What is a programs responsibility in teaching affiliates?

I got an email earlier in the week from a new affiliate that doesn't have a working site. The affiliate signed up then shot me an email to ask what their affiliate code is and how to link it in a URL !

I liken it to signing up to be on an olympic swim team and expecting them to teach you how to swim.

What is a programs responsibility in teaching affiliates? How far are we expected to go?

I've posted tons of info over the years on boards trying to help, should I just point the guy to GWW and have him teach himself?

I look at this a couple of different ways personally, there is the one mindset that says yes, we should 'pay it forward' with newer webmasters after all, many of us wouldnt be here today if it werent for help and assistance we got when we first started out but, on the other hand, there is only so much you can do to help someone before it gets to the point of being detrimental to your own business.

A good example of this, a few months ago i had a guy who would hit me up almost daily on ICQ asking for help and advice with his site, he wasnt making sales, he wasnt getting a lot of traffic, he was basically hemmoraging money trying to break in to the business.

After literally WEEKS of telling him what he needed to do, how to build sites, get traffic, choose good banners, buy content, etc he still kept asking me why stuff wasnt working for him... The reason? He didnt do ANYTHING i had suggested he do.

In your instance, i think pointing the affiliate to GWW and letting him learn the ropes from past information that has been posted on the community and also asking specific questions is probably the way i would move forward, purely because of my own recent experience, i really do beleive that new webmasters still think the adult biz is going to make them millions overnight and because of this, a lot of them dont realize that even though we are trying to help them, we have our own businesses to run too.

On the other side of the coin, im actually thinking that the larger affiliate programs need to be mmore active in the adult webmaster community like they used to be 6+ years ago, no sponsors have regular weekly chat sessions anymore, no sponsors have online radio shows designed to educate and inform newer webmasters and affiliates and because of this, i think the intelligence levels of many are being dumbed down by people 'teaching' them what to do who quite frankly, shouldnt be teaching them what to do.

I simply cant imagine anyone hitting a board like GFY as a total newbie and actually making any money in the industry yet, everyone still seems to rely on GFY for business advice and information when they are new to the adult industry.

As with everything, bigger isnt always better, although it is good to look at :)

Regards,

Lee

I think all programs should offer their affiliates an "essentials" page that would take a PHP programmer about 10-15 minutes to do. With all of the various processors and backends (NATS, Epoch, CCbill, ad nauseum), it would benefit the program owner just as much as the new affiliate. Do you really want them to do it wrong and send your traffic to a dead end ("XXX is not a valid web address" or something like that)? If the affiliate has never used your processor/backend, he's quite likely to make a mistake and that mistake costs you in lost revenue.

There should be an example of link URLs for those who want to look at it and do their own thing. Also, a form with one input (their affiliate ID/code) and a submit button. A simple PHP script would output something like:

1) Main tour: http://mysite.com/tour1?[processorlink/affiliatecode/etc]
2) Alternate tour: [similiar to above]
3) Join page: [similar to above]

Of course, the program owner could script it for whatever destination pages he/she wants. The main thing is it's a very small investment of time and effort to make sure that every single potential customer reaches your site and the affiliate gets proper credit as well.

Kevin

The change I've noticed with affiliate reps if you compare them to 1998 is that now, their only focus is on making you sign up and trying to get their numbers

They are all friendly and helpful to do just that but as soon as you have some more in depth questions like can i link to a product / model page it takes days (if even) I get an answer

This is in general but for the most programs its true.

Most of them also lack a mini guide and just offer links and banners and what more

Closer, i agree with you, the problem is that most 'affiliate reps' these days actually arent 'affiliate reps' they are glorified board whores posting 24/7 about a sites products or services like you say, in order to get affiliates 'in the door' ultimately i guess if you throw enough shit at a wall, some of it will stick.

Regards,

Lee

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee

Closer, i agree with you, the problem is that most 'affiliate reps' these days actually arent 'affiliate reps' they are glorified board whores

---

Oh man I noticed this the other day on another board. over 40% of new posts on the board for the week were from people that worked for the company.

At some point you have to wonder how genuine the interaction between board members is when a board is owned by a program and employees account for 40% of new threads... I didn't even count their total post count for the week, but it must be high though.

RE closer: I think you're right in that reps these days primarily try to get people in the door but as far as telling an affiliate how to link; if you don't even know how to link to a program should you really be an affiliate?

I think you're right on regarding a mini guide to help affiliates, that seems completely reasonable.

i agree with affiliate reps as well they all seem to post a lot on the boards but do not really have much helpful information when you ask them important stuff like they are just being used as board reps but if you want real help you have to get them to pass you to somebody else instead :(