Sponsor submitted galleries

[Toby]

I have several sponsors that submit their galleries to my TGP's. That in and of itself isn't an issue, but in all cases I promote those same sponsors myself. I don't really care to compete with the sponsor for sales on my own TGP's, but I don't want to tick them off either. Any suggestions? Thx

[MadMax]

If you're promoting them they should have the common courtesy to let you make the money on those galleries. Just my opinion

[Toby]

That's my opinion too.

[Useless]

Me too. Also, I have a couple of bad experiences where the accepted gallery ends up redirecting to their tour. So I tend to not accept galleries if I know it's a sponsor submitting them.

[GeorgeTH]

Just send them an email explaining your point of view (and that you'e covering the cost of running the TGP with advertising THEIR sites) - any person/business with some decency should understand that...

BTW: I too get direct submits from sponsors, but none clashing with ones I'm advertising.
PLUS: my main money makers are actually excluded from posting (be it directly from sponsor or regular submissions) - I find that only fair enough since I'm not charging for submission accounts unlike so many other TGPs, and otherwise my gallery content might be identical to submitted gals.

[GunnCat]

I agree. Contact them and explain, I wouldn't have a problem. Then they can use their submit spots on your site to promote some other sponsors. Win/Win for everyone.

[emmanuelle]

I am a sponsor, and I also submit galleries occasionally. While my aim is not to compete with affiliates, I will admit that receiving 100% of the sale can be sweet.
Despite this, my motivation for these occasional submits is to test. I want to see how well new tours or gallery templates convert, rather than ask affiliates to be guinea pigs. Furthermore, submitting gives me a refresher course on what affiliates go through regularly, and helps me to respond quickly to their needs. It really helped me to improve our program, and anticipate what affiliates would be looking for.
Many of the BIG programs have entire departments dedicated to in house promotion that competes directly with their affiliates. I do not mask my identity, my program url is part of my email addy, so as not to mislead anyone.
Do whatever makes the most sense for your business, as you do every day :-)

[Useless]

One of the other problems with some sponsors submitting is that they don't seem to understand that no matter how many different domains your are submitting, you always use the same name and email addy. It's typically new programs or ones you've just never heard of that do it, but they'll submit 5 galleries a day, each for a different one of their paysites, but it will be a different name and email address on each submission. Of course, they are submitted from the same IP, so you know it's the same damned person/group.

[Surfn]

Just put in your affiliate code

[Mr. Blue]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

One of the other problems with some sponsors submitting is that they don't seem to understand that no matter how many different domains your are submitting, you always use the same name and email addy. It's typically new programs or ones you've just never heard of that do it, but they'll submit 5 galleries a day, each for a different one of their paysites, but it will be a different name and email address on each submission. Of course, they are submitted from the same IP, so you know it's the same damned person/group.

What about sponsors that use 1 template and submit 2 times a day for 30 days in a row...also ignoring the rejection emails for overused templates...they're personally my favorite as they end up getting blacklisted eventually for being annoying.

[Simon]

Hi everyone

I agree that submitting to places that list you already doesn't seem to be fair dealing.

I do think Emmanuelle has a good point about the need to test things. Coming from a (pre-internet days) direct marketing background, the idea of "test and retest and then test again" is pretty deeply ingrained here.

Coming up with good ways to test new tours, join pages and other "sponsor side responsibilities" is definitely important... but it's not always easy to do.

We used to get most traffic via search engines and our own feeder sites, so testing was pretty easy. Now that we've expanded to offering hosted sites and galleries for LLs and TGPs, it's not as easy to duplicate that traffic for testing purposes.

The best I've come up with so far is offering some LL/TGP owners an additional account ID that we use exclusively for new things we want to test. That way the sales still generate the usual commission to them, but we can track the stats separately.

Anyone with ideas about this, please do jump in.

Simon

[Surfn]

The only sponsor sites/galleries I accept are the ones that I submit

[Jel]

I agree, if a sponsor needs to test new galleries/freesites then make the freesite/gallery and put it up as a HFS or FHG for affiliates to use.

[Jel]

btw I do like your idea there Simon of an extra id for testing purposes

[Toby]

Simon, you and Emma are both class acts. You understand that looking out for your affliates best interests is also in your own best interest over the long term. Too bad that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

[RawAlex]

There is a difference between "occassional testing" and "daily submits".



Alex

[Tommy]

if they wanted to test gallerys on your tgp they could put your id in the gallery

I wouldnt lose any sleep over not listing them

no offence to Emma and Simon

[Simon]

None taken here, Tommy.

One thing though. I agree that they should put your ID in the gallery... the thing I'm suggesting is kind of a tweak on that. For instance, let's say that in addition to your usual ID 972842, we also gave you another ID, let's call it 248279. We would only use that 248279 on any special gallery or tour tests we wanted to try. The new ID would still payout to you at the usual rate, of course, but we'd be able to look at its stats separately from your usual astronomical numbers.

And of course this is something a sponsor should work out with the LL or TGP owner in advance, not just starting submitting with a new ID and expect the owner to figure out what they'e doing.

Let me know if I only further clouded the waters on this one.

Simon

P.S. Toby - Thanks man, I really don't see the sense in doing it some other way. This road is lonely enough with everyone else we need to exclude from it.
Jel -

[Doug E]

Well, heres a good thread for my question, if you don't mind Toby...

Surfer visits sponsor site with your affiliate code. He checks it out and returns to your tgp.

Two minutes later Surfer visits same sponsor site with a different affiliate code from one of your submitters galleries. This time he signs up.

Who gets the sale ?

[Simon]

Hiya Doug,

I can give you an answer from a sponsor's perspective. We use CCBill's affiliate program software, and that allows us to control how long a cookie is kept in a surfer's browser cache. We've opted for the maximum the system will handle, which is 255 days. However, you're correct that this system, like every other one we've previewed, does allow one cookie to be overwritten by another one of the same name.

In the example you presented, the surfer from Toby's site who signed up after getting 'cookied' a second time, the credit would go to the submitter who set the cookie most recently.

I've always been a little uncomfortable about this, but I've yet to find an affiliate system that offers a better solution than the standard "most recent gets the credit."

To try to balance the scales a little, there are a few things we do. One is that we don't use CCBill IDs for our own in-house tracking. So the urls on our pages which list our own paysite, our HFS and FHG, and links from our own traffic feeder sites, do not contain any IDs in the URLs which cause CCBill to set a new cookie. (I've seen this done the other way, where the same technique is used to cause new cookies to be set -- bad way to do things, I think).

We also set some cookies of our own, which are designed to store the affiliate's ID number so that in can be reinserted where needed. For example, if someone visits a HFS/FHG and crops the url to see what else may be there.

But none of that changes the fact that whoever most recently sends the surfer to the tour will get credit if he signs up.

I've wondered if there was a way to use "weighted" cookies, but that's a topic for another thread sometime.

Simon

[Doug E]

Interesting stuff, thanks for that Simon