I wasn't going to bother responding to this thread for two reasons:
1. The question is simply ignorant.
2. The thread title is so incredibly fucking stupid, my head hurts whenever I read it.
Why has NO ONE said anything about "stoled"? I mean, holy shit, what is that, past-past tense? Stoled is, of course, a word. It means:
to be wearing a stole.
Why do I claim the question to be ignorant, you ask? Well, no one has
stolen link list traffic. As Stu stated, it comes and goes. Also, how can you ask where the traffic has gone by giving one example of a traffic loss (which occurred over a year ago and remains much higher than most link lists will ever achieve), but two examples of traffic gained? Doesn't make much sense, does it?
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Originally Posted by Senator_x
Are link list owners to blame for not keeping up with the times?
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What are link list owners supposed to do? They run link lists. It's only one form of traffic generation. Should they drop their listings and install TEVS? Certainly, tube sites have been able to create a heavy traffic flow in a very short amount of time, but it is shit traffic - especially on the illegal tubes, funded unapologetically by Brazzers, JuggCash, AFF and the like. It didn't start as shit traffic. Giving them everything for nothing made it into worthless, nearly un-convertible traffic.
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Originally Posted by Lace
Tube sites are the new TGPs.
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Excuse me, but when did TGPs disappear? Tube sites can't really be compared to forerunning forms of traffic generation, not even MGPs.
As far as competing with tubes, the primary difficulty is that illegal tubes gain an enormous amount of one-way inbounds from porn-hungry surfers every day. It's not as if many of them have been SEO'd. Their SE strength must be nearly completely due to inbounds.
Since I really think that this thread has a lot more to do with tube sites than link lists, I'm going to go on with my thoughts.
Tubes don't threaten link lists or TGPs (as a model) as much as they threaten sponsors. I'm not talking about legal tubes right now - I'll get to them in a moment. Those ever-menacing illegal cocksuckers, like RedTube, PornHub and Tube8; that are packed to the brim with full length movies downloaded directly from paysite members' areas and uploaded to the tubes by surfers - those are a paysite owner's worst nightmare. Especially if you're buying exclusive content. And we thought RapidShare was going to be a problem. Ha! A single sign-up can download all of your content and share it with tens of thousands of surfers. Isn't that grand? Your expensive content is no longer exclusive and many of those tube sites will wipe their hairy unwashed asses with your DMCAs.
Naturally, if the paysites aren't converting because all of their content can be viewed for free, then we silly little bitch affiliates aren't eating. I need to lose a couple of pounds anyway. Unfortunately, affiliates can't really do much. Sponsors can, but will they? We know for a FACT that Brazzers and JuggCash are paying for ads on RedTube. You'll see a lot of AFF and Fling ads on illegal tubes as well. So either they're paying to be there or, at the very least, refusing to kill the tube's affiliate account. Twisty's publicly announced their attempt to work with RedTube to see if they could convert some of their surfers, even though they fully realized that the fucking site is packed full of stolen content. But poor Shap, the owner of Twisty's, was displeased because RedTube wasn't abiding by a couple of rules that he put in place for the deal to work. I'm sure it must have been a shock to discover that thieves not only steal, but they lie too! Who'da thunk it? Oh yeah, everyone's favorite spamming content producer, Paul Markham, is currently uploading his own clips to RedTube to see if his shit content will convert. And get this - he blames the rest of us for not promoting his site or buying his content. It's our fault that the old fuck has to see if he can convert RedTube's 1:50,000 traffic. You go, Paul.
One positive thing going for us is that many of the illegal tubes are struggling to pay for the clustered servers necessary to deal with their truly amazing traffic flow. So we're starting to see multiple pop-ups, and my anti-virus has gone off twice while browsing those bastardly behemoths this week. They're pulling all stops to make money and they'll scare away their surfers soon enough. Many of them aren't bookmark-able already. (Oh yeah, RedTube was successfully hacked by an anti-porn group and remained vandalized for about a day.)
What do you, the affiliate, have to do? Push QUALITY. The content found in any members' area is of a quality 500% better than anything viewed a tube site. The affiliate model is far from dead and the sky is NOT falling. This is a period of transition. I would suggest surfing some tube sites and seeing what is out there, both illegal and legal. Educate yourself on the business model.
As far as the legal tubes sites go, they aren't that bad once you except that they aren't going anywhere. Everyone has bitched about TGPs since day one and they haven't flinched. Oddly enough, no one claims that TGPs are giving away the bank anymore.
Most legal tube sites have decent clip length rules and they fly the correct sponsor's banner on the movie clip's page. Even if you don't see a paysite banner, many of the movies link directly to the paysite tour.
From what I can tell, the link list's role in this game will remain the same. We will probably end up with excellent SE traffic, TGPs will continue to skim and trade amongst themselves and tube sites will do the same. I was on a tube site the other day that was full of blind links to a handful of other smallish tubes. Go figure.