Has anyone noticed a massive drop in conversions?
 

Is it just me? But for last one week, my conversions have dropped down to 1:2500 overall from the average of 1:400 before!!!
It's my first summer in adult business... so maybe it's normal for this time of the year or maybe i've been real crappy at marketing...

Wait till September hits.....

Is 1:3425 bad? :)

I've seen a few others mention this. Seems like sponsors are skimming a whole lot more in order to pay for their 2257 legal advisors. Plus, I'm betting a bunch of them are in a panic and are trying to make a last few bucks before shutting down completely. In a few months, when all of this bullshit is over, they'll wish they had stuck with business as usual.

It is summer...
You guys will probably get as much traffic just a lot less conversions. That has happened every summer since 1995. Again, colleges are closed, people are outside working in their garden, riding their bikes or doing anything other than buying porn.

My totals for June look like they are going to be just a little bit lower thant May, but nothing to be concerned about.

Same thing here, pretty much a carbon copy of May. Very eratic from day to day, but overall just another exceedingly average month.

seems like a hell of a spread, but...
 

For us it's hard to figure out right now, since we added our hfs's right in the midst of the 2257 craze and summer beginning. I can say that up until last month conversions were at 1:494 or better for our affiliates. And we get better than that on pure SE traffic. But now it's June, and now we have the link list traffic coming in from our hosted free sites, plus traffic direct to the sites' galleries from webmasters linking directly to those. So now we still have the usual affiliates in the 1:400 and better conversion ratios, but most of the new orders we're seeing from link lists are more like 1:700 to 1:1500.

So my question is, what kind of conversions are "normal" for traffic coming from people who've viewed a free site first, or who've viewed a gallery from a site? Is the kind of spread we're seeing what we should expect?

Simon

Sales are pretty much the same for all of my stuff including the tranny site that I run. Actual payments received for this month are the best so far this year.

yep i noticed a bit summer slow down , i quess kids of out school and beaches are full with bitches :) abviously people will masturbate much less :(

Cleo,
June was actually pretty good to me too until maybe last monday. Before that, other than one debacle where I sent 15k for 7 sales, I was actually converting pretty good. Maybe the sites I picked to promote this week were overexposed or something... but then my SE traffic hasn't converted well either and I'd rather not get into the TGP traffic lol. For the first time since I've been submitting galleries, I've had to say HOLY CRAP :!!!
UW... man I sure hope what you said ain't true! I'd rather believe that I screwed up my landing pages.
Jim - you just gave me a new marketing idea... It's summer, don't waste hours searching for free porn... buy it and then go out and play lol Or maybe time to get back to dating sites!!
Simon - a more regular submitter might give you a better idea but for me, whenever I do make and submit a free site, it usually converts 1:250-1:300 specially from Linkorama, Tommy's and penis bot traffic. But if your free hosted sites are like free hosted sites from most other sponsors... similar design, not much thought into which parts of videos/pics you put on the site, then conversions are bound to drop. My best conversions come from movie sites where only the last movie clip has any action and the first three are more like striptease, babe introducing herself or playing around.

Was having best month so far (haven't been around long) until the 15th, then I have sucked severely :(

Not sure whether this meant I should change my marketing techniques(not that I have any) or change what I am doing.

I guess I will just run with "Yeah my conversions are down, you know the summer thingy" :D

I have noticed a drop with my main $$$ site. It is running about half of what it was 2 months ago. |cry|

Oops, I meant not change what I am doing

blasted mistakes ;)

The last 7 - 10 days has been pretty bleak, sales have really dropped off where traffic has not. Interestingly, on two sponsors that show "sales rank" my position has not greatly changed with the drop in sales, which tells me that EVERYONE would have seen the same drop in sales in those programs.

As Jim said, some of it is certainly the summer drop off.

However, some sponsors have either pulled sites, are redirecting traffic, or have redesigned tours in a hurry. Redirections and such are a pain, you send a guy expecting "this" and he gets "that". More than likely he isn't a buyer for "that" so you just wasted a click. The new tours are a really big issue as well, as some have gone totally softcore, and others are using designs that have not been completely tested. Conversions drop, and away we go.

I saw better sales yesterday, and today so far isn't terrible, but that is normal summer action as well.

Oh well. Only 2 more months until school starts again. :)

Alex

Fortunately, my sales are better than ever. But I heavily promote a 100% european based sponsor, so maybe that helps too. I think all of the factors that go into sales ratios make it hard, if not impossible sometimes, to figure out exactly what is happening when they go up and down.

I can answer that one in my case. Almost 100% of my traffic is either straight from my link list and the HFS on it or from free sites I've built, and my average conversions (per unique) across the board including all sponsors and traffic sources look like this for the year:

Jan 1:1,004 (the month after Xmas shopping)
Feb 1:965
Mar 1:748
Apr 1:473
May 1:869
Jun 1:841
Fuck I love statsremote :)

So for me June is distinctly average as well so far, and though I won't claim that these are the type of conversions everyone will see with LL traffic, I be they're somewhere in the ballpark since I get free site traffic from other LLs as well.

My traffic is also down a bit as well, since the last G update fucked me pretty hard and Y picked up most of the slack but not all of it.

Well as far as sales go im having my best month ever, but this is my first month full time since back in feb, but overall converstions are down quite a bit, one sponser which i was doing 1:250 has dropped to 1:2000 for june but generally i think im down about 25% overall for conversions

Back to school- the season of pantyhose site success - All the college boys missing their mommy, and with shiny new plastic to blow their student loans :D

Halle-fucking-lujah! :D

And before that, exactly the same in the porn video Biz Every year since 1985. The graph looked the same. early spring, rise, full summer; steady decline, september, even more nose dive, october, rapid recovery.
(In PA anyhow....)

