Better Sales Tools Or Breeding Laziness?

Of late there seems to be a new craze sweeping the adult industry and, especially in affiliate marketing, what is this craze? The want no, the NEED for promotional items that mean webmasters have to do LESS work is this a good thing or, is this the start of the downward slope to affiliate programs no longer needing adult webmasters this is what we will take a look at in this article.

New Tools.

Anybody remember the good old days? Not the golden days but the days of adult webmastering going back two maybe three years ago where you would find affiliate programs telling webmasters that TGP's were no good for traffic and that they should concentrate their efforts on getting 'quality traffic' to their sites? Well, it would appear that those days have long gone with many more affiliate programs starting up offering webmasters even more incentives to join their program than ever before and, not just in terms of the money that can be made.

From free content to free hosting to free traffic. Affiliate programs have always raised the level of quality when it came to helping their webmasters make money however in my eyes, the recent saturaton of free hosted galleries and free hosted TGP's is lowering the quality of not only the affiliate programs themselves but also the adult webmaster.

How many times in the last fortnight have you seen a webmaster asking for more hosted galleries or free content to 'promote' a specific affiliate programs paysite? Better yet, how many times have you seen the reply, 'they are on their way' or, 'we have them already'?

Adult webmasters used to have to actually do something that every other profession in the world still does to earn their money - work for it.

Nowadays it just seems like the newer webmasters get given everything they need to make money only to find out the one, vital thing they are lacking is the knowledge to make these tools work for them, sure, anybody can throw a few thousand hosted galleries onto a page and send traffic to that page but, in reality, how many of these webmasters will actually make any significant income from their efforts?

Marketing Over Ease.

It seems that the longer this new craze goes on the harder it is going to be for everyone in the industry whether you are just starting out or, have been doing this since the 'Golden Years' the one thing that is apparent is that todays breed of adult webmaster is not capable of being creative, sure they can change the way a page looks or how they get their traffic but when it comes down to the absolute basics such as marketing, i would wager a guess that only 1:20 webmasters could actually write a text link that would be able to entice the surfer to click to their sponsor.

Often the surfers we get to our sites have seen everything that affiliate programs offer up before and, lets be honest, seeing the same page layout with the same naked women (or guy) on it isnt really going to induce you (or them) into visiting the sponsors paysite which, ultimately, is what we want them to do. Of course, there are those sponsors out there that have raised the limits of the hosted gallery even higher with some companies now offering hosted movie galleries and even complete TGP sites but, again, what about the basics, can and more importantly, will these sites do both the affiliate program and webmaster any good?

It now seems that affiliate programs are quite literally offering their webmasters the 'golden goose' in order for these webmasters to send all of their traffic to the affiliate program, whilst this is a great marketing effect for the affiliate program themelves the webmasters doesnt really get any benefit except for the odd sign up now and again, how many of the hosted galleries can convert consistently at less than 1:200? 1:300? very few of them and, given that every other webmaster using the same affiliate program as you is also using the EXACT same galleries this now dilutes the effectiveness of these 'promotional tools' even further.

Quality Over Quantity.

Regardless of what type of site you run the one thing that you strive to attain is getting a 'quality' surfer to your site in order to make them buy a membership to your sponsors paysite however, what happens when the surfer decides they do not want to buy a membership to the sponsor who's gallery or hosted TGP you have just sent them off into? How do you control that surfer then? The simple answer is - you cant.

You seldom see a post looking for traffic trades anymore, instead you see countless posts offering to sell traffic from webmaster to webmaster in the hopes of being able to grab the few quality surfers that are still available to us, well think about this, if you were not using hosted galleries, you could send the surfer where YOU wanted them to go, NOT where your sponsor wants them to go.

Of course this isnt going to change the fact that there is most certainly a valid place in todays market for the use of such promotion tools as provided by your sponsors but, think long and hard as to where these should be used, the first thing you should try to sell your surfer on is something that YOU have built, once they decide to leave and only once they decide to leave that gallery or site should you start to send them to the promotional tools given to you by your sponsors.

Summary.

Free promotional tools are always a good thing but at what point do they become counter productive to your business and, at what point should you start and stop using these tools? it almost seems like this is the start of a downward spiral from the affiliate programs making to rid the industry of adult webmasters who are capabale of thinking for themselves, afterall, if we get given free hosted galleries to use, the vast majority of us will use them, right?

Article written by Lee.

http://www.adult-sponsor-programs.com