helterskelter808

I'm not sure if you mean the 'niche' of good photography, or of the content.

Your photography and attention to detail is fine, laudable in fact. I love the nice, if cliched, locations (there are plenty of beautiful locations in Canada, not just scruffy couches in basements, which would make an interesting change, IMO, to tropical locations) and the quality photography.

So yeah, maybe it is just that I think it's 'wasted' on that kind of content; not sure. I admit I can't comprehend how jaded you have to be to need to see the uterus of a woman to get off, but I'm willing to generalize long enough to say that such people are unlikely to be too fussy about the background, which they can't see anyway staring up a cunt.

Furthermore, I think if that's your target market (fair enough) your site does not suggest it. If I signed up based on 90% of the sample pics, which are 'soft', and found out the emphasis was actually on gaping orifices, huge 'insertions' and/or urination, I would be demanding a refund, and certainly would not be renewing.

In fact I think the fact you don't emphasize what your 'niche' is on your site, preferring instead to show off the locations you shoot in, demonstrates that you yourself believe that the niche is 'ugly'.

looky_lou

Sorry you think that Dean and Paul are the only ones that get it. You must have missed a few of the comments in this thread including:

Oh, but that was just coming from a lowly affiliate. Not an artist / content producer.

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Qbert

Wow, just wow...

Rather than going all gestapo on an affiliate that is actually trying to promote your site, perhaps your time would be better spent policing the file sharing sites to get your content removed. Your updates (full sets) appear within hours of release and most downloads are still working weeks/months later. There is where your precious art is really being given away free.

looky_lou

Yes, but I think he said he was mainly in it for the art, the money is secondary. The file lockers, torrents, and tubes are just more exposure for the art.

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inthecrack

Do you suppose I am happy about file sharing? We do what we can but I am not God. Just because there's a major problem in our industry doesn't give people license to do the lesser crime.

__________________
High on crack.


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will76

Agreeing with Paul is further proof that you are totally out of touch with affiliates and how to run an affiliate program.

This is a bit over the top eh? " sell out our principles" because one of your affiliates wants to use your images and crop them, thus leaving off your watermark *gasp*.

PS the two people "who get it" are content producers like yourself and also don't understand being an affiliate. Apparently to you all of the affiliates here who disagree with you are just rednecks. Congrats on pissing on an entire population of people who can send you more sales.

__________________
ICQ: 86364801 Email: will [at] innovativeassets [dot] com

inthecrack

Sure there are some nice places in Canada. Consider that there are only 2 months of the year when there is a remote possibility of being comfortable while naked outdoors if the weather cooperates. Then consider that there is no industry and no model agents in our neck of the woods. Since I would have to fly the models here anyways I might as well go to a tropical location that the models really appreciate.

__________________
High on crack.


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will76

Exactly, sounds like the cops who are hardcore at giving out parking tickets yet there are drug deals and murders going on all around them. Not to mention he makes nothing from the people who steal his content, yet his AFFILIATES who crop his images are sending him sales.

This sounds like someone who jerks off, daily, to his own content. He is so worried about his precious content, that getting rid of affiliates who shave off a couple pixels or removing a watermark is more important than actually making money. Priorities...

__________________
ICQ: 86364801 Email: will [at] innovativeassets [dot] com

StinkyPink

This thread is just preposterous. Reminds me of AppleSky.

inthecrack

Disassociating the legal copyright from it's owner and creator is trivial to you because you didn't create it.

The only people that could be pissed off are those that want to deliberately abuse the TOS and those that might send lots of traffic but generate next to no sales. That still leaves 90% of our affiliate sales. If you read my previous comments you will see that the thickness of my wallet is not my priority here.

__________________
High on crack.


www.inthecrack.com

Qbert

Once again you've completely missed the point. I'm not saying you're happy about the file sharing. I'm saying that you're not doing enough to get the posted content removed. The fact that the downloads are still functional after weeks/months tells me that. If you were also putting forth the same effort to police your content on file sharing sites as you are with policing affiliates I'd be less inclined to see the issues with this affiliate as dick waving.