Yeah, the first 4 days of this week were my worst this year but this weekend everything picked up. I have no doubt the summer slow down is here. Hang in there people.

yep now is the time to break the savings and lay down on some tai beach and just....... :)

From the sponsor side of things Ive noticed a massive reduction in overall traffic from affilaites over the last 2 weeks. GonZobucks.com is down to a quarter of its traffic from last week and depraveddollars.com is down by 25%.

If you dont send it we cant convert it. Personally if I were affiliates with this information Id be ramping up my traffic to both programs. This means a less saturation to surfers... kick it up a notch!

There's something fishy going on - and it's got nothing to do with my wife's tights.

Khmmm,
hey guys dont forget that this was TOP NEWS last week...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/06/....ap/index.html

You read my mind Plumster. Ive noticed a big drop, but what I do get is better than nothing. Every sale is a bit more in my pocket...

Tis the season to push the stuff they can't find at the beach.

eman - Im with ya on this one - my conversions have stayed relatively the same (accounting for summer slowdown which I have charted for the last 5 years) with most sponsors. There are at least 5 sponsors Ive been watching playing the "allow sales on this day of the week" and they are some rather large sponsors. Im not going to name names yet as we are just finishing up a test signup program and will have to notify the sponsors, but I will guarantee you that there are some that are not showing affiliates every sale they are making - and Ill be the exception and say that there are also some Nats sponsors doing it - although I realize they cant skim - they can turn off sales for a particular affiliate so no sponsor in this group will be getting sales here in a few more weeks.

I'd be very interested in the results of your tests Linkster...I've noticed a couple sponsors in particular had conversions drop to damn near nothing when they were extremely stable and consistent for a long time.

My overall conversions are stable, but the significant change between April and May was the result of a couple large programs.

If there comes a time when you're willing to privately release results please put me on the list :)

My conversions have gone to crap, but mostly site that use CCBill. Like 1:2500.

Yes, conversions suck right now but I expected it...it's summer! My worst last week was a spanking site I promote. Sent 5200 hits with 1 sale. Ouch! |cry|

Hi e-man! :) Succinct and to the point mate! - Sales are squealing like a stuck pig at the mo - although I have a few sponsors who are holding their own quite nicely.

reasons? Summer - possably, although for the last 2 years I saw an increase in sales during the summer months - strange but true :/

2257 - I think there are some sponsors out there who are going down in flames - we will see who when the dust settles - choose them carefully right now - the issue Rawalex brought up regarding promo material in another thread is one good indicator. Stay away from those in 'headless chicken' mode!

Prognosis? - Things are going to pick up real nice when the summer is through - I feel it in my bones :-)

Build - build - build!

by the way - do I need an account for subbing to |cool| hadafew |cool|

Cheers!

PP

Man the first 2 weeks of june was so so considering I am not that old in this biz(almost 2 years) and the 3rd week was really dead for sales but starting last friday and still going strong on a good sales run on both my LL and old free sites/galleries - one example outback cash I built 12 - 15 free sites maybe and they are drawing almost prue yahoo traffic & LL and 4 sales this period - 2 full 2 trials 1/92 thats the best I've seen them convert and its summer.. with that amount of sites on the average I get a few every month..

I've found (good for new people) from watching things is that you have to have some kind of hub be it a small LL or tgp and just bite the bullet and stay with it and keep updating it and grow bookmarkers and draw even a small amout of SE traffic to keep coming back to join your pay sites.. and on free sites is to make them good friendly se sites... I'd trade 50 throw away free sites for 10 good built se sites that draw small amounts of prue trageted se traffic and I'll take yahoo and jeeves and msn any day over google traffic.. IMO

Well I've got Nasty Dollars at 1:3420 for May 1st thru today, when the prior 2 months showed 1:730. In fact I've not made a sale with them for about 6 weeks now :( I don't push them heavily, but damn, that's a difference in numbers.

me 2

I only buy the summer slowdown thing to a degree...I've been doing this quite awhile and this month, without a doubt, is the absolute worst month I've ever had in many years.

Maybe that cnn article that was mentioned earlier in this thread had at least something to do with it...people got scared into not pulling the card out for fear of their info being stolen.

2257 is most likely affecting things in one way or the other. I bet at least a few sponsors probably assume they will be gone in two months after the new laws go into effect, so why not shave the fuck out of everyone's sales right now....then 2 months down the road, cash in when the injunction has expired and just close the program.

Or maybe the processors are scrubbing harder.

Who knows |shocking|

One long term sponsor company (they have been around for at least 6 years) has a cycle: You sell well int he last couple of days for the month, again for the first couple of days of the month, and the rest of the month is absolutely sucks ass.

Every month since, well, I won't say how long, that would give it all away.

I don't actively promote them anymore, if I find stuff when cleaning it gets removed.

The games that are played. :(

Alex

Alex - Im seeing that game played on a few other sponsors as well - although Im finding that they do it based on the day of the week for some affiliates - and on the day of the month for others - its a real shame - but they will be exposed - and it will be just dues when they get called on it

I had thought like many that it was based on a spending cycle for surfers - but I had too many outlyers with sponsors that didnt play the game - its the good thing with having such a pool of people here to use for historical records

I really hate these shaving fucking crooks. I bet I can guess at least one or two of those sponsors you speak of. But I won't say it here.