I see ATK has hired some dummies to come defend them


how about that skim remark of them . . ? I mean really ? that was bullshit and the reason he got terminated

DAMN --- You sent 562,070 visitors/clicks to their TOUR?

I think they're not thinking straight. If you sent 562,070 visitors to their free hosted galleries, and each visitor downloaded say 75% of the videos on average then that WOULD eat up a lot of bandwidth if it only generated 8 sales..

But, I highly doubt you sent 562,070 people to the tour... :)

Matt

It wasnt tour but their galleries where I send traffic to and because of their stupid traffic tracking system they used, EVERY hit I sent to gallery was counted as hit to tour page, so here comes the big numbers. Never seen any other sponsor using such sytem of tracking hits. My average ccbill stats are affected by this numbers, but as long I saw signups on their site, I let it go...

Sadly, they're shooting themself in the foot.

Matt

Nah he sent that to the galleries. If you look in their program they give you the ccbill code to link the gallery with.
http://refer.ccbill.com/cgi-bin/clic...s.com/045/?id=

so every time the gallery is loaded ccbill counts it as a click, so Chris was certainly wrong in his above statement to goodwill about it being to the tour.

now if Goodwill was linking the galleries like http://galleria.atkgalleries.com/045/?id= then Chris would be correct in saying that just the tour clicks would then be counted.

I also think traffic skimming is pathetic. Damn I have been pathetic for a long time!

well ....

This is not correct statement by ATK - former adultteenkingdom ? - they are not living in 1999 ...

well , any TGP webmaster can choose itself , if they'll use them , or not ...

i'm deleting ...

there's too much worthy sponsors to go with ...

Amateur and Teen Kingdom, but due to the ever changing movement of the US government and the laws they are trying to push for they thought best for everyone that teen be removed. For this I cant fault or disagree with them on. Just smart to protect yourself and your affiliates from legal liability.

damn, i'd suspend you too. that's a waste of a lot of bandwidth

why do I find this funny?

actually Chris is of the most informed and likeable guys in this business. He is taking care of business. What he says makes total sense. And if this affiliate was sending traffic to a c/p site he should be kicked out from every affiliate program, period.

"I also very well understand what traffic skimming is, and what a
pathetic way it is to acquire traffic from other TGPs."

Obviously this guy does NOT know TGP's and is stuck within his own little world.... What kind of Program representitive is this guy WOW!!!!!!!

Thats 1 sales for every 71,000 shown to the gallery. At a 2% clickthrough rate thats a 1:1400 ratio which isnt that bad for a ccbill site. Plus with the rebills, hardly a waste of bw

Note to self: don't deal with ATK. Going to make sure their sites are in the banned text list of my sites so I don't ever list any galleries that promote ATK. What a bunch of fucking chuckleheads.

yeah , but fact is this never happened, Goodwill just had one trade of him with the word "lolita" in it ,and that site was filled with FGH from teenrevenue and others


ATK = hypocrites

ATK is a long standing/successful company! A lot of programs tolerate using their content for promotional purposes of the site ... because the ends justify the means...

But it's ATK's right (as it's their program, sites, content) ... to put limitations on how they want you to promote their site

ATK is a solid company, with solid management and solid employees. Chris can be blunt sometimes, but he is a straight shooter and very reasonable, a great guy

You have to understand that atk is one of the cleanest companies in the business, thus i have no doubt that their rules are different than many other programs. They set a very high standard and from my years of experience with them, they are less concerned about sheer profit and very concerned about value to the surfer, in fact up until relatively recently, they had a closed affiliate program because they didn?t want to risk tricks being played. Be a surfer and join their site, see for yourself what the surfer gets.

They are one of the few companies that i will happily sit here all day and defend

HM.. 18 and 19 is still legal; that's eight-TEEN and nine-TEEN.. :P

So technically teen can still mean adult.. maybe they need to rename what you call '18' and '19' year olds.. LOL... 20minus2 for 18 year olds and 20minus1 for 19 year olds....

Matt

Let's keep this at the top of the 1st page shall we? Bump.

Yep thats for sure, but why set yourself up for legal issues if you dont have too. Using the word coed for example works well and helps to keep you off the ol governments radar.

ATK is one of the best and experienced programs. Back in august 2003, they changed their policy of the use of word teen, and it was nothing else to do than to comply with that. Fair enough.
As I read it, you did not read their TOS good enough, they sent you a warning, and you did not want to comply. So what is it to argue about then?
Your title should be rather be:
"WARNING for TGP owners: Start reading TOS."