Just because you have the authority to act, doesn't me you have to. Working with the affiliate, as has been suggested already in this thread, rather than making demands with a deadline that was impossible to meet, would have likely saved you an affiliate and kept this thread from happening and costing you even more affiliates.

inthecrack

This was addressed on page one. Please read.

__________________
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DeanCapture

I'm very sensitive to InTheCracks plight here. There are plenty of producers in this industry who are only in it for the money. They don't care what the content looks like and they don't care what happens to it after it leaves their hands. Obviously, InTheCrack is not one of those kinds of producers.

I never got into photography for the money...and I didn't get into shooting nude girls for the money. Sure, the money is fine... but first and foremost, I want to produce good work. I want to be proud of it. Some of you guys have never created anything of value in your whole life. You don't have a creative bone in your whole body. I'm not knocking you...that's fine. Our world would not survive without non-creatives.....

I can't tell you how many people have told me over the years that if I shot "this" way, or "that" way...I'd make a lot more money. One of my producer friends has told me for years that I'd make a lot of money if I'd start shooting boy/girl. Well, it may surprise some of you to know that there are actually producers in this industry who have a desire and a passion to produce good work. They've studied their craft for years, want to do the best that they can do and be proud of their accomplishments. The money is important, but it's not "the most important thing".

For the uncreative affiliates out there (you know who you are) whose only purpose is to make as much money as they can, they may have a hard time understanding this. But for anyone out there who has a passion for creating a quality product, and have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours practicing their craft and learning the skills that are required, it should make more sense.

With InTheCrack, you have a producer with a passion for creating a beautiful product that is very unique in our industry. Someone who pays big $$$ for high-quality models, locations and post-production. His years of study & practice have made him a skilled composer of the image. He crops the pictures the way that he thinks looks best, that gives his images the most impact. Then an affiliate comes along with no experience in art or photography, recrops the images so that it fits within his blog, crops out the watermark and thinks that should be fine. Yea, it may be fine if your pushing BigSausagePizza.com, but when you're pushing a highly stylized, high quality product that features the work of one producer whose work is known the world over, have a little fucking respect. His work to him is just as important as your work is to you.

No, I'm not an affiliate, so I'm looking at this primarily from one angle. Those of you who are affiliates, arguing in this thread are probably not producers of high-quality, premium unique content either, so I realize that my thoughts are falling on deaf ears. You think that your opinion is the only one that makes sense... and the only one that matters and that anybody who doesn't think like you is a retard. The fact is that if you have ever created anything of value in your whole life, anything that took years to learn how to do and someone came along and started fucking it up, you'd be angry too.

Seems to be that both sides could show a little more sensitivity towards the other. In this particular situation, the watermarks should not have been removed and ITC could have handled the situation with a little more tact. Both sides could have done a better job with this issue but it's easy to look back and say "should'a - could'a".

Now, I know that some of you are just fuming because I've taken the time to post my opinion and of course, your opinion is so much more important than mine so....feel free to release your anger. Some of you will even stoop to calling me names because well, you're not mature enough to convey your thoughts without going all "trailer-trash" and shit. But this will be my last post on this matter. I've said my part - no need to argue with those who disagree with my opinion.

Carry on.....

__________________
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Instagram: @TheDeanCapture
DeanCapture "at" Gmail.com

StinkyPink

Alphasky or whatever, the appletwins dude that bitched about using more than a couple galleries on your sites. Not that it matters anymore, the affiliate model is dying anyway.

12clicks

I doubt he missed it. I'm sure he read it as I did.
Translated it goes something like this:
I appreciate all of your hard work. since I can't duplicate it, I simply remove the watermark to make it seem like mine.
Then it will make it easy to use to promote another site as there won't be any of that confusing watermark stuff with the wrong url in it. If I get caught, I can just say, "oops! rouge link."



did you mean con artist?
There's a watermark on there for a reason.
being a lowly affiliate, you should have taken the admonishment as a learning experience, not an opportunity to have people laugh at you.

