Mini Paysite Affiliate Program

Just wanted to ask your opinion on something else i have been thinking about for a few days..

Would you guys actively promote an affiliate program that offered nothing but 'mini paysites'?

What i mean by a mini paysite is something similar to an AVS site however, the sites in the program would all be highly niche specific in both the gay and straight markets however, the one huge difference would be the payouts you would make for instance..

Monthly Membership Surfer Cost = $5-$10

As a webmaster promoting these sites payout would be on a revshare basis due tot he fact these 'mini sites' would have nothing but highly targeted niche specific content, no filler stuff just content relating to the mini sites tour.

The tours themselves would also be single page tours with a join page tacked onto the bottom of the page.

I realize for many promoting affiliate programs with payouts that are a LOT lower than the industry standard isnt going to be something they will do however, im also of the opinion that because thse sites will be so highly targeted the recurring potential of them would be unrivalled.

So what do you folks think about this as an idea? Good, Bad, other?

Regards,

Lee

I'd certainly consider it. Also wondering if the minisites offered as a multi package - with a higher membership fee wouldn't also work?

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Originally posted by LdyLnWolf1
I'd certainly consider it. Also wondering if the minisites offered as a multi package - with a higher membership fee wouldn't also work?

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Yeah but that would defeat the object of the sites IMHO.

The idea would be to promote the sites as exclusive and 'hard to find' such as the gay ebony niche was going back 3 years ago very few affiliate programs had a gay ebony site now thy are everywhere.

Of course the one MAJOR benefit from such a collection of mini sites is that the program owner would be in a great position to launch new niched full paysites onto an existing affiliate program as they will already have stats on which of the smaller micro-niches are popular ;)

In addition, they will also know which webmasters have niche specific traffic fo when their larger affiliate program did launch a full paysite geared around any specific 'new' niche ;)

Regards,

Lee

i guess it would depend on two things: how mini are we talking about? will there be some videos? how many pics?

how often will you be updating these sites? i know some content is hard to find, but with a very small site like this, you'll need something to keep them coming back. with an avs, you have thousands of other sites. with these sites, you'll need something or basically you'll be selling one time sites.

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i guess it would depend on two things: how mini are we talking about? will there be some videos? how many pics?

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Thats the thing right there lol

I was thinking along the lines of having, female armpits, male armpits, uncut bears, uncut twinks etc etc the micro niched stuff but not so micro niched it would only appeal to 10 surfers net wide LOL

Content wise there would be a few video clips and enough content in it so that every few days it had an update.

Regards,

Lee

things like armpits have a bigger base than you might expect. but the bottom line is how many pics? how many videos?

remember, the surfer joins, he comes into the site, he surfs around. will there be enough to keep him surfing around till the next update?

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What i mean by a mini paysite is something similar to an AVS site however, the sites in the program would all be highly niche specific in both the gay and straight markets...

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I'm wondering about the content too, and update frequency.....I've noticed the gay vintage niche is growing, but still scant for original content. I'd signed up with PosingStrap's affiliate program, but I'm waivering on adding them because the monthly membership fee is kinda high.....which makes me wonder as well, in general how willing are surfers to pay a higher rate for access to that hard-to-find content, instead of a lower price for access to lots of sites where they'd have to search and search for the specified content.

Like armpits -- I don't know about women's but I've seen loads of men's pics and video clips mixed in with other niche content on quite a few sites.....IMO a lot really depends on the niche itself, and how likely it is the content can be found somewhere else without much effort. I've been trying to think like a surfer (beyond just "what would I do"), but I'm also thinking like a surfer who doesn't want to spend money ((slaps wrist)).

However -- everyone likes a bargain, so would I be willing to promote a site with very specific niche content that's also a good deal? At this point, yes -- but a "good deal" to me would be a reasonable price based on how much content there is, and a tour that shows me that there is, and will be, quite a lot of original content of good quality. If "mini paysite" is referring to access to more than one site (in the sense of "similar to an AVS"), I think it'd be more tempting.

