Stats for Afiliates and Question

[UncutBucksMike]

OK, I'm looking for some feedback on how to attract more affiliates. We currently have 214 affiliates and only a handfull are actually sending traffic (which I know is typical). I have completely redone UncutBucks and set up all the tools that I could think of: MOTD and POTD with multiple thumbnail sizes. FHG's (both 50+ movie and 50+ pic) with multiple thumbnail and description sizes. Zipped content sets (both 50+ movie and 50+ pic). Hosted Blog and RSS feed. We send out newsletters to affiliates roughly every 2 weeks. We tried running a bonus promotion in March.

As far as the site, we have worked hard to build a solid members area and have recently gone to High Def Videos and have always provided Hi Res (2302x1536) Pics. We do regular live cam shows, provide live 24/7 voyeur cams as well as other houses in the network, do multiple updates per week, and provide additional leeased feeds. Reviews done on the site have been great. We received an 83.6 from TheBestPorn, 4.1 from PornInspector and 9.1 from HonestPornReviews.

For the affiliates who do send traffic, since February we have converted at 1:796 uniques. With the majority of it being TGP traffic. Our 10 best converting affiliates are doing better than 1:400.




What do we need to do to attract more affiliates? We are a CCBill program, so some will say that is the issue, but we didn't see a big improvement when we were in a NATS program. I know that it takes time to build, but I would like to know what elements are missing in your opinion. And If after looking you don't see anything missing, feel free to sign up LOL.

Thanks for your time,
Mike

[Useless]

You took that damned link to CamZ off your tour. Thank you.

As far as being a CCBill sponsor, many of us prefer that over, cough, certain 3rd party stats scripts.

[UncutBucksMike]

Yep, I think I have a true leak free tour now. No email collection, no stores, friends, etc. I am trying to give affiliates a tour that they want. You know we used to live upstate as well near Binghamton. So you gonna send a former fellow Empire Stater mad traffic, lmao.

[Allfetish]

You seem very honest and that is a HUGE plus. You also do have some pretty good content and resources availible for promotion. That's great because a lot of sponsors skimp on that or obviously do not know what they are doing in making content availible.

I'd say one thing might be the $25 PPS. Personally I like at least $30 for PPS. I do not know how realistic that is for you, though. But if you could get to that, I bet it would help a bit and would make for some good PR too.

The whole CCBILL thing -- I usually shy away from them because of certain things I have heard and seen over the years. But this is only my personal choice.

Good luck!

[walrus]

I know I'm going against the grain but.... lose the hosted blog / rss feeds. First a blog / feed that is updated 3 times in the last month is pretty much useless but for a small program really developing the tool into something useful is more work than it is worth.

Spend your time developing tools that can help everyone....including bloggers.

I'd love to see an erotic story with each content zip. One that works with the content. I'll send you 10x the amount of traffic from a tool like this than I currently do using your hosted blog and feed put together.

[UncutBucksMike]

Allfetish, thanks for checking out the site. Unfortunately, $30 PPS isn't workable for us. The only way we could do that would be to do some sort of skimming or to upsell surfers to death. Neither of which is something we will do. Being honest can be a pain in the butt sometimes LOL.

Walrus, I apologize for the recent lack of updates in the blog. I have been teaching Jen to do galleries, etc. and she slacked on the blog. I'll have to get out the paddle and do some spanking... that could be some nice galleries LOL.
As far as the stories, did you notice that there is a story associated with most (it should be all, but Jen and her slacking LOL) sets out there. If you would take a look at these and see if these would work for you. If it does, I could go back and add these to each of the content zips.

Thanks,
Mike

[Useless]

Originally Posted by Allfetish

The whole CCBILL thing -- I usually shy away from them because of certain things I have heard and seen over the years.

What have you heard? That they've paid on time, week after week, year after year?

Most sponsors who you use 3rd party affiliate back-ends use CCBill as a processor if not their PRIMARY processor. So whether you know it or not, you're getting paid by CCBill.

[emmanuelle]

Originally Posted by UncutBucksMike

What do we need to do to attract more affiliates?

