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Anyone know of a case(s) where a website / business was sued for traffic leaks?
Where the affiliate sent traffic and returned no sales
Can show proof of their own and at least 2 other member joins as record of membership
can prove real, working linking codes in the link source
Had a record of total traffic numbers
I ask because I see a lot of sites with major leaks
Example: A video site with sample videos behind an age check system that, when verifying, removes your affiliate link.
I am not aware of any.
It takes me about 20 hours to put together a complaint, and then adding court filing fees and service fees you are going to spend at least $5,000 to just to file suit at Day One, so you need to be assured of some return on that expense to make it worthwhile. Expect $35,000 in costs to "go to court" and hope that you win damages AND attorney's fees.
It would not surprise me that some will shave joins because they know that the small affiliates cannot afford to fight for what is rightfully theirs.
with the right company doing the shaving ... I would assume an affiliate class action could be called on.Quote:
Originally Posted by chadknowslaw
It's not hard to find a few affiliates by google-ing the site name.
and if not, just to set the bar, it's almost worth it.
Traffic leaks are the new black. People seem to be suddenly all verklempt about them.
Yes.. there's dirty tricks like removing affiliate codes and having all your traffic going to a landing page filled with banners to other sites but I've had some affilaite cry blue murder over the very few tiny links to our DVD sell page.
My attitude is this.. if you're making money on an affiliate.. keep promoting them if you're not.. don't.
It does get out of hand. I had an affiliate with two sales in the last three months write to insist that we remove links INSIDE our members area to our cam site or pay them for any sales that we make to members that joined under their affiliate code.
Its like the cascading billing. "We won't promote you without cascading billing!" Well, we don't get enough declines on our direct sales to even cover the cost of the Visa fee for a secondary processor much less to cover those affiliate sales. Our site just doesn't get that many declines and (knock wood) has only had two affiliate chargebacks ever.
I don't believe folks should support sponsors they believe are treating them unfairly. I also believe that affiliates have a responsiblity to insure that their sponsors are providing them honest information. If not, move on and quickly.
When you join a program, you are agreeing to play by their rules. Its up to you to visit their tours and assess the traffic leaks before agreeing to join their program.
I know, it sounds cynical, but I am betting that is how the law would interpret it.
I'm kinda thinking that a lot of the kurfuffle is about affiliates who don't know how to sell anything. I've seen affiliates making the stupidest mistakes and them blaming the programs for not converting.
Yeah program owners don't sit around in the Axis of Evil Lair plotting ways to defraud affiliates (at least not at any of the meetings I attend). What works for one sponsor won't always work for another!
My motto is this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasun
"If I am making money with an affiliate w/ traffic leaks, how much more could I make if they didn't have them.?"
One of the MAIN issues I have with traffic leaks is this -
When I first market a site it may have ZERO leaks. Then they decide to add a second processor. Ok. Then they launch a DVD store. OK. Then they link to a blog they just created. OK. Then they get 20 reviews somewhere and link to those. OK. Then they get a mail server and add a mailing list. OK.
Soon, it's a totally different tour than what I originally decided to create galleries for, free sites, AEN sites, put links all over the place, add FHG's to my tgp, write blog posts about. That's a lot of work, only to find that the tour I started to market has now turned into a mini hub just taking my traffic and not giving me credit.
My opinion - Do whatever you want with your traffic. Send it to your store. Send it to Porn Inspector. Send it to a myspace blog. But send my traffic to a join page I get credit for. It's just the fair thing to do.
If affiliates now don't say anything about traffic leaks, pretty soon every site will have links to blogs, dvd stores, and "friends". And of course the best leak of all a VOD theater.
Luke,Quote:
Originally Posted by Chilihost
I agree with you. However, it gets annoying when programs CHANGE their sites after you send them traffic.
I could not say it better.Quote:
Originally Posted by abostonboy
This would be true for some.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasun
However I am against traffic leaks in a very big way. One sponsor i was sending 7 signups on average a day. (I know how to sell stuff). When he gave me a clean tour it went up to 10 a day. Win Win for both of us.
The main issue I see with this is,
Since there are so many gay sites out there that sell very well and have no traffic leaks, why not just point those ones out and point out the leaky ones and let webmasters decide.
I don't market sites with leaks and I make a very nice living. Other webmasters could do the same as well.
Isn't the point really that you do know how to market, which is why you make a good living? Irrespective if the tour has leaks or not? Granted, you will make more if no leaks, and that many simply do not know how to market? Thus 'traffic leaks' are a bigger issue than they should be?Quote:
Originally Posted by abostonboy
In my article 'Walking The Affiliate Tightrope I look at it a lot differently. I think we expect more than we deserve, because I don't think we OWN the traffic we send to a sponsor. We filter it, using many techniques, including competing sponsor content, yet we don't give them a cut. We give them the traffic, they give us the content.
