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Originally Posted by MisterPeabody
You make so many great points I won't quote them all. LOL From an affiliate's perspective I am in total agreement and I don't have a clue as to how you would compete with what is, essentially, a whale affiliate like YouPorn et al.
But this leads to some points: You would be 100% correct (instead of 99%) if there were traffic alternatives for the paysite owner. Nowhere else can I get 10k hits in a day on a semi-consistent basis from another affiliate other than a giant tube. If there are other sources that can send big numbers I'd like to find them.
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It's not hits which make you money though, it's sales. Before the market became overtaken by piracy even back in 2008 with some sites I could send around 1000 uniques a day and make at least ten sales. It didn't happen all the time or with every site but it could be done when you "nailed it". And this was as an affiliate with nothing more than a text link. Zero sponsor content. Just a perfect link targeted at the right people.
What has changed between then and now? I think most of us know deep down what has changed. I don't want to sound like a broken record.
The trend continues. The difference between the affiliate and the paysite owner is just that the paysite owner is able to profit from the sales the tube can still send by cannibalizing the market. But the position of each and the final outcome is the same as long as both rely on the faltering paysite model under the current environment.
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In a conspicuous consumption and disposable society, which we are, you have to have an almost endless supply of goodies to give out. But nothing is forever, nothing is endless. So we simply must find a fair-ish "balance" between ourselves and our traffic partners.
I propose this:
We must work towards achieving a 60/40 split between Program Owners and tubesite owners. I do not believe we will ever achieve 50-50. What I mean is tubes should offer and we should demand that 40% of the ad space on a page that contains one of our videos is an ad for the paysite the video is advertising. NOT OTHER VIDEOS. (This would not include the Homepage, obviously.) So:
1 under-player ad (most tubes have this now)
1 NTV ad 250 x 300 animated
1 1000px wide Footer animated or static
This will leave the Header, 1 NTV animated ad and the entire right margin for the tubes to promote their cams, etc. This setup would increase a paysite's advertising threefold. Not perfect but at least it's giving us a fucking CHANCE. (I would actually like a single 500 x 300 animated ad NTV for the paysite owner, thus "framing" the promo video with ads to the paysite. But I'm realistic. LOL)
Tubesite owners will resist because those NTV ads and Footers bring in big bucks via brokers like Exoclick and through direct ad buys. Brokers will not like this, either. But AGAIN: no content means no content to exploit other revenue streams. It's a symbiotic relationship so now we should just be jostling over percentages.
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That would be more fair for the content producer for sure. But it may not help you as much as you might think. You see the problem isn't necessarily that the tube isn't giving you enough real estate. The problem now is that the product we are trying to sell has been radically devalued. The average surfer (compared to five years ago) doesn't want to click your link or banner because they know it's a paysite and they just aren't interested. They expect it for free.
I don't know if you've made any tubes yourself just for promoting your content and maybe a few other sponsors but if not then I suggest you try it as a learning experience. Try to see how much plastering the page with ads and text links does for your overall ctr versus one little link. There will be a difference for each ad or link you add but you probably won't get anything near the 3% ctr or more which some of us were seeing a couple years ago.