usually not pay as much detail to your webmaster area, as to your member’s area?
With this project of setting up a fake tube site, I have been spending time going in and out of the various sponsors affiliate area, and it amazes me at how some are so, well… disorganized.
I mean you guys spend a fortune for stuff like NATS or MPA (whatever) and yet when an affiliate goes inside, it’s like a maze, cluttered if there is a ton of stuff, and yet really hard to get what one needs.
Take Luke at Hunk Money. Now that one has to be one of the best affiliate set ups I have accessed. There is a spot to find the links, the banners, the sites are all listed, split out. You can easily find the video trailers, embedded videos, and a host of other stuff.
While it is easy to use, the only bitch I have is NO ZIP FILES for the Banners. Mind you, very few Sponsors seem to bother with that. I mean they have zipped content, [B]but not banners.
So what gives here guys? Are affiliates just not important enough to warrant the same attention and ease of finding stuff, as a member?
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dude, most member areas don’t get half the attention that the tours do. many sponsors only care about showing their best face before people sign up - surfers or webmasters.
actually if you talk to bigger sponsors, they don’t believe it will make them more money - or at least not enough more money to bother with. smaller sponsors tend to burn out on all the work involved - a lot of guys who made their own paysites are just blown away by the time they’re done.
and then there’s the question of knowledge. i found it very difficult to make our member home page compared to the tour - it’s a very different skill set than you need on tours and a different way of thinking unless you have a reality tour or a tour like blake mason that uses the same layout in the member area that’s on the tour.
[QUOTE=Gaystoryman;24547] Take Luke at Hunk Money. Now that one has to be one of the best affiliate set ups I have accessed. There is a spot to find the links, the banners, the sites are all listed, split out. You can easily find the video trailers, embedded videos, and a host of other stuff.
While it is easy to use, the only bitch I have is NO ZIP FILES for the Banners. Mind you, very few Sponsors seem to bother with that. I mean they have zipped content, but not banners. [/QUOTE]
Thank you! We spent a lot of time working on the affiliate area and listening to what affiliates suggest. And we are constantly trying to update it to make it better. We had to tweak the f*ck out of NATS to get things as they are laid out - we added loads of special pages and worked around all the limitations. NATS 4 is supposed to be way better as an affiliate interface, we have been in the queue since August but are not expecting to get the upgrade for another 3-4 months.
About the banner zips…I thought we had that online already. I will get Ben to get this online and get links in place next week.
Speaking as affiliate I don’t care so much about what sponsor gives me in the affiliate/webmaster area. What I’m looking for is the access to the member are so I can grab whatever I want - unless the sponsor gives me some limitations like money shots and so on.
Slick design and easy to use interface… NO seperate tour / members area. What you see is what you get - Membership merely unlocks full access to the sets, clips, cartoons, webcams, and streaming theatres. The index page is also dynamic, so it always seems new.
Check out our affiliate area, its very easy to use.
How about our affiliate section? We’ve been updating it recently, hopefully making it even easier to get all our available promo materials. Even each scene is broken down.
I’m the same. In fact I prefer a sponsor that pays more attention to the tour. Just get your tour to convert as best you can, I can deal with the webmasters area. In fact, I don’t need a webmasters area I don’t need banners, I don’t need FHG’s, I don’t need anything, except good promo content (which I can grab for myself from the members area) and a good line of communication to the sponsor, where I can ask questions about the site, get to know the people etc.
I agree that Webmaster Affiliate areas should be made easier to use. I have joined other affiliate programs and just given up when I found them too difficult to navigate. Then there are other Affiliate Programs that are just about empty in the Webmaster area, and I figure why bother having an affiliate program at all?
I’ve always tried to do everything possible to make our program as easy to navigate as possible. Like Luke, we’ve also spent a fortune in time and money tweaking Nats to make things easier on the webmaster: such as adding the ‘quick stats’ right when you log-in and giving news and announcements of all the latest affiliate tool updates.
We are also working on making it easier for newbies. I think for those affiliates familiar with Nats it’s pretty understandable how our system works, but I recently had a foreign webmaster sign up that was totally lost in our system. Because of this, we were are currently working on a ‘tutorial - how to’ page that will explain to webmasters exactly how things are organized and how the system works. And of course we are always there to lend a helping hand.
While I always appreciate a sponsor giving me access to the members area, ideally, I don’t think they can do that with all affiliates due to the high risk of theft and these new tube site resells that are so predominant lately. I’m not a sponsor so I don’t know.
I like all the right tools such as banners and whatnot. And I would like more sponsors to use HunkMoney’s example. I also like the way zbuckz’s affiliate area is laid out. Pridebucks too. Bareback Masters is coming along too. wink
I think that many sponsors are trapped in the “this is the way it’s always been” when it comes to the affiliate area. They are also trapped by the tools available to manage the area - which are really terrible. (Luke has already talked about the amount of work and money needed to make Nats functional).
Another thing is, that as an Affiliate Manager and B2B Marketer, I’ve begged and pleaded with my webmasters for feedback. I’ve bribed, borrowed and stolen. God help me if I can get more than a couple of responses. It’s an interesting thing that when the programs come and say “Please, tell me what you want. What we can change, what would make your life easier?” The response is so often silence.
Are program owners giving you an excellent product? No, quite often they don’t supply an organized area to get the tools you need.
But, when a program asks you for feedback, take the time and give them a laundry list. If they bothered to ask, chances are they want to make the changes.
I don’t need banners, I don’t need FHG’s, I don’t need anything, except good promo content (which I can grab for myself from the members area) and a good line of communication to the sponsor, where I can ask questions about the site, get to know the people etc.
I don’t even want what others are using 
super… much appreciated.