(I realize I'm new, so I hope this isn't just irrevelvant babbling)

I really do NOT think this is a good idea for a number of reasons, the main one being it does not pay enough to the webmaster. A $5 per month payout for someone willing to take out his credit card and join a site is not worth it, I would rather send a cheap surfer to a free join or cheap trial site and make $25-35 per signup than risk sending it to a cheap site and hoping for 5 to 7 rebills to make the same amount of money.

And from a surfer pov, if I am willing to take out my cc to gain entry into a site, it really makes little difference paying $10 per month vs $29 per month...and if the $10 membership does not include loads and loads of videos or live shows or whatever, then I would actually rather pay the $29.

Of course, this is just my humble opinion!

cheers,
Luke

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Originally posted by Chilihost
the main one being it does not pay enough to the webmaster.

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Whilst the payout for a webmaster is certainly nowhere near what they are being paid for $2.95 trials currently would you not conceed that by offering highly targeted niche paysites with enough content to enable their surfers to recurr on a monthly basis would not make up for the lower payouts?

Of course the main thing that such a system should bestow on webmasters is that the PPS affiliate model is going to go away or, if not, the payouts inevitably will become lower anyway.

Its simply not profitable for many of the PPS affiliate programs to pay $35-$40 on a $3 trial of course, trials will most likely be the first thing that disappears from affiliate paysites with only single or multiple month join options being made available.

I truly think that if the sites convert way better than standard affiliate cookie cutter sites there should be no reason for a webmaster not to such a program.

Personally, i know i would rather send 1k hits for the search term 'male armpits' to a dedicated male armpit site than to a general site and thats all webmasters can do currently.

Regards,

Lee

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Originally posted by Chilihost
if the $10 membership does not include loads and loads of videos or live shows or whatever, then I would actually rather pay the $29.

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Even if as a surfer you KNOW that the loads and loads of video feeds you are going to get inside the members area are the same ones you have seen time and time again before?

I would personally rather pay less and know what i should expect inside the members area than pay more and see the same old recycled shit again lol

Regards,

Lee

it's just my opinion, but i don't care for it.

now, if the member could get access to ALL the sites for a higher monthly price, and if we got credit if the members upsold, that might be something... join one site for $10 or get access to all 10 for $19.95.

but i'd rather offer my surfers a normal $24.95 or $29.95 site that has tons of content. i sell that price range well, and in good sites, the surfers stay for months.

Lee, I really do not see how this is feasable.

From the website owners pov:
If you only make $5 off each $10 sale less the costs of processors, hosting, video feeds & content updates, you would be making no money off these sites. If you do not offer video & content updates you will not have rebills.

From the webmaster (affiliate) pov:
I agree that trials will likely be going away, but the fact is that they are *NOT* gone yet and that webmasters are hesitant to even take up a revshare program vs a pps, let alone one that will only pay them $5 per sale. Like I said it would take 5 rebills to get to the $25 mark which is a low pps payout...and to get those rebills on 100% of signups would be unrealistic!!

overall, I think you would be losing money on this venture and would not get affiliate support....but if you think differently, give it a go and see what comes of it.

cheers,
Luke

Chilihost - i'm going to make a wild guess here. i think it's not about replacing trials. i think there isn't enough content in each of the niches to make a full sized site. at least, i suspect that's part of the reason lee might consider this.

i'd rather sell sites with no trial part of the time anyway on revshare.

Basschick,

You hit the nail on the head.

The amount of content available for these micro niches simply doesnt warrant a full priced membership as we are used to as webmasters i know i certainly wouldnt stick around in a site that charged me $30 a month for access 5k pics with regular updates and i feel certain that regular surfers wouldnt either.

Same thing for the trials really, why offer a surfer a trial at say $5 when within the first 10 minutes they will see the amount of content inside the members area and cancel their subscription.

