damn, they should sue google.

thumbnailing is legally protected, presenting less than a full image as part of a promotional blog should not be an issue. any program anal enough to do this against a blog that is promoting their sites directly needs to be checked for any signs of intelligent life in their offices, because they just shot themselves in the foot.

that is one program i wouldnt touch with a 10 foot pole now.

There's a few progs out there with the exact same in their ToS.

'Thumbnails' have changed quite a bit over the years.

Early days - 80x115 thumb, can't wank to it. Members area content was 600x800.

Now the 'thumbs' are 600x800 :)

Yeah, I think there are probably allot that have this in their TOS.

You are right, thumbs have definitely evolved over the years.

The times. They are always a changing. :winkwink:

You obviously love them; personally I wouldn't want to be associated in any way with any company with their history.

What is their history?

As the director and photographer of inthecrack I feel obliged to respond to people's concerns here. I would agree with Dean that Angie was a little harsh on this or could have been a little more tactful. To be honest I am not concerned about what people do with thumbnails. The thumbnails on our own site do not have watermarks either. To suggest that thumbnails should have a watermark on them is a bit ridiculous. However in Angie's defence this affiliate was in violation of the TOS and we are not talking about thumbnails here but in fact full size images. I really see this violation as a trivial matter that I would have overlooked but Angie is new on this so it would be good to cut her some slack.

Now to enlighten people as to why that rule is in the TOS…. Branding is certainly a part of it but really only a small part and it is definitely not intended to short change affiliates of any potential click throughs. The fact is I go to extraordinary lengths to produce a premium product. There are not too many other producers that would fly all of the crew and models to exotic lands such as French Polynesia and New Zealand in order to get amazing locations. What customers and affiliates do not see is 10 in house trained editors that give every single picture 30 minutes of extreme detailed editing in such a manner as to not look edited. This does includes cropping to the ideal composition. I probably spend more on the post production than I do on the production. Therefore yes it does pick my ass a little bit when people feel they have the liberty to go and make their own alterations to the pictures.

I'm not likely to go and tell all our affiliates to quit altering our pictures but I would only hope that people would have some respect for the time and effort that goes into making a top quality product.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...?output=gplain

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.a...?output=gplain

This is another (letter of the law/spirit of the law) = intent

All programs put this into their TOS to cover things like newsgroups posting. The intent isn't to chastise affiliates who crop to make it work better in a blog post.

When a company head reads the TOS and has no business sense in the affiliate marketing industry they get a little overzealous in their interpretation...

Interesting quandary. I've never promoted 'InTheCrack', but have a bunch of blogs/tgps that all rely on cropped thumbnail images... using UUGallery, I quite often choose a pic or two from the original hosted gallery and crop to a 500X400 size as a preview - making sure that the logo is removed, and pictures are uniform size to keep the blog clean - but linking each fully to the hosted gallery...

Moron Sponsors....

Sucks that the adults here can't have a mature discussion without the name calling.

It never takes long for the haters, trolls and drama queens to come along and prove that GFY is useless when it comes to serious discussion of industry issues.

Agreed :)

This is exactly what I and most other bloggers do. My 500x700 blog images might be larger than some blogs do, but this is the size that I have found works best for my blogs. Even at that size, they are not close to being full sized images.

what does InTheCrack have to do with ALSCANS? those allegations on USENET are about ALSCANS.

This is not an "industry issue", this is an affiliate who is trying to warn others that said sponsor is actively asking folks to take down content or accounts get suspended. I happen to be an affiliate in a similar situation as the OP with the same sponsor... not a troll. So I have a valid interest in this thread.

What sucks is that the adults here can't have a mature discussion without some other "producer/content provider" (in this case photographer) coming in the thread calling people trolls queens whatever... hmm, you are right it doesn't take long does it. afterall, it only took you 6 posts.

I for one do appreciate what it takes to create a quality product like you do. I do appreciate the time and detail that goes on behind the scenes to make it happen. I do appreciate the investment in the travel and locations. I do appreciate your eye for unique style and angles. I appreciate the large archive of quality content in the members area, both photo and HD video, and the continuation to update regularly.

That's exactly why I chose to promote your site in the first place. And although the conversions are not too good, I could feel that I was providing true membership value to my surfers should they join the site. That's what I am looking for when it comes to what I promote.

You should in turn appreciate the time and effort that an affiliate puts into promoting your site. It takes allot of time to put a blog like that together, write long posts, crop the photos, and keep it updated 2-3 times per week. All in an attempt to sell your site and make you money as well as the affiliate. That way, you can keep living your vision and dream and we all can pay the light bill. :)

You have a valid interest in this thread so you come in calling people morons? That's classic trolling. Thanks for proving my point :thumbsup

I try not to argue with trolls so have fun........

Whatever dude. I believe I proved my point as well. I am not the first, nor the only one who has said basically that the sponsors (ITC or otherwise) are morons. NOT when they put this shit in their TOS, but when they threaten to close affiliate accounts due to "standard" marketing practices, simply because they put this shit in their TOS.

Count, must've been at least half dozen other guys before me that said about the same as I did, but "I" am the "troll" here...

This just sickens me...

In FACT... if something is 'cropped', it is NOT full size!

We are talking about a blog, at best 500 maybe 600 pixels wide. (mine are like 540 or so)
InTheCrack 'full size' images are like thousands of pixels wide. Hardly the same quality, NOT the same size!

