When You join a program...
 

Ok I have an earnest question for everyone here who joins programs as an affiliate and starts promoting that programs sites...
Do you use real information when you join a program?

No no, wait now, hear me out please. This is an honest question and not the beginning of some sort of rant. I know just about everyone uses their own websites when asked for a URL in the application. I figure that the epassporte info or mailing address is correct (depending on how the payout is going to be) but the question lies in the e mail addy's and ICQ#'s about a week and a half ago I sent out, from my own outlook account (not using a mass mailer but one at a time) over 700 e mails to some of our affiliates. Not one reply and several bounced back |banghead|
I have also tried to contact many affiliates via there ICQ#'s, which i will admit, I have had more success with, but not nearly the success I would hope for. How is an eager lil affiliate manager going to be able to open a dialog with the partners of his program if there is no way to contact them.... seriously. This is not spam, but an expression of frustration here, I REALLY.... HONESTLY want to make our program the best it can be and I need to talk to those people who are out there every day pushing sites and making bank to talk to me and tell me how to improve our program that they have already signed up for. So if anyone can shed some light on this, I would be extremely appreciative. no I am serious. If your an affiliate of our program I really DO want to hear from you.


Jim

A news letter with new links (including my code) will usually get me to read the entire letter :)

thanks Surfn.. yup, we do that already. :D


Jim

Some people may have changed emails or changed ICQ. Or on ICQ they are ignoring you.

Yeah ICQ is one of those funny things ya know. almost everyone uses it and I have been using it since i think 98a and after awhile i started to notice conversations that went like this
person1: So what did i do wrong?
person2: what are you talking about?
person1: your ignoring me
person2: no i'm not
person1: I sent you a message last week when you were offline and you you never replied to me... I have seen you on line several times since then.
person2: I never got a message from you
person1: Yes you did

and so on, ICQ isnt that reliable so a lot of the time i wonder if people are even getting my messages. I definitely prefer e mail... but even that has problems occasionally.


Jim

I'm not signed up with your program yet :D But always use complete and accurate information when signing up with new programs. Rather silly not to use correct information...you never know when there may be a change that requires the program be able to contact you.

I generally change my ISP several times a year, a casualty of moving to different areas for longer term contracts. Since I don't always manage to change all the contact info I sometimes get disconnected from the program when they send stuff(confirmation emails,etc.) to the old email. I started to route everything through domain emails nowadays though.

Also all your email must indicate the program name, or I will just dump them automatically.

My ICQ is always turned off as my nick on ICQ is "Tickler" which draws 100s of requests per day. I only use it when I want to start a outbound conversation myself.

I am signed up to you, but I don't remember seeing a mail from you other than the regular newsletters.
If it was sent from a different domain than the newsletter it could be that it got caught in the spam filter.

Tickler, Thanks for the heads up. I try to include something that says our program name but sometimes i forget, I sent an e mail today to a webmaster that just joined and the subject line was something like 'Hi from SexyCityJim' I wonder if that qualifies heh heh

Jim

Darn! Thanks swedguy for the heads up. I sent a bunch of ICQ messages (you know, the less then personal mass massaging) and then to everyone that I didnt have an ICQ# for a sent an e mail. It took several hours to send them all and at one point I had about 200 stuck in my outbox, but they eventually worked their way out :D
all e mails that come from me will come from rogertaft@ the same as the newsletters.|noclue|

Jim

Since my ICQ is in the admin, that could explain why I didn't get a mail. But I never got an ICQ message either ;)

I have wrapped all of my fingers in duct tape to prevent me from asking 'why not?' and spamming like krazy! LOL

Jim

|banghead|
now ya see that?
|banghead|
they don't have a smilie that shows me jumping off a bridge but thats just nuts! I wonder how many other people arent receiving my charming nuggets of prose?
and I was charming too darn it |banghead|
well swedguy, if you have any questions, comments, complaints, suggestions or anything. you have my contact info... hit me with it. I will be happy to do what I can


Jim

The only time I have ever replied to a newsletter was when a program was pushing that fucked-up seudo board SponsorShat in their newsletter. I whipped off a quick note informing them they are a bunch fucktards. Otherwise, I can't think of reason to reply. Plus, (assuming other people function similarly to me) I sign up to a lot of sponsors; more than I could ever hope to promote. I stumble on a nice tour or something which leads to me the sponsor, I sign up, then never go back because I can't remember why I signed up.

Looking forward to your next love poems ;)

Jim... we rarely get more than a couple replies to the newsletters we send out, unless we say something really stupid or stick in some bad urls. ;)

I see that about 10% of our affiliate emails go bad within the first 90 days after signup. Seems that some people either don't last long in the biz or maybe don't really care about getting mailings. Around 20% will go bad after a year. Usually those are never the top producers. Funny how that works. :)

Simon

Hi Simon, and thanks for replying (good looking program and great looking site BTW). Yeah I am not too concerned about the newsletters. Although I think they are important for getting our freshest galleries out there to be used and we do put news in them. I am more concerned about when I am actually sending an individual e mail to webmasters that have signed up you know? Those e mails are important to me and I'd like to think that they are at least being seen.
I think part of the problem may be past abuse of webmaster lists by other programs in the past. Now affiliates might just auto delete something because it smells like spam, when it might have some useful info. I wish there was a way to seperate that kind of thing, the wheat from the chaff, but i dont think there is :)

Jim

That sounds like a huge pain man. And I do personally use my real information, email, ICQ and everything as well. There HAVE been times I've forgotten to update the email but usually no longer than a month or two before I remember. It sounds like your affiliates are just plain busy or too lazy to fix their info!

