Quality and Sponsors

[Boogie]

This is a post that has been a long time coming for me. I know i'm not a big name in the industry any more and I know i'm really dangling my dick above the pirranah pool when I post this kind of thing but I think it has to be said.

I've been shopping around looking at different sponsors lately. If you own a sponsor program chances are I've signed up with you at some point. I've checked most places out and I'm noticing a reoccuring theme in the industry.

The quality of your sites, your tours, your free hosted content and your interfaces are beginning to be piss poor.

Now i know this is the pot calling the kettle black. My sites are shit. Then again I've not got a reoccuring membership base turning me into a millionaire.

But if you own an affiliate/sponsorship program take the time out of your day and check for the following

1) does any of your sites have mispelling?
2) does any of your sites have broken images or links?
3) how difficult is your website to navigate for webmasters? (Hint, if it takes more than 4 clicks and and 2 windows to check your stats, that's not good.)

I can honestly say that, without a doubt, 80% of the affiliate programs out there have one or more of these issues plaguing them.

Where are your testers? Where is your feedback? How can this state exist?

I'll never mention sponsors by name here but I'd highly recommending hiring a guy to 'scrub' your system if you can afford it.. (we know you can).

Its very frustrating spending the entire day building surfer friendly sites only to find that at the end of the day one of the POTD links you've got doesnt update, or the pics are broken... that one of your tours doesnt load right in firefox... or there are mispellings at the tops of your tour pages (or worse yet "new document")


Who else is noticing this and is being put off their rockers by it?

I mean I know not every webmaster affiliate program can be as clean and easy to navigate as google, but jeez.

[[BV]]

It blows my mind how many sponsors don't even encrypt your personal data you send on their webmaster signup forms when you sign up for their program, log in, or edit stuff in the admin.

[xxxjay]

One thing that I have found is that you staff will continue increasing in size to keep a lid of the problems you have mentioned -- though, I doubt some guy roughing up the suspect is really concerned with mispellings.

[Boogie]

Hey jay.

Its true bud that the surfer probably isnt that worried about it.

I more specifically meant bad back ends for your webmaster rather than your surfer.

I'm hoping most of us work with hands. at least, a good part of the time.

[Cleo]

I've sometimes stopped using sponsors that have put up big flashy backends for us webmasters to, I guess, enjoy while trying to access them.

Just give me an easy and fast admin please.

Lately I see to be going with the smaller sponsors.

Everything working right is very important.

[dareutwo]

If I a may add a bit here Boogie.
I AM concerned about what I'm selling.
What I promote, is what I believe in.

Would you sell Kleenex if you would really love to sell Q tips?

Though you do have some VERY valid points.
I can get currently get more video content for 9 dollars a month than I can for 30.00 a month.
Not streams, downloadable.

Not going to say what I think sponsor should do. If they don't know already, oh well.

[andymike]

The points you mentioned where good food for thought. What type of program are you looking for? We have a new gay program that is doing well for webmasters. It might be something worth checking out. We offer tons of content, hosted galleries, no pop ups, and stats only takes 2 clicks to view, and that is including clicking the log in button. ;o)