EXACTLY!!! And those that don't lower payouts were typically paying between 20-30 to begin with. And the few that do stay at $40 can now have all the webmater fraud that will migrate their way... have fun!

Thank you very little.

Mof, you dont even have a per signup program do you?

Originally posted by Lenny2
I'd like to personally tell all of the people whining about lower payouts and begging for lists of sponsors who aren't making any changes to FUCK OFF!!

Don't you realize that the only reason those sponsors were able to pay you $35-40 per join was by ass fucking the surfer with a dick big enough to kill an elephant?
Charging $40-50 subscription fees, multiple pre-checked cross sales, console hell on every tour, not to mention spamming the living shit out of their member's emails to try and make a buck or two.

Stuff like this is the reason VISA is breathing down our necks and sponsors who continue to operate in this fashion just so they can win the biggest payout dick measuring contest won't be in business for very long I assure you.

You can shear a sheep many times but you can only skin him once.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Used to have the pure PPS, but got tagged by the fraud.

Theoretically we do with Pay it Forward, but I guess it is a "hybrid" program.

A lot of this fraud webmaster traffic will be re-dispersed- that is what I was referring to.

I feel for you guys, but you are shrewd and will weather the storm.

:thumbsup

As always test test test and then send traffic to the best converting for your traffic. For 7+ years I have been doing just that. These changes just mean more testing :) It also means the playing field is flattening, at least till the next trick of billing is brought into the light. Hey at least mastercard and visa have not just said we wont process for adult anymore. Though I do expect that at some point in the next few years. And if you think they cant or wont turn off adult, it will be a big surprise for you when they do. Instead of bashing people for lowering payouts, just test to see if at the new lower payout you are making more money with them than the next program. If you are stay with them, if your not move on to the next program. I can not tell you how many times over the years I have switched back to sponsors after they changed things around a bit. Nothing has changed its buisness as usual. We will be keeping our payouts the same, but then again we have a much different business model, than recurring billing.

Hey that's copyright infringement......LOL

It's funny to see many "clever now" webmasters. Just imagine situation when many sponsors say the same words as now but ..... one two month ago ;)

Lenny, I looked at the local copyright office and didnt see anything on it so I thought I would use it :)

Good points for sure!!!

We are not reducing our payouts. SEG as been same for years, never will change business model.

We have decided to start paying per sign up in January, $30.00 a sign up. Maybe we don;t attrack all the fast buck webmasters with loads of traffic but we have loyalty and consistency. Before that we where rev share only, now at 60% and we proved that rev share works... Most of our big affiliates would not even think a second to change.

Having Original shot in da house content makes members happy, especially when you always have updates for them. So why in the world would those surfer cancel or CB.

But why take a french frogs word for it. Check it out yourself!!!

This is an extremely interesting and informative thread but some of the disussion reminds me of the old joke of a couple fighting and one says

"We'd have a great relationship if only you could see it my way".

Everyone is in business and, because this particular business is intensely competitive there are plenty of choices. The sponsors make their decisions as to pricing / marketing /strategy and the traffic suppliers make theirs. To continue with the relationship analogy, don't waste time on arguing with and trying to change the other person, work on your own options.

ayj

I just realised looking at gfy, that a lot of banners are going to need changing :)

On another thread someone was arguing that lowering the cost of a signup to a surfer is going to increase the rate of recurring. Do program owners agree with that?

If you're lowering the cost per month, but increasing the amount of months that someone stays a member, then don't those two offset each other in some way?

I will be looking forward to seeing who can innovate their way out of this negative situation and keep the money flowing to affiliates.