Oh yeah Dean just a reminder... this is GFY, the place where we call morons, well... morons. I know, I know... the place where we call trolls, well... trolls. There, I responded to my post for you. ;)

Nothing, AFAIK. ALS was heavily promoted in this thread by the OP though. Didn't you bother reading it before posting?

Personally, unlike the OP, I don't even think ALS and InTheCrack are similar sites. ALS is fixated with bald pussies and small tits, as well as large objects. Given their history I personally find that obnoxious.

InTheCrack seems more like, I dunno, DDG to me; quality, glamorous images in nice locations.

No way. Really? You mean when I replied to the guy raving about ALS, saying how I wouldn't be associated with ALS because of their history, and someone asked what ALS's history is... I posted links about ALS's history? That's crazy. What was I thinking.

I know... isn't it crazy about TEXT... it can often be read out of conTEXT.

True. Especially when context can be lost, unless multi-quoting. Anyway it's too late to edit out the sarcasm in my post (which even annoyed me when I read it back), now it's been quoted, but it isn't helpful or constructive, so I take the sarcasm back and apologize for it.

Hehe, my bad.

Thank you for the warning.

Don't mind me... I'm just p, p, p, pa... trollin'!

I wouldn't exactly say that I was promoting ALS. I was asked a question and I answered it. Then posted a couple of pics for entertainment purposes. I don't have anything to gain promoting ALS here. They don't offer affiliate referrals. I would actually prefer that you didn't sign up and promote them. Just more competition for me as an affiliate. Many affiliates on this board would not have answered the question to begin with. Not my style.

Both ALS and InTheCrack consider each other to be primary competitors. This is not just my opinion. I got this impression first hand from the owners of both. They are both pussy-centric sites even though the individual styles are unique to each owner / photographer. They also have a pretty high overlap of models. As a matter of fact, both pictures I posted earlier are models that are featured on both ALS and InTheCrack. This is quite common.

One difference between the two is shooting locations. I would say that ALS is a little more reality based look shot in middle to upper middle class homes and such. InTheCrack is a little slicker and shot in high class mansions and villas. I wouldn't compare either one of them to DDG other than InTheCrack locations. I may be wrong, but I don't think DDG is primarily focused on the pussy and ass or features much in the way of huge dildos, speculum, fisting, bottle and other extreme insertions, four finger pussy gaping, pissing, anal insertions, etc.

This absolutely is NOT the case. NOT "technically", and NOT in any court of law. You can't trim a pixel off the height and width and call it your own, you fucking tool.

You aren't legally allowed to use anything you didn't produce yourself without the permission of the person who created it. That is the letter of the law.

The color of the law is that your business can't profit off the sweat of another business. That's the basis behind all IP laws including trademark, patent law, and laws governing domain misspellings, etc.

I'd love to see you trim a millisecond off a pop music track and go against the RIAA in court with that defense. They'd rake you over the coals. :thumbsup

Well that sounds like ALS, but from the InTheCrack website, aside from a speculum pic (never understood the demographic for that, or indeed most of the other things you listed), and a couple of others, I didn't get the impression ITC was that kind of site.

If it is, then it's obviously not as 'classy' as I thought, or what the representative/owner is trying to make out. Being anal about 'changing the composition', flying models around the world, spending 30 minutes on every image and other pretentious bullcrap just for shots of models holding their piss flaps wide apart, shoving wine bottles up their asses or pissing on the floor is laughable, and it should perhaps change its website, because the sample pics and the overall look of the site don't convey that kind of content at all, to me at least.

Sometimes it best for people to simply not reply. While your post was professional, i think it shows further lack of knowledge that your company has any understand of affiliates and how they work.



I assume no one here knows "Angie" nor would they know she was new nor would they care when they receive an email saying that they have 24 hours to comply or their account would be suspended. Perhaps you should train your employees better before turning them loose on their own.

I wasn't enlightened... To sum up everything you mentioned, it's not to get free traffic, and branding is just a small part of it. We put a lot of time and money into production, and I get pissed when people second guess my end product and feel they need to make it better.

News flash buddy, you are a photographer, you probably don't know 1/2 of what most good affiliates know when it comes to advertising and what shots work best for their sites. The fact that you get "pissed" when people alter your precious works of art, is your problem. Do you want to make money and trust your affiliates to do what they know best or do you want to get mad because someone, god forbid is cropping your image because they think they can make it better to make more sales ??

Where's the watermarks? :error

M:)rten

So be professional in your reply and take the opportunity to talk to the guy instead of shout at him, and enlighten him. The end result is a win-win, where he not only tells Angie (and whoever else) *why* she needs to cut good affiliates some slack, which results in affiliates not being too worried about being shitcanned that they don't promote his site, and him getting/keeping that traffic, instead of a lose-lose where it degenerates into 'us' vs. 'them', links galore pulled, and possible multiple good working relationships never coming to fruition.

:2 cents:

I reply how I reply, take it or leave it. If you don't think it was professional enough for GFY then you can go fuck yourself. :321GFY The message and advice was solid, shouted or whispered, he can listen to it or shove it up his ass, I really don't care.

AND THIS IS SHOUTING! :)

I think spunkycash has it right.


Perhaps offer up a psd logo pack to affiliates who feel the need to modify/crop full images so they can always add it onto the image after they modified it to their liking.

i cant even afford to have a blog... let alone use it within the TOS of a sponsor or not... :(

Rules are for other people. Silly of you Dean to think they really apply. :winkwink: