Oh I get hit up, but the "optimizations" never result in more sales. Usually I just get told how well the top affiliates are doing, and asked to "send more traffic". Affiliate reps seemed obsessed with ratios.

My favorite optimization was listing the monthly membership price in my linkcode. I was told that would give me a better conversion ratio.

Nice write up and accurate :thumbsup

this is an interesting theory and people have been talking about the theory that internal traffic generation and buys are the wave of the future. for us, especially since we believe in a Performance-Based model - this prediction of internal traffic buys taking over is contrary to our business model. we'll leave traffic generation up to our affiliate partners, while we focus on continuing to add sites that convert. sure, I can see how program owners can basically peel through their affiliates' referral logs and then buy those same placements -- but that style is just not XPays style, as we grow together with our affiliate partners, rather than competing with them.

Time consuming, tedious and BORING process that results in one productive affiliate for every 5-10 you sign up. It takes a dedicated individual to dig that hole every day.

yes and so far everyone i hired gets tired after a few days and try to shortcut it

Someone with more time on their hands should cut and paste all of your posts trashing aff. managers, heh.

Getting rid of affiliates is like getting rid of retail shops... have fun with that.

A lot of mainstream is just now looking at ways to get MORE into affiliate related sales if that tells you anything...

Best thing I can say is if you're only doing affiliate marketing, you fail. If you're only doing ad marketing, you fail. You SHOULD be doing both. They're completely different traffic sources fools! You can't even compare them against each other.

Cutting of a traffic source all together is like chopping off an arm of your marketing... and if you don't have two arms, you should really get on that right now...

Couldn't have said it better myself. Great post :thumbsup

An affiliate is already the traffic manager. Some will be very good (whales) and most won't.

I personally try to work with as many different affiliate reps as I can. They make my job so much easier.

I can say without any question in my mind that a good affiliate rep is a key ingredient for a programs success.

50 dead jobs

seriously though...i don't think they are going anywhere.

sales is a hard gig in any industry unless you are just inbound sales

if you have to hustle your ass and go out and find the money...that is a valuable skill set, and the good ones will always have a home i suspect.

certainly people who under perform or dont even try and are just taking up a chair will be thinned out, but that is natural in any business that is forced to trim their costs

if you, as affiliate, know what you are doing, you dont need to bother any affiliate manager. if there are any problems with payments or system or something, one support email is enough :2 cents:

i like when affiliate managers help me by bumping my pps. :)

:thumbsup

the position isnt dead,,the worthless ones are

and you are good to work with Ken :thumbsup

I have alot to say and Im going to do an article for the GFY educational series.. I think the position lacks respect.

FACT: Affiliate managers are Webmasters!

There are tons of programs that sell the same products, so unless your sales staff is able to show a perspective affiliate what sets you apart, there's really no way to stay ahead of the game.

I wear many different hats here; many of which have been discussed in this thread, and others which are internal functions or might be overlooked 'cause they don't directly affect affiliates.

I don't think getting new affiliates has ever been an easy task, and the main things that have changed are the methods in finding them. Aside from that, a lot of time goes into making an existing affiliate notice their payout...you have to move them from their check covering their utilities, to covering their car, to covering their house.

Are you sure?I though they are all failed webmasters :1orglaugh

Your not the average AM tho, your elite!

You're not the only ones pushing sales :winkwink:

Practice what you preach. :2 cents:

If I can generate traffic as a "Traffic Manager" why the fuck do i want to work for someone else?

I blame the tubes!

productive affiliates usually don't need any help, and when they do it's one email or a short ICQ convo and they're back to work.

affiliate reps/managers who bring in lots of new affiliates/sales - those days are long gone. the best affiliates are on top of their business, they know what programs are new and have sites they can sell.

a traffic manager who's great at maximizing a program's own internal traffic is a very nice asset. people who can generate a lot of organic traffic/sales on their own rarely work as employees, they'd be stupid to because they can make more on their own. there probably are a small number of people like that who still would rather have the security and structure of working 9 to 5 in house for a big program.

That might be my favorite optimization of all time too.

Please let me know who to never hire. =)

Of course the big programs have a team in place to do their own SEO, media buys, and promotions. Wouldn't you? Why do you think the brograms all jumped the tube train and started riding that out? Because there is huge fucking traffic there AND THEY CAN AFFORD TO HARNESS IT. If I had the patience to dig through all my posts from years goen by, I started saying this shit like 2 years. The programs do not want you as an affiliate! They want to generate that traffic for themselves and cut the middle man.

Brograms have wanted the affiliate out for a long time, and maybe for this industry to survive that is what has to happen. I doubt affiliates will ever be completely gone, but limited absolutely. Small programs will still need the hand of the affiliate model to generate sales, and will continue to work with affiliates. Big programs will only care to work with the real top dawg affiliates, who in all reality have gone beyond what i'd considr the affiliate model and more just contracted sales commpanies.

I wouldn't consider traffic managers a replacement for affiliate managers though. They are completely different entities.

I'll repeat what others have said though, most affiliate managers = completely useless.

/me looks around... that's right, alot of you are right here being useless right now, lol....

Kinda what I was going to say but probably in 4-5 lines :upsidedow I'l just quote

Correct, and well said.

While that may not cover EVERY brogram (before someone comes running in the thread saying, "Not us"). Many have been saying this (generate more of their own traffic) for around 18 months at conferences at the panels. So if you go to some of the shows, they tell people this to their faces this is what they are doing.

That is what always cracks me up about the boards. They run in the rears on some things, and the info you pick up at some of the shows is really informative on the way things are heading. Not only on traffic, but processing, delivery, what they are investing in, etc...

Affiliate managers will always be needed. Why? Because from time to time, as an affiliate, I have questions. I didn't get paid, I need a banner of a certain size that I can't find, can I get access to the member's area to grab some content for my blogs, what exactly are your rules for promoting, can I use my own tour blah blah blah blah blah.

Affiliates will always have questions, and questions will always need to be answered. If I can't get someone to answer my email in forty-eight hours, I've already moved on and I'm sending my traffic some place else.

Also, affiliate managers do a lot more than recruit and assist affiliates. They update websites, create new galleries, send out affiliate emails, etc etc etc. And in some cases they do a whole lot more.

Good thread actually, finally

- Buying advertising? Only on GFY
- We are not going to compete with our webmasters
- Affiliate managers a dead job? Winston/Pornguy/Tam are doing a great job and bringing in a good amount of new webmasters and joins in daily.. for sure not a dead job!

Different companies, different business models..

They still keep busy doing tasks other than handling affiliates, like inhouse traffic generation, etc.

Agreed on the position lacking respect although the industry had a good amount of idiots messing up this affiliate managers position name in general

I think the best one Ive ever heard was I suck dick for traffic :1orglaugh

BIN-GO!
It's all semantics. Organic traffic with relevance and intent is king. You can build all kinds of biz models to make it work for you. Bigger organizations packs more punch when it comes to traffic harvesting but there are lots of room for smaller entities/individuals to impact distribution of traffic.

need more like that.

haha, yeah affiliate manager no need ;) funny thread

Good thread. This stands out among some good posts.
Amen :thumbsup

If "I" can sell "your" porn product on these here interwebs we will always be "friends". :) Only an idiot would leave money on the table (in an envelope with your name on it. :)

I see no end to affil marketing from the affil's prospective. However, as time goes on I suspect 20% of the (porn) progs will (if they don't already) have 80% of the affils.

There is alot of shit out there that doesn't sell.

Ultimately, IF you can generate your own traffic (I'm speaking as a program owner here, not as an affiliate) then that IS the best thing. Not only do you 'cut out the middle man' (sorry beloved affiliates) but you also are no longer dependant UPON your beloved affiliates.

As in: what if one of my biggest affiliates, sends me hundreds of fucking sales a month, decides to get married, finds God, his mom finds out, what the fuck EVER, and POOF! There goes my sales, my 'lifestyle', x% of my business. Multiply that and you can see how being 'dependent', on ANY affiliate(s), is a nebulous, shaky affair. Believe me, as a past 'victim' of a single website deciding to no longer display a single link (eggs in one basket lesson here) and losing my entire business overnight (this was back in 2008) I am justifiably paranoid about losing whatever traffic I've worked so hard to build up.

So the only peace of mind you can get as a program owner is to try, anyway you can, to generate your own traffic. Besides, it's not really an 'either or' situation, more like an adding more traffic TOO situation. LOL I mean, whatever you do in terms of getting your own traffic is not going to conflict (or shouldn't) with affiliates traffic. So why not employ both? Seems logical to me. :D

you guys are some bright mofos...very interesting thread.

To up and coming paysite ops..

It's sort of a catch 22.. if you can generate traffic to your site at a profit greater than the top 10% of other paysites... then you are a profitable entity and I will be beating down your door. :) If you cant generate at the profit level of the top 10% you might as well just become an affil (I realize most do both, prog owner and affil) and sell the traffic to the top paysites.

Traffic is a purchased item one way or another.

<rant>

It all comes back to the paysite owner creating something for the affil to sell. So you really need affils of course but bottom line, you must create something that sells, not have affils step in and sell your stuff for you. It must be designed at a level that will sell.. today.

Better to spend the money on the tour than anything from my perspective but
hey I am just the affil who looks at you and decides if I can sell you from one thing.. the tours of your sites. Cause that's what the surfer sees.

Guys sit on these boards all day. Take a year off and put the money (wasted here) into a fucken kick ass tour and fresh content on one site. Come back and say look at my fucking tour guys.

I see some good new progs do this. They put it into one or two sites and they can compete with the big boys. And they are having some success. The days of launching lots of sites are laughable.

That is what gets affils. And affils make big money for guys who put their money into fresh, spendy, new tours and content. Even tho there is this anti affil vibe at GFY. The only ones anti are the ones who don't have any.

And yes they better have trailers and prob even some hd by now. Oh oh. I had to go there. :)

(Not directed at any paysite ops in this thread, just been meaning to bitch about this for a while now :)

</rant>

I started my own paysites just to make more per sale.

All the programs that could be bros have affiliate managers. They also just buy the traffic they need from almost every big affiliate you can think of.

Building an internal traffic network isn't something you can just start up or know how to start up, to replace 100's if not 1000's of sales daily.

At the end of the day, affiliates will promote whatever makes them the most - the easiest. And those programs will always need reps to support those affiliates.