Signs that your new altporn site will fail
One of your “hot new ideas” is to:
- Pay “commissions” to models
- Have a “street team”
No. This shit will not work. It will not increase your memberships appreciably. It will give you FAR more hassle than it’s worth. How long do you think people are gonna be interested in your site? 6 months for the REALLY crazy, obsessive types. You’re dealing with 18-25 year olds, and your site is definitely not gonna interest them longer than the new Franz Ferdinand album. They’ll be SUPER PUMPED for a little while, but sooner or later they’re posting in their livejournal about the new Fall Out Boy.
Assume no one but you cares about your site. It’s almost certainly true, especially when your site is nothing more than some ideas and half-written html templates that your friend on AIM made for you.
It’s not that “commissions” are a bad idea (I think street teams are a little more debatable, but that’s not something I wanna get into right now). But there are a couple of ways to do them. Here’s how you don’t do commission-based sales:
SECTION 5 - ACTIVITY REQUIREMENTS – YOUR OBLIGATIONS
5.1 Your commissions depend on your contribution to the website, and if at any time you stop contributing to the community, this agreement may be terminated.
Activity is defined as:
a. Updating your journal and responding to member’s comments.b. Participating in Deviant Nation’s forums by posting new threads or responding to existing threads.
c. Submitting your own new sets or shooting new sets with a Deviant Nation photographer.
Hard to know where to begin, so let’s just start listing the problems here (and yeah, I know this is a “work in progress,” but it’s publicly posted, so public criticism doesn’t seem unreasonable):
- It’s not clear whether you can be doing “any” or “all” of these things
- “Participation” is not quantified in any way. Is one post in the forums per month adequate? How about one journal post a year?
- What happens when your drop out of “participation,” but still have money waiting in rollover (see below)? Is it forfeited?
- Why the fuck should it matter if I’m participating in the forums? If I’m sending you referrals, I deserve a cut. Why do I even have to be a model to earn money on referrals, let alone a “participating” one?
That last point is what really confuses me. Why not just set up a CCBill Affiliate Program? It’s easy as shit, they handle all the bullshit of cutting check and stuff, and you’re probably doing your billing with CCBillanyway, since they’re the only folks left who haven’t assraped everyone in the industry. And it’s FREE with your CCBill account.
So let’s take a look at what we’re getting paid in this commission system:
3.1 Exclusive vs. Non-Exclusive models . Models who wish to be exclusive models of Deviant Nation will be granted a larger commission rate than non-exclusive models. This commission will be agreed upon at the time the model notifies Deviant Nation that they wish to be exclusive to Deviant Nation’s website.
Once again, I don’t see why you even should need to be a model AT ALL to get a commission. The rates for “exclusive” models don’t seem to be defined, but I hope they’re a lot better than what we’ve got here:
(And just to interject here, to clear up any misconceptions: you will NEVER make enough money to live in anything but a cardboard box in an alley as an “exclusive” model doing altporn work. Even the most famous fetish models, who can command much larger paydays, don’t do exclusive work because no one can make it worth their while. Even then, most of them have day jobs or live in far shittier apartments than you would imagine (or go out with Marilyn Manson).)
3.2 Termination of Exclusivity . Termination of exclusivity will automatically convert your commissions to non-exclusive paid commission rate listed below.
3.4 Multi-Month Subscriptions . You will receive 25% on the 1st time subscription when your web site visitor signs up via your referral for a multi-month subscription. You will not receive Monthly Commission as defined below on multi-month subscription packages because the user is not on a monthly payment subscription. Multi-Month Subscriptions commissions are defined as:
a. 3 Month Subscription ($23.99) = $6 Commission
b. 6 Month Subscription ($35.99) = $9 Commission
c. 12 Month Subscription ($59.99) = $15 Commission
3.5 Monthly Commission . You will receive 50% of the members first month’s membership dues. After the first month, you will receive 10% on the member’s monthly membership dues for as long as your referred member remains a paying member of Deviant Nation. Monthly Subscription commissions are defined as:
a. New Sign up one time payment ($9.99) = $5 Commission
b. Re-occurring monthly membership dues ($9.99) = $1 Commission x # of members referred. (100 members referred = $100 a month in commission)
Okay, so that’s 25% on multi-month non-rebilling plans, and 50%/10% on monthly plans/rebills. That’s quite low compared to most of the CCBill affiliate programs I’ve come across, even for tiny sites. Most pay at least 50% on all their plans, and at least 25% (usually 50%) on rebills (see: Spookycash, Inkygirls, DarkPlay). And once again, anybody can participate in the program - not just models who are “active.”
But still, that’s not to horrible, right? At least you’ll get a little bit of money here and there. Well, not exactly:
4.1 Payment . Commission will be automatically calculated in real time, and you can login to your account to check how much commission you have earned. Deviant Nation will mail checks by the 15th working day of each quarter, if the balance is equal to or greater than $100. If the balance is less than $100, the balance will carry over to the next quarter until such time that the balance is equal to or greater than $100. All amounts are stated in and all payments will be made in US funds.
You know what the standard rollover is on a CCBill aff. program? $25. Here, you get paid less than average, and have to wait 4 times longer to get a check cut… if you ever get a check at all (again, no explanation about what happens if you drop out with money in your commission account). I’d be very surprised if more than 25% of the models can ever earn more than $100 with these rates. If the site were enticing and properly promoted so that it could get more signups, they could pay a lot more than this. Under this agreement, models would be better off just signing up for some other sites’ affiliate programs and pasting those links into their Myspace bulletins.
I know this looks like I’m picking on DN here. I’m not - they may be very well-meaning people, and they at least are trying to introduce a bit of transparency to their process. Lots of folks in this niche have crappier terms. But when you boast about your great new idea, you’ve gotta make sure that it’s actually both “new” and “great.”"SG doesn’t do it” doesn’t qualify.