Originally Posted by
tigermom
Hey, Carrie, nice to see you here!
I've just posted something on another board, which is relevant to this thread as well, so I thought I'd repost here. The other thread was started over the fact that 20 new sponsors have opened their gates over the past weekend. It's addressing the phenomenon that so many people seem to think that a viable business model is buying tons of content, setting up a group of paysites (non-exclusive content on all), and launching an affiliate program with those, hoping to eventually make a buck with having lots of affiliates to promote them.
This is what I posted -
I think that when you rely on affiliates to promote your site, and you are working within a finite pool of affiliates, then this business model becomes real problematic over time. It's getting too saturated for program owners. And what happens next? they start competing over affilaites tooth and nail. They don't compete over customers, because they don't really have anything unique to offer as a paysite, just the same non-exclusive content others have. So, they compete over affiliates, assuming that the more, the better. And they start spoiling their affiliates. Free hosting? you got it! Free domains? you got it! Need us to write your blog posts for you and syndicate for you? Sure thing! Need more FHG's? more banners? how about we make banners specially for you? everything and anything is being given away to just any affiliate.
Then it gets to the point where some program owners get pissed off at having to spoil affiliates like that. Well, I think there's an easy enough solution. Just don't overpamper affiliates. Set your own limits, as a program owner, as to what you will or won't do for an affiliate. By all means, relate that to the amount of sales they drive, if you want to. Define some affiliates as Gold Affiliates, or whatever, and be in constant touch with these, offering the big players more help. With the others, let them bitch and moan about it if they can't promote your site without being provided 10,000 tools for it. I would say the single one thing a program needs to give affiliates is promo content. Even that is just if they have exclusive content that they can't buy anywhere and which truly reflect the product. Sort of like samples of the actual thing that we can show prospective clients. They don't need to be huge images and they don't need to be movies.
My advice to program owners would be this. Get real good paysites, something unique, something exclusive, something that actually converts well. Get good ratios. Promote your sites with no affiliates to begin with, polish your tours and get good convertions and good retention. Then, when you know you have a good product, and only then, start bringing in affilaites, slowly and gradually. Don't spoon feed them anything. Take serious affiliates, ones that know how to build their own sites, write their own blogs, create their own galleries, and lo and behold, maybe even create their own banners! The point should be to get affiliates joining you because -
1. Your site retains and converts.
2. You're honest and don't shave.
Thats it! No need for crazy payouts, Hummers as prizes or nakes girls at shows. Just get a good product that makes both of us money and be honest. Is all I would ask for.
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