Sacrificing Sales
 

I have an affiliate who's converting at a very nice ratio off our Lactalia content, plus a bunch of rebills. I checked his site to see how much he was promoting; we're one thumb on the whole page. I hit him up and asked politely if his other sponsors convert as well, and he said no. So, of course, I asked why he doesn't up our exposure a little. |badidea|

He said he keeps close watch of the pic gallery vs. vid gallery ratios on his site. Since our content is primarily pic galleries, and he needs the vid galleries to "keep his surfers happy", he doesn't want to add more right now.

Have you guys ever had a situation like that before? I can't imagine who would turn down sales for that reason. Isn't the point of the pic gallery vs. vid gallery concern do find out and take advantage of what converts best off your traffic? Please tell me if I'm missing something. |huh

Yep you're missing something

The affiliate just might be in it for the long haul, and building (and retaining) his bookmark traffic may be more valuable than a few quick sales. He's allowed to run his business as he sees fit, sponsor reps' advice notwithstanding :D

They probably don't want to push it too much & oversaturate their listings with what is very niche specific content.

Sorry, I should have mentioned, the whole site is the same niche.

Then I'll change my answer to "Ditto what Emma said" :)

That's pretty interesting. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of video content from which to make promo material at the moment.

I figured there was something I was missing. Always good to get the skinny from the affiliate side. I prefer to ask questions to find out how affiliates think and work, to better serve them, than to try to give advice to them. ;)

Must be hard to know where the long-term destination should be, as a webmaster affiliate. I suppose as much as you've gotta be flexible, it's good to stick to a plan/strategy.

You don't need "a lot" to make one or two video galleries for one affiliate. Some things you have to do one-by-one, instead of making everything available to everyone. And sometimes enough small steps can get to you to the same place.

Maybe he doesn't like unsolicited ICQs from sponsors.

|haha
I crack me up.


BTW, I agree with Emma.

Hmmm.. if you believe in his site and its potential why not offer up some cash incentives to achieve a better position? I'm pretty sure he knows how he's doing in sales and so must have some other economic interest in the way he is presenting his site.

I'm not looking to start a fire here. I just have a few questions cause the start of this post and my untrusting nature has me thinking something is fishy. The whole site is the same niche yet your site converts better then the others with just 1 thumb? Now I understand he/she may not want to over saturate their site with your content but I would think offering a just a little more then 1 thumb would not hurt. Why offer just one thumb? Could this be the target thumb for stolen creditcards. How long has he been converting? You mention rebills. Have you seen any chargebacks from him?
Sorry have to edit this. My other thoughts are he needs more vids now then pics. To me that means most of his traffic is looking for vids, so he does the correct thing and narrows down his traffic for pics. Yet he is still converting on the pics with just one thumb. I take it that its a decent amount or else you would not have even posted here. So once again he is sending really targeted traffic to a really hard sale niche, which he is narrowing down even more so to the pics of which your site is the best convertor. I don't know I understand this is how it's supposed to work but something seems strange. I'm not trying to dump on your site but seriously what makes your site better then the rest he has on the site that your converts better? From what I saw on your site it's one girl (correct me if I'm wrong I did not look at it for over 1 minute) but I would think sites with more girls would convert better or at least just as much with such a niche.

Why would that even cross your mind based on the info Simon posted?

Well I surly don't know if thats what's happening. It does not make sense for it to be a target thumb or anything. As who ever is buying, is buying and would not get anything other then milky images if the cc was stolen. I would think people would look to use a cc differantly. I know there were some scams going around in RO with camsites and ebay with stolen cards where the person who stole them let his litte band of merry men know they had to go to "these hosts or certain items on ebay" But don't something seem strange here? Like I said I'm not looking to start a fire here, I would think human nature being greed this guy would have up more then 1 thumb. Could be in such a great place that is converts so well in a sea of others?

I know what you mean about the greed. That's what I was thinking. It takes a lot of discipline as a webmaster to narrow a sales stream for the sake of maintianing the traffic you want to maintain.

We keep a really really close eye on fishy behaviour and stats, and he's been an affiliate for a while with no chargebacks. It's not like he's 1:5 here; he's just converting at the better end of our range, which was better than the ratios for the other programs he was promoting.

Regarding why it would be converting better, Lactalia's actually the highest-rated pregnant site on thebestporn.com. The niche is really unsaturated, and most sites use the same bought content as everyone else (which isn't outstanding content, either). Our content's exclusive, and our galleries are good. The other galleries on the guy's page weren't that great.

Very good idea, just showing how committed you are to him would go a long way. Since I've been in the room for many of Talia's shoots, I know that you have more than enough footage to whip out a couple of movie galleries :-)

Good thinking. New video galleries for Lactalia have recently been added. My affiliate's pleased. Ahh, isn't it wonderful how fruitful discussion can be. Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah, I would've dumped it down to Products & Service a long time ago. Guess I'm not as kind and gentle as GG&Jim. ;)

"never change a winning team" ... I understand you both to be hounest...