Quote:
Originally Posted by cots
Feel free to tell me I am a knob but wanted to try and respond to your "2002 business model" criticism. Our "pay sites" are up around 20% this year. It's our affiliate side that is struggling!
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We are really concentrating very hard on the "in-house" side like just about everyone one else now as this is the area of growth and it's this side that gives us the flexibility to be able to make price changing and offers as and when we want.
The affiliate side is fine for the *good* affiliates that are still out there but it's not an area that we will be chasing up on going forwards. At one time about five years ago we were doing 200+ new joins a day from just FHG's alone (good days
) but those days are gone forever and it's a different business model now. We have concentrated *VERY* hard on having a LOT of our own "in-house" traffic over the years and with that and the growth of "social networking" sites we are still able to do the same number of new joins at a 50% discount (as we have no affiliate payout) and at a 50% discount we are seeing our retention now climbing to the early 2004/5 level as well.
We have never seen football or any other sport have an impact on our conversions and really I wouldn't expect to. We advertise to the entire world and just need the people who live on just one village street a day to subscribe to make a very good living. It really isn't that hard is it?