looky_lou

I just want to warn other affiliates promoting InTheCrack of a situation that happened to me this week regarding promotion of their site.

I had a 3-4 month old blog pussy-n-crack.com that was originally 100% dedicated to the promotion of InTheCrack. I had around 50 posts containing 200-300 words of hand written text each along with 2 500x700 pixel cropped photos from their FHGs in each post. Each photo was linked directly to the corresponding FHG and each post also contained a call to action text in H3 text linking to their main tour. I was adding 2-3 new posts per week. In the last week or two I had added 3-4 post using another sponsor. I had not received any sales from that blog for InTheCrack, so I figured I would try adding other sponsors to the mix to see if I could generate some income from the blog. Shouldn't be a problem since I am not using their TM name in the domain name or anything. Just another promotional blog with still over 90% of posts promoting InTheCrack.

This week I received an email notice from CrackAssets saying that I was in violation of their TOS. Because I had cropped the photos in my posts to the 500x700 dimension to capture the best of each photo and fit the format of the blog. In cropping the photos the original watermark was not on the cropped version. They gave me 24 hours to remove the photos or redo them with the watermarks left intact. According to the TOS, affiliates are not allowed to alter in any way the promotional photos or videos provided in their promo area.

After responding to the original e-mail the responses were pretty vague and delayed. I never could get clear answers regarding thumbnails on my TGPs, etc. Uncomfortable with the situation I went ahead and removed all posts for InTheCrack and altered all text and meta details geared towards InTheCrack. I replaced them with posts for other sponsors as you can see.

Just be careful not to put too much time and effort into making promos for InTheCrack that violate their TOS. I put allot of time into creating that blog, hand writing those posts, cropping the photos, and SEO the blog for InTheCrack. Seems that they don't really care whether they loose a big dedicated ad. They want those watermarks on there whether you can read them or not.

The following is the e-mail correspondence between CrackAssets affiliate program and myself:

These are in reverse order of received and sent. The times seem to be out of order as I think they were sending from two different computers or something.

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spunky99

some people just dont like sales

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vittle

We would love to have you as anaffiliate! Lots of up close pussy massage pics to keep your user happy and get some cash going your way!

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looky_lou

So true.

BTW, Thank you for running good clean programs. I'm making some sales with the Alluring Vixens site from my bikini niche sites and seems to be re-billing well also. Always nice to have some good sites for bikini lovers.

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mafia_man

It's like health insurance.

There's a dedicated team who try everything not to pay out.

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I'm out.

LeRoy

It's unfortunate but hey... battle is on

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DeanCapture

Maybe I'm missing something here.....

A company asks you to agree not to crop their pictures or remove watermarks from their pictures as part of your affiliate agreement with them....and you went against the rules and did both of those things. You got upset when they told you to fix the problem and now you're here trying to warn others because what? They've asked you to follow the rules?

Seems pretty simple to me. If you want to push their sites, you must agree to their terms. If you don't like their terms, then find other sites to push. I don't get what the big deal is here. They have a right to run their business as they see fit - just like you have a right to run yours.

Somebody clue me in on what all the whining is about in this thread....

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Socks

He said he didn't get any sales, so that's not the case here.

I've seen 1,000 posts on GFY saying "if someone removed my watermark I'd can their ass so fast" etc. What's so different about this?

BSleazy

They're gonna get more typins from their watermarked images...

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icq 156131086

sandman!

problem is 95% of programs dont care as long as the pics are used to promote the program.

so its a pain in the ass for some people to do things differently for the 5% that have a issue.

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Mutt

Here's what should have happened. The program's rules are fine, prohibiting the cropping of promo content that removes the watermark is reasonable. But considering the blog's sole purpose was to promote InTheCrack I'd have appreciated the work already put in and tell the affiliate that he can keep whatever's already on the blog but from hereon if you're going to crop photos the watermark needs to be on it and i'd send him a png file of the watermark to use.

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DBS.US

So you want to keep the altered photos but everyone else should follow the rules?

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DeanCapture

I don't think Lou was using that blog solely for ITC. By the time ITC had contacted him, he had already added another sponsor:

BTW, I think Angie could have handled this situation with a bit more tact. Telling Lou that he had 24 hours to remedy the situation or his acct would be suspended is a bit on "unfriendly" side to me, especially for a first notice. Some people feel the need to be a hard ass when it's not really necessary. It makes them feel powerful and important. Angie seems like that kind of person to me.

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Tempest

Just drop them... If they don't get how real promotion occurs then they're too fucking stupid to be worth sending your traffic to.. watermarks.. what a bunch of morons.. of course we crop that shit out.. We're trying to get the best possible image we can in order to get the surfer to click through and buy a membership.. I mean what the fuck. The blog is almost exclusive to their site... You're linking to their FHGs. You've got another link to the site... Fuck them.. They don't deserve one hit from you or anyone else for being so stupid. Any program ever sent that sort of email to me would have all that traffic sent to a different program as fast as it took me to click a couple buttons in my admin.

</rant>

Jayvis

Try us out for your dating spots ;-) You're running the same sponsor all the way down the page, mix it up a bit!

looky_lou

I appreciate your view and technically I was violating their TOS. However, in searching their top 20 Google search results I found that all affiliates were technically violating that same term.

I am still violating that term on 4 of my TGPs right now because the thumbs are cropped without their watermark and have been re-sized and further compressed from their original files. Basically to stay within their terms I would have to use the thumbs from their FHG as my thumbs without revision whatsoever, regardless of whether their size matches my TGP or not. This does not make for good productive thumbs and no TGP that I know of does it that way.

The Blog was 100% InTheCrack for around 3 months. Even if they had asked that I remove those other 4 post for the other sponsor and keep it 100% InTheCrack, I would have said OK and removed the 4 posts immediately. I really don't mind having a blog dedicated to one sponsor or site exclusively. If they want the water mark but back on after cropping and resizing, I don't have a problem with that if they provide me the .png as Mutt mentioned.

The way I look at it is, my cropped photos in my blog postings are just really big thumbs. They serve the same function as thumbs, but I'm not even skimming any % of the traffic off to trades with the clicks like a TGP.

Anyway Dean, I wish I could work with you or someone with your photography skill to create a site featuring InTheCracks unique style, angles, subject focus, and quality. Build a quality site with great content, very regular updates, providing a real value to the members. Combine that with a great tour and promotional galleries and materials geared towards closing sales. InTheCrack has the content and updates equation covered. The other aspects they really need improvement in.

BTW, I am pulling their thumbs and galleries from my TGPs as we speak. I don't like being micro managed when it is not in the best interest of either party. I have a long story about meeting and talking with the owner of InTheCrack back in 2008. Lets just say, I should have just stuck with my gut instinct.

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Tempest

"Technically", once you crop/resize etc the images you are protected under fair use provisions as has been upheld in a US court of law. If that wasn't the case, none of us could have been doing what we do in this biz for all these years, nor could google have their image search etc. That means you can use the pics however you want really and tell them to fuck off while you redirect the traffic elsewhere.


Yep, I'm in a pissy mood tonight

anexsia

I can't say I have ever had a problem cropping sponsor's images. Personally, I would drop them quick. There's to many sponsors in this market to worry about crap like this...if one doesn't want your traffic, another one will.

will76

The warning is that they are sticklers for the rules and weren't willing to "work with" an affiliate who was (I presume) sending them sales. Yes it was their rules, yes what they did was fine. However, most companies wouldn't have cared and been fine with what he did. These days you think sponsors would be doing what they can to get as many sales as they can not lose sales over something as stupid as a watermark on site that was built and dedicated to just them.

The real !!Warning!! here though, should be: Before you spend a lot of time working with a new sponsor, make sure what you are doing is ok with them even if you think it is harmless and most sponsors wouldn't care.

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Mutt

yes, everybody should follow the rules including him - no big harm in what he did though, whether he knew the rules or not. hard working affiliates are hard to come by, not going to punish him other than to say 'you broke the rules, please don't break them again'.

and if the rule was THAT important to me, then I'd put the rule right on the pages where affiliates get the promo content from, rather than burying it in a terms and conditions page which we know a big majority of people don't read.

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georgeyw

That's a bit ridiculous.

In all my sites, I create a preview thumb that is cropped from one of the gallery images. This preview thumbs sole purpose is to draw people to the gallery.

Having a watermark in that is impossible as I want a nice clean image to promote the gallery and therefore BUY a membership at the freakin sponsor

looky_lou

Yes, I am not trying to bash them or whine about this. They have top quality, unique content with a large archive and regular updates. Obviously they also pay and pay on time being a CCBill program.