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12clicks

yeah. I'm sure he'll miss this guys.......sorry, how many joins was it, ZERO?
yeah, he'll miss his zero joins.

If I went to a site and saw resized pics to remove the watermark and zero joins, I'd know what I'd be thinking and it wouldn't be,"hey, lets work with this guy. He obviously knows his stuff"

but then, I've only been paying affiliates since 1998.

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StinkyPink

Agreed, rightfully so.

So YOUR work is art, and YOUR art fits YOUR vision, but if an affiliate wants HIS work to be HIS art, and HIS art to fit HIS vision, he is a "non-creative". Which BTW I am VERY creative, however I think that my work outside of adult internet marketing is irrelevant to the topic and frankly nobodies business. So I hope you weren't directing that towards me alone, which I don't think you were primarily. Also, I respect both you and ITC as credited photographers and artists in your own right.

Again, a bit hipocritical, narcissistic and cynical no?

OK.

again... OK for YOU but NOT for US! Apparently YOU are important and artistic and valued and creative, but WE are NOT...

O'rly?

I feel like we are spinning in circles here... So, YOU are GOOD... WE are BAD! I get it.

Ahh... finally. Some reasoning.

Agreed, but is this now becoming about the watermark or the artistic views of the original uncropped images... I am getting confused at this point.

And YOUR opinion is SO much more important than mine...

I never called YOU anything, but yet YOU have called ME names, I think I will cry to my mommy!

That is what you said earlier, but you continue to post this "It's ok if I say shit, but you can't because you are just a troll affiliate" type shit. OK.

Whew... thank you!

arock10

some people just have never ran affiliate sites and dont understand wtf is going on

__________________
Sup

bigluv

Cliff Notes: Owner comes in, says really he could care less about this instance, does nothing to rectify problem or make amends, pats overzealous employee on the back.

Won't be a program I'll be promoting although I was considering it.

MPGdevil

Was one of the sites I had in mind promoting, but if affiliates who in all honesty trying to send new members are regarded as criminals just because of a missing watermark on thumbs then I think I'll pass.

Reading the first reply from sponsor I got the impression it was ok after all as everything linked to the paysite, but as the discussion have gone on i am confused.

Are affiliates actively promoting ITC with text links and ads put in the same category as the 100s of tubes, P2P and boards that don't give a shit about the sponsor, all just because of a missing watermark?
That is the impression I get when reading the rest of the thread.

BlackCrayon

perhaps people like yourself and inthecrack shouldn't have open affiliate programs. obviously affiliates don't get all the concerns the content producers have and the content producers don't get all the concerns affiliates have.

__________________
you don't know you're wearing a leash if you sit by the peg all day..

MaDalton

true

i once spoke to the guy who owns and shoots the sites of Nadine J and Milena Velba. He doesn't want affiliates cause they are "stealing" his money. That he could have made A LOT more if he allowed affiliates he didn't understand.

i don't mind, our stuff is jerk off material, i am happy when our clients are happy. and if they want us to shoot with an iphone instead of a camera we'll do that as well.

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Tempest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

12clicks

Affiliates are a dime a dozen and come and go, making them irrelevant when determining the policies of your business.

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looky_lou

Pretty much sums it up right there.

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wehateporn

It was pretty much a mistake by someone new to this, normally it would have been handled differently. That's the way it sounds to me

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looky_lou

Based on his posts, he is not too worried about thumbnails. However that is still technically a violation of the same TOS rule.

So, best to check with them first and show them examples of what you intend to do. Then it would probably be best to get the agreement in writing, so that there is no conflict in the future.

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epitome

Holy shit, I agree with you on something.

