Lifetime ... Just How Long Is It?
Posted On: 2008-06-26
Have you ever stopped to wonder just how long a lifetime really is? In marketing it's one of those nice power words that implies an awful lot but actually means very little when you come to think about it.
You'll often see 'lifetime' used in conjunction with guarantees but just how long is a lifetime guarantee? Is it as long as the lifetime of the company that's offering the guarantee? Is it as long as the lifetime of the purchaser? Is it as long as the lifetime of the item that is being guaranteed?
When you think about it the company offering the guarantee could be on the brink of going belly-up as you read the lifetime guarantee so it could only last till tomorrow. If the guarantee is refering to your lifetime then ... well ... let's face it, you could walk out the door and get hit by a bus just five minutes from now.
And if the lifetime guarantee refers to the lifetime of the product ... well ... it could have been designed to fail after just a couple of uses so the lifetime of the product might be even more limited than your lifetime if the next bus that comes by has your name on it.
However long that lifetime may be we still get pulled in by the promise that the word implies and we automatically think of it as being a very very long time.
Even in this industry we're attracted by offers that include the powerful 'lifetime' promise. One of the big attractions of revshare for many webmasters is that they will continue receiving commissions for as long as the people they send remain members of the site that offers affiliates commission based on revshare.
We're told that we will go on receiving lifetime payouts and, if you've been around for a while, you'll know that an offer like that can mean that you'll go on receiving checks from some revshare sponsors long after you've stopped sending them any meaningful amounts of traffic.
But what's the definition of 'lifetime' in the online adult industry? Well going by the checks that hit my mail box every month there are plenty of sponsors out there who consider that 'lifetime' really does mean until the member stops renewing his membership but it seems that not every sponsor sees it the same way.
Perhaps it's a sign of the difficult economic times ... or maybe it's just a few greedy sponsors ... but it seems that there are a few sponsors who are beginning to consider that the offer of lifetime payouts only stands as long as you keep on sending them new signups. If those new signups stop then so does your income from all those signups that you sent in the past and who continue to remain members of the sponsor's site.
So you need to be aware these days that 'lifetime' can have multiple meanings and for some adult sponsors the lifetime income can be for a whole lot shorter time than you imagine.
Where do porn surfers go in summer?
It's always been one of the basic beliefs in this industry that traffic and signups drop in summer as people spend more time outdoors and away from their computer and rise again after college goes back in autumn.
I've always wondered just how close to reality that perception of the reasons behind the rise and fall in our traffic really is. Perhaps once it was ... back in a time when people weren't quite so tied to the social interaction that their computers offered ... but now things seem to be changing.
A few weeks ago Hitwise published some figures that seemed to indicate that traffic to social networking sites this northern summer has actually risen slightly since college ended for the year and it repeats a traffic peak that was evident in June last year. While it's nowhere near as high as last year's traffic peak there's no doubt that numbers have risen since some low numbers that were apparent through January and February.
So if your numbers are heading downwards this summer it may not be because it's the season for people to leave their computers and go outside. And it may be worth your while to see what you can do to keep those big numbers that you might see during winter go on and keep happening all year round.
Could it be that you need to engage your traffic more? It's certainly something to think about.
Now I'm off to see a couple of mainstream clients who want to take their business online. I'll be back next week.