Playing The Numbers Game

[Dianna Vesta]

Pay per sign up, pay per click, pay high in Nov?????? What’s it all about? What are the most successful affiliate programs and why?

Love to hear from sponsors and affiliates.

[Almighty Colin]

I'm pretty much away from this side of the business but I've found the best sponsors of any type are very similar in the end. There are excellent pay-per-click and pay-per-signup sponsors. Well, there are very few pay-per-clicks sponsors that I know ae really good but there are a few.

I think the 4 free sponsors have their place too. There are a few that have stood out for me but they are also dependent on the type of traffic I had. I am not sure AVS sites (for example) would want to send their traffic to the same places I did. There are a few places with free signups still and those are good for certain types of traffic. 4 free sites can convert really shitty traffic.

Then, if you have email traffic - nicksclicks.com are masters at converting that stuff. Why not go with real pros?

I've always made sure I know who I am doing business with. Random programs can easily lead to non-payment. New programs that pay-per-click = bad.

[Dianna Vesta]

You know I once paid a mailing list company a lot of money to send email out. It was by far the biggest disapointment I've ever had.

Marketing niche sites you need to be very clever. I've often thought about opening a few non-niche sites to see if I'd be good at it.

I'm revamping all my shit. I've signed up with Jettis, redesigning my sites, building new sites and Niche Cartel's new interface should be ready by the end of the year. I'd really like to know more about running a successful affiliate program since this seems to be the key in making money with sites.

CJ? I know you know.

[Nickatilynx]

Then, if you have email traffic - nicksclicks.com are masters at converting that stuff. Why not go with real pros?

Awww shucks ,Colin

DV,

Mail lists if manged properly and marketed correctly are imho the best forms of traffic.The trick is being able to comply with all regulations.

We find in fact that a way to "refresh" a list is including sites you describe.Ouir lists come from adult and thus they may be very au fait with general porn.Showing them older women,bdsm etc pulls a good lot of sign ups.

I don't see how you have to be clever marketing niche sites more than any other.

In fact I'd say the opposite.

Afdter all amateur is just the biggest niche

[ulfie]

Mailers with targetted traffic are money in the bank.

I like sponsers that pay $35-$40 join. Marketing gimmicks don't impress me, people that prepay do.

Ulfie is partially right I think; one thing I look at to determine whether a site is making a serious effort is their payout scheme. Are they taking any risks? For example CE pays you on confirmed members in some of their programs, and they pay you $40 (which last I checked is about the cost of their membership.) So they're betting that their members will recur for 2 months, that's a low risk and a decent payout, since they take no immediate loss.

However other sponsors pay per trial, which is more of a risk. To compensate for it they will shave, or not count traffic from a bunch of countries, or pop tons of consoles, or do whatever they have to do to hit that payout number and keep money off their rebills. As many know the conversion rates from trials-to-memberships are getting worse and worse in mainstream adult niches, so the programs are working harder to hit their thresholds.

Really in the end it is all math and marketing tricks. Do they have the traffic volume (of their own hits, and of enough affiliate sales that don't get counted) to pay you properly without taking a huge loss. Do they pop enough of the right consoles to generate additional upsell/cross-traffic income. Do their sites convert well enough or cross-bill enough to keep their precious rebills?

I was a partner in one large affiliate program when I first got into this business. I ran 2 of my own affiliate programs, including one that was large. Every time it was all about the math. The first thing many affiliate ask you is 'how can I increase my payout?' so you have to be prepared for these questions. If you don't have a good grasp of what you are making on average per sale, you can't give them a good answer. We had a calculator in my second program that would tell us exactly what that affiliate would be making compared to other options, and how much we would make off their volume of sales. This was essential in cutting some of our bigger traffic deals; we knew what kind of payouts to offer them.

I hate to say it because I personally think that the recurring model can be very profitable for some webmasters; but there are two types of risks. Per-signup sponsors put the risk on themselves to make the money to pay you. Recurring sponsors put the risk on you; while it is their responsibility to make their sites convert that doesn't differ from per-sign, the risk you are running is that YOUR traffic will stay for 3, 5, 12 months and make you more for your effort.

As a shrewd customer, I get very wary of all of these 'new' affiliate programs who shout in your face that they're paying $40 per $2.95 trial, or paying you $20-30 per $1 signup. It is reverse-engineering the 4free program, where they pay you $1 and have to convert 1 in 30 of their free members to upsells in order to break even. While MaxCash has 200,000 members to Kara's to offset any of your crappily-converting traffic, these new programs either have big bankroll, or sneaky billing/tracking practices to 'cover the spread' so to speak. Nothing in this business is too good to be true, it's all a numbers and marketing game.

C.

[Nickatilynx]

hmmmmm.....all I'd say is most affilliate programs pay you what they want to pay you

[homegrownmof]

Actually Cal,

CE pays $55 per member sent. They also have a program that pays $40 I believe plus $5 recurring.

More info at cecash.com. People here may not like Ron but the fact is that he has some of the highest if not the highest payouts around. Plus lots of innovative program options and great stats.

Plus program options for Homegrownvideo.com!

