Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
x-sells went on for over a decade. Every affiliate (including me) promoted sites with them and never even knew it. Sales were at all time records.
Mainstream x-sells are what caused the new visa and mastercard rules. NOT porn.
Sales dropped to the ground when every program I tried to make a sale for has their entire members area ripped for free on megaupload or rapidshare and the links to all the scenes nicely linked up and arranged for you at porn bb by...you guessed it...surfers.
The same surfers we are going after now.
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I'm with you on taking down the pirates but I think to deny that hidden pre-checked cross sales hurt sales in the long term is wishful thinking. As soon as the average surfer gets hit once by it and especially if they have to go through the embarrassment of canceling their credit card with the hot banker girl, they are going to be much more hesitant to pull out the card next time. Of course we didn't see it in the short term but in the long term such a thing could only have hurt us. It was and is a mistake to place short term profits over long term revenue. It usually is...in any industry.
Btw, I always wondered why more sponsors don't tap their affiliates for identifying pirate content. If you have to, offer a struggling affiliate $200 a month to comb places like pornBB and send you a daily email which could immediately go to the normal legal process (DMCA takedowns, etc). I'm sure quite a few would do it. If not struggling affiliates someone would.