question about promo tools
 

Do you think promo tools proposed by programs are enough diversified?

Hi Celine |waves| welcome to the board :)

Short answer to your question...NO

hehe, thanks! Then short question: what do you miss?

It varies from program to program...

I think it varies from webmaster to webmaster - of course, the more promo tools you offer the webmasters, the better the odds of you having what they need for that particular project.

I like programs that offer hosted free sites, but I'd bet that only 1% of the programs out there are offering them these days (and the number of programs that offer decent ones is about .5% - LOL)

You can't make everyone happy, but you can try :)

I would agree on the hosted free sites - most of the programs out there are filling their members area with hosted galleries for the tgps - and forgetting that the LLs are such a great source of traffic - and most of us list HFS's so it would be to the programs benefit to look at them - definitely another source of income. Seems the smaller programs are the ones that realize this so far - but the bigger ones focus only on the tgps

Hm... interesting point... Sorry, Linkster, what do you mean by 'HF', please ?

Sorry - hosted free sites - sponsors use them as well as hosted galleries as promo tools
hosted free sites are just a free site that a LL would list with a warning page, main page and two galleries (total 20 pics)
The sponsor hosts it just like a hosted gallery - and allow the LL owners to insert their aff ID using php or coding to pass through the hosted free site.

It amazes me of how many dont have hosted free sites time to get on the wave folks :)

Wow great thread. We are working on our sponsor program right now I am going to definatly add FHS for LL wms. When I am pushing sponsors myself, I only do TGP so I never thought about the lack of FHS out there. Thanks for the insight on this. Great Post!

I heard ya ;) We're going to add a bunch in TotemCash. We'll post here when it's ready.

And another sponsor to sign up with :D

Hmm, I see... but it means you got a url that redirect to a site enterely hosted by the program?

Could someone from Totemcash please contact me?

You do not seem to be getting my messages.

ICQ: 121018947

That's something you guys need to work on. I tried contacting you many times with no response at all. Granted this was last year, maybe things have changed since then.

Maybe my ICQ is acting up? Surely they wouldn't just ignore their affiliates?

I think I used to have someone there on my ICQ, and I would always see them online, but no one would ever answer. I don't know if it's their ICQ settings which don't allow them to see or perhaps they are just to busy.
Sponsors have different ways of dealing with affiliates. I have had many never reply to emails sent to them. I don't mind that since I immediately choose not to promote them, and move on to the next sponsor out there.

very sad to read you can't contact me... it is the first time I hear this...

Celine, I would have told you but I couldn't contact you to let you know! |jester|

Hopefully you got that worked out, I am sure it wasn't intentional so I have nothing bad to say about that, I just thought I would mention it since the same thing happened to me.

:( Feel very sad about that... I answer all messages I get here, by icq, email, etc... people usually say we take good care of our contacts...

Yes :) Just like hosted galleries that are made for people with TGP's, a few programs are now offering hosted free sites for people with Link Lists - here's an example of one from KatCash:
http://www.katvixen.com/HFS/massive_...its.php?256287

Thanks, Greeguy, I see what you mean, now... well, should not be difficult to do... we'll add it to tcash shortly...

I often try to find new tools to help our partners... already did a 'pic of the day' and put our wallpapers at our affiliates' disposal, it worked very well...

Just wanted to say that I really like the POTD from Totem Cash (and a few others) that allow me to show a thumb of the pic on my page. This works really well for my hub as it gives me a little more "sticky" content. I would like to see more sponsors doing that.

Like everyone has said it really varies from sponsor to sponsor. The two things that most affects whether or not I promote a sponsor are banner diversity/design and how user friendly their webmaster section is. And I really love it when sponsors email me when they add new hosted sites since I generally dont spend a lot of time browsing my lesser used sponsors sites.

Also the wallpapers from Totem Cash are excellent quality and I actually have one on my computer now. Just wanted to throw that out there :)

Yep, the Pic of the Day does work very well, for direct and indirect sales, as well as the wallpapers...

These klind of tools are great 'cause they reinforce the product recognition and make surfers more easely click & buy via banners...