Mr. Fiction,

There is no negative situation with CECash! In fact, we're raising payouts! :thumbsup

I just got bent and for some reason have a savage salami up my ass! :NopeNope

Yep:thumbsup

who gives a shit what the payout is. Its how much you make with a sponsor off your traffic.
it could be 15 cents an install to a $40 payout. its what makes you the most off your traffic

don't be fooled meet your sponsors in florida. see who you can trust and who's shady . Just my 2 cents

a sponsor can payout $60 but then work the numbers in there favor.

thats why you need to trust the sponsor you send traffic too and see who makes you the most.

sponsors are in this business to make money and the only way that is possible is if the webmasters are happy. It takes two. webmasters and sponsors

Nobody is talking about the scrubbing getting tighter with all of this - It has to, dont you think?

So not only will amount of payouts for each signup go down -- but the number of signups will most likely drop too.
Shouldn't really well scrubbed signups be worth paying $40 for?

tighter scrubbing will just weed out the freebie surfers and fraudulant webmasters if they even tighten the scrub.

From what I understand its up to the sponsor to monitor there sales thats why you might see webmasters getting dropped from programs if there chargebacks are high.

thats why I posted this so we can work together
http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...hreadid=151916

The free trials are not the issue by any means. If your site is good enough, people will stick around. Yeah maybe not at $40/month, but at $30 probably, but at $24.95 I think your retentions would be damn good. And at $20 watch out! This is totally justifiable in many peoples eyes.

But it is all based on quality. If the sites were at least decent, there would be better retention. I have joined a few of the free trial programs, and was shocked at what they were trying to sell me on. Garbage.

Example... the movies were shit! I mean litterally shit. I have a 1.8Mb Cable modem and the movies were fuzzy garbage. I have seen better video on the TGPs. The only movie content that I have ever seen on a pay site or from a content provider that was worth paying for was WebmasterCentral's. If I owned a pay site, they are the only one I would use. (not a plug either) I make a median salary much higher than that of most folks out there and would not throw my money away to these programs... for $20, yeah I would seriously think about it. For $40, suck on my salami!

The purpose of a free trial was for webmasters to more easily get surfers to signup. Well, once they signup, it the sponsor's job to make them stay. I as a promoter have no hand after they jump in. I believe it was poor content, a lack sponsor effort, and high membership fees that killed the free trial. And I stick to my guns on that one.

How about tactics to make the surfers stay longer. We have rewards points as webmasters, why not for surfers who stay longer? Why not reducing membership fees the longer they stay?Little customer appreciation tactics work. They have for years in other mediums. To me, the customer who paid the bills have been getting the ass end of the deal, now maybe that will be realized.

This is probably the best thing to happen to this industry in a long while. And believe me, this VISA move just cost me a bundle. I lived on free trials, but if the industry improves because of it and the stupidity stops, I will cut my losses now for a brighter future.

Good luck everyone. May the smart succeed.

P

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

About 6 months ago I was finding a lot of surfers would signup for a recurring but cancel immediately and I think this has probably been due to them feeling that pay sites screw them.

I found that the cancelled member after seeing he is getting value for money then signed up and remained a recurring member.
My only concern was for affiliates because they would get the initial sale but when that same member signs up again for a recurring it is via the paysite and not via the affiliate's page. I think a lot of webmasters loose out this way.

We are developing a system where these transactions can be identified and even if the sale occurs directly at the paysite the original webmaster still gets his recurring $'s. After all it's his/her customer not mine.

In the past 2 months I haven't had one cancel after signup and I can only think that surfers are now starting to recognise which programs screw them and which don't.

Retention is excellent and I have members that have been with me since day one. As so many others have mentioned here - Quality and good customer relations is critical.

IMHO I think the smaller pay site operators who have successfully built their business on quality and superior customer relations are the ones who will see an increase in signups and retention.

ok.. now lets hear your theory on what makes good content... since you are also a "pornstar"

an opinion is fine... but unless you work with an affialiate program you have no idea...

Greg,

Hello! I am not arguing the actual content as subject matter. I am arguing that the content I witnessed was of poor quality in viewability. Fuzzy, grainy movies that are 160 pixels wide and motion that is really jagged is poor.

I can go down the street and rent porn movies in DVD quality. I can subscribe online and rent porn DVDs for less than most memberships out there, less than $40/month for certain. Surfers want good quality movies.