Its just a warning to others that they did actually enforce that rule and really seemed kind of indifferent to my reaction. Technically they could enforce this rule with the majority if not all of their affiliates with a 24 hour notice and suspend your account. Should this happen, say goodbye to new sales as well as your re-bills. Maybe they singled me out since I am one of the bigger affiliates of their primary competitor, or maybe they are going to hit others with the same enforcement. Who knows.

I do make sales for them even though the conversions are not very good. I surely felt that my work and effort put into this blog so far would pay off well in the long term. I think the conversion problem relates primarily to their poor gallery design and tour. So much value to sell in the members area, but just not doing it very effectively in my opinion.

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signupdamnit

You should see yourself how many of these sponsors see you. As a slave to provide them with free labor. I bet the chances are that the watermark in question has their url all over it, right? Gee, do you wonder why they don't want you to remove it? Ever read some threads here about sponsors submitting clips to tubes even though they don't even allow a single link back? That's one of the dirty little secrets. Many of the people who will buy will type it in directly. They won't click your banner. They won't click your link. Do not pass Go. You won't get a dime for it but their pockets get fat. Like I said. A slave. Free labor. You're not respected so it's no wonder they treat you like shit. Find sponsors who respect you and aren't looking to rip you off. Fuck the people who don't like me telling it as it is.

will76

yeah those 2-3 type ins a week from watermark images on his blog, that wouldn't have clicked the link anyway.... That is going to hurt their program not to get those couple type ins... vs they lose all of the traffic he is sending to them.

people are lazy, if they like the picture and want to see more they going to click the image or link under it. That is 100x easier then opening up a new tab in your browser and typing in the url. In regards to traffic, watermarks server a little purpose in some situations but not his blog. The only thing the water mark is good for on his blog is "branding" for the program, if the customer sees the name over and over and over they may remember it and go back to it later. But even then that will be rare and only if they see it multiple times on different sites over time. Or, by some very rare chance, someone downloaded the image and saved it/ shared it. Which would be 1000x more likely with videos, not pictures. This isn't 1996.

99.999% of your traffic is going to click the link. The water mark is virtually irrelevant and totally stupid to lose an affiliate/traffic/sales over. I do understand what you are saying though, any branding we do as affiliates for those companies is free traffic/sales they get because of our efforts.

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signupdamnit

One slave. No big deal. But a full slave revolt. Big deal. So they gotta crack the whip every now and then and make sure the free labor keeps coming. It's also a lot more than a few type ins if he gets traffic. Any person who types in the domain is highly motivated and likely to buy more so than the average.

Mr Pheer

Rules are rules....

Some programs will overlook things if you arent trying to fuck with them and are actually getting sales. But if they dont want your traffic, send it somewhere else.

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signupdamnit

Ever wonder why a sponsor has a 1:400 ratio but an affiliate has a 1:3,000 ratio? This is actually part of the reason. If it weren't the case then sponsors wouldn't be spending time submitting watermarked images to tube sites which do not give link backs hoping that those people will do a type in. Many of them do and they buy. That is why they do it. It isn't rocket science. It's mostly about keeping the slaves in line. The same programs who will go after affiliates for small things like this often will at the same time submit 20 minute clips to tubes or won't give a damn. It shows how they think of affiliates.

looky_lou

I totally understand this concept. The traffic that started me on the web back in 1994 - 1995 was from my images that I posted in newsgroups with my url on them.

With that said, it doesn't really male allot of sense in this case. The images in question were directly linked to their gallery or tour which has their name/url all over it on a blog dedicated to them.

Type-in are just part of the cost of being an affiliate marketer. Always have been, always will be.

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signupdamnit

It wasn't always this way. Not to the degree it is now. Seven, ten years ago hardly any sponsor dared put an url on their affiliate content or banners. Logos yes but not urls. Certain affiliates would raise hell when they tried. Now everyone rolls over and that is why you have what you have today. It's just one of many things which cut more into your percentage. Add them all up and it becomes significant.

over38

They have great content, but I can't take that tour design, looks like something from a 1997 Avs site

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RycEric

One of the rudest programs we have ever worked with unless something has changed.

CaptainHowdy

See me stretch ...

