Sounds great and have a good new year. I get over things quick your right life is to short :thumbsup

I've noticed most of the x-sell percentages in this thread are off. Surfers are much smarter than they were even a year ago concerning them. They tend to go through 11-14% now. Thats the past 2 months numbers crunched.
A year ago it was about 25%

Let's go back to the numbers...

Using my same example from before... Take into account that xsells are down, mailings are down, consoles are down, type ins/bookmarks/one clicks are going to be good only if the site is exclusive, well branded, and worth the price, and whatever else is left over like VOD or Live Show upsells from the member's area to make income with:

These numbers are ambitious imo...

Add xsells @ 12% which only count on joins, not trials... so 12% of 35 joins = approx. 4 joins

Add mailings... if out of those 100 trials say 10% (ambitious) join the mailing list, then that means 10 names and if you got 10% return on those names that would equal one join.

Say on every 100 trials you get 1 console sign up on between 1 and 4 exit consoles presented (ambitious) and add another join...

Then for every 100 trials there are 15 type in or direct non-affiliate joins...

Now you have an additional 21 joins which equal about $47 bucks per based on 4 month aging and 30% retention which comes to an additional $987. Add that to your original earning of about $1650 for a total of $2637 over four months. That would barely cover paying out $25 per join for those first 100 paid trials.

Here is where I tend to hear all the things like "you need to know how to monetize the traffic", and "we make it up on volume". How does volume change anything except the bleedrate? Where else can you monetize or improve percentages?

This is not counting VOD or Live Chat upsells but those numbers are going to have to be amazing. To balance that omission I also didn't count all the other overhead costs associated with running a biz. Some may say they can do these or better percentages to make it worthwhile but I think am presenting a fairly "savvy" level of sales conversion as a measure of core competency.

"The beauty of revshare for many sites is it takes zero investment outside of your site to run. The processors cut the checks, the processors provide the stats, and if you ask me that is just too low of a barrier for entry."


Well said.

Alex, so you are getting a merchant account? Good luck. If you can not figure out the pay per join model, a merchant account if well over your head.

We are doing no trial full join memberships and doing quite well with them too... :thumbsup

?

Who peed in your Wheaties this morning?

I know too many companies that are screwed with banks now because of how they worked pps with aggressive xsells. Many of these companies still posture themselves as huge successes and fountains of the special wisdom that only being somehow annointed a "Playa" entitles them too. They hang by a thread with their merchant accounts in the balance about to be completely blacklisted.

In a move I respect, even Marc De acknowledged having to deal with chargeback issues which so many others won't.

Very informative. :thumbsup

I totally agree. He is being very frank about what happened. Although no one liked it at the time, I think we all understand the steps he took to stay in business by now.

I don't know Marc personally but I do know the extent to which ARS has been involved with our very expensive fight with Acacia and I know that any company that has come this far with us is completely stand up imo, not only for themselves but the benefit of the entire industry.

I should say again for the record that I am not a big fan of revshare either. As a sponsor I look at what is best for my company from that perspective. However, if I were a webmaster and not a sponsor, I would diversify and put 50% to 70% of my effort into the highest paying pps, then I would do the rest in revshare and count the days to when the pps was going to go under; secure that my other income would keep coming in while I rebounded into something solid like what ARS or Homegrown Video would offer for example... something stable that will be around forever...

I would rather make less money day to day but more over many years than more money one day or another and less over many years.

:winkwink:

I just want to chip in my experience with trial versus no trial (again from an adult dating perspective, not adult).

We had 2.95 for one week which rebilled to 24.95 per month. We decided to raise that to 4.95 for one week and there was almost no difference in signups (so more cash for us). We then got rid of the one-week trial all together and the minimum membership was 24.95

We had very close number of signups, but worth much more :winkwink:

(and yes, the number of initial 24.95 was now making more than the trial + those who did renew after one week at 24.95...)

I think basically what it comes down to, is many surfers will go for the cheapest choice available. If you eliminate that choice, many will still signups. Thinking 'we will get way more signups at $5 than $25' just wasn't the case, atleast for us :2 cents:

Then again, with adult you have WAY more competition, so the surfer might say 'this site is too expensive, let me go find a cheap one'.

Thanks for your concern but the PPS model is not rocket science.
We will be just fine. : ))

We personally have never had chargerback issues (KNock on wood) if you want you can ask chris mallack at the paycom dinner in vegas.

the only thing that has changed is the margins are tighter but there is still profit.

don't get me wrong it doesn't help every time a new rev-share program launches and takes from the pie.

we put everything back into pornkings and we are very solid

so i have no idea who you are speaking about? everyone I know with PPS is still doing well. but not like 98

how do your ratios compare on the upfront full price with the low monthly rebills vs low price trials

Far-L - you can't get an average surfer value in 4 months - even if you only keep 6% of the original trials (so in your scenario 6) for 8 more months you're talking another 48 rebills. You should be breaking even in about month 4 and then you starting turning up the profitability from there.

Don't get me wrong, don't operate properly and you can VERY easily go from black to red - just miss a couple of your variables and you could be in trouble. However, that is usually the same in any business, whether it be service, manufacturing, food, etc...

Wow. 1/3 of your signups are walkin? I wonder if you would have those without the affiliate traffic?

with free trials these day, what percentage auctally convert to members?

PPS definitly works

Like Marc said, a tight spreadsheet is key, and the variables can vary from the ones that were posted in this thread.