Mike- I think you might have a minor PR problem. I know that a lot of people still associate you guys with your former program and don't know that you've made the move to independence. You might spend some time on making that fact better known. Also, you might try to work with them by helping them to change their links, something I know affiliates get tired of doing every time someone changes their program scheme.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by UncutBucksMike

Walrus, I apologize for the recent lack of updates in the blog. I have been teaching Jen to do galleries, etc. and she slacked on the blog. I'll have to get out the paddle and do some spanking... that could be some nice galleries LOL.
As far as the stories, did you notice that there is a story associated with most (it should be all, but Jen and her slacking LOL) sets out there. If you would take a look at these and see if these would work for you. If it does, I could go back and add these to each of the content zips.

Thanks,
Mike

I'll have to check the story thing out...perhaps I just downloaded the wrong zip at the time or am blind and missed the story that went along with the zip.

Personally, and I am a blogger, I think feeds are way over-rated something every blogger seems to want but at the end of the day they are not really worth the effort for a small program.

[UncutBucksMike]

Originally Posted by emmanuelle

Mike- I think you might have a minor PR problem. I know that a lot of people still associate you guys with your former program and don't know that you've made the move to independence. You might spend some time on making that fact better known. Also, you might try to work with them by helping them to change their links, something I know affiliates get tired of doing every time someone changes their program scheme.

Emmanuelle,
We have tried to address that issue whenever we can. Unfortunately, we did not have access to the affiliates who were promoting us when we were with SammySmack, and therefore could not notify them. I tried to do searches to find the ones that I could and I did notify all the affiliates that we took to their program to get them the heads up on the change before it occurred. I even went so far as to post on a number of boards as the change became eminent to explain that the traffic they were sending would be redirected to a different site. When we have come across affiliates that had issues, we have worked with them to help change anything that will make the transition easier. If you look at some of the other boards, you will see some of these threads floating around.
It is difficult to try and overcome these kind of issues, and many will try and blame the girl for "flaking out". In business relationships things often just don't work out, and our two primary concerns during these transitions was to protect the members from losing access and to insure that affiliates would continue to get credit for their traffic.

Thanks,
Mike

[UncutBucksMike]

Originally Posted by walrus

I'll have to check the story thing out...perhaps I just downloaded the wrong zip at the time or am blind and missed the story that went along with the zip.

Personally, and I am a blogger, I think feeds are way over-rated something every blogger seems to want but at the end of the day they are not really worth the effort for a small program.

Walrus,
Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. The story is not currently in the zip, it is displayed on UncutBucks when you look at which content zips you want to download. If that story looks like what you need, I'll go back throught the existing zips and add it to them.

Sorry for the confusion,
Mike

[walrus]

I should learn to pay more attention. My fault. I can work with it the way it is no problem

[Jel]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

What have you heard? That they've paid on time, week after week, year after year?

Most sponsors who you use 3rd party affiliate back-ends use CCBill as a processor if not their PRIMARY processor. So whether you know it or not, you're getting paid by CCBill.

I'm not particularly knowledgeable on these things the way others may be, so bear that in mind when reading this From my understanding ccbill have tracking issues on the part of the affiliate. So while payments get processed on ccbill programs for the program owner, sales go amiss for the referring affiliate. From what I recall, the ampersand in the aff code, pointed out a while ago I think by Toby in another thread, and the various errors (possibly ony 1 per string, my memory may be playing tricks on me) when you run a page with ccbill aff codes through the validator at w3.org.

With programs that use their own tracking, yes, the payment is processed by ccbill, but the tracking is seperate. CCbill are primarily a processor, not a program designed with the emphasis on affiliate marketers.

Their penalty for anyone unfortunate enough to have suffered CBs from the same person of 3 months worth of billing or more in one hit hit's very hard also, I got hit by a guy for 7 at once a while back, and saw sales tumble - it's speculation of course, but after having another guy CB 3 at oce and seeing the same results, I'm convinced my affiliate account was flagged and subjected to extra scrubbing.

Saying all that, I still use, and sign up for ccbill affiliate programs, but I don't go out of my way to look for them

[Useless]

I intend to address all of those issues when I take over CCBill.

Though I do think it is time for the fine folks at CCBill to create an alternative method for sale tracking, since every filthy cocksucker out there is killing our cookies, my primary point is that CCBill can be trusted. They aren't going out of their way to screw us over. Even with all the scrubbing and cookie swapping, CCBill-only sponsors continue to convert better for me than those who use cascading systems. I don't know why that is, but I refuse to believe that it just happens to be that way.