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TeenCat

those people are back thinking, they want you to use material that they made and that is all around, so you cannot offer nothing else than everyone around, so how can you make sales with that oversaturated free hosted galleries and banners and all other crap which is on all high traffic sites? just stop promoting them, start posting similar sites and keep traffic on your blog their serps. if they dont want any of your traffic, dont send it to them easy as that, no brain, no traffic ...

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seeandsee

if you sent them traffic and sales, what the fuck was with them to gain you about crops...

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Qbert

I've noticed this about a number of programs where photographers decide to venture into the pay site and affiliate program arena. Not always the case but many are way too caught up in the idea that altering their work degrades their art.

This is porn, wank fodder, not art.

BlackCrayon

thanks for the heads up, i will avoid them.

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gleem

Why bother bitching about it here? If you don't like their rules, drop em, everyone has different tolerance levels when it comes to their content.

They probably looked at your site and the fact you weren't making sales and decided it wasn't worth it.

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DBS.US

If you can't make any money with them whey not just move on to the next program and don't look back.

Spending time on past mistakes will not make money in the future.

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jimmycooper

I've always felt that similar watermark rules exist for the need of having an 'absolute' to cite because 'intent' can be hard to prove.

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AmeliaG

Who is their primary competitor?

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looky_lou

The one. The original since 1996. ALSscan

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mafia_man

Does he know for sure?

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I'm out.

looky_lou

Maybe calls for some pics.

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will76

I agree they pick up some free traffic from branding, but this has been talked about and happening from day 1. And you would like to think that they take in account the free joins they get when they decide on how much they want to payout to affiliates.

There are reasons why most sponsors have much better conversion ratios then their affiliates, and type in traffic from branding is a lot lower on the list than other things like..

- The fact that most affiliates send garbage traffic.
- Some sponsors don't buy traffic and make a lot of their sales from good placement of their sites in the search engines which converts a lot better.
- Lost cookies, expiring cookies, signing back up with a new credit card, depending on the company, there is lots of ways that affiliates get ripped off and lose credit from sales they send that make the sponsor's conversion ratio look so good.
I am sure there are several other reasons I am not thinking of at the moment right off the top of my head.

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iamtam

dean, google did the same thing in making thumbnails for the content as well for google images. damn, they should sue google.

thumbnailing is legally protected, presenting less than a full image as part of a promotional blog should not be an issue. any program anal enough to do this against a blog that is promoting their sites directly needs to be checked for any signs of intelligent life in their offices, because they just shot themselves in the foot.

that is one program i wouldnt touch with a 10 foot pole now.

TheDA

There's a few progs out there with the exact same in their ToS.

'Thumbnails' have changed quite a bit over the years.

Early days - 80x115 thumb, can't wank to it. Members area content was 600x800.

Now the 'thumbs' are 600x800

looky_lou

Yeah, I think there are probably allot that have this in their TOS.

You are right, thumbs have definitely evolved over the years.

The times. They are always a changing.

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helterskelter808

You obviously love them; personally I wouldn't want to be associated in any way with any company with their history.

DeanCapture

What is their history?

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inthecrack

As the director and photographer of inthecrack I feel obliged to respond to people's concerns here. I would agree with Dean that Angie was a little harsh on this or could have been a little more tactful. To be honest I am not concerned about what people do with thumbnails. The thumbnails on our own site do not have watermarks either. To suggest that thumbnails should have a watermark on them is a bit ridiculous. However in Angie's defence this affiliate was in violation of the TOS and we are not talking about thumbnails here but in fact full size images. I really see this violation as a trivial matter that I would have overlooked but Angie is new on this so it would be good to cut her some slack.

Now to enlighten people as to why that rule is in the TOS…. Branding is certainly a part of it but really only a small part and it is definitely not intended to short change affiliates of any potential click throughs. The fact is I go to extraordinary lengths to produce a premium product. There are not too many other producers that would fly all of the crew and models to exotic lands such as French Polynesia and New Zealand in order to get amazing locations. What customers and affiliates do not see is 10 in house trained editors that give every single picture 30 minutes of extreme detailed editing in such a manner as to not look edited. This does includes cropping to the ideal composition. I probably spend more on the post production than I do on the production. Therefore yes it does pick my ass a little bit when people feel they have the liberty to go and make their own alterations to the pictures.

I'm not likely to go and tell all our affiliates to quit altering our pictures but I would only hope that people would have some respect for the time and effort that goes into making a top quality product.

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www.inthecrack.com