Thanks for the nice words about the wallpapers, I will let Gerald (our art designer) know!


ex of POD : http://www.lesbian-series.com/index.php
(+ wallpaper in pop up)

Following is what seems to work for me:

1. Free Hosted Galleries: Make sure that the thumbs are decent sized, the galleries sell the site, and the pics are of decent resolution (I never get conversions from galleries with shitty pics). Also, do not 404 redirect the galleries to anyhting other than a blank page or figure out a way to carry my affiliate code over to that page. When you do static galleries (much more important than rotating galleries IMO), do not change them. We put them in a db with specific descriptions. If they change all the time, we simply delete them from our db as it is too much work to manage constant changes (in content, urls, codes, etc)

2. Downloadabe Galleries: If you don't offer FHG, downloadable galleries are ok too. If you do offer both, don't use the same content on both and vary the templates a little. Otherwise, the same suggestions apply here that apply to FHGs.

3. Free Content: Make the sets decent sized (16 to 20 pics), make certain they are 800x600 at least (larger is better), and make sure that you use at least some different content than is being listed on your FHGs. If you offer FHGs and free content, there is very little to be gained by having the same content in both areas. If I list your FHGs, there is no reason for me to list either submitted galleries with your content or make my own. For niche sites where I am listing everything out there, offering both FHGs and content that are identical does not optimize your exposure.

4. Good Artwork: give me logos, selling bullets with logos, and standard sized banners. Logos and basic artwork make gallery/site building a breeze and are easy to create and offer. Standard sized banners are critical for people who use banner serrvers and rotate ads. 468x60 and 468x80 are key. But also standard vertical sizes and blocks are good too.

5. Free Hosted Sites: They server a different traffic market.

6. Give me a good preview prior to signing up with your program. The most egregious I have found will claim to have FHG's and offer one rotating gallery per site. I want to see examples of all of your tools. Otherwise, I will sign up, be disappointed by the tools, and never promote the proggie.

7. Understand your market and where the traffic comes from. Most of us in the biz awhile make more money with less raw traffic than some of the less experienced folk because we know how to target traffic. Make sure you understand the niche you are in and how it is promoted in the biz. For example, I do alot of soft fetish, and people who like babes in stockings are different than people who like milf's panythose. Yet, I see one major sponsor who just rotated all the content on their hosted galleries in this niche without regard to micro-niche. Hey, it caused me to reconsider the sponsor, look closely at conversions on page views rather than clicks, and realize this sponsor really didn't understand their niche although they had a ton of sites in it. Conversions per page view were crap and all their promo tools got deleted from my dbs. Understand your niches, the traffic structure, and build targeted tools.

Whatever you do, emphasize the quality and uniqueness of your sites. High quality tools result in high quality presentations result in better conversions. I would take 10 well done galleries over 200 shit galleries any day, and sell a hell of alot more memberships that way too!

|thumb I agree!
AND: don't use old content on hosted or downloadable galleries - can't sell a site with content found on TGPs for a year or more!

|thumb I agree! Most webmasters will re-size and re-compress content as they see fit, and I rather start from a 1024 px pic then a grainy 800 px pic. And for postings at thumb tgps I need a clear picture to get a decent thumb done.

Personally I prefer larger sets of free content (but am satisfied with -let's say- 40 pictures!) for 2 reasons: if you use it for a free (linklist) site you need at least 24 pictures, and it gives me the opportunity to pick out a personal set which, combined with my own lay-out, might look completely different to what somebody else is making from the same set. I used to be rather sucessful doing this with Sunnydollar's larger sets.

|thumb I agree!
I repeat this all the time: we need logos! Even information on fonts used in graphics would be helpful! I often waste hours trying to re-create the feel of a particular tour in my galleries. With logos and the correct font it would be done in minutes (and I could make another 2 gallery templates in the same time).

|thumb I agree!
another thing I like to add: keep your tools- and stats pages simple! You impress us webmasters more with decent conversions than with flash and terrible navigation on a webmaster page! (Yes - Silvercash comes to mind)
By example: I still like to download/save all relavant link codes at once, so that I have fast and easy access to them when I'm offline. During summer I might be actually making galleries on a Notebook away from my desk - and still need codes to finish my work...

Great reply.

Picking and choosing from whitey's great post:

YES! Word on whole word bread with a side of word. I've been filling up my banner ads program and it just boggles my mind how many sponsors have few, if any, standard-sized ads. Most frustrating is running into a batch of ads, say, 470 x 80. Yes, they look about the same, but my program doesn't care. It wants standards, dammit! You simply must offer 120x60, 468x60 and 468x80. 200x300 is nice, too - those fit handily in sidebars.

