Sponsors - which affiliates really check what works?

[cots]

You know I run Glam Images/Ult Fetishes and, as much as possible, I am a stats freak. In my daily/weekly trawl to see what's new, I am always intrigued that some TGP/Directories constantly feature sponsors that don't sell for me.

In fact, some featured sponsors have never generated just one sale at my sites. Others have been in major decline over the past few years to the point that I hardly feature them any more. Quite a few of the site owners (sponsors and affiliates) are here - so I won't name names.

Questions. Assuming my content matches incoming surfers expectations -

Do sales (based on conversion not volume) widely differ from TGP to TGP?
Do some TGP owners just go for signup volume and no other criteria?
Do some webmasters, despite protesting how bad business is, just not care enough to look closely at the reasons why?

Am I missing something obvious?

The main reason I ask is that over the past three years or so GI/UF revenues are down 40% (but still very, very reasonable). Traffic is up 20% in the same period. Most of the decline in sales comes from -

Closed sites - nothing I can do about that
Not enough new sites - Good new sites still have fantastic sales
Good active sites that have a lousy affiliate content update rate

But the real killer are sponsors whose conversion has just really slipped. If I look at my Top 10 from 2009, and compare them with 2012, there have only been 2/3 sites that have kept up. Others have just dropped and dropped and dropped. Good clicks still but lousy conversion.

Lets hear from both sides here (after all I am a sponsor too!).

Confused from Tenerife

[Toby]

I've seen more slip in my top sponsors this year than in the past, and as we all know far more sites leaving the biz than new ones entering.

I think you will definitely see different TGPs doing well with some sponsors that won't convert at all for others and vice-versa, all a matter of traffic mix. There are also some sponsors that don't convert all that well for me, for whatever reason, but their content is good quality and the thumbs get a fair amount of clicks. I use these as filler content since the clicks help feed the traffic trade machine.

[thor]

The same problem here. Some of my sponseres i didn`t make any sales in the past. In 2013 i will check all my sponsers and delete main banners from my sites!

[deejay]

Originally Posted by cots

Am I missing something obvious?

The main reason I ask is that over the past three years or so GI/UF revenues are down 40% (but still very, very reasonable). Traffic is up 20% in the same period. Most of the decline in sales comes from -

Closed sites - nothing I can do about that
Not enough new sites - Good new sites still have fantastic sales
Good active sites that have a lousy affiliate content update rate

But the real killer are sponsors whose conversion has just really slipped. If I look at my Top 10 from 2009, and compare them with 2012, there have only been 2/3 sites that have kept up. Others have just dropped and dropped and dropped. Good clicks still but lousy conversion.

One factor you may have overlooked is price. Numerous sponsors have been offering half-price memberships to their in-house traffic for a couple of years or more. Word gets around and this market is like every other at the moment, i.e. price sensitive.

[BigD]

A lot of sponsors now give half price membership to their followers on Twitter / Tumblr by giving out a direct link to a join page missing out the sponsor completely. Price is now a key factor why pay $30 per month when by being a bit clued up you can get it for $15 or even less.

One thing I've started doing recently to actually join some of the sites I promote. This has been quite an eye opener. The members areas in most are still stuck in the 1990's and make it as difficult as possible for the customer to download the material.

[cots]

Originally Posted by deejay

One factor you may have overlooked is price. Numerous sponsors have been offering half-price memberships to their in-house traffic for a couple of years or more. Word gets around and this market is like every other at the moment, i.e. price sensitive.

Originally Posted by BigD

A lot of sponsors now give half price membership to their followers on Twitter / Tumblr by giving out a direct link to a joint page missing out the sponsor completely. Price is now a key factor why pay $30 per month when by being a bit clued up you can get it for $15 or even less.

One thing I've started doing recently to actually join some of the sites I promote. This has been quite an eye opener. The members areas in most are still stuck in the 1990's and make it as difficult as possible for the customer to download the material.

I see the point here. After all (as a sponsor myself) we give a 50% commission to affiliates, so giving the surfer the benefit of coming direct is a reasonable strategy. However there is a chance that you can kill the golden goose. We have seen the number of active affiliates we have go down by 40% or so, and sites are closing all the time. Pricing may be sensitive as you say, but if you only get the same from a direct sale, but in the process create a traffic void because TGP/Directory sites close, then there is no net gain. Not a clever way of doing things if the overall objective is to increase revenues and profits.

I also think it misses the point I was trying to make. Conversion rates, on the whole, are holding up even with some paysites in decline. Others are up and down like a yoyo whilst others just don't seem to sell at all for me. Yet, despite that, these sites appear on other TGPs almost on a daily basis.

[deejay]

Originally Posted by cots

I also think it misses the point I was trying to make. Conversion rates, on the whole, are holding up even with some paysites in decline. Others are up and down like a yoyo whilst others just don't seem to sell at all for me. Yet, despite that, these sites appear on other TGPs almost on a daily basis.

