OOPS! A Correction, Apology & Thank You

On Saturday, October 3rd I posted new hosted galleries for DeliaTS.com and zips for affiliates and sent out a mailer with all of your link codes already built into the email.

Unfortunately, I made a really stupid mistake when I built the FHGs so the links were wrong and not carrying affiliate id's THROUGH when surfers clicked on them.

Two webmasters (see below) caught my mistake and took the time to write back to me explaining what needed to be fixed. At first glance, I misunderstood what they were saying and thought they were complaining that when they visited the webwhorebucks.com content pages that it still said XXXXXX in the links, so I was like, "dudes . . . I'm not that fancy!" and focused on the other millions of things on my to-do lists.

Later as I did some exercise attempting to maintain my MILFy webwhore figure (ha ha) it HIT me what they were trying to say: I TOTALLY FUCKED UP THE LINKS ON THE FHG PAGES!

Due to the way I jostled my brain during my exercise, it wasn't initially clear to me how I messed up, but eventually I recognized the incredibly dumb mistake I made and fixed it on all six galleries on Tuesday, October 6th so they were only wrong for three days, and only in use by a handful of people for one or two days.

As a very modest token of my regret at having made this mistake, I've added $3 to everybody's payout rate which we'll continue for a week, provided I set it up correctly (in the ccbill admin it says, "To offer a combination of percentage and dollar amount per sale, enter values in the Base Percentage Payout and the Base Dollar Amount fields. Enter percentages as 25, not 0.25." so I left the 50.000% part and added 3.00 to the base dollar payout; having never done this before, I have no idea whether it will perform in an intuitive manner, whether or not it will effect rebills, or anything). I hope I'm not adding a new mistake to an old one, but it's about all I can think of to make sure you know I'm mortified by my mistake.

I know it's not much, but it does apply to all of our sites, not just Delia's or just to sales made on those particular galleries. If we were a huge corporate sponsor and one of my lackeys made this mistake, I'd be able to offer a few of those $100 payout days as an apology! Of course, if I were a huge corporate sponsor who could afford to do that, I never would have been trying to do so many things in the first place that I'd have made this relatively minor fuck-up and I'd probably be screwing our customers and your traffic with a bunch of shady practices to line my pocket enough to where $100 payouts would be as easy as shitting yellow-speckled turds the day after the Fourth of July. As it is, we don't do those things (and I don't even like corn on the cob that much).

Anyway, I'd like to thank the two webmasters who saw my error and took the time to write to me about it:

Oskar of OutlawCafe

and

Mike of PornStarGals

I know when you have a million things to do it's easier to just dismiss a mistake a sponsor makes -- particularly an indie like we are who maybe just doesn't have a clue and no amount of assistance will help -- and decide they are unreliable and not promote them anymore so I REALLY APPRECIATE that they took the time to let me know.

On TOP of that, Oskar let me know how to fix it up so you can get your link codes off of our site more easily with your account number built in; I am working on a redesign of WebWhoreBucks as we speak and hope to incorporate this since it seems like holding our breath for CCBill's new system (which now doesn't even appear to have any promo content management) is not such a wise idea.

Anyway, a big thank you to those two guys. I also added a couple more FHG's for DeliaTS and accompanying zips to entice you to try again.

Name for Leak-Free Affiliate Tour

Perhaps stupidly, I named all of our leak-free/"clean"/no-exit-links tours for affiliates to send their traffic, "clean" or in folders named "clean" or "cleantour", trying to make it clear to our affiliates that they are for them.

This time, with Delia's new site, I named the clean tour entrance page VIP.html and prefixed each additional page with VIP. The reason? I'm concerned that surfers hover over the "clean" links and think they're g-rated or not as nasty/dirty/filthy/nude. I have no reason to think that, but from now on I'm not going to use the word "clean" in file and folder names that we want to get traffic to. I'm just suspicious that maybe the word "clean" doesn't attract clicks. Again, I have no evidence of that and our tours labeled "clean" have done perfectly, respectably well but I'd rather not chance it in the future. Things need to be designed with surfers in mind, not affiliates.

