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Recently I have become quite suspicious about some adult affiliate programs, so I would like to ask you, in your opinion – is it possible for someone to manipulate sales on NATS for example? I send about 200-300 visitors every day to a relatively good affiliate program with a plenty of sites. Stats show an absolutely unacceptable rate of 3500:0 for last 2 weeks. Meanwhile I send a lot less visitors to unpopular programs, and yet my ratio with them is about 1:600. I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure that the first program is stealing sales… If so, is it possible to prove it?
We use NATS, and I am not aware of any feature that allows that. You can set affiliates into programs which give lower % of the sales etc, but not hide or not credit sales from the tracked links. They do have the add manual sales option, but not the reverse. At least from what I see.
Some affiliates are pretty keen to jump to the conclusion they are being ripped off or not paid. Maybe you just need to look more closely at your traffic, what they buy and to what extent you promote certain sites. Just because its a good program doesn’t mean it will be a big seller for everyone.
Perhaps the less popular program is being pushed by a smaller number of affiliates, which in the end makes for better ratios. Also, established sites with well-known names get more type-in traffic. Imagine someone following your Sean Cody link to check things out, but decides to join at a later time. That surfer will just go to SeanCody.com directly at the time he’s ready to join. In case of lesser known sites, that surfer might not remember the exact name at the time he decides to join, so he goes back to your blog and look for your post that got him interested in the first place.
This shows that promoting well-known studios has both pros and cons.
I totally agree, so I’ve been working with more unpopular programs lately. The program that I asked above is also not too popular, but the strange thing is that their content is really good and it’s positioned in the niches that my sites sell best.
However, I will assume that NATS cannot be manipulated. Yesterday I researched the program’s landing pages and I think they are the biggest problem the program needs to solve.
Ultimately it comes down to what sells for you.
These days I’m far more attentive to what works and what doesn’t. When I join a new program I’ll try their content on several of our blogs and if it doesn’t sell then I stop promoting them. Some I’ll keep around for “filler”, things that I know will get traffic to the blog even if it’s not converting (then point them to more profitable posts), but most of the time I cut them loose if they don’t deliver a ratio of something like 1:500.
There are other factors to consider though, like how many posts of their content exist on a blog, the competition, how much time I’ve spent on them, what information they can give me about models and whether their performers are likely to engage on social media, etc.
I think you might just need to be more ruthless in your choices. It’s in their interest to make you money and keep you promoting them, so if you’re not making any profit with them at all, why keep promoting their content? We’ve had the same problem with programs in the past. When that stopped selling people were making assumptions about whether there was something dodgy going on behind the scenes, but in the end it comes down to profit.
So, I would recommend focusing on the things you can change.
Thanks. What you wrote is completely true. 1:500 sounds perfectly acceptable, and I will truly mercilessly sift all those who do not fit in it. Regarding the specific affiliate program, I really like their adult sites and that’s why I continued to promote them.
