Methods Of Gaining New Affiliates?

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Originally Posted by GPallan

how do you explain guys like jake*cruise, corbin*fisher, sean*cody, straight*college*men, and amateur*straight*guys (who JUST introduced their new marketing tools) just to name a few. ALL of whom, as i'm sure you agree, are quite successful and none of whom provide a single fhg or the likes

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That's why I think they're so successful. Corbin Fisher remains one of my biggest sellers and all I have is a thumbnail linked off our homepage. IMO FHG's largely get you lazy and cheap webmasters: they want to do as little work as possible, not spend a dime of their own money to make money, and they want you to hand over a big fat cheque every period. If you're looking to kill and over-expose your site, I think FHG's are the way to go - within 3 months every TGP from here to kingdom come will be full of your stuff and surfers will be so uninterested, you couldn't give your memberships away.

I think the sites you mentioned all have one thing going for them: hot, original content and they keep it pretty tight. And they're not giving it away, or if they are it's to select webmasters.

I have heard the Sean Cody's pirated pretty heavily on the file-sharing systems. And of course Randy Blue's an example of a site that's still pretty popular and has FHGs. Randy Blue also produces a shitload of high-quality content. So there are exceptions.

cheers
dzinerbear

people who own their own programs and shoot their own content aren't affiliates, and the ones i know are usually acquainted with any sponsors they use on exit - and yes, they are often quite involved in their sites. after all, their sites are often their own artistic expressions.

lee is asking about affiliates, and they are the people who choose not to have their own programs or shoot their own content. they are the people i was talking about in my longer post.

dzinerbear - i can only speak from my own personal experience working with programs. fhg do extremely well for the programs i work with. it's best to create addional galleries with each update, but i know programs who are getting great sales from older galleries, as well.

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Originally Posted by GPallan

how do you explain guys like jake*cruise, corbin*fisher, sean*cody, straight*college*men, and amateur*straight*guys (who JUST introduced their new marketing tools) just to name a few. ALL of whom, as i'm sure you agree, are quite successful and non of whom provide a single fhg or the likes

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Originally Posted by basschick

people who own their own programs and shoot their own content aren't affiliates, and the ones i know are usually acquainted with any sponsors they use on exit - and yes, they are often quite involved in their sites. after all, their sites are often their own artistic expressions.

lee is asking about affiliates, and they are the people who choose not to have their own programs or shoot their own content. they are the people i was talking about in my longer post.

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i'm clear on who sponsors and affiliates are (lets hope so :)), but IMO, good effective affiliates (the ones that actually send you traffic for a good period of time) are the ones that are motivated and ambitious, and i'd assume that these usually (and i said usually) come from more than just good marketing tools (FHGs for example) that the sponsor provides. They have to be confident that they can sell this site first before even looking at their marketing tools.

It's true, crappy sites can retain their sales by employing good marketing tools. But i guess the point that i'm trying to make is that IMO good quality sites delivering hot exclusive content don't need to rely on these same tools to be successful (like the sites that i mentioned earlier). They'll naturally get picked up by smart affiliates who know a good thing when they see one

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jim

Some great suggestions and commentary. I would just add that from our experience "word-of-mouth" is a key component of getting good affiliates. It's a small industry in the grand scope of things and word gets out fast. Having a great reputation goes a long ways. There is no better sales person for your company than a successful affiliate recommending you to his/her friends.

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Originally Posted by GPallan

how do you explain guys like jake*cruise, corbin*fisher, sean*cody, straight*college*men, and amateur*straight*guys (who JUST introduced their new marketing tools) just to name a few. ALL of whom, as i'm sure you agree, are quite successful and non of whom provide a single fhg or the likes

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We don't provide those, either, and we've found that the really good people don't care about that. Our affiliate program has been quite successfull so far, and it hasn't even been officially launched yet. (although keep your eyes here for news on that next week).

We provide banners and that's about it. On a case-by-case basis, I'll let images go out, and I've given a few review sites some short video clips, but that's about it. We don't want to bore customers with our content, and we don't wanna do that.

I have to agree that there are way too many webmasters who want to do as little work as possible, and get a big fat cheque once a month. We're just not willing to saturate the market with our content to have a short-term peak and a long-term death.