For all the paysite owners here would you be willing to divulge about how many affiliates promote your site(s)? I ask because over in the current thread about affiliate/sponsor relationships someone mentioned there are “thousands” of affiliates and I was wondering if that’s really true. Consider that here at GayDemon, probably the best forum for gay webmasters, I count less than 50 people who actively participate here on a regular basis. Sure, maybe there are thousands more who are members and never comment, or don’t belong to GD, but I doubt it.
So if you don’t mind, would you share a ballpark figure of how many “active” affiliates you have? By “active” I mean affiliates who send you sales. I’m sure over the years you may have had hundreds or thousands of affiliates sign up, but I’ll bet most went away or don’t promote you or any gay sites anymore.
If I were to guess I’d say there are probably less than 200 people out there who are actively promoting gay porn sites. I’m basing this guess on the number of gay porn blogs I am aware of that do regular updates, many of which are probably owned by the same person.
I think all of the sponsors here would find this data interesting as a way to discover how you compare in affiliate numbers against your peers. And affiliates like me would find it interesting to know how many others like me are actively doing this.
I know that divulging actual paid subscriber numbers is a big taboo and never done publicly but I’m hoping that sharing affiliate numbers is not a closely guarded “I can tell you but then I’d have to kill you” secret.
I didn’t want to be the first to post here, and I know this is a subject some will not want to participate in as it could be seen as a sign of how successful or not a site is.
Swissbucks currently has around 100 active affiliates promoting Porn (with many many more registered, and others only actively promoting our sex supplements brand) sending sales, but note some of those are also other studios doing member area cross sales, I’ve considered only the ones sending regular sales, other will send the occasional sale, but its not always a case of whos active, its more a case of doing what, review sites sell better than blogs, blogs sell better than FHG’s, FHG sell better than tubes, tubes sell better than dead sites. I know there are active TGP’s and tubes sending traffic that I have classed as inactive under your “active guidelines” as they dont make sales yet send quite a bit of traffic.
Worth noting that weve seen a decrease in aff promotion and number of active sites, when I go check on these affs sites > They are dead/blank… so its certainly on the decrease, and much lower than a previous straight porn company I worked for back 8-9 years ago (which was also seeing decreases back then)
I have worked for 2 paysite networks over the past ten years, both using NATS, and both had “official lists” of affiliates running over 3000 accounts.
In reality, each program was supported by between 50-75 affiliates who sent at least one transaction per month. There were more affiliate accounts that sent traffic that never converted, but at best, there were only 50-75 accounts that earned any commissions from sale or rebill, and in each case, the bulk of affiliate sales came from 10-15 affiliates, and that would include accounts owned by the paysite itself.
Even on a network that grossed about $1.5M per year, the top affiliate rarely topped $2000 in earnings per month.
So far just three responses. Would love to hear from some of the other site owners who occasionally participate here like SpunkWorthy, Badpuppy, GayHoopla, Chaos Men, etc. If you’re not willing to give an exact number how about just saying if you have more or less than 100 active affiliates?
If we are defining active as sending sales each month, then more than 150. That is higher than Bel Ami stated - but remember that is because we cover many niches, not because Bel Ami are doing anything wrong, so please don’t compare like for like. They are unlikely to have, for example, Bear bloggers as affiliates.
Most sales come from affiliates who don’t participate here. Some of them have large traffic and (legal) tube networks.