Your opinion and help please?
 

I am slowly back to work and my favorite sponsor came out with this draft:
http://www.hotgirlthumbs.com/contractdraft.pdf
and we have to agree or disagree with it and sign it. I love the site, it is very high quality, they update 6 times a week with pics and movies and the content is exclusive to them so they do work for me. It starts with the blue and green splash page and logo then gets pretty colorful depending on the categories which are many... except hardcore girl-boy scenes and there are surfers who love this.

My #1 problem with this draft is that they do no reward anyone for referring another webmaster and have never done yet.

They have awesome girl-next-door type models and they have never let affiliates call their girls little sluts or whatnot so it is not new to me. But I got declined a few times for this 'boring text" even by UW I am using on the galleries and they all come from the site, Swedguy etc. an so on so I gave up making free sites of the galleries I have and submitting to you. You were right from your point of view, I am not argueing here with you or pointing fingers but I didn't go into details why was it the way it was and is.

UW, I ask you and everyone to help me with fancier promo text which is not rude and your opinion on the contract draft from an affiliate point of view and I am very interested in what Greenie and Jim have to say about it. I will show the thread to their stuff and new affiliate manager of course.

Here are three sample galleries and templates I am using, I got more... and I know some are wide for the 800x600 rule but i won't redo them, I have too many so it is not worth it IMHO. My sponsor keeps telling me to use even bigger "big pics" to convince the surfer about the quality of their site.

http://www2.egghost.com/digifan/abby/alexia1/ta.html
http://www2.egghost.com/digifan/abby/rosanna3/ta.html
http://www2.egghost.com/digifan/abby/katw/ta.html

PS
I do need your help and supportive opinion now. I don't have much on my epassporte account because I had a micro surgery again last week and I'm preparing for my next 5 week radiation and chemo session. Hope it is not too brutal to post it, if it is then please edit it mods.
So please keep the bashing to yourselves, it is not healthy.. if you got nothing to say but negative remarks, I am not interested, sorry so let me nip it in the bud :D

PS
The default tour url is http://www.gmbill.com/redirect.php?aff=1084x450 but I prefer promoting the long tour, both have a lot of sample pics and movies.

Huh...swedguy? Do you submit as "digifan"? I don't remember seeing any of your sites and I can't find them in the DB.

My personal opinion about Abby Winters is that I will never touch them. Just because of their attitude towards afilliates and teaching surfers that afilliates are generally bad and teaching them how to change URL's so the afilliate will not get credit.

Thanks for your input! It was back in autumn i think and your problem was that the gallery was scrolling on 600x800 and I respected it.

ahhh, I see. I thought you meant that I declined it due to boring text :D

Nope and UW had the same problem, I mean the scrolling... but the text can be boring for a LL or TGP owner after a while and my hands are tied.

Would you believe they are my best sponsors and the galleries convert like 1:500 with tgp traffic? Including the time I have spent in hospital. Not bad with mainly softcore/solo girl stuff.
By solo girl stuff I mean one chick stripping and posing... we were allowed to use max 20 pics per set, now it will be 30 but the sets in the member area are huge, most have about 400-500 pics.

Gone working.. if you feel like pm me rather than post here, please do, thanks :D

Hmm.

Sent you a PM digifan :)

Thanks |thumb :D

I can't help, digifan, except to give this post a little bump.
My apologies to all if that's seen as bad forum etiquette, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

Hey Digifan,

The contract isn't loading for me so I can't give it a read. On principle I don't like the lack of WM referrals, but I have yet to make any real money on WM referrals anyway, so I've got to believe they'll never come to much unless I get to refer a whale like GG one day.

I think there are a lot of ways you could do hot promo text without being "derogatory" about the models. Since I can't read the terms I can't be sure if anything below would violate them, but here are a few examples:

--These fresh faced amateurs can't wait to show you every inch of their smokin' hot bodies...and you can ONLY see them at AbbyWinters.com
--Get access to more hi-res pics and vids of these sweet, wet, EXCLUSIVE models than you'll be able to look at in a LIFETIME!!!
--They saved themselves for AbbyWinters.com, and now they're pulling out all the stops!!!

OK, not my best work, but those are 3 I just threw together on the spot to give you some ideas :)

Swedguy... can you give more information? I haven't heard that assertion before - is there an example that they're teaching surfers not to use affiliate codes?

I got the email from Abby Winters demanding I prove that I was a worthy affiliate, which I must admit was a bit strange in a business sense, but I understand their ethics in trying to make sure their models are respected.

And have some linklist owners here really declined someone's free sites due to "boring text"? That's a little subjective, don't you think? What qualifies as "exciting text"?

My site is down atm.. bummer :(

So I was referring this part about the tasteful presentation of the models which is not new at all, it says
"Use of any derogatory or negative terms or references to AW models such as bithc, cunt, whore, stupid or the like, is strictly prohibited".
That's fine with me.

Thanks Madmax! :)

I found another post here (and yes I just quoted myself, lol):

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=6

Where Abby does clearly tell members not to clear cookies.

Thank you Grandma, I was hoping others also post here and missed asking Swedguy the same question but I have no idea where it came from. I have to stick up with them, especially Abby despite being a very hard worker because they have been very helpful to me in email, on icq whenever I needed their help and in all possible ways. I have been treated extremely well always and I know I am not their #1 affiliate, there are lots more making more money to them. I did't get this email either, I suppose because we could contact each other always.