If you have a 45% conversion from trial to regular membership, you don't need to cross-sell heavily or try to bleed the members.

i am sure you get that with audreylive

we do ;)

I'm in love with this thread.

check sig for a good pps program

We do about 40-50%

Still to early to tell. Most our webmasters send to our Porn4abuck or free trial

its harder to convert our paid trial program since we ask for $34 up front and then $5.99 a month rebills. since the payout is higher you average about the same $ amount at the end of the day.

its all in how you like to promote sites.

I came up with the reverse trial it hasn't cau :( ght on yet.

Paid trial program has a new way of billing instead of a $5.99 trial for 5 days reoccurring at $35 we have reversed it. One time initial set up fee of $34.99 and $5.99 a month reoccurring every month there after. This way we can have a High payout and not worry about chargebacks etc... Built to convert and retain!

I agree with you, but even accounting for that difference, and my example is very hypothetical to begin with, my point is that you will have to perform at a very high level to make all the variables profitable... If any one variable could throw it all off then that is not exactly a very stable profit model and that is my main point.

It will definitely take a high performance site to maintain that level of conversion.

Yes but when its time to cash out all the reacurring becomes profit and when you have a large database it ads up to millions.

Most programs don't fold because they are in the red they fold to cash out. they already paid out the webmasters. all the reacurring is profit.

Interesting idea..

40-50% that is a high number for free trials converting into paid members

Roger... I am not quite sure why you keep thinking I am referring to you guys since if I meant you then I would say it openly. If you don't know who I am inferring then it is not my place to say.

BTW...

I wish all our businesses a happy and prosperous new year!

Varius - your post made me wonder if your good full signup ratio is due to the fact that it's an adult dating site and not an adult site and if so, have you considered or already experimented with raising the lowest available monthly membership fee even more to one of the standard adult site fees of $29.95, $34.95, or $39.95 to see if the signup ratio / retention would remain good enough to make it even more profitable?

and vice versa - have the PPS program owners in here experimented with the approach of offering lower membership fees without the trials. And if so, why haven't you adopted that approach... I've seen some big adult sites offer the low memberships of $19.95 and $29.95... like danni.com for example, just wondering why not all?

Has it something to do with the strategy of collecting e-mails from as many confirmed credit card holders as possible and later trying to upsell them something/anything through e-mail marketing?

Also wondering why there is such a huge membership fee difference between adult dating sites and adult sites, where the adult dating sites, imho, from the visitor's perspective have a more desirable/real-live content, hence could ask more for the membership and the adult site signups are more based on spontaneousness of the visitor.

This is a great thread! My experience with trials has been the same as Alex From San Diego. I have never considered PPS but this thread has me thinking. Marc De what is your email addy? I would like to discuss something with you.

So how will you fund your pps if you do that?

Those are pretty darn slim margins to run on.

My bad... i may have misread this... Do you mean the surfer pays $34/$5 recurring or the webmaster makes $34 and $5 recurring?

Marc De's dead on. It's all about execution. One key factor is having tours that convert well enough to make the recruitment model work and member sections with enough interactivity/novelty to make the retention model work.

The more successful the conversion is on signups means the greater the number necessary to finance those signups. With enough of a member base recurring this can be carried since the cash flow is there, but if that is not there or some other way to pay for the signups then you are going to have a tough time getting out of the hole high converting traffic would create. Admittedly that is a kind of a "good" problem to have but mismanage it and you are going to tank quickly.

To echo a common theme here... strong forecasting and financial management is critical.

Nasty Dollars, Platinum Bucks, Topbucks, and Traffic Cash Gold all give me $40 per SU - because I do high volume.

You probably wouldn't know about that though.

Yes, this is true. Trial-to-full will max out around 30% no matter who you are...unless you use some kind of one-click-upgrade (OCCash does this now), but setting that up is a technical nightmare.

Since we've switched to one-click-fulls we are doing 50%-60%. It kind of pisses surfers off, but there are more and more "trial hoppers" that do the trail, download all your shit, and then get the fuck out. That is where programs are losing money on PPS.

10,000 sign-ups total = payout: $350,000
10,000 sign-ups X 500 uniques = 5 million hits

60% trials = 6,000 trials X $4.95 = $29,700
40% full month = 4,000 full X $39.95 = $159,800

30% trial convert = 1,800 full X $39.95 = $71,910

1st month members = 5800
2nd month members = 2610 @ 55% drop X $39.95 = $104,269
3rd month members = 1174 @ 55% drop X $39.95 = $46,901

Total: $412,580 - 12% processing = $363071


10% of sign-ups is an xsale = $10 per sale = $10,000
50% of the traffic will see the exit, 1:3000 convert to view rate X $35 per sale = $29166

New Total: $402237 profit of = $52237
Still have longer-term retention; e-mails, hope to god better exit results, up sells, and a mixture of other areas pps programs make money. Some don't pay on checks, web900, etc.. Some say they do, but don't. Type-in traffic from webmaster screwups or just for whatever reason.. And a mixture of other BS that paysites can earn income with.


Some programs can run PPS with no xsales and much lower exit rates, as long as retention is good. First off "MOST" programs have a 20% trial to convert rate. 30-35% isn't easy to his these days. 45% month to month, isn't bad, not what most PPS programs sit at.



Fact is, you CAN run a PPS program, and not shave. Well my math could be off some :)
A good, no bs, recurring program, will crush a PPS in payouts though.. Joins are worth $80-$120 on average.. Do you want $35ps or $40-$60+ after a split.. Invest over time, or instant return. The above math is $36 per join value just after 3 months. Long-term retention would put it over $80 a join. Earning you more than a PPS program. I have to admit though; it needs to be a good revshare system.

Neither would roughly 98% of affiliates of the world. The performance tier would certainly count as one of the variables to control...

TheDoc: great post!