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?

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.

Yes, yet another one of my sponsor rants.

Today it’s about bullshit stats reporting. And how they seem to think webmasters are complete idiots. Stupid as stumps. I’m not the only one to bitch about this.

I was checking my stats on pone of my sponsors, I won’t say who. My stats ratio showed 1:187.  Most people would say that’s an out standing ratio, especially these days. The bullshit is, that ratio is figured off my sales to JOIN PAGE hits! WTF?

Now if it was figured off my unique hits, which it should be, and only be, the real ratio is 1:1019 wow, quite a difference isn’t it? And quite a difference if you were to figure out cost per click.

Why would webmasters want to see their ratio calculated off joins? Maybe I am off base, but I see it as this..

My business is to make money. My only goal is to send as many surfers to the sponsors as possible. Right? What more is there? You could say building traffic, getting trades, make sites, blah, blah, blah. Of course you need to do the work, but in the long run, what is your end goal? Okay thats out of the way.

Not only do I want to send as many porn surfers to the sponsor as I possibly can, but if I don’t want to be working for peanuts, or be making less than a burger flipper, I need to make the most money from the traffic I do send to the sponsors. Common sense.

See where I am going?

If my ratio is 1:187 with a descent payout, I’d be making pretty good money for my traffic. Hell, it would be good money 5 years ago. But the bad news, I already told you what my real ratio is.

The only conclusion I or any other webmaster can come to is the sponsor thinks we are stupid. No really. What else is there to think? Joe webmaster looks at his ratio and say’s, “Hey this program does very well!”. They might even try to send more traffic because it’s converting so well (ya right!). I can only conclude it’s to make the program look better, like it’s converting well, when in reality it’s not even close.

Once again, I want to make as much from my traffic as possible. From EVERY hit I send, not just the ones that click to the join page.

Has any one heard a valid reason for ratio’s being calculated from join page hits? If so, I’d sure like to hear it.

</rant>

Most every adult sponsor offers a webmaster referral program. Well, the vast majority. You send a webmaster to the program, if they sign up you get a special prize. Either a one time commission or a percentage of all their sales.

Now if your going to offer a referral program, why the hell do you try cutting webmasters out of their fair share?

I think you know what I’m talking about. Like those hosted galleries with the link at the bottom to the program, but they DON’T have an affiliate ID. Right down to the individual sites that have no affiliate ID in the link for the program.

For one it pisses me off. Second, if they know about it, I and you can only come to the conclusion they are trying to weasel their way out of actually keeping their promises and paying webmaster referrals.

How many sponsors do you promote that do this? Have you voiced your opinion? Have you asked them why they have a webmaster referral program, yet do not put affiliate ID’s in the program links?

Maybe we can make a difference?

</rant>

Of course this is not true for all, most are upstanding citizens and play nice.

Last month or so I’ve been putting up some new blogs, re-doing old and revamping many of my sites. In the process I thought I’d add some sponsor provided feeds. In a side bar widget, I am not in to splogs (unless some one shows me that make money..:)).

What I am finding is a majority of these sponsor feeds either do not work or have traffic leaks. It amazes me that sponsors do not test the feeds before making the public for webmasters? I am also surprised how many have been available for some time and I was the first that noticed there was a problem? You can’t tell me they don’t have somewhere they could put up a test blog.

I am using a RSS widget that comes standard with Wordpress 2.3.3, not like am using some homebrewed who-knows-whats-it thingy. Sadly the only valid feeds I’ve found thus far are from Kinky Dollars. Love their content. Little tougher to get that first sale, but they recur very nice!

So… if your using sponsor provided feeds, check them out, you could be losing sales. I noticed the biggest problem was the feed titles. Also, make sure your Id is getting passed.

Do you even use them?

I recieved an e-amil from a sponsor the other day, I wont say the name. It was the usual, we added all these new tools for you, our webmaster to make loads more money. The first “tool” was 468×80 banners, they even stated “New Banner Size!”. That and talk about sponsors on another board got me to thinking, I do that from time to time. What is so new about 468×80 sized banners? Is it because they are 400 and 68 in size. Are there still webmasters out there that do not realize this size banner in general has not pulled crap for clicks in years? Granted there are exceptions, but with that size it’s far and few between. Show me your stats to prove me otherwise.

I guess it’s a rant because sponsors seem to keep giving us tools that are not worth much, some times even worthless. Where’s tracking stats that will tell me where every one of my sales comes from? Where are sponsor blogs with lots of tasty text to tempt, tease and sell the surfer? Blogs are not exactly something new. How about rss feeds we could use to pre-sell the surfer before sending them off. Of course the list is endless. So why waste your time and ours with ads that don’t pull and have’nt for a long time?

Maybe I should’nt be so hard, many sponsors do provide tools that help us to be more productive and sell more. Now if we could just weed out the crap..:)