Let’s Do The Webmaster Math

Something interesting happened to me today.  A person I have known for a long time told me they wouldn’t do business with an affiliate program because they were only offering a 50% rev-share program instead of the “standard” of 70%.  Then another person said that he would never do business with an affiliate program that offers less than $40 PPS.   Of course both of these guys are owed checks for no less than 10 different affiliate programs and they can’t understand what is going on.  Really?  You can’t understand?  I guess people really just don’t do the webmaster math.

When really established names like Suze Randall and Earl Miller are having trouble paying their affiliates you know things are really bad.  We all know the economy is bad, but is that alone the reason why affiliate program after affiliate program is failing?  Off the cuff it’s easy to blame the economy on our problems but if you look closer, you soon realize we are in a large part to blame too.

How many times have affiliate programs offered things like $100 PPS sign ups on trials and 70% rev share?

Every time I see that it doesn’t make me want to do business with them.  In fact, it does the complete opposite.  It makes me realize how extremely short sided the people running the program is and their bad business decision makes me want to run the other way.  I want to do business with a company who is smart enough to hopefully be around for a long time to come.  With someone making these kind of financial decisions, I know that won’t be the case with these guys.  So that is why I tend to avoid them and as such that is also why I rarely have to chase after money people owe me, because I am smart enough to do business with smart people.

Affiliate programs were originally designed as a partnership between the program owner who has the content and the affiliate who was generating all the traffic.  A real partnership is one where everyone benefits but somewhere along the way things have gotten out of hand and in the end everyone loses.

Let’s say a member joins a website for a $1 trial membership.  The affiliate program for that says pays the affiliate $100.  These $100 PPS promos have been far more common.  Can’t understand it but nonetheless, let’s do the math on that.

On a decent enough site, in a decent enough economy, 1 in 4 of those trials will typically convert to a full membership.  On a decent enough site, in a decent enough economy, the average member will stay a member 4 months.  So if 40 people join the trial, 10 will stay members for an average of 4 months.  $20 * 10 = $200 * 4 = $800.  That means those 40 people that joined, in the end are worth about $800 to that site owner.  But keep in mind, that site owner paid the affiliate $100 PPS on those 40 original joins.  That means they owe $4,000 on the $800 they just made.  The math clearly doesn’t add up.

But not all affiliate programs pay $100 PPS for long.  Looking around $30 to $40 PPS is more common.   In fact out of the 20 affiliate programs I browsed tonight at random while writing this article, every single one of them paid either $30 or $40.  So we’ll call it $35 for example purposes.

You send 40 joins to that website.  $35 PPS * those 40 members = $1,400 you just made.  Great!  But as you seen before, those 40 joins really aren’t worth that much to the website.   They just lost $600.

A lot of websites try and make up the loss in doing up-sales like selling merchandise to their members or cross-sells with memberships being offered to their members, to other sites at a discount.   This money can often be significant but even still, common sense tells you that in the end the math just doesn’t add up.

The whole idea of being in business is to make money, no?

Now let’s look at high end rev-share programs.

A membership to this example website is $25.  The affiliate gets 70%.  That means with each join or re-bill the affiliate earns $17.50, leaving $7.50 left over for the website owner.  This $7.50 per member has to pay at the very basic level, the cost of credit card processing fees, chargeback fees, new content, web hosting including the cost of excessive bandwidth usage, banking fees, including payroll, and customer service costs.  So really what is left over for the program owner?  $7.50 per month, per member quickly is reduced to pretty much nothing.

An affiliate wants to make the most money they can from their traffic but in the end, an affiliate program can’t survive if they keep paying these over inflated fees.  So it is really no surprise that affiliate programs, even the big ones are having a hard time trying to find a way to pay their affiliates – I mean if you pay your sales team more than you are making from a sale, how do you expect them to stay in business for long?

So our lesson is this … you can do business with people all day long that promise you the world, but I want to do business with people that I know will be there to pay me today, tomorrow and next week.  You enjoy your $100 PPS promos or your 70% rev share promises, while I sit back and actually enjoy getting paid by the people I do business with.  I’ll take 50% any day and know for sure I’ll actually be getting paid than the promise of much larger numbers and be left with empty promises when it comes time to actually pay me.

The XRCO 2008 Awards

The winners of the 2008 XRCO (X Rated Critics Organization) are:

Best Release

Babysitters (Digital Playground)


Babysitters starring Jesse Jane

Best Epic

Upload (SexZ Pictures)

Best Gonzo Release

Flesh Hunter 10 (Jules Jordan Video)

Best Girl-Girl Release

Belladonna’s Fucking Girls 4 (Belladonna/Evil Angel)

Best POV Release

inTeractive (Teravision/Hustler)

Best Comedy or Parody

Not the Bradys XXX (X-Play/Hustler)

Best Gonzo Series

Ass Worship (Jules Jordan Video)

Starlet of the Year

Bree Olson

Female Performer of the Year

Sasha Grey

Male Performer of the Year

Evan Stone

Best Director (Features)

Brad Armstrong, Stormy Daniels (tie)

Best Director (Non-Features)

Jules Jordan

Best Actress

Eva Angelina in “Upload” (SexZ Pictures)

Best Actor

Randy Spears in “Black Widow” (Wicked Pictures)

