Quote Originally Posted by CorbinFisher_BD View Post
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?
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.

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....