Right, I don't work an affiliate program, but I promote the sites. It is like sending a salesman out with a two bit offer that holds no weight and expect massive conversions. Better yet it is like sending a salesman out with a terrific offer which is a big lie and when the customer signs up, they get garbage.

If I ran an affiliate program, I would think about my customers first, then my webmasters. Because without customers, there is no cash. I would give my customers what they want! I am curious to know how many of the affiliate programs run surveys to find out what their customers want, what they think, and what they would like to see. Get their opinions. If the quality is there and the price is right, they will stay.

I do, however, have the ability to look at it from a consumer's view. I am a consumer myself and I will tell you quality is better than quantity when it comes to porn. Quality is able to regurgitated and provide pleasure time and time again, shitty quality will not.

Think about it. I have a stack of porn movies as high as the sky and of that stack, I only watch the quality over and over and over and over again. The shitty porn is lost and forgotten about. In fact, it is given away.

I couldn't agree with you more and we have active message boards were the models and I chat to the members daily. We go one step further, we shoot what our members request and many of them purchase items of clothing etc and post it to the models to use in the photo shoots.
This goes to show that members want the interaction and quality. Some of them spend over $100 on clothing that they send in to the models.

Needless to say our retention rates are excellent :)

It's about time the industry is finally getting back to the way things used to be. Anyone who's been around for a few years knows exactly what I'm saying :)

Back in 1998 (97?) when revenues from running sites like in 1996-97 started dropping, everyone started to migrate to free trials. By the end of 1998 the rules changed and "oh my god, the sky is falling - no more free trials! what are we going to do now?" I watched our conversions from trials shoot through the roof overnight. What seemed like the end of the world at the time ended up being a great thing -- less free porn = more paid signups and trial conversions. The industry adjusted and survived.

A while later (don't remember exactly when) MC came down with the 1% chargeback rule. And "Oh my god, the sky is falling - 1% chargeback limits?". I think we were running at under .05% at the time and we were worried about it. But the industry adjusted and survived.

Last October came the $750 "sponsored merchant" crap and again, the sky was falling. Visa has gotten that fee from us for each of our IPSPs and as much as I hate paying it, it's a cost of doing business. And guess what -- pretty much everyone is still around and the industry survived.

Now comes the new 1% chargeback rule from Visa. How many other people were wondering when it was coming? I figured it would have come within a few months of the mastercard ruling, but it didn't. We're still below 1% across the board, but as surfers start getting smart (dumb, actually - as I'll explain with another short story in a minute) it goes up. We provide high quality sites with lots of content focused on the niche we are marketing. We don't lie about what we offer, nor do we allow affiliates to do it. We also give access to our other sites (although we don't promote it on the outside of the sites) as a tactic to increase retention and reduce unhappy subscribers who may have had second thoughts about spending $30/month after they bought access.

It's simply a time to adjust tactics, cut some of the bullshit (multiple pre-checked cross sells, etc) and get back to basics. I don't see anyone who's on the level going anywhere anytime soon and if this all ends up going as I expect it will, we're all going to be better off in the long run due to this.

There is also a pretty big lesson to be learned -- if we don't watch what we're doing and keep clean, someone is going to clean us up again.

Anyway, one of my non-industry friends was talking to me the other day and I asked what their take was on some of the sites out there. "Do you ever worry about getting screwed by the site?" Her response - "No, I just call my bank and get a refund". Thank you V/MC for teaching people that there is nothing wrong with calling your bank and "getting a refund" (charging back) because you didn't want to pay for the porn.

Anyway, this is long winded so I'll cut it here - as much as I want to post oh so much more about this :)

thefreakybeaver,

Stop playing the victim... there will be people that profit from these changes and others that perish... I worry that you'll be on the losing side in this venture.

Sorry bud but the Cold War is over... Capitalism won and communism is dead, sponsors aren't charities and as far as I'm concerned, they've earned everything they've achieved for the most part.

