Manifestmen galleries down

[100boys]

Alex I hope you're aware of this, I see many TGP's who use your FHG's which are down, e.g.:

http://manifestgold.com/hosted/galleries/20090820Hadyn/20090820Hadyn.cfm?PA=2005717&SLK=2

[AlexManifestMan]

Yes. We sent out a notice when we changed over to the new system that we would not be supporting Cold Fusion galleries any longer.

[100boys]

Oh damn seems that I missed that, I sent a lot of traffic to those dead galleries :( What are cold fusion galleries?

[AlexManifestMan]

They are hosted galleries that have to be hosted on a cold fusion server. The old Manifest site was running on Cold Fusion but the new one is MetrixStream which we will be able to have on a standard server and move them from place to place as needed without disrupting them in the future.

A number of the changes we are making now are the result of bad advice that we had early on. But better to resolve these issues now so that they are managed properly going forward.

We are seeing a big increase in our sales as a result of the changes and want the affiliates to participate in these improvements. We have also added CCBTools and partially populated them. I am in production all this week and when I return to the office next week we will add the balance of the toolset.

[rawTOP]

Redirects would have solved the problem...

[AlexManifestMan]

The galleries were are running on cold fusion. They will not work without cold fusion. We do not want to have cold fusion servers anymore.

[rawTOP]

The galleries were are running on cold fusion. They will not work without cold fusion. We do not want to have cold fusion servers anymore.

Doesn't mean you can't put 301 redirects in place so each old URL redirects to a new URL with similar content. It's not like just because you use a new platform it's OK to break all the old stuff...

You're doing this with your CCBill link codes too...


Due to all of the exciting new revenue opportunities that we are offering our affiliates, we will need everyone to go to https://affiliateadmin.ccbill.com/signup.cgi and resign up for our affiliate program. Not to worry, you will still be paid out for ALL of your rebills under your old affiliate ID, however, new sales must be processed through your new affiliate id starting on January 20th

Turning off people's established affiliate links so they don't work for new sales is pretty hostile when you could just migrate them to WMS like other programs are doing. What I can't tell is whether you know this is a hostile move or whether you just don't get it... Either way it's really tiring for those of us who are affiliates - imagine all our sponsors doing this - we need stability and backwards compatibility...

[AlexManifestMan]

Turning off people's established affiliate links so they don't work for new sales is pretty hostile when you could just migrate them to WMS like other programs are doing. What I can't tell is whether you know this is a hostile move or whether you just don't get it... Either way it's really tiring for those of us who are affiliates - imagine all our sponsors doing this - we need stability and backwards compatibility...

Did you not just start a thread stating that wms was horrible and that affiliates should boycott sponsors who use it?

Anyone that has worked with me would not accuse me of being hostile or stupid. That you would chose to attack me directly here and in a passive aggressive thread earlier thread makes it pretty clear exactly where you stand.

Why do all the links have to be replaced? Because early on I asked the opinion of affiliates regarding the use of group tracking with CCBill. Because several (who post on boards with great frequency) indicated that doing so would big mistake, we didn't do it. It was the overwhelming opinion that affiliates wanted to keep the accounts totally segregated. Additionally, they wanted a tour that eliminated any possible cross sales between our sites. The Men site grew substantially and we began to offer our members more and more features. We wanted to add additional options but were told that affiliates would be pissed if we did so we held off making the changes that we wanted to make. However, sites that offer nothing but video and photos are not going to be successful in the long haul and Manifest Men had to offer its members more.

Then WMS came along with would allow for a single account number to carry recurring cam sales as well as the cross sales from the Men site to the Cam site and vice-versa. But WMS is complicated and hated by some affiliates (but we have some that like it very much). So now, if an affiliate wants credit for our membership sales, the cam sales, the vod and buy to download sales AND wants to us the CCBill legacy system, then group tracking must be turned on. Otherwise affiliates will be sending traffic to the site and not getting credit for any sales except for the sub account under which they enrolled. Now is the time to turn group tracking on. Is it going to create additional work? Yes. Is it worth it? I believe it is.