At the end of the day, if you aren't sending sales to the program your argument means nothing.

If it were some huge review site sending dozens of sales a day ... I'm sure ITC would be willing to meet halfway or at least hook them up with a watermark so they can edit with credit.

looky_lou

I stated that the particular blog was new and had not generated any sales yet. Fairly low traffic at this point, maybe sending 5-15 hits per day to the tour at this point.

I have been an affiliate of InTheCrack since 2006 and I have made sales. Not a ton, but some.

Whats funny is, I was checking stats today. When I first became their affiliate in 2006 I made 26 sales in a few months. Out of those 26 I got 0 rebills on them. This year they are rebilling at 2 to 1 to sales, so I know it re-bills well. I think back in 2006 maybe they had their re-bills set to (rebills expire after no re-bills) or something. Based on this years stats, those 26 sales would have got me 52 re-bills.

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will76

It seems your priority here is that no one questions your ability as a photographer, or touches you "art work" in any other way then what you provided it. That's a great attitude if you run an art studio / gallery.

Also, cropping the pictures where the water mark is no longer on the image doesn't mean that you are giving up legal ownership of the images. The reality is if people want to *steal* your images they will do it. Anyone can take your images and crop off the very top corner and use it however they like. Good luck stopping people or preventing them. HOWEVER this case was one of your affiliates who was linking back to you, built his entire site to promote yours. The people you should be getting pissed at are the ones stealing your images to promote other sites, not the people sending you sales.

If you care about your works of art that much you should lock them up in a safe and never put them online. As much pride you have in your work, you need to have a little loosen up the grip there and balance it with some business sense. You might not be in it for the money, but I have an assumption that if you didn't make sales then you couldn't afford to operate your business.

__________________
ICQ: 86364801 Email: will [at] innovativeassets [dot] com

inthecrack

Why the big obsession with cropping watermarks anyways? In 10 years of inthecrack I have not once had a customer say "I can't whack off to your pictures because I'm too distracted by the watermark". For that matter I don't think I've ever had someone make a comment of any kind about the watermark. It simply does not bother people. Perhaps the affiliate really had to reduce the picture but that could have been done without cropping. The cropping of a copyright watermark only suggests ulterior motives. You better believe our customers are going to see watermarks on all the images in our members area so it sure would be nice if you were to present the product exactly as they will see it after they have payed for it.

__________________
High on crack.


www.inthecrack.com

BlackCrayon

i dont like watermarks just because i want people to visit the site via my link, not typing it in. i don't like mentioning the url anywhere and sometimes i even avoid naming the site because i don't want to lose sales to type ins.

__________________
you don't know you're wearing a leash if you sit by the peg all day..

DigitalTheory

I do not think it was an obsession but layouts are designed with specs in mind. His picture slot was 500x700, so instead of making the image fit by width height css and look off, he decided to crop the image to the size he needed. Perhaps it was a cut of a head/tit/pussy, and keep the water mark or show the goods and crop the watermark. I am sure if you furnished him with a psd of the watermark he would add it on the pics.

will76

I read all of that shake my head.... REALLY?? all of this because an affiliate cropped an image??????

Dean, I am 100% an affiliate and one of the bigger ones on this board. I have never produced my own content, however that doesn't mean I am not creative or can't appreciate creativity. I've designed promos and web pages over the years that have been copied by others several times. I can come up with some pretty innovative stuff. Affiliates aren't always just people who just send traffic from point A to point B.

Secondly, no one is knocking a photographer for putting pride into his work and producing a quality product. On the contrary, producing good work is what is going to draw affiliates to want to promote that site. But you do have to realize all of this is over a photographer who is mad because an affiliate is using his content to promote his site, but cropped the picture to make it smaller and by doing so the watermark was removed.

