I’m sure you’ve heard the old cliche, “Thinking Outside the Box”. How to out wit the competition and having more business then you know what to do with. Or build a better mousetrap?

So why is it this industry still shovels the same shit? Or the fact that their mousetraps are no better than the ones every one has in that over flowing junk draw in their kitchen?

Seems if your not doing Tubes sites, you not pimpin.  Sorry, was new and out of the box 5 years ago when Utube did it. Old news.

In reality it’s the same ole smelly crap. Just newly skinned tgp’s giving even more of the store away. Business as usual. Like this industry doesn’t have enough programs, lets just give out more free content. Johnny can jerk off without getting his hand even close his pocket. Unless he’s looking for something to clean up with.

It’ no wonder Johnny’s not buying much porn these days.

I have a very bad habit of trying to do eveything myself, learn from me.

I’ve been working a mainstream shopping cart site for some friends (getting paid) and it’s been a royal pain in the butt. I’ve installed and set up these packages before, even have one of my own thats laying somewhat dormant.

I’ve even used TM templates and set one up for a local business. Pretty easy stuff. Well, Until this one.

Since this one was for a friend, I wanted to do it right, with all the right mods. Well crap was a great thought. I’ve installed mods and add-ons before, but only to a stock store. It’s so much more fun when your using a template where much of of the code is different or has been changed. Plus the fact that I am not CSS or PHP guru, it was kicking my ass.

Probably two days spent trying to get one add-on to work right, what a waste. I finally got a little smarter and asked a friend. Little over 20 minutes later and my Epass $25 lightly, it worked perfectly. Should have done it two days earlier.

Don’t catch my bad habit.

Seems to be old new these days, the fact that dee cash bought yet another adult web program. This time is was STfUCash. Course I’ve never heard of them anyways, then again, I don’t get out much.

Oddly I keep seeing that Big hammer marching along though the war rubble in the Pink Floyd movie, the wall.

Sorry no tag this time, getting enough attention.

Think it’s pretty much official the program is dead, as it’s been listed for sale a couple times on GFY. Actually the last price I saw was pretty good for the whole set up, including at least one very nice domain name. Also includes the programming and back end. I’m also guessing there’s probably a nice webmaster list in their somewhere. Might not be to fresh, but sure there is some affiliates that could be smoozed.

Gonna be a big mess to walk in to but a prime opportunity for some one to make big cash.

It’s sad really, it use to be a kick ass program, one of the best around. Bill use to be a upstanding guy who practiced what he preached. Use to.

Times, they are a changing.

I really can’t complain about the adult business, it’s been very good to me over the years. I am soon coming up on my 10th year of slinging porn. Not sure if that’s something to really celebrate. It is as far as being around that long, I’ve seen many, many people come and go over the years. Then again, is 10 year of pushing “porn” something to be proud of, but that another post, maybe.

So why do I seem to bitch all the time lately? It’s because the online porn business has gone downhill to much over the years. Sure things and times change, but much of what has changed shouldn’t have and it seems more evil.

Maybe Evil is not the right word. Maybe.. More Greedy.

When I started I was getting ratio’s of 1:100 and under all day long. Yes, that is 1:100, no missing zero on the end. Sure it’s still possible to get that kind of ratio, but it’s quite rare and pretty uncommon. For average Joe webmaster these days it’s more like 1:500 or more at times.

It seems every day I read or hear of another sponsor ripping some one off. Just yesterday I read about a guy who built up a very nice recurring lifetime income a few years back. As long as his members stayed on (lifetime) he’d get a cut. Low and behold, the program decides to cancel his account and cut off his money. They gave some bullshit excuse that they couldn’t get a hold of him and that he wasn’t sending traffic. Gee, his checks made it to him every month, that is until they stopped it. As for sending traffic, it was lifetime commissions, he shouldn’t have to be active to get paid. After all they were paying on active members he sent! From what I see, they are going to get away with it and some people even still praising the program, after all that. Un-fucking-believable.

It’s hard not to get pissed off and tired of the crap, when you know what it use to be like. It never was perfect, but it was a hell of a lot better than it was.