In your opening post you said that "over the past three years or so GI/UF revenues are down 40% (but still very, very reasonable). Traffic is up 20% in the same period." That really means in dollar terms the profitability of traffic to your TGPs has declined by around 50%, which is very different to "conversion rates, on the whole, are holding up."

In your opening post you also mentioned that "If I look at my Top 10 from 2009, and compare them with 2012, there have only been 2/3 sites that have kept up. Others have just dropped and dropped and dropped. Good clicks still but lousy conversion." One reason for this might be sponsors offering discounted memberships to their in-house traffic. Check whether those sites are offering discounts via Tumblr, Twitter and mailers to lapsed subscribers.

I still get mailers offering cheap subscriptions from sites I'd subscribed to five or more years ago. Like the poster above, I started a review site. Like him I was also shocked at how poor many of the sites we reviewed were. The crazy thing was the reviewers were encouraged to tell it how they saw it, but still the sites with downright bad reviews made sales. The world must be full of rubber-neckers, or it least it was until 2009. Nothing sells as well for affiliates as it did then, especially when they're selling memberships at twice the price that surfers pay if they go direct to the sponsor site.

As for TGPs featuring sites that don't sell, to an extent that's probably down to the culture prevailing among affiliates since FHGs became their standard marketing tool. Making sales used to be as simple as pasting a bunch of links into a script and trading some traffic. A lot of people earned a reasonable living doing nothing more than that. But because it takes time and thought to work out what does and what doesn't sell, most of them couldn't be bothered and left everything in the mix. So you see a lot of the same old same old on lots of TGPs. And so it goes on.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by cots

I see the point here. After all (as a sponsor myself) we give a 50% commission to affiliates, so giving the surfer the benefit of coming direct is a reasonable strategy. However there is a chance that you can kill the golden goose. We have seen the number of active affiliates we have go down by 40% or so, and sites are closing all the time. Pricing may be sensitive as you say, but if you only get the same from a direct sale, but in the process create a traffic void because TGP/Directory sites close, then there is no net gain. Not a clever way of doing things if the overall objective is to increase revenues and profits.

The other factor in play when using that discount scheme is potential devaluation of your product in the eyes of the end user. My thoughts on discounts has always been that they should be a temporary and time limited.

[jscott]

Originally Posted by cots

You know I run Glam Images/Ult Fetishes and, as much as possible, I am a stats freak. In my daily/weekly trawl to see what's new, I am always intrigued that some TGP/Directories constantly feature sponsors that don't sell for me.

In fact, some featured sponsors have never generated just one sale at my sites. Others have been in major decline over the past few years to the point that I hardly feature them any more. Quite a few of the site owners (sponsors and affiliates) are here - so I won't name names.

Questions. Assuming my content matches incoming surfers expectations -

Do sales (based on conversion not volume) widely differ from TGP to TGP?
Do some TGP owners just go for signup volume and no other criteria?
Do some webmasters, despite protesting how bad business is, just not care enough to look closely at the reasons why?

Am I missing something obvious?

The main reason I ask is that over the past three years or so GI/UF revenues are down 40% (but still very, very reasonable). Traffic is up 20% in the same period. Most of the decline in sales comes from -

Closed sites - nothing I can do about that
Not enough new sites - Good new sites still have fantastic sales
Good active sites that have a lousy affiliate content update rate

But the real killer are sponsors whose conversion has just really slipped. If I look at my Top 10 from 2009, and compare them with 2012, there have only been 2/3 sites that have kept up. Others have just dropped and dropped and dropped. Good clicks still but lousy conversion.

Lets hear from both sides here (after all I am a sponsor too!).

Confused from Tenerife

I finally took the time to read this Geoff.

But, I do think a LOT of tgp owners that are still basing their main income off their tgps are just lazy or just cheap. I know of some personally (including myself to some extent) who just riding out their tgp profits and as sales/ratios/profits decline they just add more advertising, juicyads, IM adverts, popups, and now the tgps are getting SO low in profits they are now finally in a frenzy like "what do I do now?" and there has been no secret that tgps are going to die, or dead already.

So we've all had pre-warning on this already.

1 example is, my biggest tgp was an asian tgp that was getting 45k/day (VERY VERY low skim, 93/7) and is now getting 12-16k/day traffic. I watched it month by month as it lost more and more SEO and all trades are dying too as my site lost SEO and all my traded sites losing it too.

I did nothing, now I am "in a frenzy" to change into something else too, luckily I have many many other sites that help keep my income at decent levels though.

Guys, to stay in the game, it's fact now, cut the lazy bullshit and really must change with the ways of the net. Using tgps to build income is like going into a fight with a bag of rocks when your opponent has nuclear missiles!

[cots]

Just managed to get around to reviewing this again.

