Hey everyone,
How's it going?
I run a modelling community site based in the UK (bit.ly/aBZiiy) which allows models/amateurs to setup their own profiles with associated pictures/information. We shoot for the International media and produce glamour calendars and invite models down to shoot, who are then featured within the best babes section of our site which members can then access for $24.99/month. The type of stuff we shoot is glamour (so a variety of lingerie/topless/implied nude shoots, with occasional fully nude shots, but all soft) and we release at least one new update a day (either a video or a pic set) and currently have over 50 000 exclusive pics and nearly 500 exclusive videos in our pay area. We also sell zip sets for $10 each.
We have always got all of our traffic from our own marketing and from the links we have from the media companies we sell to but we are finally looking at setting up our own affiliate program and I thought i would ask for your thoughts on it if you don't mind.
The options are to either setup our own affiliate program (which would most likely be through epoch our current payment provider) which we would directly promote ourselves or alternatively join up with an adult affiliate network so as to access their existing network. As a result my questions are:
1) Would you setup your own affiliate program or join an existing network?
2) Do you know of any good affiliate networks that would allow us to join and add our site to their existing network?
3) We are tempted to setup our own program and then get someone to act as affiliate manager/promoter who would be responsible for promoting the affiliate network and driving traffic. We would like to pay this person a commission based on all affiliate sales. Has anyone had much success with this or do good people not want to do it purely on a commission basis?
4) What affiliate commission do you think needs to be offered? We were thinking 30% or so?
5) If we were to get an affiliate manager paid by commission (on all affiliate sales) what sort of % do you think we'd have to offer to get someone good?
6) There is an issue with using a 2 tier affiliate program (as we use 1 tier of the current affiliate system to automatically pay models as well). Do you think it will put affiliates off if it is only a 1 tier system (and they can't refer other affiliates) as this is apparently the only way to do it through epoch? We could change our provider to ccbill who do have a (rather convoluted) way of doing this, but we'd rather not have to make that change unless absolutely necessary.
My apologies for the ridiculously long list of questions, even if you have an opinion on one or two of my queries above then please feel free to chime in.
Thanks so much in advance for any help and advice you can offer!
Dave