I think many of the up sells are part of doing business. I do think the tours should be clean, but exit consoles, up sells in members area is theirs to make, not mine.
Call me naive, but I just don't think we should be bitching about up sells inside, or exit consoles for traffic we send, that decides not to buy. While sponsors should give us a choice on exit consoles, it comes to our own choices to make.
Yes if they change things, they should notify us, and we should also be checking every now and then as well, for those who don't bother. Still, it is our business, our responsibility.
my two cents :innocent:
Gay Story Man,
Upsells in membesr areas don't bother me at all.
Exit consoles don't bother me, though given the chice between making $30 on a console tour and $25 on a non cocnsole tour, I will choose the $25. I want bookmarkers.
Not sure I understand about giving content. I pay around $30 - $50 a set for my content. It's a nice feeling I get when I know that the traffic I send to a sponsor on content that I paid $50 for goes to a join page with my affiliate code and not to a VOD theater that a customer may spend $200 and I get nothing. I have my own VOD theater, and many DVD stores that I can link to. i don't need a sponsor to help me filter my traffic to those. I can do that on my own.
Inside the members area - do whatever you want. On revshare I look inside and feel if my traffic will retain before I market.
What are your opinions on excessive amounts of content on tours? This could be sample content directly on the tour or a link to a blog.
This content may have a negative effect on affiliate traffic. In some cases this content provides multiple days worth of jerkoff material or at the very least a "Too much to look at, I'll check this out later." response. This could be problematic if the affiliate cookie expires before the surfer reaches the end.
I am sure we will be seeing lawsuits with traffic leaks soon and I hope we do because it is getting ridiculous.
Mark
What is the goal of your paysite tour? To sell a DVD or a membership? If you put a link up, you do so because you expect someone to click it. Why confuse the surfer? They came to your site to join a paysite. Sell them a membership. It actually works.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasun
Unlikely that a lawsuit for paysite leaks would ever happen. When an affiliate joins a program, that affiliate agrees to the Terms and Conditions which allow the program to run the site any way it sees fit. There is no contract between the program and affiliate that is broken, and thus grounds for a lawsuit, due to leaks on the join page.
The best way to deal with leaks is (1) ask for a leak-free tour (2) scream and holler for a leak-free tour or (3) only join programs with leak-free tours.
and (4) bail out from programs that add leaks to their tours.
The program does not have a contractual duty to provide a leak-free tour. But threads like this do have an effect and bring the leaks to light.
Personally I think a lot of affiliates take a rather shallow, closedminded view of things. Not all (so please call off the lynching party), but many.
I see affiliates obsessing over every single detail in a tour and what links are where and what free content is offered up and la la la la la.
I also see affiliates giving little to no credit for the single greatest sales tool they have - quality content being created by their sponsors. I'm not going to shy away from saying we spend an assload of money and put a great deal of time and effort in to recruiting hot models and creating quality content. We also put a lot of time, effort and money in to branding our name and sites - something that turns around to benefit affiliates as well when they can send traffic to a site their surfers have heard of and know they can trust. And we're not the only sponsors who do this. This board (and this thread, for that matter) is full of sponsors who work extremely hard at creating a quality product.
As an aside, I'd venture to guess the quality content these sponsors are creating is the reason why a lot of affiliates are getting the traffic they're getting. The photos and clips and other tools (beyond just banners, but actual members area content samples) are the reason why a lot of the surfers going to affiliate sites are going there.
Where's the flattering threads commending a sponsor for that?
Where's the thread that says "Hey SPONSORX! Your latest model is fucking HOT! I know I got a bunch of sales from surfers who couldn't wait to see their vid and pics! Thank you for putting all those hours in to recruiting that model and spending all the money you did on paying them and working so hard to answer their questions and fly them out to you and get them up on your site, as you've done with every single other one of your models as well, and filming that great material of them! Thanks, as well, for the free content you gave me featuring them!"
for an HONEST appraisal of what's involved. See, when some one tells you a course of action is a , oh I don't know, let's say "Slam Dunk " for instance, people sometimes rush into a course of action that might be VERY time consuming , costly , and , like other forms of human endeavor, there are no
gauranteed results . But of course, no specific examples come to mind ...:catfight:
This argument is true to a point. However, you need to ask yourself WHY are we in the model of FHG's and sponsors giving out content. When I entered this business in 1999, they only "gay" content available to affiliates was maybe 10 pics from Max Cash. All were non nude.Quote:
Originally Posted by CorbinFisher_BD
So why do we have so much free content from sponsors and why now to affiliates expect it? Simple. Program owners felt a NEED to give it out to survive.