CCBill's New Affiliate System

After hearing rumours last year that CCBill was working on a new system for program owners to get marketing materials to affiliates I was SO excited to log into CCBill today and see them announce "Web Marketing System (WMS) is a new-generation affiliate system providing all the tools you need to easily and effectively manage your programs to maximize their performance and profitability."

Fuck. YEAH!

I just called up to be put on the list of sponsors who want to demo it. I'm guessing bigger clients will get a shot at it first, but even if that's the case I don't care because a) they'll have worked out the kinks by the time I get in on it, and b) once it's in place it should really help level the playing field for small operations like ours.

So many small program-owners don't even know how to customize their mailers so the promo links are ready for affiliates (I didn't even know we could do it myself until a few months ago) and without buying software or hiring a programmer yourself it's really difficult to customize your promo offerings, links, etc. to provide each affiliate exactly what s/he wants without giving them what they don't. I know as an affiliate I love promoting ccbill programs . . . all except for when it comes to getting the promo materials, link codes, etc. It's KIND OF a time-sucking nightmare with most sites. I definitely prefer harvesting promos from sponsors who use NATS, partly because it's pretty consistent from sponsor-to-sponsor and because I can customize what I want. I really really hope this new CCBill thing does all of that and more.

I didn't even bother checking the boards to see what people are saying before I called up (though I did get reassurance from CCBill that OLD LINKS WILL STILL WORK and THE NEW PROGRAM WILL RUN IN TANDEM WITH THE OLD so no work will be lost; affiliates who don't want to try it don't have to); whatever it's like it's bound to be better than what we have now. When I heard the rumours before I called and asked about it but the rep said he hadn't heard any such thing. I think that was during the phone call when I found out how to send out the mailers with the affiliates' numbers already built into the links. Anyhoo . . . good news. This will be a big help.

Why I haven't logged into ICQ in years:

This thread on GFY epitomizes all that is charmingly dysfunctional about the special working relationship between affiliates and sponsors.

On this particular issue? I can see it from both perspectives; each person has some valid points AND says other things that are pretty fucked up.

I for one think a program owner is going above and beyond to even BE on icq available to talk one-on-one to affiliates (or anyone else, for that matter). I know that I don't have time for it. It's not that I don't think it's a great idea to be able to respond to affiliate questions, feedback, requests, etc., I just think it's pretty hard to run a business and be on call and interrupted like that at the drop of a hat. You'd think, though, that if the guy makes as much money as he says he does and is so willing to reinvest tons of it back into his business ("noone spends more money than me on updates and on models and on keeping things unique") that he'd fucking hire somebody whose JOB it is to MAKE time to respond to affiliates in a better way and people to make sure the promo content really represents the high quality he claims to spend THE MOST MONEY IN THE INDUSTRY TO MAKE (why do people say such ludicrous things? WHY?). I totally understand feeling run-ragged by affiliate requests, but that's because I don't have the money to hire people to be run ragged FOR me. If I had the kind of money this guy says he has, I would not be sitting on icq chatting with affiliates. Seriously. I'd be making love to my hitachi magic wand on my own private island.

I think he could have handled it better, for sure, but I totally understand not having the motivation to do so. Finding a polite way to say, "I don't have time to customize content for you (or we do not want to give away too much high-quality video or whatever) nor do I have the need to because it has a proven record of converting" is probably not as satisfying from a personal perspective as ripping somebody a new asshole for assuming that just because you are a paysite owner and sponsor that someone can tell you your content is junk and you should JUMP to accommodate their desires, though I don't think what the affiliate said was THAT offensive. I mean, if you are in the habit of being offended by stuff like that, why make yourself available on icq and even give the impression that you care? Of course, not seeing the promo content in question OR any of the affiliate's work it's pretty hard to judge whether either of them has a point. Years ago I posted a guest gallery from one of the TushyCash sites and I thought the content was hot (if the quality was average it really didn't detract from it's worth because of the hotness of the fetish/role-playing); I haven't looked at it much in recent years because I always felt like I had to doublecheck my link codes more than usual because of the way their program is set up (kind of confusing); maybe it's changed since then, though.