Also, what you photographers don't understand is that you may have an "eye" for the best shot, but the affiliate will know what works best on his site with his particular traffic. There is the people with t he passion to take the best photographic shot then there are people who knows what sells the best to their particular audience. The two points of views can still be right, but different. If the photographer's main concern is producing works of art and not making money, and doesn't want anyone to question his creativity/skill nor touch his works of art in anyway, then said person should not only NOT have an affiliate program but they should never put their images online.


At the end of the day, affiliates are here 100% to make money. The photographer wants to be an artist, but by offering an affiliate program he gave the rest of us the perception that he also wants to make money. He's made it clear in this thread he pretty much just wants to be an artist. I can't blame an affiliate for wanting to be an affiliate. You keep saying " affiliate don't understand, can't appreciate...". So what if we don't understand why you guys are so anal about the photos you take? We don't need to understand, he is offering an affiliate program, we are affiliates, we are going to do what we do best (drive traffic and make sales). Obviously the problem lies here with the artist who wants to make money from his art work but doesn't really want us to do what we do best and make sales. How many other affiliate programs act like this? it's not the norm, the artist is acting way different than the norm here and a lot different than what affiliates are use to dealing with.

__________________
ICQ: 86364801 Email: will [at] innovativeassets [dot] com

Tempest

You yourself said that you spend hours post processing your photos to give the customer the best quality you can... Affiliates do the same thing except that we crop/resize an image in order to get the surfer "hot" so that he clicks the link to your site and garners everyone some cash... You deliver a final product to your customers... Affiliates deliver content as a promotional means to get you the customers. The mind set between what your customers would like and what's required to entice a surfer to click through are two different animals. Your expertise is in creating a high quality end product. Affiliate expertise in converting a free loading surfer into a paying member.

When we're cropping an image we're trying to take just the absolute best part of an image and use that to promote the site. We look at that image in terms of how enticing we can make a single image to the surfer. In order to do that, and include your watermark, we'd have to add it back in after the fact which is too much work for the amount of promotional posts/pages etc. we have to make in order to generate traffic. What you're telling your affiliates to do is just take your image, resize it and use it as is. That's simply not as effective as making something that's "optimized" to sell.

LeRoy

TOS is a wonderful thing

Might want to add this bullshit to that

__________________

Raja

If you have bikini sites and like long rebills you should promote blackmendigital.com or for tattoo niche try Skinz.com. You can promote them at swankdollars.com

__________________




Skype: hollywoodraja

epitome

My apologies then. It has been awhile since I read the OP and thought it was an older blog you had no luck with so you were trying new things.

If its a new blog then it takes time to make sales...even if you throw traffic at it. My experience at least. Its the people landing from G that make my blogs sell.

epitome

I can't tell you how frustrated I get when a sponsor sends me a 1600px wide pic that I need to make work in 540px for a blog and the main focus seems to be the background and the models take up 300 of those 1600px. If you resize it you hardly see anything and surfers have too many choices and will move on to something they can actually see... and buy from that site.

StinkyPink

I know, right.

epitome

To those that have watermarks and want to crop and easily insert, there is a great free program called photoscape that lets you resize, build collages, do light editing and add watermarks easily.

I love Photoshop as much as the next guy but unless doing heavy editing, I use photoscape almost exclusively. It does the job and does it well. I use it probably 15x as much as I do Photoshop.

inthecrack

This is probably the the most coherent presentation of your side of the argument so far. I have seen portions of our pictures at 200 pixel sizes that link to unaltered inthecrack content on a page which which in turn links to inthecrack. I'm cool with that.

To be clear… if we are only talking about thumbnails then this whole thread is a giant misunderstanding. We don't have readable watermarks on the thumbnails on our site either. However, if the thumbnail links to a full size image with the watermark removed then I have a bit of a problem with that. If I recall correctly the affiliate in question had resized the images to perhaps 75% of their original size and called them "giant thumbnails" so as to justify removing the watermark. Pardon the pun but that is a bit of a stretch. I don't think there was any unaltered content to be found in the links.