No, we will not build a tour and segregated member area that only sells memberships. The increase in revenue from VOD and Buy to Download is far too substantial regardless what anyone may say as to the profitability of either option.

Our sales are better than they have ever been. Our hits to the join page which convert to sales has never been higher. Our conversion ratios have never been better. Our membership has grown 23% since we changed over to the new flash format (which was also a huge mistake according to the suggestions of many and would spell the death knell of any site which did so).

So if an affiliate does not chose to use WMS then they must sign up for a new account under the main account or they will no longer get credit for new sales. All rebills under the old account number will continue to be paid regardless. Or we could have just moved everyone over to WMS whether they liked it or not as you suggest. But that is not something that we would do. Affiliates have a choice.

If anyone believes that this is being done because I am either evil or stupid, there is nothing that can be done to change their minds. I don't know why I am shocked that you would suggest that I am either but so be it. Those who know me, know better.

[basschick]

i'm very confused. rawTOP, this is your thread
http://www.gaydemon.biz/showthread.php?t=11670
and in it, you say "I'm now to the point that if a program switches to WMS I'll stop promoting them."

so while i agree that WMS would have been a viable solution, i can certainly see why alex didn't use it. after all, people say they hate it and will drop any program that uses it. maybe alex can't do everything perfectly the way we all want him to because there is no perfect solution.

coldfusion sucks. the same folks recommended it to a new program i worked with, and i busted ass to convince them not to take that advice. alex, i'm glad to hear you've gotten away from it.


Turning off people's established affiliate links so they don't work for new sales is pretty hostile when you could just migrate them to WMS like other programs are doing. What I can't tell is whether you know this is a hostile move or whether you just don't get it... Either way it's really tiring for those of us who are affiliates - imagine all our sponsors doing this - we need stability and backwards compatibility...

[rawTOP]

Previously I've had good interaction with Alex, but I have to say things have been frustrating lately...

First, unless I'm misunderstanding the e-mail I quoted above, Manifest is simply turning off all the old, regular CCBill links as of January 20th. Other programs are migrating people from the regular CCBill to WMS, but Manifest is just disabling the old links. (That is what that quote above says, right?) When I asked Alex about it he said if I was signed up for WMS I was fine, so my interpretation of all that is the old stuff is dead and it's all WMS. I really don't understand why the old links couldn't be migrated and how this could be OK with established affiliates who may not have redirect scripts in place.

Yes, WMS is in the mix and "thanks" to Manifest being an early adopter I've grown to loath WMS as I tried to figure it out so I could promote them. But the bigger problem is that Manifest is turning off sales for existing links codes that don't use WMS instead of just migrating the link codes to WMS.

Now we see that Manifest is doing pretty much the same thing with it's galleries. I don't use FHGs, so it's not a big deal to me, though I used to use FHGs and have seen Manifest do something similar in the past (probably when they moved to Cold Fusion).

Now the point in all of this is that we're in a technical business and there's no excuse for just turning things off. When I migrate to a new technology I go through the laborious task of redirecting every significant URL - I expect the same of my sponsors. They need to migrate things and provide backwards compatibility. I'm sorry if this seems sarcastic, but hasn't Manifest ever heard of a redirect? I don't even need them to understand the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect - any redirect will get the job done.

Let's take a comparison... Nice Dreams migrated their CCBill and Epoch affiliate programs to NATS a few months ago and they did it in a seamless way that meant that all of their affiliates' old links continued to work. Nothing was needed on the part of the affiliates - the affiliate could send through CCBill or Epoch and get credit for the sale in NATS. They were able to do it because they did their homework and thought through the details and did the difficult work to make it happen. That's affiliate friendly. Just turning things off isn't - it's pretty hostile to people who are supposed to be your business partners.

The porn business these days is a technical business. Don't tell me Manifest can't manage a redirect...