I agree with the person who said they're both acting like crybabies. I also have to laugh any time anyone in this industry accuses someone else of not being "professional". For one thing, anyone who levels that accusation almost always has a huge double standard/is a total hypocrite when it comes to their own behavior (usually not professional) versus what they expect from other people (bowing, scraping, and dishing out "the customeraffiliate (or sponsor, depending on who's doing the whining) is always right" nonsense). Mostly I just think it's funny because people want to apply standards of professionalism from OTHER industries to an industry in which modeling many of those standards is totally absurd. THIS IS THE PORN INDUSTRY. If you expect me to not use foul language in my communications with you because "it's not professional" to do so I think you are confused about what my profession is: I am a whore, a pimp, and a pornographer. It would be unprofessional of me NOT to say "fuck" or "cunt" on a regular basis. I make money on my fucking cunt, okay?

Don't misunderstand me, though; I do think it's important to treat everybody with kindness and decency (unless it would be reinforcing or rewarding indecent/unkind behavior to do so), but that has nothing to do with being "professional", it has to do with being a good person to everybody you meet regardless of whether it's at work or not. Working on the internet DOES make that hard, though. Not seeing people face-to-face makes it pretty easy to treat other people like shit. Still, I think there's a difference between being frank and full of a certain amount of bluster/larger-than-life-personality (a good thing, perhaps, when trying to establish yourself online) and being genuinely mean. I don't think anything said by either of those guys is a reason for someone's feelings to be hurt.

Sometimes telling someone to fuck off IS professional when you're an internet pornographer or smut peddler. It's pretty hilarious when people go to a board called "Go Fuck Yourself" to complain about someone telling them to do just that.

Quickie on To-Do's

Just a quick post for now because it's been so long since I've made one here; first of all, if you've written to me I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you yet. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE I SEEM TO BE IGNORING! Unfortunately we are just trying to do too much for two people which means a lot is left UNdone at the end of the day/week/month/quarter/year even though we are working our asses off.

A couple of the high-priority things I need to work on for WebWhoreBucks affiliates:

*GET REVIEW-READY
I'm glad review sites are eager to promote us; we have a few things to do before we re-submit to them, though, including tightening stuff up in our member areas, writing some guidelines for review sites (especially regarding "reciprocal" links that so many of them are requiring), special tours and links codes, writing ready-made reviews, etc.

*CONTENT/MEMBER-AREA REQUESTS
I'm going to renew access for a few of our affiliates who have had access to our members-only areas in the past, but I also need to think really hard about how we deal with these requests in the future especially now that we are adding new sites to our network that are operated by and feature people OUTSIDE our household. It's possible I will create a form for affiliates to fill out to apply for access to make it easier for me to get the information I need to determine whether or not to entrust individual affiliates with total access to our sites. We really appreciate the people who are willing to do the hard work of selecting content and building their own promos but we also need to be cautious about WHAT content and HOW MUCH OF IT is used.

*****

Of course there are also a million other things on my to-do list for affiliates, but getting review-ready and addressing our most ambitious affiliates' requests are the most important to me right now.

Next week we will be shooting a bunch of content for AmberLily's site and in the months ahead we're working on shooting for a new video site we hope to launch soon: I Make Porno (imakeporno.com).

Blocked Countries

For a long time I've allowed affiliates living in blocked countries to sign up to promote our sites, but I've just switched it back to the default. I just don't have time to police those people and they DO have a way higher incidence of sending fraudulent transactions. Fortunately it was CCBill who caught it this time, but yeah. I don't have time to watch that shit like a hawk.