Congratulations on the restraint Jim |thumb

Just haven't gotten there yet...but you're on my list :D

I have found that more programs these days are requiring that the email address be verified before the partner account is activated. I think this is a very good way to up your acceptance levels on your partner emails, and also to make sure that you are not getting duplicate accounts and such.

I get anywhere from 3 to 10 sponsor emails per day. Also, the email used to sign up to sponsor sites often seems to end up in the hands of spammers and other marketing companies without my permission. I filter, but some people will put in spam arrest or similar, which will mean your stuff doesn't get through.

It isn't easy.

Alex

I use my real email when I sign up for programs, and I try to always remember to go into spam arrest, and authorize that domain, but sometimes I don't remember, and letters would get caught in a spam filter in that case.

Do you get emails back to an address, so that if something like that happend, you could click on a link and confirm yourself? (which is what spam arrest sends).

I agree with the newsletter, but even those I don't always read, depends on how much I'm promoting the sponsor, I'm with Useless, I've signed up for a LOT of sponsors that I never do anything with, then a few I do a lot with.

I'm another that has also never heard of your program, if you guys are making posts (not spammy but contributing, not everyone reads the spam forums) you also might get people getting to know your name and maybe more apt to ask questions. Or if you advertise on boards and can post announcements on main sections, that would get you out there where affiliates and non-affiliates can comment.

I don't run a board, I'm not trying to solicit biz, lol but on this board for instance, when they have announcements from different sponsors, I do tend to always read those. Just a thought.

I sign up with a lot of sponsors, often on the spur of the moment, and many of them I don't use. But I always give accurate, up to date info. there's no reason not to.
I'm not signed up with you Jim, but now I'm going to have a look. Brace yourself!
Cheers |waves|

wow, lots of great relies!
MrYum... thank you, sometimes it is very difficult for me to prevent myself from 'talking up' our program. unfortunately, thats also spam LOL I am coming to grips with that :D & I am very glad we are on your list to look at
RawAlex... I know all about the spam problem with affiliate e mail addresses. I was on another board and saw one guy accusing another of hacking into the database of sponsors for their webmaster e mails... I don't know how likely it is, but I know we have no use to sell ours to anyone. & I will gladly verify for spamarrest when i get that mail.
RedCherry.... I do make the occasional 'announcement post' on boards that I frequent. However, that never the only posts I make. For instance here at GG&J I signed up here (with a different nick) 4 days before they opened the site and have sporadically posting here for all that time. I also post on about 2 other boards, maybe 3 but even there I try to add more substance then just the drive by look at my stuff type posts. Thats why I am a member at so few. I read the forums, i read threads, and i generally dont reply unless I have something to add to it other then 'LOL' or 'spam spam spam spam' heh heh
japamor... Thats excellent! I look forward to it. I hope we have content that will work well with your traffic :)

Jim

Yeah, I always use correct information (although the one that asks for my url is a bit useless, as it could be any one of 20 or so LOL). I was running a server-side spam filter pretty damn hard there for a while, and missed LOADS of emails (I think it's even blocking ccbill signup notification emails now :( ) but -- 99% of the emails i get from sponsors are "5,000 New FHGs Added!" and then proceed to list all 5,000 with my code. Having absolutely no use for FHGs -- DELETE. (seriously, do these make anyone money except the top 50 / high traffic TGPs anyway?) After a few too many "Look we've added another 18 billion FHGs" emails, I'll typically opt-out of the mailings if that option is available.

What I'd rather see is a more robust solution like many mainstream newsletter publishers are using. On sign up for a program, offer checkboxes for the newsletter content.

Here's what mine would look like ;)

[x] New Content Addition Notifications
[ ] New FHG/HFS Addition Notifications
[x] New Paysite Additions
etc...

Now THAT would be handy ;) bigass lists of fhgs? no thanks ;)

heh heh... guilty as charged. I always felt that delivering the FHGs/HFSs directly to the affiliate was a convenient way for them to get the materials they needed and maybe save them a step or two. Now while I will admit that our weekly newsletter do list all of the new galleries and freesites we are releasing that week, I also take the opportunity to relay any important news or information about the program at the top of the newsletter.
I hope not to many have opted out of ours because they will be missing important information that we send out from time to time :)
Since our newsletter is pretty much created by hand by me (and sent out via script) it would be very difficult (I dont know how we could do it) to customize the newsletter for each webmaster. But that is an outstanding idea. I will look into it.


Jim

I used to have a script........... LMAO

Which *might* be buried deep in the bowels of my server in the "stuff I haven't touched in 3 years" folder hehe

Or better yet, in this day and age of tightly ratcheted down spam filtering and lack of email trust, why aren't more sponsors publishing thier site news as an RSS Feed that I can just slap into my RSS Reader? ;)

the script in question is MPA3, i aint burrying that anywhere.

Jim

LOL, no i meant I used to use a separate newsletter script that did what i'm suggesting, but it's likely to take me 3 days to find it on my server ;)

|bow| OHHHHHHHhhhhhhh *slaps head*
well i will look into it, I will see if one of our programmers can write one that will work with MPA, I think it is a good idea if MPA gives us the encrypted parts we need to write it


Jim