ATKCash's policy on traffic skimming is as follows: We do not permit skimming to happen on thumbnails of OUR content. We have no way of controlling what or how much is skimmed off of TGP owners' OTHER thumbs, but we request that our content is not used to send traffic to anywhere but our galleries.

Our OPINION of skimming is that it's a poor business practice because to the CUSTOMER, it looks like they're being shipped elsewhere and denied the opportunity, X% of the time, to get what they asked for (the girl in the thumbnail.) As I said in my (heretofore private) email to Goodwill, it's a less-than-optimal way to gain TRUST among your surfers, whose interests should always come first.

We have had numerous complaints from customers about the way some of our affiliates skim traffic, to the tune of "I thought you guys were above that blind linking shit..." at which point we have to explain that "no, that's not us, that's one of our authorized resellers, and we apologize on their behalf." We fully expect our resellers to abide by the same business model that we do, and blindly sending Surfer Joe to some other TGP for the sake of keeping our traffic numbers high is not the way to do good, clean business.

As far as my use of the word "pathetic" to describe traffic skimming, I was referring to YOUR less-than-professional reply to my first email, which should have been taken as an effort to HELP your conversion ratio. We've found that our affiliates that don't skim traffic (our top resellers) have much higher click to join ratios, and there are plenty of them who do VERY well with our program. We've found through the years that TGP traffic tends to be jaded traffic... surfers are USED to being jerked around and are much less likely to trust ANY website because of these methods.

We'd much rather have an affiliate send us 5 joins a week that renew for 6 months than sending us 15 joins per week that cancel or charge back because they were misled by aggressive/misleading marketing tactics.

A word on our traffic counting: You, and several others, are CORRECT about our linking codes to hosted galleries. This is an error and will be corrected immediately, so in short yes, your ratio looks worse than it really is. We apologize for this.

If you think that a site that USES THE TERM LOLITA to lure in customers and thus pander to their pedophilic tastes or curiosities isn't flatly in the wrong, then you either don't know what "lolita" really means or you're the type of person who doesn't care, in which you'd be dropped from the ATKCash program for that alone. ANY of our affiliates that we find trading traffic with sites like that WILL be dropped from our program as well.

Chris - ATKCash

PS: I challenge ANYONE here to convince me that skimming traffic is an ethical, effective way to gain new customers or to build long-term relationships with satisfied customers (which is our primary goal). Just because everyone's doing something, doesn't make it right.

ATK, you're fired.

Kudos to Chris for giving full and explanative reasoning for his and his company's actions. Any affiliate that doesnt read the terms and conditions then turns around and accuses a company of an "unfair" agenda, that has been clearly outlined in the TOS has no grounds to such a response, but yet again Chris goes above and beyond for the rightful excellent reputation of his company.

The people who are bashing ATK in this thread are damaging their own reputation.

Bashers: you are basically showing that you have no idea who's who in this industry. ATK has been around since the beginning and have always had very strict rules on how you can promote their sites. Not everyone can even BECOME an affiliate. You'll notice that at ATKCash.com you must APPLY for membership and they'll POSSIBLY approve it within 48 hours.

They are very picky, and those of you who say you'll put them on your shit list are most likely the same idiots who would never have been approved to begin with. They simply don't need your traffic.

This is NOT bullshit when I say that promoting ATK is more of a badge of merit for YOU than a new affiliate for THEM. Sure, they get a few sales from you. But if you'll take a little time to look around you'll notice many of the big TGPs won't let you submit ATK galleries to them. That is because THAT TGP IS RUNNING THEIR OWN ATK GALLERIES.

Chris is relatively new to ATK. He is incorrect about the linking code counting all clicks to the gallery when it begins with refer.ccbill.com . He'll learn. But that account definitely would have been terminated anyway for linking to sites with the word "lolita" in the title. ATK is very determined to stay WELL ABOVE the law. They would rather be TOO conservative and lose a few clicks.

ATK is the standard of what adult sites SHOULD be. If you're an affiliate, feel honored.

you got dropped on your head frequently as a baby didn't you?

Not for long :2 cents:

That drop in traffic was the result of several factors, first of which was our migrating our servers to a different hosting company, at which time we did suffer a traffic hit during the conversion. Secondly, we had to drop a number of our big (hardlink) trades due to allegations that THEY were either directly (or somewhere along the line) linking to beastiality.

What's funny about your suggestion that we have taken a hit because of this is that our sales haven't even fluctuated the tiniest bit.