Two things happened, and it's hard to say which is the most important, but I will say the Can Spam act as most responsible. Paysite operators use to be able to create 1,000s of doorway pages and pull signups from the search engines like crazy. With both increased competition and smarter search engine (Google introducing the concept of "votes" and "relevance") that model become no longer viable. Combine that with the can spam law, which happened about the same time (maybe a bit after), and sponsors went in "panic" mode. No longer could a sponsor buy 5 email lists a day and pull a few hundred signups. The lists were just not there. I know as I was buy the gay Naughty list for a year and on a good day could pull 50 signups a day. With the advent of filtering software and the new law, it just died. Plain and simple.
So, what could sponsors do to get traffic? TGPS! Sure it converted bad, but there was volume. What do you need to put on TGPs? Galleries. Not only did sponsrs pay for top spots, they started cranking out FHG's and giving away content so THEIR sites could be saturated on TGPs. It wasn't so much us webmasters asking for it as it was sponsors feeling the need to give it. Search engines didn't work and mailers were pulling in 10% of what they use to. TGPS grew like crazy, because now TGP owners no longer had to create their own galleries or rely on webmaster submissions. Yes, eventually webmasters began to expect FHG's and sponsor content. But, who is to blame for that?
Webmasters face one MAJOR change that has happened over the past few years. It use to be that every site had a trial going to a recurring membership. Then trials stopped. Ok. Then shortly after that, one time, no recur memberships became popular. So instead of 100% of the members we send to paysites having a chance to recur, that number dropped to 40% or less, depending on the sites pricing. Example - 74% of all signups I send to Sean Cody never have a chance to rebill. The response from sponsors was, if we don't offer it we lose 20-30% on conversion. Yet affiliates lose upwards of 70% of rebills. A couple sponsors, and one that posted in this thread, have even bragged about how many signup for one month then immediately signup again after their membership expires and stay for months.
See a trend? Sponsors gave out FHG and content because they felt a need. They created the No Trial, Non Recur, because they felt a need. It really wasn't us asking for it. In fact many of us wish there wasn't anywhere near the amount of free content given by sponsors. And many of us, like myself, know how to filter traffic down so a join page that doesnt offer a non recur can do just as good as one that does. But what can we do? Market a shitty PPS site or a quality Rev Share and deal with having few of our members rebill. Many of us choose the last one. Where is our fanfare for choosing quality over an easy $30 -$40?
I think both webmasters and affiliates need to take a non shallow view of their whole business.
Not lynching you Corbin. I actually have a lot of respect for you. However I think in this industry it can both be sponsors and affiliates that sometimes take a shallow view.
Some affiliates have actually taken a complete unknown site, bought google ad words (because the program owner had no clue how to do it), dealt with a 10% ROI, but that was ok, and built his brand for him. Only to find later that that 10% ROI turned into far less because the site changed. Changed in what way you may ask? Let's no even go there, as I was the one crazy enough to buy those Google keywords.
Traffic leaks are a funny thing. I am still trying to figure out what value this blog http://blog.myspace.com/hancockstudios has on http://www.mikehancock.com/main.php. (Hasn't been updated since jan 2007). Or still trying to figure out how Nightcharm http://www.nightcharm.com/ changed so much and why I still market it with links I never took down. Oh well. Life goes on....
No that is wrong, affiliates started to DEMAND free content, if a sponsor didnt offer it, they went to one that did, in turn that meant EVERY sponsor started handing out free affiliate content, exclusive content, movie clips, movie scenes, full DVDs, for affiliates to use.Quote:
Originally Posted by abostonboy
Affiliates wanted to much and they got it, there is no easy way to reverse this trend and its going to put us all out of business unless the program has their own source of traffic and closes its doors to affiliates that arent productive.
Regards,
Lee
There are some programs with zero affiliates that buy traffic and have all marketing in-house.
I have to say that the affiliate business model needs some serious examination. There are some webmasters that can send a lot of joins, that know how to market, and are an asset to the sponsor programs. On the other hand, there are demanding drama queens that send 2 joins a month yet still want their money wired and want you to pick up the wire fees, or if they don't have a check in their mailbox on the day your Terms and Conditions say you send out checks [they forget it takes a day or two for delivery] they run screaming to the boards how you are scamming them.
So what then, is it going to take in the market where there are, it seems, new websites coming online each and every day?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee
I view what I do sort of like the little old lady at Costco who hands out free samples of really good stuff; this works apparently, or they wouldn't do it. I can't speak to what affiliates did back in those days, or why bigger and better "samples" started to work to get folks to try a product, but it seems that more transparency is always better; people generally want to know what they're getting before they buy something.
