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Not too long ago, a site that some of you promoted suddenly *poof* disappeared and there was (understandably) some grief about it on this board.
I was wondering, what would be the “correct” way to take a site offline? An email letting you know? How much notice? Etc, etc.
Thanks!
I think an email with a couple of week’s notice is good.
Even with jump scripts, sometimes there’s quite a bit of work involved in delisting a site especially if you’ve used a lot of deep links. It’s still not a huge job, but it’s a matter of: do I have a couple of free hours to do this today? So a week or two is ideal.
informing your affiliates by email in advance is understandable. I remember thefullenglish sneakily changed the ccbill payout ratio without telling affiliates last summer, so I got a lot of $0.28 sales. that’s disgusting.
I would say the most important thing is how you tell affiliates the site is going off line. DON’T just mix it in the text of your regular mailer. Send at least a couple emails that mention what’s going on in the subject line so it stands out. Maybe one a couple weeks before, and then on the day of.
If one of the reasons for taking a site off-line is because you want to get out of the porn biz, alerting affiliates in advance about this has another benefit: you may find someone interested in buying the site. I think there are some affiliates who have thought about taking the plunge and getting into the other side of the biz as a content producer and buying an existing site is an easier way to do this rather than starting from scratch. In fact, I wish some sites that have stopped updating like Buzz West would just sell the darn site and let someone else carry on the brand.
A couple weeks notice is, in my opinion, too small a time-frame to expect affiliates to pull their links. I’d make that 3 months, along with at least a few emails giving them a heads up that “as of such and such a date, the site will no longer be taking new joins”, and how all affiliates will be paid up-to-date etc..
The site itself should stay online and visible for recurring members, but you could initiate something there as well if you wish.
@naked
Thats a good point. It does surprise me that almost every site that goes offline never even tries to sell to someone else. There are lots of content thats now offline that sold very well and could easily be used again somewhere else or on the original site under new ownership. Huge amounts of content lost.
An email and probably redirecting the traffic (affiliate links) to another site in the network (if there are any).
i’d prefer an email two months in advance or at least a month, then a second reminder email in case the first one went astray. an announcement on the board is good, too.
but why take a site packed with content offline? if there’s enough content, why not just make it a non-updating site? there are many that make good money…
Server costs. If the cost to keep it online doesn’t cover the hosting fee, it doesn’t make much sense. If it’s not updating, it’s generally not getting promoted by affiliates. If it’s not getting promoted then the sales tend to drop and it stops making enough to support itself.