You, of all people, Alex_Xe, should understand the margin for error we give affiliates, especially cybersquatting ones we allow to keep those trademark-infringing names on the web out of the kindness of our hearts.

Jesus Christ, you're dumb. The well established TGPs to which I'm referring are usually very "old school". They don't pull BS such as skimming and they DON'T link to Lolita terms. They look down on these practices as much as ATK does.

Those who do business otherwise are simply not worth ATKs time.

If you think this thread will lose a single decent affiliate for ATK you have your fucking head up your ass.

1. I fail to see how your first mail to this guy has intended to help. You didn't offer anything except a complaint about low ratios and a warning that he was violating your TOS. You didn't so much as hint that you had any help to offer.

2. Your TOS are your business and you may not like skimming, but you are in a dream world if you think that these days any TGP which is not already well established is going to get far without doing it. And you are promoted on plenty of TGP's which do skim (your gallery links included), so is this just a convenient TOS condition you can call on when you want an excuse to dump someone?

3. Assuming your customers really do visit TGP's, are we seriously supposed to believe they take the trouble to single you out of all the sponsors who feature on TGP's (the vast majority of which do skim traffic to trades) to write to and complain to? Presumably they must single you out, else they would spend their lives writing emails...

4. How on earth do you segue from skimming into "aggressive marketing tactics"? The guy was sending surfers from his TGP to your hosted galleries and then it was up to them whether they went to your tour or not. The only difference on his TGP is that 2 or 3 surfers in every 10 never reach your galleries. Those who did were treated no differently to the surfers on one of the no-skim sites.

5. There was nothing in your original mail to this affiliate except your concerns about his poor traffic quality and thumb skimming. You didn't mention the lolita stuff (which is of very doubtful provenance anyway) or anything else until your subsequent response: by which time it comes across as someone in the driving seat who is teaching a lesson to someone he doesn't think should ever have questioned him. You even told him he was wrong about the way your clicks were counted.

I don't disagree that his ratio is very poor, but your handling of this issue and the way that rather than start over and find a productive route, you began digging in your heels - first with him and now here - is just childish and unprofessional.

Chris, it looks like you was never on our side and dont understand what tgp webmasters do. This is not about how much you jerk surfer, we all used to have much much better ratios few years ago, even on cj sites with zero content. Anyway, time is changing and we dont use so dirty ways of trading anymore, but still we need to exchange traffic to make some decent traffic to make some money. If atk is not interested to get our useless tgp traffic, then write it direct on main page to make it visible to all new tgp webmasters who want to give you a try on own tgp site, otherwise you only fuck them hiding your tgp antirules in your TOS. Btw. if you bored to check my cp site, you should see what linking I use to send traffic to atk, I didnt make such stupid fhg links like you did at start, so its not my problem what numbers you see because of it. I regret, that I helped you to growth your paysite biz, it was wasting of time and any other webmaster should think twice before will send his valuable traffic to your sites and feed your pocket.

Right, I'm sure the goodness of your heart has nothing to do with the fact that the domain names are registered by Russian citizens and you can't do jack shit about it. :)

Why would you fight with them after they made their position known in the first email? ATK sells very well for me, and I would hate to lose them. But any sponsor tells me I am in the wrong. I would correct it first and respond second. Protect your cash, is not a bad rule to have.

Are you serious? Show me 3 big TGPs that don't use skimming. Only 3.

1. TheHun
2. ?
3. ?

I'd never promote you guys after reading this bullshit.

someone found god and its not me :)

Fuck Jesus Christ and no, you're dumb. Now swim the fuck off you pathetic brown noser.

"I also very well understand what traffic skimming is, and what a
pathetic way it is to acquire traffic from other TGPs"


hehehehe

Right on! :thumbsup

Seems to me that TGP owners bitch if they find out that a program owner has shaved their traffic. What's the difference between that and a skim?


Of course, no TGP owner is going to agree with me but oh well. :glugglug

Personally, I find it refreshing to see a company stand up and say "fuck you" to the system in order to do business in a 100% upstanding way. Especially a company who usually lays very low on public boards like this.

Very few people in our business show this kind of integrity. :2 cents:

Brown noser, eh? Is it brown nosing to say that a Rolls Royce makes nice cars? Is it brown nosing to say that Rolex makes nice watches?

No, it's not. Those two statements are facts.

As is the FACT that ATK is one of the very best programs in the business. As is the FACT that if you don't know this you have your fucking head up your ass.

BULLSHIT!


ATK is not plastered all over GFY therefor they could not possibly be very successful. :glugglug