Taking that 5 minutes out of your 16-hour days to think about how you can work smarter instead of pissing & moaning about who drives what and who is living where might be a tad more productive.

I'd recommend "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael Gerber to get your mind a bit more on track with staying profitable and expanding your business in a downturned market.

And I'd bet money that you're under 25. :1orglaugh

I don't have any kind of problems with the big 'affiliate' driven companies with hundreds of sites. In fact, as I stick to one medium sized niche for the most part, I'm not sure if having those crap sites out there at 39-95 a month doesn't actually help me (or rather my sites) look good and help retention. Maybe, dunno. I certainly encourage comparison of my sites with 'the big boys' on my forums and review sites. I always win :)

The more interesting question for me is where is all this going ?

While it's true that currently there is still enough new surfers becoming web active to feed these types of sites with the all the same-o plug-ins etc. Contrary to popular belief, I don't think that is going to last much longer. Or at least it will continue to slow down. Surfers are becoming more discriminating.

To me this looks like a classic business scenario.

"Grabbing an increasing share of a declining market is the fastest way out of business"

It all depends whether 'new surfers' is a declining market.

I think it is, and I think the new VISA/MC regs are helping this along. I think some big sponsors are going to fall, much like some processors have already fallen.

I think the big boys taking the steps outlined at the start of this and other threads are the ones going to survive the fallout.

I would call that one of the biggest bullshit statements I've read. To blame the WM's for using a program that offers more is daft. It is 110% the fault of the programs for deciding to have a porn version of the arms race and offering increasingly daft payouts. NOBODY forced them into it, instead they felt the need to keep trying to go just one better than the competition and screw everyone in the process.

Of course people will use the program that makes them the most $ at the end of the day. It is the program owners resposibility to make sure they don't offer them daft payouts in the first place. As an analogy...

Two car dealers selling new cars are competing next door to each other offering the same service and products. Joe public will obviously go to the cheapest dealer to get the car as they are almost identical in all other areas. Now - these dealers aren't too bright so for the next 12 months every so often one will slash the price and the other follows suit immediately for fear of losing business. After 12 months they are both selling cars for less than they cost and are basically in the shit. It's the customers fault for wanting the cheapest car? Of course not. They should have both had the sense to know when to call it a day and try to make money by offering better service etc rather than continuing a price war that just made everyone lose out at the end of the day.

This whole mess is due to many, many factors and at the end of the day may still not be a bad thing for those in this for the long haul. However all you see in posts are people on both sides spewing crap about it not being their fault, or it's caused because of XYZ and totally ignoring all the other very obvious facts. Nobody wants to take responsibility or admit that they may just possibly have been in part to blame which is amazing considering 95%+ of the people in this industry contributed to this shit one way or another.

I'd like to take a look at your sites.

Give me a couple of URL's to go take a look!!

Tipsy - you read my statement all wrong (pleaser RE REVIEW it and notice how the word webmasters and webmaster programs are included). I seriously have no resentment towards webmasters or their desire to make more money. I also have no resentment for programs that tried in all honest and legal ways to stay competitive and offer those payouts.

What I do have resentment for is programs that pushed the line WAYYY too far, screwing both webmasters and surfers and now have put our industry in an akward situation.

I also resent the greed that has brought us here. My statement just as much blames MYSELF and all other sponsor programs 'like me' as it does the affiliates that wanted more, more, more (its human nature and there is NOTHING we can do about that).

To sum up the statement, all it was saying is - WE COLLECTIVELY did this to ourselves. :) Hopefully we can undo this as well!

you say this whereas others say that soon Visa could stop processing adult at all :helpme

BTW, someone mentioned the idea of lowering payouts for loyal surfers, like
1st month - $29.99
2nd month - $26.99
3rd month - $22.99
4th month - $19.99

this could possibly increase the retention and even the sponsors profit ( although surfers would pay less when staying longer ).

another idea was "rewards points" for surfers...
I'd also prefer ARS to stop rewarding webmasters with that points, but instead giving them to surfers... that could be a huge thing, sure noone joins a porn site and stays 6 months only to get free sunglasses, but this - together with paysites being more customer oriented - could perhaps really increase retention...