There seems to be huge differences in levels of transparency in tour pages, my examples would be:
1. ethancain.com
2. jizz4u.com
So what, then, explains the huge differences in the transparency of these two entirely different "tours"?
To me, it's like putting a really wonderful image on a box cover, trying to entice you into making the purchase based on a "promise" (carnival barker?). Or, giving someone a "taste" and actually letting them experience the product. Sure, you can command a huge market share by giving your customers the very best in quality, but with so much competition that increases on a daily level, how do you keep it?
Lee,Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee
The influx of free content started when doorway pages stopped working on search engines and the can spam law was passed.
The can spam law made TGPs a viable alternative to the sales lost dues to emails. Companies at first bought top spots. Then other companies said hell we will just give hosted galleries and let tgp owners put our galleries in. Then tgp owners said hell we can charge to have submitters (that happened later).
Go back and look at the dates. I was both buying spaces in emails and running a tgp. When I was buying ads in mailers I couldn't find a hosted gallery in the gay side. Maybe 3 companies had them. After the emails dried up sponsors cranked out free content just to get on the tgps.
Yes, AFTER sponsors realized that TGPs were the next best thing to mailers and doorway pages, then affiliates asked for more content. Why not? Sponsors created a market out of the fear that SE traffic was not working and mailers were all but dead.
Trust me, I had three sponsors asking what they needed to do to get their free hosted galleries on my tgp in a top spot. At that time none of my galleries were free hosted. I never asked them. They came to me.
Yes. I agree. It is a trend that can't be stopped. New webmasters coming in today expect it. They never realized that at one point we had to buy content and create our own galleries. But I will stand by my belief that if doorway pages to SE's worked and more importantly the can spam law was never passed an sponsors could make the sales they were use to making, you would not see the shitload of free content we have now.
What I am saying is not something I made up it has been written about and talked about at trade shows years ago. Sponsors may say, yeah, affiliates wanted FHGs etc, but the truth is Sponsors began to rely on TGPS for traffic. Thus we got FHGs. Plain and simple.
That is the EXACT reason we got free content. Companies lost their own sources of traffic. SE and Email that they were buying. They thought the golden answer was to hit the tgps market. Shit traffic but lots of it. What's the best way to get your gallery on a TGP when the top 5 links are sold for 6 months? Give the TGP owner free galleries. Then webmasters ask for better galleries. More of them. The cycle grew to the mess we have now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee
Bottom Line -
I feel in a few years VOD will command a much larger share of the market.
Some companies will be prepared for the shift, others wont. It's coming though.
CONTENT IS KING!Quote:
Originally Posted by wildwildwest
Content is what surfers want. The traffic is there no matter how content providers choose to get it. Most of us content producers love to work with traffic providers and affiliates, within reasonable guidelines, to bring in traffic while we concentrate on creating content.
Sometimes affiliates will take content, or to much content, they didn't ask to take and end up getting a lot of traffic, that converts less and less to sales for the content creator and more to sales for traffic leaks on the traffic providers blogs/sites etc.
I recently found that a well loved affiliate uploaded a full video of mine to Gayforit.com to promote my site, without my permission. That's not cool. That's like stealing a copy of star wars, making unlimited copies for view, and hoping that people will buy a subscription to the star wars site to see the rest of the series ~ not thinking/caring that people who want the first episode for free will want ALL episodes for free ;)
Uploading a partial promo clip is fine, but uploading whole complete videos is fucked up, you had to admit.. right Tim?
In all fairness, Mr. Squirt, the video I assume you are referring to is not a complete video but rather a 6 minute compilation video of the DJ series; no cumshot, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Squirt
If you say you love to work with affiliates, then why have you not responded to my emails and private messages? I get emails daily from other producers with photos, video clips, and more; I've never received anything from you. I wrote and practically begged for some direction from you.
Part of my email to you on July 12:
You never responded to that email.Quote:
Wild here, from A Drab Boiz Breakfast, and I'm torn between adding a new sponsor or working better with the ones I already have[...]
[...]So, I have a request. What I mainly do on Drab Boiz is take full videos, extract a 10-20% clip (usually 3-8 minutes) and maybe add some comments, with an opener and a final note at the end. It works well for my top sellers and I would like to do it for you. If I work on promoting your site like I do my other top sellers, we can both make more money.
Granted, I have only had 23 sales for Squirtit.com but I truly think if we had had some better communication we could have and would have multiplied that number many times. I love your videos or I would not have started promoting your website!
I apologize for and regret the misunderstanding.
Tim this response is to assure you that I have indeed received, and read, your emails and PM's. I thank you for understanding my lack of enthusiasm to call you ASAP.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wildwildwest