__________________
High on crack.


www.inthecrack.com

marlboroack

That's fucking gay, links pulled.

will76

Ok, so be clear. It is ok to mess with your "works of art" to reduce them down to say 25% of their original size, but it is not ok to mess with your works of art to reduce them down to 75% of their original size. Perhaps you should be more clear in your TOS, what is the acceptable size to mess with your works of art.

__________________
ICQ: 86364801 Email: will [at] innovativeassets [dot] com

inthecrack

I think we can all just use common sense to determine what a thumbnail is. It's a small version of a picture that links to a full size version of the same picture. Do we really have to spell everything out for you or are you are just deliberately trying to be difficult?

__________________
High on crack.


www.inthecrack.com

Tempest

Blogs are a different animal than say a TGP gallery. "Small" thumbs for a TGP gallery is standard and there's multiple pics for the surfer to click on. Blogs have larger "thumbs" that are supposed to be about getting the surfer to drool over the pic and have them click through to the TGP/Video gallery if that's what it's linking to, or (preferable of course) to the site itself. Giving the niche, as far as I can tell anyway, having a large image of just the girls ass or pussy is what that sort of blog needs. Your FS images are nice and large so it makes it easy to do that and size it down to the space allocated on the blog. Funny really.. In the old days of doing galleries we'd crop the FS images down to do the same sort of thing in order to get the surfer to "stick" on the gallery. Now they're just blasted out automatically. In a way, blogs a throw back to the old way of dong things where you take the time to put together the best presentation you can.

looky_lou

See, that's the problem here. You obviously do not know what I was doing or even looked at the blog.

I had no ulterior motives.

My objective was simple. Sell as many memberships to In TheCrack as possible. How will I do this?:

1. register a domain pussyncrack.com that relates to the subject the best I can with out infringing on the original name or TM.

2. Set up the hosting for the domain on my server.

3. Install WP and configure for best SEO for the subject, in this case InTheCrack.

4. Select an attractive, professional looking theme and modify it to best show off and represent InTheCrack.

5. Start by writing 10 200-300 word descriptive posts that are keyword rich towards the subject and InTheCrack.

6. Put these posts into categories and tag them with keyword rich words including InTheCrack.

7. Crop 2 photos from the FHG featuring the highlight of the photo for best representation in the smaller format to get the surfer to click it. (Getting clicks on the photos is essential to keep bounce rate as low as possible. This is one of the key factors for ranking well in Google.) Link those photos directly to the FHG containing the full size sample photos in hopes that they will then click through from the gallery to InTheCrack and buy a membership.

8. Place a large H3 text link at the bottom of each post linking directly to the InTheCrack site, stating SEE MORE! or JOIN NOW!. Most of these links contain the name InTheCrack right in the link.

9. Place hard links from my already established, relevant sites to get indexed immediately by all of the search engines.

10. Submit to as many blog directories as possible for more back links.

11. Feed some traffic from my existing sites to get it some exposure to start it out.

12. Continue writing 2-3 posts per week indefinitely. (If it takes off and starts to produce some sales, up it to 3-5 posts per week.)

Then tweak, tweak, tweak constantly to improve quality and relevancy in the effort to rank better in the Search Engines and build as much traffic as possible. Sell more memberships.

This is how I try to obtain my objective. And my objective was to sell as many memberships as possible to InTheCrack.

__________________

looky_lou

The TOS is quite clear that I received in the original email:

Bullet # 2
Any content taken from our affiliate content page for promotional use may NOT be altered in any way. You may NOT remove or alter the copyright information. You may NOT crop or further compress the sample video or pictures.

When I proposed the question of thumbnails on my TGPs it was never addressed in the responses as you can see.

__________________

Tempest

How the hell are you supposed to put their galleries in your thumb TGP if you can't even make thumbs for them without being in violation of their TOS. Guess you can only use them on old style text TGPs.

StinkyPink

Apparently you may have been under the wrong impression from the start.