Interesting idea.

Partnerships like ours will defiently benifit from the lower payouts from per signup sponsors. Our rentention is far above most sites and our cb rate is WELL under 1%.

A good shakedown of the shady treatment of surfers is long overdue, although I am sure some will find ways to continue to rape the surfer.

Glad to see some of these big per signup companies making the changes to start cleaning up this industry and in turn making the average surfer begin to trust us in the process.

How we bill the surfer will be a good start, but what we offer the customer on the backend of our sites is another huge reason for chargebacks. Don't underestimate this.


Brent
ATK Cash

Yes, Polish. It is nice to see that some people do realize what I am saying. Customers come first. They should be the ones treated like royalty not us the webmasters. Then the longer they stay the more us the webmasters will make. They should not feel the brunt of trickery and forced into placing chargebacks.

I?ve been working the last couple of months on my new pay per signup program that I?m planning to launch in two weeks. The biggest problem for me was to grow with the current partner program as webmasters in most cases prefer PPS programs. I planed to offer the same pay per signup amount of $35-40 as the big programs do and I charged the members also a monthly price of $39.95. Over the last months I checked out tons of sites from various companies and I never thought that it is worth to pay $39.95 per month for it. The whole calculation never seemed very ?healthy? to me but I would have been forced to swim with the river if I want to grow.
I use myself tons of sponsors beside my own sites and I?m not happy about losing $10 per signup right away now but everybody who sees the whole picture will agree that the current situation is just unrealistic. A monthly price for a membership of around $30 is more then enough and paying the affiliates $25-30 just makes a logical calculation at the end.
I think that mostly the little webmasters created the current situation, because webmaster programs are forced to offer higher and higher payouts to keep their webmasters and to get new ones. 90% of the webmasters signup right away for a program if they see a high PPS amount?
The current changes made myself think and I decided to lower my membership prices and affiliate payouts so they will be identical to the new Silver Cash and ARS payouts because it just makes more sense. On the other side for programs with 10,000?s of webmasters making drastical changes if much easier, time will show how the whole situation will turn out for a new program like mine.

yes, that's even a brilliant idea. It could increase retention and decrease charge backs... Porn sites should offer the community feeling to thei customers... if more sites were like this, this could bring more sales ( better convertions ) again, slightly increase retention and - most important - there would be absolutely no reason for Visa to take any further steps agains the internet adult entertainment industry :thumbsup

Kevin, that is what I am talking about. Customer service where it needs to be. :thumbsup

I am signing up.

P

First of all don't call me bud!

For you to "assume" everything in your post about me, who you obviously know NOTHING about or you'd know at least some basic information about me.

For you to assume that any webmasters will "perish" because of this is plain stupid from the get go. To state that I will be one of them is even stupider. I will still be here, just making less money for the same amount of money and time spent is all. Just like most of the other webmasters who are in this full time and for the long haul.

Now instead of looking to increase my revenue each month, buying new servers and more content to push even more traffic to these programs, I will settle with my income as it is now (by using the programs that didn't lower payouts) and sustain it and not help anyone else get richer than I already have. I make enough to be comfortable with, but I wanted a little bit more as does everyone.


If nobody had stepped in and gave their opinion on this payout lowering don't you think just about every single sponsor would have jumped on the bandwagon?

If they thought webmasters would sit back and take it without having ANY problem with it all, it would have happened with 90% or more of the sponsors.

I simply laid my opinion down, be it a negative one to those sponsors who already jumped to make the announcement that they were lowering their payouts.

Just because you are foolish enough to believe that EVERY sponsor who has been paying $30+/signup has been LOSING money the past year, not all of us are. This 1% new rule is being used as an excuse some of them are using. You would see this if you read all the posts from the sponsors on this issue. Some are stating they've been losing money all along and it needed changed BEFORE this 1% rule even came around.