[rawTOP]

i'm very confused. rawTOP, this is your thread
http://www.gaydemon.biz/showthread.php?t=11670
and in it, you say "I'm now to the point that if a program switches to WMS I'll stop promoting them."

so while i agree that WMS would have been a viable solution, i can certainly see why alex didn't use it. after all, people say they hate it and will drop any program that uses it. maybe alex can't do everything perfectly the way we all want him to because there is no perfect solution.

coldfusion sucks. the same folks recommended it to a new program i worked with, and i busted ass to convince them not to take that advice. alex, i'm glad to hear you've gotten away from it.

No, they're moving TO WMS, not away from it.

[AlexManifestMan]

Where exactly did I say we were asking affiliates to move to WMS? We are not. You are saying that. If an affiliate is a WMS affiliate they do not have to sign up again. If they are a legacy affiliate they have to sign up for an new "old style" account. Why? Because they will not get credit for any sales to a website that uses multiple sub-accounts if group tracking is not turned on. It is not currently turned on but is being activated on the January 20th. Why are multiple sub-accounts being used? Because you can not sell credits and memberships on the same sub-account. You can not sell cam purchases and memberships on the same sub-account. They can only be credited to affiliates if they have signed up for the master account. That is what we are asking them to do.

[rawTOP]

Where exactly did I say we were asking affiliates to move to WMS? We are not. You are saying that. If an affiliate is a WMS affiliate they do not have to sign up again. If they are a legacy affiliate they have to sign up for an new "old style" account. Why? Because they will not get credit for any sales to a website that uses multiple sub-accounts if group tracking is not turned on. It is not currently turned on but is being activated on the January 20th. Why are multiple sub-accounts being used? Because you can not sell credits and memberships on the same sub-account. You can not sell cam purchases and memberships on the same sub-account. They can only be credited to affiliates if they have signed up for the master account. That is what we are asking them to do.

So just to be clear - all of the old style link codes stop working (for new sales) on the 20th and that's OK with you? How is that ever OK? You're breaking a lot of the affiliates links to you. Most affiliates don't use redirect scripts...

And yes, my understanding of your e-mail to affiliates and our subsequent e-mails was that only WMS would work after the 20th. Did you ever tell me something different?

I don't understand why you have to have affiliates sign up again. Other programs have sub-account linking and affiliates get full credit. I went around and around on something similar with Buk Buddies a while back it was sorta complicated and Paul had to get involved. The bottom line was that if the sub accounts are linked the affiliate should get credit no matter what sub account the purchase is under, but sometimes they're not linked properly.

[AlexManifestMan]

You are the one that keeps saying affiliates have to sign up for WMS. I never said that. I don't know how to explain it any more clearly. The only way affiliates can get credit across different sub accounts is if group tracking is turned on. When it is turned on, all existing affiliates have to create new affiliate accounts unless it was turned on at the very inception of the program.

[100boys]

I understand that it's not possible to get credit for all kinds of sales using the old link codes and such but for affiliates with bigger networks like us this is quite a big hassle. We have links to ManifestMen on a couple of hundred sites plus tons of blog posts on many blogs plus lots of custom made galleries. We can't simply use database queries for all of these which means we'll have to invest at least 1-2 days to find and change all those links and we can't be 100% sure we found all of them after that.
I'll kick your ass, Alex, if this doesn't turn out to increase new sales by at least 20% lol J/K

[gaydemon]

I'm glad I use a CMS for all my links on blogs and the sites I have. Only takes a few minutes to update everything.

It's always difficult with sponsor changes, but to me it sounds like it's something ManifestMen it's affiliates will benefit from in the long run.

[100boys]

I'm glad I use a CMS for all my links on blogs and the sites I have. Only takes a few minutes to update everything.


Yes that's what we're trying to do for all new projects, too.. but older stuff was still handmade and not handled via mass edit scripts... I'm sure Manifest will do good with the new features, too.

[rawTOP]

The only way affiliates can get credit across different sub accounts is if group tracking is turned on. When it is turned on, all existing affiliates have to create new affiliate accounts unless it was turned on at the very inception of the program.

Buk Buddies had sub account linking turned on after the fact. I was in the middle of the discovery of the fact that it wasn't on (when they thought it was). In the middle of all that there was never a mention that affiliates who signed up under sub accounts had to re-sign up. If what your saying is true then CCBill's technology is pretty horrible and none of us should ever sign up under a sub-account for anything. Can CCBill Paul jump in and clarify why this is necessary?