I think a very respected member of this board may have already created a system for better sales tracking for CCBill sites, but I've only ever seen it mentioned once, so I won't link to it in case that person didn't intend to make it public yet.

[Licker4U]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

...since every filthy cocksucker out there is killing our cookies...

Are you saying some surfers disable cookies? Why would they do that?

[Useless]

Originally Posted by Licker4U

Are you saying some surfers disable cookies? Why would they do that?

Some do, but I was referring to scumware, such as the ever-popular Zango.

[UncutBucksMike]

When we used to have NATS, I quickly discovered that there are ways that NATS can be manipulated as well! In fact, there are unintentional ways that I have seen sales get credited incorrectly. So I don't think it's an issue of security in CCBill that should worry anyone. The biggest issue with CCBill is the quality of the stats. When I promote other programs, I prefer CCBill because regardless how small the program, I WILL get my check, without waiting to hit a per program minimum.

[Greenguy]

Let's just agree to disagree

[tickler]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

... my primary point is that CCBill can be trusted. They aren't going out of their way to screw us over.

I've found a few bugs in their system over the years. Mainly referral commisions weren't credited for about 4 months, and a few other minor things.

They keep telling me that it only affected my account , and end up cutting me a manual check for the difference. Either that, or after 4-5 phone calls to different people, they pass it on to accounting who never answers ,

[Useless]

Jesus Fucking Christ! Do you cocksuckers want to start arguing the pros and cons of only CCBill, or should we create a list of ALL the fucking CC processors and ALL the stats/affiliate systems? Remind me not to claim anything about fucking anything ever again, you nit-picking bunch of bastards. Go blindly in to that good night and get your hairy asses shaved all you want! Sorry if I prefer to have mine gently scrubbed.

[UncutBucksMike]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Let's just agree to disagree

To each his own. But I must agree with Greenie's sig, that Nipples is a deserving category!

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

Jesus Fucking Christ! Do you cocksuckers want to start arguing the pros and cons of only CCBill, or should we create a list of ALL the fucking CC processors and ALL the stats/affiliate systems? Remind me not to claim anything about fucking anything ever again, you nit-picking bunch of bastards. Go blindly in to that good night and get your hairy asses shaved all you want! Sorry if I prefer to have mine gently scrubbed.

If we didn't bitch & moan about what we don't like with the sponsors & the processors, we'd have to spend more time concentrating on what the real problem is...our sites suck & we couldn't sell water in a desert

[Jel]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

I intend to address all of those issues when I take over CCBill.

Looking forward to it

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

Though I do think it is time for the fine folks at CCBill to create an alternative method for sale tracking, since every filthy cocksucker out there is killing our cookies, my primary point is that CCBill can be trusted. They aren't going out of their way to screw us over. Even with all the scrubbing and cookie swapping, CCBill-only sponsors continue to convert better for me than those who use cascading systems. I don't know why that is, but I refuse to believe that it just happens to be that way.

I think a very respected member of this board may have already created a system for better sales tracking for CCBill sites, but I've only ever seen it mentioned once, so I won't link to it in case that person didn't intend to make it public yet.

Yeah agreed. Like you say, they can be trusted, and aren't out to intentionally fuck us affiliates over. FWIW Nat's sucks for me also, but that's getting the thread a bit more off topic than it's become already

BTW your 'refuse' link doesn't work

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Greenie

If we didn't bitch & moan about what we don't like with the sponsors & the processors, we'd have to spend more time concentrating on what the real problem is...our sites suck & we couldn't sell water in a desert

You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?



_

[Humpy Leftnut]

Not to toot my own horn, but I think review sites work great for sites like yours, because you have unique, original content that we highly favour when scoring sites, at least I do. Offering high quality images, a few big sized samples, HD format videos, listening to your members, all that helps.

Sometimes I prefer PPS, but lately I've been signing up to revshare where I can, give it a go. I see on a few big programs we have more rebills than sales, and I know what a serious downturn from Google feels like, so revshare can't be all that bad, probably works out about even.

About CCBill, I rarely see any 1:thousand ratios or worse, but in some programs we do horribly, even with many of their sites listed. Sometimes the $ per click is scary on those, and rarely that way with CCBill, always solid. I have to say I trust it more.