The exciting text theory is based on the fact that most surfers are still male and like to see some naughty text and girls talking to them dirty so they whip out the plastic easier but AW has their fans and followers and if I get rejected then i try and submit the galleries elsewhere. I always told myself the saying: a picture is worth 1000 words :D

Ignore that postscript please in my first post and feel free to "bash" me if you think so I deserve it, I am a survivor I can assure you :D

I dunno...perhaps in some ways, I'm too soft and fuzzy for this biz. I've always loathed using derogatory terms for the models...even have a rule to that effect on FPP. Personally, I absolutely love women...and reserve those derogatory terms (rarely used)...for those that have given me a damn good reason on a personal level to use them.

As to the lack of referrals issue...that is a pretty crappy way to treat affiliates.

Declined for boring text? That's a new one on me too. I decline REGULARLY for text that's incomprehensible, but have never rejected a site for boring text |huh

Trust me she is working her ass off even on the weekends... and the stuff and models are her friends. I am doing some better sales like $44 sales and rebills are closer, introduced from April, did you know it?

LMAO, also known as the Walrus rule!!!

I've edited my post; re-read it please :) I know the rebills are coming. I just posted the thread swedguy must have been referring to. I have no complaints with the way she runs her business; I'll promote her even if she had no affiliate program.

I cached the page lol... then hit refresh and there goes the edited post and Mr Yum, respect to you for respecting women. I know that dirty talking can be a great sales pitch and that 90% of the surfers are guys but even non nude sells if you master it so we are not worse just different.

|thumb :D

I just went over there to give that thread a read. I've got to say, I was a bit shocked and certainly disgusted that a program owner would trash her affiliates like that in public. If she feels her affiliates are such bloodsuckers, why bother to have the affiliate program? Oh, wait...affiliates DO send sales she wouldn't possibly have gotten otherwise. 50% of something is still WAY better than 100% of nothing, no matter how much you whine about it.

Looks like I posted over my old post |huh

That was written in 2003 and the program owner is not Abby, she is "only" the heart an soul of it as far as I know... she is the chief of the stuff, she is shooting content, she is updating the site every day and yes sometimes when desperate or tired she is making bitter remarks like this.

If you have the time to read her long post, you can see her strategy:
"We don't get money for the traffic we refer elsewhere. I hate the idea of that - I'd rather customers just vote with their wallets, and that the people who created the content get as much of the money as possible for it. This means slower growth for us, but in the long run, a more solid customer base... unless the customers have no idea what's going on (kinda hence this thread).

A "normal" affiliate program works where each customer an Affilliate sends me, the affiliate gets 50% of the initial join fee, AND of each rebill. I'm a real hard-arse about this, and offer 50% for the initial join fee, and nothing on rebills. This means, most affiliates will go to other sites which offer them better rates, and not bother to promote my site.

This also means that to make decent money, most sites, who rely on affiliates heavily (between 60 and 100% of their traffic will come from aff sales) - charge DOUBLE what they would if they were doing their own marketing. That is, they make the CUSTOMER pay the affiliate, not themselves.

We charge $17.50 for a monthly sub - half of that is $8.75, and for a huge majority of aff's, that's just not worth the trouble. Why not send the same customers to a site like teenflood.com, who charge $30 a month, and make $15 a pop? So, teenflood get $15 for every sale, and that's what they have based their profit/loss sheet on. NOT the $30 list price, but the $15 they make.

We started off with no affs when we set our prices, and in the last nine months, we have added a few, and our prices have stayed the same. That means we make less money than we could, but we make enough to pay the bills, and have abit left over. AND we treat our customers by being cheaper than most of the competition.

We have a good site that "converts" well - converts idle browsers to actual payers, and some astute aff's recognise this. They make more money from me - even without rebills - than they do from other sites, cos they just don't convert as well as us.

Around half to a third of all our joins are from affiliates, which means, it's a big chunk of the gross income. In a way, I feel like using affiliates is selling out - affiliates have ONE goal: to make as much money as they can. That's different to my goal, which is to make the site as good as it can be, cos I love the genre. If I can make money while doing it, great, but it's not a driving force.

My main problem with the affs, is that I work my arse off 80, 90 hours a week to make the site as best as I possibly can. The staff I employ work hard as well, and they care about the site too. Yet I have to give away HALF of my gross to some lazy (six to ten hours a week's work) guys who make a few web pages with MY images, and post them on the net!?

Hardly seems fair...

But to look at it from their side, they know the places and ways to post these pages of my images for the most amount of sales - that honestly does takes time and experience. And, some - they argue most - of their joins would never have found my site, and incrementally, it does not cost me much to add a member to the site... so it's income I'd be otherwise missing out on.

I don't pay out rebills, so it's in my interests to keep people a member for a long as possible (in that, it's more money for me). Obviously, I try to do that, but few people stay more than three months. When they rejoin, it's cos they saw a new image in on a page of images one of my affiliates made, so the aff gets the join again.

It does not matter if people join for the shortest or longest sub plan - the affs get 50% of the join fee (not a flat $ amount).

Changing billing company did not affect aff sales at all - it just lowered our overhead, and kept our prices lower than they would be, had we stayed with CCBill."

Back in 2003, I might add. By now they are a 6 yr old great site and start paying rebills.

Thank God that they decided not to stay with ccbill only... the ccbill sites stopped working for me long ago.

OK, I think I'm confused about some of the discussion in this thread... but if there's deleted posts it's not surprising LOL

Another quote from that Abby Winters thread (page 2):
"No, we get nothing in return (well, apart from a customer!), but the point is, affiliates work hard to make sales for my site, and I don't want their sales to drop due to users deleting cookies at my behest. They'd be pissed off, and probably black ban us, or something."

And I may sound confusing too sometimes, I meant the conversion ratio of ccbill sites is getting worse and worse.
But my site is down and we wanted to install and set up scripts with a busy webmaster friend and launch it... I uploaded the pdf there too. I am getting a dns error when trying to access www.hotgirlthumbs.com :(