My point though is that your communication was as clear as mud (I walked away from it thinking you were moving to WMS only) and you don't seem to understand the scope of what you're asking affiliates to do. On top of all of that your promo materials now seem to be locked down and require a user name and password. I've asked for one repeatedly and not gotten one (I don't even think you understood I was asking for one).

You've been great in the past, but you seem disconnected from affiliates right now and doing things that really negatively affect us. I'm just asking you to stop and think before you change technologies. Have a migration strategy that's painless to your business partners.

[gaydemon]

Just tested it myself. Looks pretty much the same to me as before, the only different is that you get a new ID to use. Same type of links.

Seems to be no galleries available to use yet though. Or maybe I'm looking at the wrong place?

http://manifestgold.com/signup.php (http://manifestgold.com/signup.php)

It doesn't either seem to require a login, it only asks you to set your CCBill affiliate ID.

[rawTOP]

I'm at this URL and it's asking for a user name and password...

http://manifestgold.com/tools_downloads_items.php?category=1

[rawTOP]

I just signed up AGAIN (reminds me of getting baptized - got sprinkled when I was a baby, then got baptized again when I made a profession of faith, and then had to do it a third time when Jerry Falwell's co-pastor "Brother Moon" decided the first two weren't good enough)...

Anyway, I see the user name and passwords are sent to you when you sign up again. Would have been nice to say as much on the page that requires the password. I think part of the problem here is just really bad communication. Given how many times I mentioned that I couldn't get promo materials, you'd think I'd know how to get the password...

[AlexManifestMan]

I just signed up AGAIN (reminds me of getting baptized - got sprinkled when I was a baby, then got baptized again when I made a profession of faith, and then had to do it a third time when Jerry Falwell's co-pastor "Brother Moon" decided the first two weren't good enough)...

Anyway, I see the user name and passwords are sent to you when you sign up again. Would have been nice to say as much on the page that requires the password. I think part of the problem here is just really bad communication. Given how many times I mentioned that I couldn't get promo materials, you'd think I'd know how to get the password...

RIGHT there on the page where you enter the un/pw in text as big as can be with boxes for you to type into is the place you can request the un/pw if you don't have one. In fact, because of the number of fields required, the un/pw password request area is even larger than the area where you enter the un/pw but you complain that I am not making it possible for people to get them.

[rawTOP]

RIGHT there on the page where you enter the un/pw in text as big as can be with boxes for you to type into is the place you can request the un/pw if you don't have one. In fact, because of the number of fields required, the un/pw password request area is even larger than the area where you enter the un/pw but you complain that I am not making it possible for people to get them.

Yeah, I filled out that form, and 6 e-mails back and forth later still didn't have the password and was under the impression that you were moving to WMS. I told you I didn't have the password, couldn't get the promo materials, and I hated WMS. What more did I need to tell you?

[AlexManifestMan]

I have just spoken with the head of programming for CCBill and YES affiliates must sign up for the main account if they are to get credit for sales when we turn on account grouping. Lloyd even went and confirmed this to make sure that he did not have outdated or incorrect information.

Perhaps it was different in the past, but the most recent information available from the most authoritative source confirms that what I am saying is true. Yes it is possible to write a complicated script which will convert an old affiliate id to a new one (after the affiliate has created this new id) but it adds a layer of complexity to the mix and makes it even more likely that the affiliate will not get credit for the sale due to the way that the value is passed between the affiliate id link, the page redirect and the surfer's browser as it is carried through to the join form. This creates yet another way that the affiliate can lose credit for the sale and is unduly complicated.

You are dealing with out dated information and using that to indicate both directly and through implication that we do not care about our affiliates. That is not the case.

If anyone has any questions they may certainly contact me by email. That is the fastest and simplest way to have your questions answered. We will assist you in anyway we can through this transition.

[zbuckz_lloyd]

I did what?

[AlexManifestMan]

Sorry...that would be LLoyd, the head of programming for CCBill. Not Intense_Lloyd.