And like George TH said, simply naming the fonts used in logos would be brilliant. I'm a bit anal about trying to at least mimic, if not mirror, the site I'm promoting. I will not confess how much time I've spend searching for just the right font. (Of course, fonts are like crack to me, so it's not the worst thing to have to do, but still...)

Yes, please.

I will add: Softcore banners, please. Especially with the new 2257 regs still up in the air. Yes, you can promote hardcore sites with softcore banners! You've hired a creative team; demand a little creativity! Example: Cumshot site. Show me a pretty, fresh face with some text along the lines of "How'd you like to see her covered in your cum?" *CLICK* Reality sites: I don't need to see the final frame in the banner. Try a little teasing, for cryin' out loud.

Forgive the rant - I've been revamping my banner database and I'm just boggled by how many sites simply have NO softcore banners. None, zero, zed, zilch, nada. While others have a plethora. To those of you who do: Thank you a bazillion times.

Another thing - somewhere in your promo tools, please provide a quick, concise paragraph describing your sites' focus. (MaxCash used to be really good about this.) Maybe you have three teen sites. Teen Sex, Teen Babes, and Teen Hotties, for example. Maybe Teen Sex is actually an amateur site, Teen Babes is hardcore teens, and Teen Hotties is, I dunno, let's say sorority girls. Please don't make me guess. Tell me. No, I'm not stupid - I'm busy. I'm not asking you to write my descriptions for me (although that WOULD be nice...) but please, at least give me something to go on.

Finally, again following on something George TH said - I don't care how slick and fancy your webmaster interface is, if I can't easily get what I need. Several big sites are using programs that force you to drill down to the exact, specific niche, site, and banner you want. I would much rather have at least the OPTION of looking at all the banners for any given site and downloading them at my leisure.

And...I think that's enough ranting for now. Data entry has warped my tender little brain.

Wow, all this is soooo interesting! I wish I could have had this conversation earlier... All your suggestions will be taken into account!

"quality, diversity, speed & simplicity"

One question that comes to my mind: would you be interesting in having a building system allowing you to create your own tools, a "gallery building system", for instance, where to choose your template and pics to build your own customed galleries and/or sites?

No

Celine - my opinion of course - but dont have a "building system" as it just leads to cheaters that use that to build their submits - and they all get declined. For the WMs that build everyday - the other things like logos, premade free sites and galleries and simple to use interfaces for linking codes and banners (with the option to buld download definitely) are much more important to the WMs that are going to make you money :)

Thank you for your precious answers & suggestions! :)

Talking about free content, I wish the minimum of pics in one set is 20.

We who build only free sites, no galleries, can't use 16 pics set.

I have many times used two sets, 10 pics of each and got listed, but sets with 20 pics is much better.

Also, if set have 30 or 50 pics or even more webmasters can choose the 20 they want and so more webmasters get listed with pics of same set.

And have the content all the same width & height - nothing makes building a free site or gallery harder than having the 1st pic at 640x480, the next 3 at 480x640, the next 4 at 640x480......

Celine,

My apologies.

It seems that ICQ / AOL are having server side issues, which is the reason I couldn't contact you or Richard yesterday.

|thumb Great point! - it saves at least the tedious work of making thumbs manually to get around this problem (like with square thumbs). All these little things some sponsors don't know about... LOL!

This will be announced int he news tomorrow, but Celine wanted me to give all of you a head start :)
********


Subject : FHG script export available at Totemcash

"Further several discussions with webmasters, we developped a script to allow you to export a full list of FHG in a few clicks (nearly 400 galleries available)...

The script we built includes the URL, # pics, short description, long description & model name.
It simply creates a .txt file to save on your computer.
You can find it in the "hosted photo galleries" section of our marketing tools.

We also launched a new gallery template to reinforce conversion ratios... what do you think of it?
http://banners.toteme.com/Galleries_....php?ids=20645

Any comments or suggestions?

Celine

This is an amazing eye opener and plenty of great suggestions. We will get this going for Homegrown asap too.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Any hosted movie galleries?

This is so great. It could not have come at a better time for me as I am in the middle of re-doing my program. I have asked some of my affiliates what they want/need and it is always the same blank stare. This is really good information, thank you!|thumb