Never Forget – This is a Business
Posted On: 2007-10-15
One mistake that many newbies make when they move into marketing adult products is that this is a business.
Perhaps it's all those pictures of naked babes and wild hardcore sex that suckers them in. Perhaps it's the fact that they're now dealing with their wildest fantasies and looking at porn is going to make them money that confuses them. Perhaps it's the thought that they can work in their underwear and never have to get dressed to go out to work again that fools them.
Whatever it might be that throws them off so many newbies forget that this is a business and all the principles that apply to those running businesses in the real world also apply here in cyberspace. It doesn't matter whether you're selling widgets for a multi-national corporation or selling porn memberships for some company no one has ever heard of before, the principles are all the same.
And one of those principles is that you always need to read the fine print. At first glance this industry might seem to be full of people who do business on the fly, people who don't bother about real contracts and real business agreements and that image is often strengthened by what you might read in the press.
I can remember years ago reading a piece by a mainstream journalist who was amazed that in this industry big business deals could be done over a drink at the bar during a convention and handshakes were all that was needed to seal the deal. Well maybe some guys did business like that back then but even in those days this was a real business with real contracts.
Today things have become even more conventional and every time an affiliate signs up with a new sponsor the two parties are entering into a legally binding contract. You may not have recognized it as a contract but when you agree to a sponsor's terms of service you are entering into a contract with that sponsor.
Now you may not feel like reading the fine print in that contract but if you're serious about your business then you need to be serious about reading the fine print because it's that fine print that will govern the way you and the sponsor interact ... and getting paid is part of that interaction.
Of course you may think that you already know what is in that fine print. After all you've already read the hype on the sponsor's website or read the press release about their latest program and so you know how much you're going to be paid and you know what the conditions of those payments are don't you?
I'm sorry to break the bad news to you but if you're relying on the hype and spin that you see on websites and in press releases then you could be in for a very nasty shock. All too often the devil is hidden away in the fine print and if you don't read it you really have no excuse if you find you're not getting paid as much as you thought you would.
A perfect example of what I'm talking about hit a major industry message board just a couple of days ago. One of the best known sponsors in the industry launched a new program and it really does look good. It's offering webmasters a lot of different ways to monetize their traffic by sending it to this sponsor. The announcement made a big deal out of these ways for affiliates to make more money and it also made this statement:
'$1 trials paying $40 per signup'
Now doesn't that sound wonderful and I'm sure that statement got a lot of affiliates very excited but the devil was in the fine print; you know, those nasty little lines of small text that you find in the Terms of Service ... that contract that you're going to ‘sign' when join the affiliate program.
I'm sure very few webmasters bothered to read the terms. Instead they were bedazzled by the vision of all that money they could make just by getting their surfers to sign up for a $1 trial. Unfortunately, if they were bedazzled by their fantasies they're going to be in for a rude shock because they're not going to be paid a cent for the $1 trials.
You see, hidden in the fine print was this little gem:
'ii. Pay-Per-Signup: We will pay you a commission of $40.00 per Qualified Subscriber (as defined below) who connects from your Referring URL on your Affiliate Site to the xxx.com Site (subject to the limitations below).
iii. For purposes of this Agreement, a 'Qualified Subscriber' shall mean an individual person who (1) xxx can verify navigated directly to the xxx.com Site using your Referring URL; (2) are not customers of xxx at the time of their registration on the xxx.com Site; (3) register for a trial subscription or a full-paying monthly subscription for access to the xxx.com Site service during such person's visit upon linking to the xxx.com Site directly from your Referring URL; (4) pay the applicable access or subscription fee following successful completion of xxx's registration form (including without limitation acceptance of the applicable terms of use and privacy policy and verification that such person is at least eighteen (18) years of age); and (5) for users who sign up for a trial subscription, convert to a fully-paid monthly subscriber of the xxx.com Site immediately following the trial subscription. Qualified Subscribers must meet all of the above criteria in order to be counted toward your sign ups.'
And just in case you're too lazy to read the fine print let me tell you that what it really says is that if you join that affiliate program and send traffic to them you will only get paid on the $1.00 joins if the $1.00 join converts to a full-paid monthly subscription.
Think about it for a while and you too will see why it's always important to read the fine print and why you should never forget that this is a business just like any other.