egafd.com

Agreed, But if affiliates recommend changing something to make it more sellable, then this could be a could cause.
I was once told my pictures were too large for many surfers to bother downloading, waiting a minute for a picture of say 3mb is not worth it if you could make the same picture, slightly lower grade and slightly smaller for a 1mb size.

I think, like all businesses, you need to listen to the guys that are selling your product also, otherwise you may end up losing good business.

Its not like any of us in the adult business has anything absolutly different like a new brand of chocolate bar or anything, and even then, they spend millions on advertising.

Its your choice, spend millions on advertising or work with your affiliates.

You will be in a world of pure pain if you try to do everythign yourself Daz if what paul Paul says is true.

You either produce or maintain a website full time. Do both and one will suffer.

Badly...Unless you are some mega evil genius then I shall salute you and shut up! !happy!

Ive produced & done all the maintenaince until now, & yes, its hard work. You need to spend hours a day on the system for affiliates and putting galleries together etc.
Yet, you need to be editing and uploading the new content that you have shot.
Its a hard thing to do it all yourself but hey, thats why its not really an easy business to get into. You have to get it right or have previous knowledge from your past.

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to say a big thank you for all the advice and information
I am taking on board everything that has been said and hopefully will make the right decisions - once again many thanks.

Affiliates are dead.

The amount of time spent doing it - you'd make more money delivering newspapers. Or pizzas.

In 2002 affiliates were smoking hot and largely helped Hogtied.com become Kink.com.

In the last three years we've seen a steady decline in affiliate driven memberships.

Try a blog instead.

Hi Spanner

Two Questions : Have you got a site built yet? Have you shot lots of content shot?

If the answer is no then forgot the Affiliate stuff for now just get site live and running then worry about setting up affilites at much later date.

Glams

Actually I am an evil genius but that's not the point.
What you have said is 100% true and actually makes my point for me.
Affiliates say that I should stop what I'm doing and take up their job for a year or two... but why when your advice (and others) is to do ONE THING OR ANOTHER AND NOT BOTH?
I would be happy to let affiliates do their job - they just don't seem to want to offer me the same grace to get on with mine.
Presumably my job is all done by pixies whilst I sleep.

!previous! BENSON !previous!
"Affiliates are dead.

The amount of time spent doing it - you'd make more money delivering newspapers. Or pizzas.

In 2002 affiliates were smoking hot and largely helped Hogtied.com become Kink.com.

In the last three years we've seen a steady decline in affiliate driven memberships.

Try a blog instead."

===

So true.

Hi PaulPaul.

I'll reply to your post step by step if I may.

"The problem with your post Daz is that you say: "When finally I move on to being a producer".
Most affiliates have no intention of becoming producers/shooting themselves as that eats time/money/headaches and isn't that profitable when starting nowadays. You need to shoot a LOT of content which comes at cost and keep updating to an ever smaller slice of the market.
Getting a return on this will be hard if selling yourself unless your just after beer money eating out a few times each week."

>I used that as a quote about becoming a producer simply because was being sardonic in response to the constant (facile) advice from people that anyone thinking of having a site should firstly down-tools and do the affiliate thing for a year or two. I was saying that at some point I would have to eventually get back to doing the very thing I set out to do. I know most affiliates don't want to be producers and that's because they just couldn't do it... just as I can't do their job. You say that shooting content takes time and can be inconvenient - WOW! Is this a backhanded compliment? if it is then it's the first I've ever had from anyone whilst in a debate about the producer/affiliate divide. Yes content takes time, money and just a little bit of talent - I must admit that I can't resist reading between the lines when you say that affiliates don't want to do it because its basically hard to do... are you saying that affiliates won't do a hard days work? LOL.
=====

"You need to understand that producers and affiliates are two complety different things and not get muddled between the two."

>Hello? er, I'm the one who is constantly saying that the two are different and don't need to learn each others jobs. Understand the jobs yes but take years out to do them... no. How am I 'muddled?'
=====

"This isn't a dig at all and i like the stuff you shoot but trying to be a producer/webmaster/editor/dealing with hosting/models etc is a tough tough task to do on your own when it best working as a team."

>I agree that working as a team is a wonderful thing to do. I'm sure that there's lots of things in your life that you would be happy to delegate to someone else but doesn't that depend heavily on finances, ability, trust, effectiveness, profitability and a whole host of other things?
I would love to run an affiliate program by employing someone full-time to make tools and do whatever else affiliates would want of them. And since we're living in a perfect world where it's just lovely to be in a team I would allow my affiliate manager to employ a few friends to help him and of course I would pay for all this.
Sorry but I couldn't help poking fun there but I hope you get my point. Someone else in this thread mentioned that running his affiliate program was more time-consuming than actually running the site - and I found this to be true for myself. I have to decide what is appropriate and frankly my cumulative experience of affiliates is that it takes too much of my time and since I cannot justify employing another person to handle them... and since affiliates don't seem to regard it as becoming part of my team and actually talk to me with utter contempt sometimes I'd rather do without. I will ride out this affiliate-owned period of the internet and I'll still be producing content when the dust settles - we all will.
=====

"It takes more than one man to try and do everything in this day and age.
6 - 10 years ago you could have done it yourself - but not in 2009."
"There are of course exceptions to this but those operators have been doing it a long time and the right now many paysites are struggling."

>You seem to have fallen into the same trap as so many others. I'm constantly being told about how much time it takes and how other people have been doing this a while and therefore I'm to automatically bow to their experience and longevity. I'm 40 now and started in the porn industry working on men's magazines at 17! I've been a model, an agent, a photographer and a webmaster (webmastering for over 10 years - I remember when Greenguy started... that's how long I've been about!)
I just seem to be a newbie because I don't spend all day crowing about how experienced I am.
=====

I'm not having a go at you PaulPaul, I'm just taking this opportunity to say some things that I really feel about this subject and about my place in things.
If anything I will thank you for giving me the chance clear some of this stuff up.
!thumbsup!

Benson_Media, do you have a clean leak free CCBill affiliate program for PetGirls?