<rant>
UGH! I asked a sponsor for some promo materials. Explained I present things scene by scene so I’d like 15-25 images per scene with names of models and scene descriptions, if possible. I mentioned promo videos would be nice, but in their case that’s impossible because of licensing constraints.
After days of waiting, what do I get? 42 images from god knows how many scenes all mixed together with no model names or scene descriptions.
This is a sponsor who has one set of images per site as promo materials on their site. How are affiliates supposed to promote their sites if they make it so difficult? And this is someone who you’d think would know better… I just don’t get it.
Oh well, I’ll just do what I can with it I guess…
</rant>
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
that happens to me all the time. one sponsor sends one HUGE zip file every 3 months or so with 2 to 4 pics of each model that aren’t wide enough for the blog i would have used them on. there’s no info about the models, nothing. and then they wonder why the pics aren’t being used. i email them and tell them if there’s only 4 pics, they have to be 570 wide and then they send an email that says sorry - here’s more pics and send me the exact same zip file again.
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
What type of promo material were you wanting? There are some niches that don’t have scenes per se, or can’t release videos to affiliates because of license restrictions. Retro and Toon material comes to mind immediately.
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
Yes, in talking to them further, they did have some issues on their side fulfilling the request. It’s sorta understandable, but still, the better the promo materials for (all) affiliates, the more sales they’ll make.
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
the sponsor i’m talking about shoots their own exclusive twink videos and pics, and they have over 1000 photo sets with over 40 pics each. i guess they just don’t get it.
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
[QUOTE=rawTOP;32257]Yes, in talking to them further, they did have some issues on their side fulfilling the request. It’s sorta understandable, but still, the better the promo materials for (all) affiliates, the more sales they’ll make.[/QUOTE]Sounds more like they can’t give you what you need, not a “they won’t work with you” situation then.
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
I never said they wouldn’t work with me. Just that the materials they provide are frustrating to work with.
If you’re going to take your affiliate program seriously, it makes sense to really think about what different types of affiliates need and provide it to them without them asking. A lot of programs do this - Jake Cruise, Randy Blue, Fierce Dog, My Gay Cash, UK Naked Men, Butch Dixon, Hunk Money, Gunz Blazing, You Love Jack, Manifest Men, Chaos Men, Nice Dreams, etc… Each of those has regular e-mails with new content organized the way most affiliates digest content. I’m guessing it helps their bottom line…
Looking at the list the question is whether all of those are pushing exclusive content. That may be the real issue here. People who license non-exclusive content just don’t have the same quality of promotional tools for their sites, which means it can be a headache dealing with them. Hunk Money is an example of a hybrid - they have some exclusive content and that’s really what they push in promo tools. It seems not having exclusive content really puts programs at a disadvantage…
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
Sounds frustrating, and I really only fully apprecaited what affilates go through was when I was populating a secondary content site around a specific niche, and utilzing sponsor promo sites/pages to gather content. As each producer has material of a unique format, frequency, style, etc. It be cool if there was some type of clearing house for marketing material or standard for publishing the material, but perhaps that is wishfull thinking.
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
Actually, it’s not that outrageous… but you’d never get agreement among adult webmasters
In print advertising, they have “SAUs” which are Standard Advertising Units… somebody somewhere came up with standard sizes for 1/4 pg, 1/2 pg, 2 or 3 column ads, etc, and a lot of magazines conform to those standard sizes, which makes it much easier for advertisers to make ads that can be used in multiple places.
I guess we do that a little bit in the industry with standard banner sizes… but since banners are falling out of favor, it’s sorta pointless.
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
If I met all of my affiliates demands for what they each specifically need/request, I would have to hire a full time person who do nothing but produce affiliate content.
I tried to accommodate the majority and it was insane. I provided nearly 50 images in various size for every video and only a fraction were used by the majority.
I’ve just changed over to providing 10-20 large images in a zip file for each video. An html newsletter goes out for each video with embed code for the previews and links to RSS feeds and images. Affiliates can resize now images to meet their needs.
One affiliate complained that she doesn’t want to have to resize the images. Unfortunately, blog owners and affiliate web sites have different image size requirements. Sure, it would be nice if we all could conform to an SAU, as Chip suggested, but then a certain amount of creativity is lost.
Re: UGH! Sponsors who don’t understand what affiliates need…
[QUOTE=drakerock;32281]I tried to accommodate the majority and it was insane. I provided nearly 50 images in various size for every video and only a fraction were used by the majority.
I’ve just changed over to providing 10-20 large images in a zip file for each video. An html newsletter goes out for each video with embed code for the previews and links to RSS feeds and images. Affiliates can resize now images to meet their needs.[/QUOTE]
What you provide sounds perfect. IMHO it’s the affiliates responsibility to resize the images.