There wasn’t so much greed, not like there is today.

What would I have to say to those just entering the business? “Go do something else online. There are plenty of better ways to make money on the net.”

Sure it’s a huge market and there is a ton of money on the table. Problem is Average Joe will have to work his ass off for a for a wage a little better than a real job. Not that it can’t be done, it’s just so much more tougher.

Am I the only one that sees this business eroding away?

I really hate being negative, but it’s hard not to be when so much has turned to crap. Believe it or not, I am actually a very positive person.

Moral of the story? Keep a close eye on your shit. Track your sales and hits and dump those that scam or shave you. There are still some decent programs out there, just getting harder to find..
Okay, get back to work!

I think I’m all bright and shiny again. I was under a foul cloud for a few days there. You know what I mean… when it’s Fuck you, Fuck you, and Fuck You, and Fuck you Too! Course some of the Fuck-youers probably had it coming, but that’s another post.

Not sure why really, the brats haven’t been any more annoying that usual, the wife hasn’t been nagging any more than normal, well, maybe just a  slight increase. Guess was just one of those things.

So I try to go to sleep tonight, pretty tired actually, but shit keeps running through my head, mainly this post. Keeping me from slipping into pornland with the naked porn star rubbing her big boobs on me and massaging my dick, about ready to climb on top… she prefers it on top.

So shit, I gotta get up and type or I’ll just be restless at less half the night. Carmella hang on, I’ll be back shortly and for gods sake, don’t put any clothes on!

I got to thinking how crappy adult affiliate programs conversion really are, I don’t think many realize. For most any real business, increasing conversions is your number one goal. So why do they keep declining and why do they not seem to do what is needed to improve it? Well, there are a few reasons for the declining part, more on that in just a minute. i also have a theory why they don’t improve it, a couple actually.

But first…

When you hear conversion numbers from most any adult sponsor, you’ll hear numbers like 1:400 and some try to be sneaky bastards and use the join page ratio to calculate conversions, pure crap! They don’t count and should be taken out back and flogged with recently used butt plug.

The thing is, when you hear a number like the above, 1:400, it doesn’t really mean much, probably because your not hearing how most real businesses think in terms of conversions. The real world usually figures it based on a percentage, in essence, what percentage converts to buyers.

You following me here?

Here’s the kicker, if your lucky enough to have a program that converts at 1:100 (only if you go back in time), that is a 1% conversion rate. So what if you sponsor converts at 1:400? Are you thinking, less that crap? In reality it is .25% … did you see the decimal point in front of the 25? A conversion rate of 1/4%. That means 99.75% of the traffic your sending is NOT spending a dime! Least as far as you know.

I am not trying to be a black cloud here. I just don’t think people realize what the numbers really mean. It’s funny how the media portrays the online porn business as this “what ever the latest number is” billion dollar industry, when the sad fact is, most of the people in the business are making crap because the traffic they work so hard for is converting like hooker in church on sunday.

My problem with this whole situation is that the programs seem to do little about increasing or improving their conversions.

Lets step back a minute and indulge me for a minute okay?

For the most part an adult affiliate program is a membership based service, right. Yes, there are many porn businesses, like dvd sales, pay-per-view, ect, ect. Lets just stick with a the membership model so i can get to sleep tonight.

So they are selling a membership to porn. How do they sell that membership? The tour, of course. In reality, what is the tour? It’s a sales page. It might be multi pages, but it’s still a sales letter. For any one serious about their business, they test every possible part of the sales letter. Why wouldn’t you? A simple headline change can make a dramatic difference, a simple image change or addition could increase conversion, even the join links can make a difference.

So why don’t they test? First off, I can’t say they all don’t, but I have yet to hear of one that does. Usually you’ll just here, our tour is converting at such-in-such and that’s about it. Okay… thanks for test results sparky.

I really don’t know why they don’t, and since i don’t know, I can only make some guesstimations. For most, they don’t know how? Others may get so much traffic in a day, even a .25% conversion makes a good bankroll.  I’m sure some just don’t care. Long as they can pay for their pimped out lifestyle, why mess with a good thing?