Dianna, I would say look for sponsors that can back up the hype, with both content and a solid reputation for paying well.

I think there are too many cookie cutter programs out there- step one, hire MikeW, step two shop at Matrix then Holio, step three, cut and paste "We have 300,000 photos and 14 million videos...!"


Homegrownmof

[Nickatilynx]

I think there are too many cookie cutter programs out there- step one, hire MikeW, step two shop at Matrix then Holio, step three, cut and paste "We have 300,000 photos and 14 million videos...!"

Hey!!! If it works...go with it!

Sorry, my mistake. I haven't been over there since CE Mags, but I remember when people were bitching because they switched to $40 payouts on confirmed members. Are their paysites $50 now?

Just went to ce.com, and what a surprise, they are. No offense HG, but paying $55 on a $50 signup isn't all that innovative or risky. Levi is a smart man, to be sure, more in my eyes for his wide diversification. Their lifetimecash looks decent, and CEMags pays well minus everyone's complaints that their confirm ratios are in the toilet. Their pay it forward program doesn't strike me as all that great though. Same concept, paying for productivity.

Just my two cents, I'm certainly in no position to give Levi advice. Just my take on the countless programs out there, as a casual observer with limited experience in the field.

C.

[Nickatilynx]

There is no doubt R-n L-n- knows this business.

And if he is doing it.It is making money.

Well except maybe resouce sites

[homegrownmof]

Nick,

In deference to MikeW he is a great designer and I'm sure his designs do work. Just that after surfers see so much of the same thing on TGPs, etc- i.e. same pics of Aria and Gauge, the surfer I think would call bullshit and not join the site.

As for Ron and his resource site, didn't he sell a % to JoeE for an absurd sum?

You can discredit the man but you can't discredit the $$$.


Cal,

Out of curiosity, where would you send your traffic?

[Anthony]

Originally posted by homegrownmof@Nov 15 2002, 01:48 PM




As for Ron and his resource site, didn't he sell a % to JoeE for an absurd sum?






Out of curiosity, where would you send your traffic?

Just wondering. If that is true. R-n decides to cut out his money page which refreshes to his resource center's front page, what is that site worth?

I mean after salaries for paid posters, etc...

If I didn't send it to my own stuff? It's hard to say. I'm a data sponge so I'm always looking at who other people are using, especially those who I know are actual money-makers.

Most of the people who were in my program used the big boys, though the type-in domain folks mostly used ARS for whatever reason. Frankly the people I cared the most about, the ones who made the most money in my program, used each other. They were all big programs, so their cross-traffic went to other big programs (vis. MaxCash and ARS's 40-sites-for-1-price exit consoles.)

If I see sites out there that I feel have a good strategy I'll usually just try to create my own in a similar vein. Not to avoid your question, the programs whose ideas/setups I like the most at this point are:

naughtyandlive
sweetapples
lightspeedcash
cemags
joinrightnow (their two non-nude sites)
collegefuckfest

Once I actually started listing them it was harder than I thought. I like all those programs for very different reasons. For example I like lightspeedcash's approach to teaming up with amateur site owners and creating a network of sites that way. I like collegefuckfest because, well, they have some pretty good content. CEMags I like because it offers the upsell option, even though ratios appear to be sucking on confirmed emails. Naughty I like because they have good technology and are using a fairly clever tiered system of billing.

But really I pick up ideas from all over the place. Anyone on here has ideas for paysites/programs/anything they want to implement, definitely hit me up on ICQ or give me a call. I'm sitting on shitloads of content and resources, and cutting deals is what I live for.

C.

[homegrownmof]

Anthony,

What is that site worth? Good question. I guess whatever people want to pay for it. Which when JoeE kicked in was quite a bit of $.

Then again I saw on GFY where YNOT claims it has 5,000 UNIQUE webmaster visits DAILY. So basically 4,997 lurkers?

[Dianna Vesta]

Originally posted by Nickatilynx@Nov 15 2002, 01:04 PM

Awww shucks ,Colin

DV,

Mail lists if manged properly and marketed correctly are imho the best forms of traffic.The trick is being able to comply with all regulations.

We find in fact that a way to "refresh" a list is including sites you describe.Ouir lists come from adult and thus they may be very au fait with general porn.Showing them older women,bdsm etc pulls a good lot of sign ups.

I don't see how you have to be clever marketing niche sites more than any other.

In fact I'd say the opposite.

Afdter all amateur is just the biggest niche

In Jan I open Niche Cartel focused on Niche programs, sites, content production, etc.

I would really like an article on successful email marketing for NC and it would be a great addition to the Newbie forum here on Oprano that seriously needs stuff like that.

Nick are you interested?

[Dianna Vesta]

Originally posted by Nickatilynx@Nov 15 2002, 02:11 PM
hmmmmm.....all I'd say is most affilliate programs pay you what they want to pay you

This is true Nick which is why it's so important to have sites like Oprano and a network of people to out the assholes and talk about the issues.

This is another reason I'm moving to Jettis and using my own merchant accounts. I want better customer service and they're reporting. They don't make money from my affiliates but provide a service.

I'm looking carefully at sponsors who do this.