Fom *my* point of view i would rather have a slightly lower monthly cost and, if offering the sites to webmasters for promotion give them 50-70% of that cost (upto $7 per sale) than having to bank on a trial recurring to a full monthly.

Obviously for the most part there are going to be more single sales than rebills at least until enough content is readily available for the individual micro niches but, with that being said, if you do get the die hard fetishist surfer into your site and they can see that you are updating the sites on a regular basis (daily or weekly) then when that next rebill period comes around they may just hang on to their site membership for another period in which case, the webmaster benefits again from their own micro niche traffic.

In all honesty i am looking at this from the point of view that even if a webmaster makes a hundred sales where the monthly cost is $10 to a surfer and they get paid $7 per member billing the data that *I* can collect on what the surfer is actually looking for and, more importantly, what isnt around in the gay / straight marketplace at present will be invaluable and, on the same note, the affiliated webmasters will also get to see this same information, for example, if their surfers are joining transexual one legged midget paysites, THEY know that there is a demand for such a niche and no, im not suggesting going as micro niched as that LOL

Way i see it, if a surfer hits your site looking for guys wearing eye glasses and you are able to at least offer them the option of joining a paysite that specialized in that type of content even if that paysite only has say 5k images and a handful of movies, you can send them to there instead of a general gay site and potentially lose not only a surfer, but a sale.

In essence, its a balancing game, giving the surfer what they are looking for whilst making sure even if they do cancel on one of these sites, both the program owner and the webmaster promoting the sites knows that any given niche has a demand and secondly, that in finding this information out, they have all made money from it regardless of how little money was made.

Some money is better than no money is my philosophy :)

Regards,

Lee

but i can make an avs site with the same niche and make more money and more rebills.

in fact, lee, i know this goes against anything most of us do, but why don't you make a series of premium sites at adultverifier or proadult and let us promote them? those two avs's have affiliate programs.

This is one of those classic catch-22's that come up from time to time. I think it makes alot of sense to try a different approach to selling content that is extremely hard to find. I've had great success with mens armpit sites (avs) over the years and there is definitely a market and tons of gay men just waiting for a premium site. I know because I'm one of them. But... in order to promote a site like this, you have to find webmasters who are actively promoting armpit sites to really get things going on an affiliate program. That's the problem and the catch-22. So far as I know, only a couple of webmasters are making armpit sites. You may have to go to the broader "fetish" group of webmasters and there isn't but a handful of them left either. You probably would have to go with the broader pool of webmasters and they will probably balk at the payouts.

I like the idea of the mini paysite with the $9.95 or less price point. If you do it right, you can keep guys rebilling forever. Unfortunately, an affiliate program might be hard to pull off using these numbers.

I was reading an article on xbiz talking about how a webmaster should think about a new url (domain) as a new business because our industry is in a consolidation phase. I have to agree with that assessment. I'm using this summer to develop a new site and consolidate everything into this one area that I think has huge potential. I will keep my husky site open because it has a great following and I don't have to promote it anymore. Now I can finally concentrate on the future for once.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.:grin:

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Originally posted by basschick
but i can make an avs site with the same niche and make more money and more rebills.

in fact, lee, i know this goes against anything most of us do, but why don't you make a series of premium sites at adultverifier or proadult and let us promote them? those two avs's have affiliate programs.

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How do you mean 'let you promote them' ?

Will those AEN systems allow you to promote other webmasters sites and get credited for the signups?

Regards,

Lee

Actually so far as Pro Adult goes i wouldnt use them anywaybecause of this rule in their T.O.S:

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Any recurring sponsors will not be accepted for this program since it is a recurring program itself.

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Nothing like shutting out your competition whilst screwing the webmaster in the process :(

Regards,

Lee

yes, those AEN systems allow you to promote other webmasters sites and get credited for the signups :-)

why don't you talk to proadult? they try to keep everything very local, but some say it's a good program.

or try adultverifier. tim has been sick, but the checks still go out on time. recurring isn't bad there... you DO need to mirror your tour pages, but that's not too bad...