You could get even more diabolical and say they don’t want the traffic to convert, then they would have to pay webmasters more money. They could be making their bank from collecting e-mail addresses on the tour where they can sell over and over to porn surfer joe and no one gets a cut on the deal except the house. You could even go so far as to say they don’t want it to convert, because they end up making more money on exit consoles, no cut for johnny webmaster and no one is the wiser or says anything.

Naturally, not every program is the evil villain robbing the stage coach, but it sure does make you wonder, and times have changed, you can’t hang a cow rustler any more.

You could say it’s because of all the free porn and the tube sites giving away the video, and you’d be partial right. Then again, how do you know if you don’t test to find out? hhmm…

So what do you do?

You can’t make a program do anything, it’s their business, their way of doing things. So it’s all on your shoulders buckaroo.

You could keep a closer eye on your ratio’s with your sponsors and dump the ones that are crap (you shouldn’t have to send 5,000 hits before they are a bad memory, as some say). You could do what most webmasters do not do, test your own sales process so at least your sending more and the paycheck makes the crap ratio’s look just a little better?

You could start your own paysite, then again, if the big boy’s don’t do it right, will you? Or maybe you will do it right because you know better
Then again , you can take what you get with a big smile on your face and be happy-happy joy-joy. Or just bitch and moan like me. At the very least maybe this has at least opened your eyes. That you don’t have to take what your given and bend over again.

Or maybe some big program owner can enlighten me?

Just in case you don’t take care of all your shit like me, Porn Mega Bucks has been dead for some time. I took down most of my links some time back, but there are still some floating around. Remind me why I’ve made so many pages over the years again?

Anyways, I knew they were not real current, and I knew didn’t have that many links up, I’ve kinda kept forgetting about it. That and the fact that I was getting checks from Epoch for the program from time to time, so it wasn’t an emergency.

That is, until I checked my stats.

You might get a laugh out of this one. I was adding my sales up for the last year and a half the other day, and of course PMB was one on the list, like I said, I’ve been getting checks.

Here’s the good part, this year so far I’ve made like $440 or so dollars, the kick in the pants was, there were over $580 in returns and chargebacks. Yep, I am in the negative! I can’t remember if I’ve even been in the negative with any sponsor.

I even stopped by the PMB site and it might as well have been a ghost town with tumbleweeds rolling across the forum. Last message on the message board was like 2006. Ya I know, I am behind, I told you I thought I was still making something.

What’s really odd to me is I am still making the occasional sale! How the heck do they keep processing payments? Inquiring minds like mine want to know! It’s obvious the sites are fucked, every one is getting their money back. Seems by now the payment processors would have dumped them as well.

It use to be, quite some time back, you could throw up page after page and the hungry google digital spiders would gobble it up and the big G would send you some of those golden surfers eager to pull out their plastic money cards.

Little crap AVS sites I built back in the late 90’s coasted along very nicely for longer than I can remember. Not major traffic, but consistent streams adding to the empires stock piles. Talk about coasting…

Eventually some things stop working, some of the models just can’t keep big G’s love for long. No hard feelings, it’s for the greater good.

Just like life, every evolving, ever changing, every growing.

So… if certain things stop working, why the hell is it still the current advice?

I see nebies lead to believe they need to have as many domains as possible cranking out pages and create hubs… for what? To sit and find no embrace from any search engine? Only to be seen in the way back machine?

It’s been quite evident the Link List Model does not work as well as it use to. Sure there are some going strong, but that’s another post altogether. Yet most every day another new link lists rises from the digital dirt, shaking the dust off, doors open for a few window shoppers. Most walk past, including the bots hungry for content. “Move on folks, nothing new to see here”.

Build an empire of web pages and domains that keeps you working with little time for a life and no time for family. Been there, done that. It doesn’t work very well. Some things you can’t get back.

There is a crazy theory, some get it, most do not. Others just ignore the idea.

Creating value, not work.

I’m sure most will still not get it.

I didn’t get it for a long time because i didn’t need to, I was comfortably coasting.

