[Dianna Vesta]

This is a good topic. I know we've seen it here before and always something new is happening with programs.

Obviously my sites are a niche specialty and it’s difficult for me to sell other niche programs because there aren’t that many of them or at least unique programs offer more then the recycled template sites.

I’m careful about spitting out names but I definitely see some kind of shit going on. We use to do well with Video Secrets and AEBN. We track all our clicks with a stat program. We know exactly how many unique we’re sending out. We don’t trick our surfers to get them to click. When AEBN shows that we sent them 700 something uniques convert, I’m scratching my head. I also don’t see the traffic stats matching up. There’s others I’m seeing this with too. You always know that it’s going to happen…it just seems to happen more lately.

I think this is why more and more webmasters choose programs that use third party affiliate programs like CCBill, Ibill, Epoch- I will admit that I’m reluctant to send traffic to in-house affiliate programs. Another good example is that we ran our fetish product mall for years. It wasn’t making me millions but I knew I could count on at least 5 to 6K a month from product sales. I had all my products set up with a wholesaler who did drop shipping. I decided to make things even more simple and just signup to affiliate programs. Boy was that the wrong move. I’ve gone through a few and I must say that we’ve been ripped off a few times. Like I said, all those fucking clicks and no one bought anything?

When I stopped using CCBill, my own merchant account via Jettis I noticed my signups go down and my affiliate signups go down. When I brought CCbill affiliate program back on and started promoting it they increased. I don’t have a really fancy program web site (yet-coming soon) with lots of free content and promotional tools. Running sites is old news for me- this other end of the business is relatively new. I work closely with affiliates providing them with content that works for their site.

My commission checks have gone down but my web site signups have definitely increased and my retention is really good. I’ve got one portal and that new community site, which is free- I get more traffic and conversions to my paysites from my own sites then I do anywhere else. So if I’m promoting other niche sites and I’m not making money I have to say, “hmmmmm”