First off, I’m in awe that there’s a forum such as this, and super excited that I found a place that I can talk with webmasters like myself! I’m familiar with a lot of your sites, so it’s very interesting to find this forum.
This is my first post here, so, I’ll get to my question.
My blog is Gay Body Blog (can’t post link as it’s my first post).
I currently monetize using Blue Loot, PPS. I have banner ads and in post material.
My blog isn’t focused on strictly porn, but where I can I will throw in monetized posts.
I haven’t always used one affiliate, but I wanted to test it out to see what kind of uptake it would have. I used to use CCBill, with crappy results, and found Blue Loot to have a great ratio.
Currently I’m getting 1 : 708 avg over the last 3 months.
My traffic is about 6000-7000 uniques a day, around 25,000 hits a day.
I was wondering, would it have been better to go RevShare?
I’m using the default PPS settings, which has the 2 Day Trial 1.99 option.
Also, would it be more beneficial to take advantage of traffic with CPM ads? Or is affiliates really the better way to go? Should I change affiliates, any better ones (Hunk/jock/muscle niche) to suggest?
I’m just looking for advice, since you guys are probably much more experienced then I am!
It always depends on the site you promote, not on your traffic or site.
Personally I’ve always done Revshare for Blue Loot, it’s such a good site that both converts and rebills very well. But often I found it really ends up being much the same IF it’s a decently good site. On BAD sites (low value, little content, or not terribly good content) PPS is always the way to go as they simply won’t rebill.
Rebills is also good for keeping you income more predictable or stable I’ve always believed that it’s prevented me from having really terribible days as rebills can make up for it on those days. However for that to really work you need a fairly large volume of sales.
You can always just test out a site on Revshare first for a few months, then calculate if it would have paid more with PPS.
First of all, welcome to GD - I am familiar with your blog as well and I am sure some others here are too.
Your question has been discussed here on the forum many times before, so you might want to search for these threads as well. It’s not easy to give you a straight answer, cause it depends on a few things, like the site you are promoting and the behaviour of your visitors. Also, if 90% present does better on PPS basis with one sponsor, you might belong to that 10% that does better with revshare. My advice would be to give both options a try and see what brings you the best results.
Promoting sites on PPS basis looks like easy money, but in the long run you might be better off with revshare. I still get revshare payouts from sales which were originally made a few years back. From those sales I have earned way more than I would have done with PPS. On the other hand, if a site has a bad rebill ratio, the PPS option is the way to go.
I am currently promoting about 50% of my sponsors on PPS basis, so I am spreading my chances a bit more.
From my own experience, the revenue from selling ads or traffic is quite disappointing. I am doing better with selling my traffic to sponsor sites.
I’m pretty new to promoting so I can’t offer anything that the others haven’t already said. Just wanted to say welcome, and I really like your blog.
It’s in my bookmark list
I tried some ads through an ad-buying service and found the results were quite disappointing. Mind you, the blogs featuring the ads didn’t have tons and tons of traffic. But still, when you consider that serving up ads from an agency based on PPC or PPM might only bring you a couple of cents per, you’re probably better off just serving up your own ads.
And you might actually even do better by posting here that your selling ads. Even if you gave a sponsor a banner for six months for a couple of hundred dollars, you’re probably still making more than serving up ads through a third party. At the same time, 6,000 or so visitors a days is pretty good, so perhaps you’re doing okay with PPM ads.
But I’d vary your sponsors on the blog. If your traffic likes Randy Blue, it probably will also like the Buddy Profits sites.
If you’re only offering Randy Blue on your blog, in a sense you’re training your surfers not to click the links. If they know that every link goes to Randy Blue, and they happen not to like Randy Blue, then eventually they’ll just think, “Oh I’m not clicking that, that goes to that Randy Blue site.” I remember feeling like that back in the 90s when it seemed like every bear link I found went to a site called Bear Lovin’ (I think it was) and when you clicked the link it popped a 29 chain of pop-up-window hell that was impossible to get rid of. Now I know that isn’t the case here with Randy Blue, but I’m using it as an example of how I was trained not to click links. So if you give them variety and keep them guessing, you might see some new money opening up.
You’ll probably also want to consider Chaos Men, Fratmen (although God know what’s happening with that site, I don’t get content any more), Dirty Tony, and a few others.
Welcome, Zack. We traded links before and I like your blog.
In addition to what Michael has mentioned, I think sites like ManAvenue, Men of Scandinavia, BelAmi, Chaosmen, SeanCody and EnglishLads would best convert with your traffic.
Adding a hello and welcome to you, I checked out your blog and its very nice!
I would also like to invite to join our 3 affiliate programs HunkMoney, BritishBucks and LatinoBucks. HunkMoney has a few sites that would do well with your blog, like HunkExclusives and BrokeAndHorny. Plus LaitnoBucks has ArabianDicks, BrazilianDicks and BrokeLatinoGuys, all of which I bet would do well on your blog.
Finally, feel free to submit your blog to our 5 directories via http://gayblogsubmitter.com, our directories are all PR3 and get good search engine traffic!
If given a choice between revshare and PPS I always choose PPS. There is a time value of money that you have to consider as well. Even if you are lucky and make more on revshare is it really worth it? I mean, would you rather have $40 now or the potential to make an average of $50 over a six month period? I stress the word potential as more likely than not you wont make more than PPS, but less. There will be some exceptions however.
The best metric that I have found to value traffic is how much you make per click. Sites that make more per click get more heavily promoted.
The other thing to consider that yes, revshare is great for long-time revenue, but aren’t surfers habits changing? Aren’t they becoming mass consumers? Joining a site raping their member’s area, then moving on? What’s the point of paying $24.95 a month for 6-12 videos a month a Randy Blue when you can run over to Sean Cody or Corbin Fisher and grab another 500-1000 videos?
I’d say there are certainly people that float through sites and have little loyalty. However some people are really hung up on a certain model or that certain je ne sais quoi that a certain site may offer. Maybe loyalty isn’t what it use to be, but I would not discount it either.
Wow great suggestions guys, and thanks for the welcome!
I’m stoked I have some people I can bounce ideas off of now!
It sounds to me that the best option then is really a mix of both PPS and RevShare. This way you can satisfy both the long term $$ and short term $$ avenues. At the same time, you capture those that like to bounce around, and those are loyal.
I definitely agree with dzinerbear’s suggestion to add variety with your affiliate base. I thank you guys for all your suggestions, I was really looking for direction in my niche with some good converters. I’m definitely going to try out some additional ones, and see how they work out.
It’s probably just going to come down to experimentation.
I did almost all revshare when I first started but noticed that there was very little site retention so I switched to PPS and now I’m doing much better.