Deejay and BigD can you let me know the urls of your sites? I would like to have a look at what you are doing there to back up some of the things you say.

I don't disagree totally with what you say but by the same token I don't see anything to really substantiate it.

[js69]

Originally Posted by jscott

I finally took the time to read this Geoff.

But, I do think a LOT of tgp owners that are still basing their main income off their tgps are just lazy or just cheap. I know of some personally (including myself to some extent) who just riding out their tgp profits and as sales/ratios/profits decline they just add more advertising, juicyads, IM adverts, popups, and now the tgps are getting SO low in profits they are now finally in a frenzy like "what do I do now?" and there has been no secret that tgps are going to die, or dead already.

So we've all had pre-warning on this already.

1 example is, my biggest tgp was an asian tgp that was getting 45k/day (VERY VERY low skim, 93/7) and is now getting 12-16k/day traffic. I watched it month by month as it lost more and more SEO and all trades are dying too as my site lost SEO and all my traded sites losing it too.

I did nothing, now I am "in a frenzy" to change into something else too, luckily I have many many other sites that help keep my income at decent levels though.

Guys, to stay in the game, it's fact now, cut the lazy bullshit and really must change with the ways of the net. Using tgps to build income is like going into a fight with a bag of rocks when your opponent has nuclear missiles!

Does anyone ever "read" juicy ads. I just nuke them and have never actually followed one link or even know what they sell. And I am sure that I act like a normal surfer. They have to be the junkiest traffic ever. Jscott we will be in BKK after 10 Jan for a few days. We gotta hook up and yak some business.

[deejay]

Originally Posted by cots

Deejay and BigD can you let me know the urls of your sites? I would like to have a look at what you are doing there to back up some of the things you say.

I don't disagree totally with what you say but by the same token I don't see anything to really substantiate it.

I've been as good as out of adult affiliate marketing since mid-2010. The writing had been on the wall for some time back then, so my resources have been focused elsewhere for the last couple of years. There's nothing of mine left worth looking at, although a handful of blogs still make some sales.

If you want an idea of who's doing what and whether it's worthwhile pushing them as an affiliate, get on Twitter. Watch the accounts with the most activity and follow the links. Some of it will be an eye-opener and should give you some good ideas for marketing your own membership sites. But probably the best place to start would be with your contacts. You're not the only adult webmaster on Tenerife :-)

FWIW I think you're doing the right and positive thing by taking a hard look at who you're promoting. And I also think that you're to be commended for sticking by your principles with regards to your affiliates. The big question is whether that will enable you to stay in business. People still want adult content, both softcore and hardcore. The issue is at what price.

Best wishes to you and everyone else here for 2013.

[js69]

Originally Posted by deejay

I've been as good as out of adult affiliate marketing since mid-2010. The writing had been on the wall for some time back then, so my resources have been focused elsewhere for the last couple of years. There's nothing of mine left worth looking at, although a handful of blogs still make some sales.

If you want an idea of who's doing what and whether it's worthwhile pushing them as an affiliate, get on Twitter. Watch the accounts with the most activity and follow the links. Some of it will be an eye-opener and should give you some good ideas for marketing your own membership sites. But probably the best place to start would be with your contacts. You're not the only adult webmaster on Tenerife :-)

FWIW I think you're doing the right and positive thing by taking a hard look at who you're promoting. And I also think that you're to be commended for sticking by your principles with regards to your affiliates. The big question is whether that will enable you to stay in business. People still want adult content, both softcore and hardcore. The issue is at what price.

Best wishes to you and everyone else here for 2013.

My opinion is that affiliates have to market harder and smarter. For years the tail was wagging the dog, but now that has all changed. Most of our business has always been self generated and we didn't even have an affiliate program until a few years ago. Those who relied on affiliate marketing have suffered.....and the huge players maintain their aff proggys because they may as well. I suspect though, most of their traffic is generated in house. We have affiliates that do very well and we have those who only make a handful of sales a week, but its all money in the bank. Unless an affiliate is just a waste of space and resources, then I think its all good. Three or four sales a week times a bunch of affiliates and more from hard working successful affiliates is all very good.
But as content producers, our biggest profit is from our own hard earned traffic.

[jscott]

Originally Posted by js69

Does anyone ever "read" juicy ads. I just nuke them and have never actually followed one link or even know what they sell. And I am sure that I act like a normal surfer. They have to be the junkiest traffic ever. Jscott we will be in BKK after 10 Jan for a few days. We gotta hook up and yak some business.

Do you have mobile when ur in BKK? hit me up on PM/icq and we can talk plans

see ya soon man

[cots]

I love you guys! The genuine, experienced, guys who are prepared to share good stuff! If only there were more of you! You always make me think - and that is a very good thing!

I need to read Scotty's, Toby's and JS's stuff again then I will be back