Blog Sized Pics

I just added a bunch of blog-sized photos for webmasters and bloggers to download and use to promote TastyTrixie and TrixiesHouseboy (or SpyOnUs).

I size my blog photos at 400x300 then add a 10 pixel black border. There doesn't seem to be a real standard as far as blog photo size goes -- actual non-adult photoblogs tend towards a format with one big full size photo posted per entry and something akin to a slideshow format to navigate from one photo to another. I don't particularly like those. Most of the porn pseudo blogs seem to use thumbnails or small pics linking to galleries, etc. I don't particularly like those either. I've been using the 300-400 pixel size ever since I started posting photos in my main blog. They're big enough to see some texture on close-ups, and small enough to see the entire composition of the photo from top to bottom. They don't contradict the textual nature of the blog as you can see plenty of text around the photo, but they do a good job of breaking up all of the type, popping out and catching people's attention. The size fits nicely on almost every blog format.

I actually really enjoy seeing smaller photos used in the internet porn world -- I get tired of the competition to have huge giant pictures which, viewed on most people's monitors, are just fragments of a photo . . . fragments of a person. I have nothing against close-ups and seeing every little ingrown hair on someone's ass, but it's also really nice to see an actual photograph with composition where all four sides have meaning and contribute to the whole vision. I think the whole picture / whole person is especially important when marketing personality sites -- what good is it for someone to see a closeup of my areola when it could be *anybody's* areola? The point is to distinguish yourself from everybody else, and that can be difficult when you're reduced to a giant blown-up 1600x1200 pussy.

Start Making Cents

Okay . . . here's a little random phone post for you from your scatterbrained WebWhore:

Webmaster Referral

Funny -- I just signed up for WebWhoreBucks to make sure the new signup page is working, and Ginger got a partner referral for it. Hehehe. I am creating all kinds of trouble for her . . . I hope she loves me anyway.

Old Affiliate Links May Lead to the Wrong Page

Unfortunately in the process of converting WebWhoreBucks into an all-inclusive program (so people don't need separate accounts for each of our websites) I could not grandfather old accounts in with certain options; cookie life was one of them, and the other more annoying one is the default redirect page.

What this means is that those of you who are promoting TrixiesHouseboy.com using your old default link code may be sending surfers to TastyTrixie.com (or SpyOnUs.com if the new change has taken place). I am so sorry about this, but you will have to check your links and change them if they aren't going where you want them to.

The good news/consolation prize is that when I put all "old" affiliates into a group, I made the payout 60% for everyone, including those promoting TrixiesHouseboy.com. SO. If you have an old TrixiesHouseboy affiliate account, keep on using it (to get the 60%) and change your link codes to the one specified HERE for TrixiesHouseboy.com, tacking (basically you just have to paste the redirect of &HTML=http://www.trixieshouseboy.com/clean at the end of your old links). I am very very sorry to inconvenience those of you who've been promoting Tucker's site and really appreciate your persistence and appreciation of his site, not to mention the members you've sent us! I hope you'll sign up to promote SpyOnUs and DeliaCD (and future sites) and continue using your old account numbers to promote TastyTrixie & TrixiesHouseboy if you'd like to get 60% on those.

Please contact me if you have any questions or suggestions for alleviating some of the trouble with this changeover. As I write this I still have a lot of stuff to sort out on the new WebWhoreBucks site, new clean tours, etc. so I apologize for the messiness.

Edited September 13th 2006: I didn't realize that the way I posted the link in this entry when I initially wrote it the redirect was obscured by the fucking sidebar so it looked like the old link and probably confused people. I am sorry I didn't notice that and fix it.

My 2257 Plans

Call me unprofessional, but I am not taking any action right now regarding 2257. Is it risky to "ignore" the regs? Yes. It would be even more risky for me to comply so I'm going to wait and see how it plays out over the rest of the year.

Our affiliates are welcome to do whatever they need or want to do regarding use of our promo content and further promotion of our sites under these circumstances. Under very special circumstances with people I know and trust, I will provide a copy of my drivers license. At this point I am not making a huge effort to build "safe" promo packs, but I might in the future (and if you email me with an outline of what you're looking for I can try to set you up with something to meet your needs). A lot of our content is non-nude or softcore anyway so it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

I am working on building more free hosted galleries, though, so that should help at least a little. Unless those also need to be 2257 compliant in which case you (or whoever you are submitting to) is really going overboard.

I hope this encourages people to find more genuine and creative ways to promote quality sites rather than just shoving free hardcore content down people's throats. I'm certainly not saying 2257 is a godsend, because it's NOT -- it's a sick crazy fucked up piece of shit -- but there are definitely a couple of bright-sided consequences.

Half-Assed Template

Someday I'll be familiar enough with CSS that it won't take me HOURS to concoct or modify a simple template. Today's not the day though so I've got yet another half-assed design on the internet.

I'll stop futzing with it now so I can get the new signup page and some resources up for affiliates.

Cookie Life

One of the little changes I'm making to the WebWhoreBucks revenue sharing program is the cookie life. Instead of a 180 day cookie life, I've bumped it down to the default of three days.

I still think it's awesome when sponsors have an extended cookie life, but I decided to decrease ours for a number of reasons:

Traffic Exchange vs. Cookies
I'd like to exchange more traffic with our affiliates, particularly those with blogs or review sites. I found myself not wanting to link to my affiliates from my blog(s) because I'd be sending them many of our current fans and members as surfers. Then if they clicked on one of our affiliate's links BACK to our sites we'd effectively be giving away half the revenue from that customer if he joined or rejoined in the next 180 days.

I believe reviews and blog links and interviews from our affiliates can convince surfers we may already have to join; I want to be able to freely link to affiliate sites that do an awesome convincing job of promoting us -- we have a lot of fans who return to our sites for our free journals or free pics, day after day, week after week, and month after month but for some reason never make the leap to purchasing a membership. I think outside reviews or genuine recommendations can be just the thing to persuade these long-time surfers to become members.

Industry Standard
Most CCBill sponsors aren't even aware they can set the cookie life and the only big corporate sponsor I know of that advertises a long cookie life is ClickCash. I decided it's really okay if we don't outdo other sponsors when it comes to cookie life.

When I first set up WebWhoreBucks the majority of experience I had with sponsors was with ClickCash and I thought it was SO COOL that you'd get credit for sales even if the traffic you sent them didn't join until months later. Now I am balancing my desire to imitate with recognition of the strengths of our unique products: our sites convert best via thoughtful text-oriented promotion. I want to reward people who do that well with sales AND traffic, hence the shorter cookie life which will encourage me to send more traffic to affiliates who represent us well, and I sure as hell don't see iFriends sending traffic to their affiliates.

Cookies vs. Extra Data
I considered making the cookie life seven days, but in the CCBill admin it says

When the expiration value is greater than 3, no extra data will be logged to CCBill's database, so the cookie will be the only means of tracking a referred sale. If the surfer does not accept the cookie, the system will not be able to track them.

Under those circumstances I figured three days are better than seven (and maybe even better than 180).

*****

I was hoping that by creating a "group" in the CCBill affiliate admin I would be able to maintain the 180 day cookie life for all affiliate accounts created before today's change; unfortunately, cookie life is not an option available for setting in the "group" admin, so from here on out 3 days appears to be the limit. Of course, if I link to one of your promos, a surfer might go back to it a couple of times over a week and refresh the cookie before eventually being convinced to join. Another way to look at it is if your promo is really good, they might bookmark it too in which case the cookie life would also be irrelevant.