They are pretty rare, but there are those few proud webmasters that seem to always be in promotion mode. I can understand and often applaud those that are pushing their wares.

But some time’s don’t you just want to say, “Shut the Fuck up Already, please” ?

Granted I am here to make money but it’s doesn’t always have to business does it? There are times I put up links without anything in return. There are times I post comments on blogs without plugging my stuff. There are many times I post on message board without reminding every one to look at my stuff, or always show off that I know everything about everything.

I have been doing some mainstream stuff along with my adult and I see it on both sides.

Do those that are always in expert mode or always promoting their products get more business. Probably. But some times they just bug the shit out of me. Like I said, Shut up already.

We are all guilty of it at times, it’s human nature and I guess the nature of business. But would it hurt so much, just to help without an ulterior motive? Or just to be quiet for once?

I’m sure some one has wished I’d shut up at one time or another.

From time to time I see people post their traffic stats and where they are getting their traffic from. Not exactly the best Idea to me, but hey, long as no one gets hurt.

I often wonder if webmasters take those stats with a gain of indifference, meaning one hit is not always equal to another. A 1000 hits from one source may not bring as many sales as 100 hits from another source. I’ve been around enough to see it happen time and time again.

When I refer to “hits” I am of course talking about a visit from a surfer, or a traffic hit.

Many also do not realize hits can vary greatly as far as how targeted they are. You could send 10,000 “fetish” hits to your adult baby site and not make squat. On the other hand 1,000 hits from a adult baby category on another site could make you some nice sales. Just because some one is surfing fetish porn doesn’t mean they are in to midgets fucking, more often not.

Just as important is future search engine traffic to your budding new fangled free site. In the above scenario, which link back do you think will give your pages more link juice?

You also have to remember, many sites, such as Links Lists have varying degree’s of traffic for each category. While Joe webmaster might not get much traffic from the Hairy page, but might get a ton from the gay twinks category.

You also don’t know Joe might have 5 sites listed with one traffic source, but only two with another. Not apples to oranges.

My point is, so many judge traffic sources from some one else’s results, often without much background as to how those results where achieved, or even more important, the quality of each traffic source.

Visiting one of the adult webmaster forums I read and post on (sure you can’t guess which one), I noticed yet another near sighted sponsor, well least one of their “spammers”.

One of those that start a thread to push their program, but all they do is post their latest FHG links. Okay.. and that ads value to the board, how? Well, it’s obvious they do it so they can keep bumping the thread, build up the view and post count and, well probably thinking webmasters will be rolling in like a late night border crossing.

This might be far fetched and maybe I need sleep, but couldn’t webmasters just go to the program to get their official links?

Nah.. cause then Jimmy the program spammer boy wouldn’t have an excuse to keep bumping the thread.

Funny thing is, Jimmy had a chance to redeem himself and his program. Some one asked for samples of his RSS feeds, as it was one of their “oustanding-incredible” benefits of being an affiliate. Come to find out the feeds were just pictures with a little text, only good for splogs. Not much use to bloggers that still believe ample text is blogging.

What do you think the Jimmy did when some one mentioned the feeds were of little use to real bloggers?

….

….

….

Exactly… not a word. Well he did show up the next day for his latest new FHG spam announcement. Least Jimmys Punctual.

Now last I checked the wind direction, there were all kinds of competition blowing in from all directions. You name a niche these days, (besides those in to screwing their girlfriends armpits, you know who you are) and you’ll find probably 20 programs or more, depending on the niche, that are more than happy to let you send them your tasty traffic.

News-Flash to Jimmy: Your not the only kid on the block. [Return to your normally scheduled thread spamming]

Jimmy could have used the lack-luster feeds review to create a dialog with those in the thread. They actually showed interest, but it was a waste.

God forbid he go as far as pretending to show real interest. He might just have hooked some brand new shiny traffic, that would be a terrible thing.

Jimmy lost the chance, But don’t worry Jimmy’s neighbor the mega sponsor will be more than happy to take on the new sales.

ronnie thinks Jimmy’s boss needs to re-evaluate Jimmy’s wage.