Unsung Swordsman

James Deen

Unsung Siren

Roxy DeVille

Orgasmic Oralist

Jenna Haze

Orgasmic Analist

Hillary Scott

Superslut

Annette Schwarz

Cream Dream

Bree Olson

MILF of the Year

Kylie Ireland

Best Cumback

Kaylani Lei

Best Male Newcomer

Charles Dera

Best On-Screen Chemistry

Joanna Angel and James Deen

Mainstream Media’s Adult Favorite

Stormy Daniels

Most Outrageous DVD Extras

Upload” (SexZ Pictures)

Upload starring Eva Angelina

The Hall of Fame

Actresses

Actors

Christoph Clark

Creators

Richard Mahler

Suze Randall

Pioneers

  • R. Bolla
  • Abigail Clayton
  • Marc Stevens
  • Lysa Thatcher

5th Estate

Paul Fishbein

Movies

“Reel People” (Arrow Productions, 1984, D. Anthony Spinelli)

”Curse of the Catwoman” (VCA Pictures, 1991, D. John Leslie)

NATASHA NICE @ SUZE DOT NET

Natasha oh so Nice!!DCypher posts: Meet the delightfully young Natasha Nice. Here’s some fun facts about the rising star.

She is 19.

She was born in Paris France and moved to the states when she was 3 with her mother and two older sisters.

She attended a private French school where she made love to the other girls in her dorm on a regular basis. They had fun in the showers.

While she was going to Santa Monica College and living with some friends, she met Karlie Montana and got turned the fuck out.

The rest is porno history. Push them ponies Karlie. Push ‘em hard. Daddy needs twenty two’s on the whip.

Natasha has been around like 9 months so she’s definitely ready to speak for the entire industry and lecture at major universities, but for now she seems to be content just posing for erotic masters like Suze and famiglia. Keep representing. Biggie said that. I sure miss Biggie.

Click Here For Full Gallery

SARA VANDELLA @ SUZE

DCypher posts: A steady stream of amazing content keeps flowing out of Suze Dot Net, the way the cocaine keeps steady flowing through American streets despite the war on drugs and the implausibility of transporting that kind of weight over our borders without the CIA, FBI, or NSA finding out. Someone ought to tell Lou Dobbs that shit, maybe tell him turning his head to the real news is just another form of worker’s misconduct. Next they’re gonna tell us that they don’t know where Bin Laden is hiding. What are we, stupid?

I digress I confess. Back to Suze.

She really does just kill it live, proverbially speaking. Let that sink in a minute.

Girls like Sara Vandella, amazing as it sounds, flock from all over the country to peel off their tight clothing and spread their dripping pink butterflies for the Randall family. Sara’s pretty new to the volatile world of pornography. No amount of Google searching could produce anywhere near a decent bio on her. In fact I don’t know shit about her. Typical. This happens a lot with Suze Dot Net. You know what that’s called? Fresh…like Pike Street.

Fuck where she came from. Fuck what it all means. Jim Morrison once said he was gonna get his kicks before the whole shithouse went up in flames. Wise words. I suggest you put them to the test.

You’ve been sleepwalking through most of your life, psychological reacting to the world, politically ignorant, and spiritually numb. Why change today?

Close Ur Eyes & Click

ERICA @ SUZE

DCypher posts: This is Erica! She’s amazingly hot for a naked woman with superb breasts and a finger in her cookie.

Suze captured a great set of her and I wanted to share it with you despite being warned to stop giving you free porn.

I’m such a rebel. Yippy kiya muthafuckahz!

The name Erica is a Norwegian derivative of the name Eric. It means eternal ruler. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

Despite several letters from my high-powered attorney requesting her home phone number so I could interview her and collect an appropriate bio, as part of evidentiary procedure naturally, I have been unable to move J. Willing from Suze Cash to hand over the proverbial digits. By letters I mean emails sent back to Mr. Noreply and by high-powered attorney I mean my imaginary friend and most trusted confident Dr. Leroy “Hot Dog” Zanzibar…naturally.

Why do I have to keep explaining this to you? Can’t you just take my word for it? When will we get past these trust issues? I feel like you’re smothering me and I need my space.

Suze, by the way, is not only an extraordinary photographer but also a member of the Porno Illuminati, an organization akin to the Talamasca but with hotter members. That means that her daughter Holly, a fellow Bruin, is also, by birthright, a fledgling member. Put that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Ford.

Now that we have that all cleared up…

Click Here For Full Gallery

ZDENKA @ SUZE

Zdenka baby!!! DCypher post: (according to Wikipedia) Zdenka Podkapová (born August 6, 1977 in Brno, Czech Republic) is a Czech erotic actress and an adult model. She is sometimes credited as Zdenka or Zdenka Popová. She is best known for winning Penthouse magazine’s Pet of the Year for 2001.

Before Podkapová started her modelling career she was a professional gymnast for more than ten years. She was in the Czech national team for five years and she became the Czech national champion four times during her young career.

In 1996 she posed for her first photoshoot, and in 1998 tried contacting Penthouse. Her first pictorials for Penthouse were published in April 1998. She was chosen as Penthouse Pet of the Month. Two years later she won Penthouse Pet of the Year 2001. “It was a very big surprise for me and I cried like a baby” because “I was the first girl in history from the Czech Republic to win the title as Pet of the Year and the second girl from Europe”.

Later she became a cover girl for issues of Perfect 10, Perfection, Esquire, QUO, Ironman, Front and Maxim magazines.

Podkapová currently lives in Brno.

Check out this fine set of the leggy Czech from Suze