Wednesday, December 23, 2009

To Stop Getting Affiliate Emails

We send emails containing promos and news to all of our affiliates via the CCBill admin. We do it that way so that your affiliate codes will be built into the links to save you time from having to login, look it up, then change the links yourself.

CCBill allows us to email all active affiliates or no active affiliates; there's no "email all active affiliates who've opted into email". Since CCBill doesn't provide an unsubscribe option or a way for you to continue getting paid to promote us WITHOUT getting emails sent through their admin, the only way *I* can stop you from getting the emails we send to affiliates is to make you an affiliate no more/deactivate you.

If that's what you want, write to me from the email address you receive news from us and confirm that you want your account deactivated in order to stop getting email from us.

The only other thing I can think of is for you to call ccbill or change your email account in the affiliate admin (I cannot change your email address or any other personal details for your account myself in the ccbill admin).

Labels: , ,

Thursday, April 02, 2009

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.

Labels: , ,

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A Bitter Sigh of Relief?

I constantly stress out about slacking over releasing new promo content, especially hosted galleries, for affiliates. I always think that the big corporate sites have so much more to offer (and indeed they do, in many ways).

But now that I've been collecting sponsor galleries to use on my tgp area on Trixie.com I no longer feel quite so bad. Just a little bewildered. So many programs with so many sites I've heard make so many people so much money that are talked up so much on boards? Many of them haven't released new galleries in three months, six months, YEARS even. What the fuck? And it also seems like it's often the best sites, the sites that are supposedly our competition (solo girl sites) or the ones that have really great concepts (if only the gallery builders wouldn't write such fucking retarded sales text) that are stagnant or have grown cold.

I'm not saying that I want to be like those sites or that I think it's fine or serves me well to not release more promo stuff (if I had two of me, I'd totally be getting it done at least on a weekly basis), it just amazes me how much we do with TWO PEOPLE. Me and my partner. And we're IN all the content and SHOOT it all ourselves. Contrasting that with these big programs with money to throw around skinning GFY and shit and it just frustrates me. If we had one tenth of those people's resources to hire just one helper and sink the rest into better equipment, locations, costumes and a third talent wheel every so often? Oh my god. We would fucking ROCK. I'm not saying this as someone just months out of the gate in this business -- I've been in it since 2000, and seriously since 2002 so I *know* what we could do with just an extra $25k to $50k a year. Toilet paper money for some of these programs.

SIGH.

It really kills me that there are so many dead sites out there, not updating or rotating old content, and they get so much play. They even get good reviews on review sites. It boggles my mind that sites with no interaction, only about 15% of the content we have, and no real updates for months manage to get scores close to ours when we do live shows every week, have 24/7 spycams, REAL blogs, etc. I honestly think that maybe we offer TOO much and it reaches a ceiling beyond which people cannot even measure or grasp what it is we do. Maybe they think we're lying about doing all that stuff, since most sites promising interaction don't really have anything except maybe some cam upsells with Eastern European girls in fishtanks.

It's so easy to believe the hype on the boards about the big programs and thinking they have superior products. In some cases they do (Raven Riley's site comes to mind), but in most cases? I just don't see it.

I have got. To get. Me some. OF THAT MONEY.

Do I have the most unprofessional sponsor blog in the industry? Inquiring minds want to know.

Labels: , , , ,