Adult Affiliate Programs: My Personal Blue Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory

This is getting ridiculous. I've had well over 1200 hits for my Pimproll affiliate program and NO sales. Maybe it's the banner I'm using on the message boards. I'm primarily promoting Mandy's Diary , a Pimproll solo girl site. Maybe it's not so much the affiliate program but the site itself.

I'd always thought that solo girl sites, where the girl sometimes chooses to pose with a few girlfriends now and then but the site is basically softcore, did well. I guess I'll have to revise that sentiment.

That being said concerning solo girl sites, it's still no secret - and it's been this way for a while - that both amateur porn and young/teen porn do well as niches in the adult industry. I guess that only pertains to those niches hardcore varieties.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think hardcore is making a comeback. Not that it ever left, but it seems to be preferred far and away by a lot more people these days. I have heard guys complain quite a bit lately (and I myself have had this gripe on occasion), wondering what the big deal is with all the lesbian porn.

On the other hand, consider the fact that Jenna Jameson - who mostly does lesbian shoots nowadays since she's been married - garnered over 1.4 million searches in the Overture search tool in a recent one-month period. Then again, that might just be her...

Speaking of The Jenna, I signed up for her affiliate program JennaCash way back in March of this year. But it wasn't only because of how big she was per se (although I did think just her name alone would be good for a handful of click-throughs and sign-ups given her star power), but because of the sites of other big name pornstars under her label: e.g. Tera Patrick, Jill Kelly, Briana Banks, and Gina Lynn. And she continues to sign up new sites of big name adult stars all the time.

Don't get me wrong, she's got some good content. From what I've seen, they do some first-class things over at ClubJenna. But the bottom-line is just not there for me in terms of sales. Part of me thinks it's a perception (erroneous as it is) that she, as well as those other top starlets, doesn't have exclusive content. After all, you can find tons of free pics and movie clips of Jameson, Patrick, Kelly, etc just by googling their names. But there is some exclusive stuff in those pornstars' members' areas, things you will not find anywhere else on the net. Trust me because I myself have been known to sign up for trial memberships in the past in order to evaluate a website for review.

So at this point I'm thinking maybe exclusive content is where it's at these days as far as adult affiliate programs go. Case in point, look at the Bangbros network.

For those who don't know (which means you must be relatively new to internet porn), Bangbros is a company that runs a host of adult niche websites (from those concerning big breasts to those concerning mature women), and from what I know all their content is 100% exclusive. That is, all their content is shot only for their websites. And you will not find any of their content used to promote any website (unless it's being done illegally) that is not in their network. From what I've heard, they're raking the money in hand over fist down there at Bangbros headquarters in Florida.

And as much as I'd like to throw my main affiliate program PECash (my very first sponsor and the reason that I'm in this adult business in the first place) under the bus as well, they're the only ones that garner any conversions for me at all. Even if it is once in a blue moon. Then again, that might be just because their links are plastered on every single page of my site. You know the old saying: "Even a blind squirrel/link finds a nut/sale once in a while."

I admit that part of my lack of sales is directly my own fault: I'd said in a previous post that it would probably be a good idea to sign up for the Hustler affiliate program. After all, they have a lot - if not total - exclusive content. Now Playboy, you might expect, also has mostly exclusive content. But Hustler, compared to Playboy, is known for its riskier, hardcore content. All I know is Playboy recently reported dwindling magazine sales.

I was thinking of boosting their visibility (read, more Playboy banners) on my site, but after that bit of news I'm thinking what's the point?

I, at one point, had thought that the lack of ethnic diversity - e.g. blacks, Asians, Hispanics - was why the Playboy affiliate wasn't doing so well. Let's face it, Hugh Hefner's idea of a cultural alternative is a brunette with brown eyes and small breasts. But the lack of cultural diversity hasn't seemed to hurt Hustler's online presence in the least.

Besides, the two sponsors that I promote the most, Pimproll and one called Fetish Hits, have diversity coming out of their you-know-whats but it hasn't done me any good in terms of sales. Those two programs each have a site for every niche you can imagine, including some niches you didn't know existed.

One affiliate program type that I've neglected is the adult dating / live online chat / phone sex genre. Sure I've always had a live chat banner or two up, but not in a place of prominence. I'm trying to fix that by recently signing up with the AdultFriendFinder program, an adult dating sponsor you may have seen just about all over the place on adult sites. They're like the Google Adwords (who don't allow porn sites to sign up) of the adult website community, i.e AFF pays you just to send click-throughs in their direction.

From my traffic analysis so far, the way AFF credits you for those clicks is a little suspect and doesn't seem to be all that they promised. But they are still paying you just for the traffic, whether it be blind or targeted. What other reputable site is going to do that for your adult site? No really, if anyone has any ideas, I'm open to suggestions...

I've been following a lot of the business news concerning high-tech/gadget porn; you know, porn on cell phones, porn on the Playstation portable (PSP) device, and porn on iPods. From all that I've read, as it stands now, Europeans are far and away ahead of porn mongers in this country insofar as mobile phone adult subscriptions. I've been doing some research (okay, I saw their ad and I remembered that they had a good reputation) , and Xobile looks promising as a sponsor that provides adult content for cell phones.

There are a handful of companies in Japan that are producing porn content on the Universal Media Disc (UMD), which is the PSP disc format. I don't know of any companies State-side that do it (they may exist, but they're just underground right now). But since PSP porn hasn't really caught on yet, it's probably not worth my time to look into a UMD porn content affiliate. Or maybe I should get in on the ground floor...

On the other hand, I think iPod porn is going to be very profitable. Even though Apple Computer Inc. - the maker of the iPod - washes its hands of and publicly frowns on those who would produce porn content for their hardware (much like the folks at Sony Entertainment in regards to their PSP), it's only a matter of time before iPod downloaded porn is everywhere. Adult content availability is only as extensive as that of the medium the content is on, and right now iPods are selling like hotcakes.

If you're an adult webmaster and are ever at a loss for some good affiliate programs, go to Xbiz.com or AdultWebmasterHangout.com for ideas.

This time I'll follow up on those prospective good affiliates. I promise.