Many sponsors have now announced they will NOT be lowering payouts and 2 that I know of are even higher their payouts. If they can do it, why can't they all?

There are those that CAN but will choose to lower the payout anyway because they now have a "good excuse" in their minds.

There are those that CAN if they ran their business right and tightened down on their expenses that aren't so highly needed. What good is free hosting and sponsor hosted galleries if the payout is lowered to the point that Most webmasters won't promote them anyway? Webmasters are their bread and butter and they can deny it all day long but just ask any one of them what % of their income comes from webmasters! And I'm talking all webmasters who send traffic, whether they own paysites, tgps, linklists, gallery submitter, free site and avs builders etc.

And then there are those that cannot survive by lowering payouts. I don't believe any of the "Big Boys" are in this classification.

And I was never pissing and moaning, just stating my opinions and opening up the discussion for other webmasters, even if they don't want to post their opinions to at least think about what these sponsors are doing. They come here crying poverty and some webmasters will buy into that if they haven't been around the boards long enough to KNOW just how much these paysite owners really make from the traffic that us webmasters bust our ass and PAY to send them.

My husband and I left the corporate world because we started making more money in this biz and started investing more money to EXPAND. We saw the future earning potential which was now in the process of being lowered in an extreme amount.

It looked like these sponsors got together and discussed this issue in far too much depth for competitors to be discussing, in order to lower the payouts and still be good competition for each other. Cmon applauding each other for lowering the payouts?

If 3 or shit even 2 design firms got together and said okay we will ALL charge $100 for a tgp design and $5,000 MINIMUM for a paysite design, that is illegal is it not? This may not be the same thing but it's damn close enough to send up red flags and make me feel the webmasters are being jerked around here.

Just like the paysite owners whined about the joint announcement frome the processors about the $750 fee not too long ago!! They were losing a BIG $750 webmasters stand to lose thousands upon thousands in this newest "change"

Someone spoke of loyalty to a sponsor who has been good to them etc. Would they be so loyal if they found out the sponsor cut their payouts by $10/signup and didn't need to? Would they still feel that loyalty if they found out that the average "worth" of a surfer stayed the same or even went up and they were making less by sending that surfer? If the answer to that is yes lol there are more fools than I ever imagined.

I no longer have a problem with this whole thing, most of the GOOD sponsors are NOT lowering their payouts and some of them raised them. I'm happy with that. I was worried this was an across the board lowering of payouts (which it could have very well been if NOBODY bitched about it right from the beginning)

I assume you are a webmaster, can't tell by your 11 posts sorry. What if suddenly your pay was cut and because you, without any knowledge of it, sent shit traffic that chargedback alot and sponsors started canning your ass? As Topbucks is now doing to webmasters? Bet you wouldn't be so happy to except lower pay as you are now. (and before you assume again, no topbucks didn't get rid of me YET LOL)

And how much would you like to wager on that bet of yours?

Let's see I'll make a bet here. Your male, under 28, lived with mom until you were at least 22 (or still do) and started in this biz to make enough money to pay for your beer on the weekends? Bet my guess is closer to the truth than yours :) Now GO FUCK YOURSELF.

FreakyBeaver.. lol

As much as you type in each of your posts you could always go get a job as a court reporter when the 10 dollar drop kicks in :)

Seriously though, you can fill a page with some words.. hehehe


Things will be fine at $30 per join.. We expect signup ratios to go up and bit and we already feel that we are one of the top two or three converting programs out there now. The changes are made because of facts not guesses.. <--- is that a word ? :)


Going to hit my pool for the first time in a few weeks.. its saterday :)

why do you think thias is going to happen...?
do you think that Visa simply doesn't like porn at all so that every year they make life harder for adult webmasters and finally they stop processing adult at all...?
IMO if the new accounced rules are going to clean up the situation, then they probably will ( = there will be less scammers and dubius billing practises )... if that is achieved, why should they suddenly stop processing adult sites ???