WHAT IS AN AFFILIATE?

It works like this. A guy (or a girl!) decides to start up a webcam site with live girls doing shows. He builds the site, gets some girls and sets up billing. Then he needs to get some customers in, drive some paying traffic to the site. He may or may not be a traffic expert, but he sure can't make the site popular and profitable all by himself.

He needs affiliates, people who can do the work for him and drive customers to the site and spread the word. So he sets up an affiliate program for his site. On the site he offers some promotional tools that will help his affiliates to market his webcam site: banners, iframes, free content such as galleries consisting of pictures or videos of his models, and stuff like that. But who would do this for free? Nobody - he needs to pay his affiliates for their effort. Some choose to pay a commission, i.e. affiliate gets a percentage of everything his referrals spend on the site. This method is called revenue sharing, or revshare. Some prefer paying the affiliate a fixed amount for the initial sign-up instead. This is called pay-per-signup/pay-per-sale, or PPS. There are other methods too, but these are the two main ones. Now you might be wondering how program owners know exactly who sent each visitor. For this purpose every affiliate gets a unique referral code, also known as refcode. In order to get credited for every sale, all affiliate's traffic must go through links with refcodes.

Everyone knows that sometimes people go to a site and leaves, but decides to join later. Wouldn't it be unfair to the affiliate who sent the visitor to the site in the first place if he didn't get credited for the sale? No worries - when you refer a visitor to a site through your refcode, your refcode gets stored in the visitors computer via cookies, IP, or URL tracking. Therefore you get credited for the sale if the visitor leaves and returns, usually even if he doesn't go through your referral links.

Cookies/tracking usually expire, depending on the affiliate program's settings, but it's only fair, otherwise much of your sales would be credited to someone else, too ;-)

This is how program owners know how much to pay each affiliate. Affiliates can also check their statistics on the affiliate program's website.

  WHO CAN BE AN AFFILIATE?

Now you know what being an affiliate means and how the majority or webcam sites get their customers. I probably made it sound really easy to set up your own webcam site, but trust me, it's hard work, and most of them never become successfull. However, becoming an affiliate is much easier, and if you're really good at it, you can earn even more than you would if you decided to start up a webcam site yourself.

Basically anyone can be an affiliate. It costs nothing to become an affiliate. It helps if you already have a website with traffic, but it isn't necessary. There are plenty of resources that will help you get started, and affiliate programs are usually happy to give you some advice on how to promote their site. Being an affiliate is also something you can do part-time, if you have a day job. Depending on how you market the site, it doesn't take much time at all to maintain after the initial system is set up. Although the minimum requirements for an affiliate are very low, and just about anyone with a bit of time and motivation can become an affiliate, some people are better affiliates than the others. So what makes a good affiliate? Marketing skills are one thing. Some people were born with a sales person mentality and a great understanding of how people's minds work and how to make them want to buy a product. You can learn these skills though, so don't be discouraged if you don't have this characteristic in you already.

Knowing the product you are selling, and knowing your target audience is helpful aswell. If you've never had a webcam show or don't have any interest in the webcam business, promote something else. Something you are interested in, a product you have used yourself, or know something about. Also if you have a website that's got nothing to do with webcams or porn in general, there's no point promoting webcam sites to its visitors. Choose something that's related to the theme of that specific website, and you'll see more profit. If you really want to promote webcams too, start up another site for that.

  HAVE YOUR SAY

Are you a webmaster and would like to add something to this review or have further questions? Go to AWN Forums to share your experiences, knowledge and to get advice from experts.

  CHOOSING A SITE TO PROMOTE

You probably know some webcam sites already, but take a moment to explore the competition. You might find a site that has higher payouts, better promo tools, prettier girls... Or you might not, but at least you can say you've done your research and chosen the best one. You wouldn't blindly start working for the first company that offers you a job in real life either, if you know what I mean. There are big cam sites and small cam sites, old cam sites and new cam sites, hundreds to choose from. My advice would be to look at the actual webcam sites before even visiting any of their affiliate programs. Why? Because that is the product you're going to be selling - not the affiliate program. This way you can forget the webcam sites you would never sign up to, or think your traffic wouldn't like.

It's better to do this before you visit their affiliate programs, because you might be blinded by their promises, high payouts or sign-up bonuses. You will not see the high payouts or bonuses they promised if their site is crap. First of all it's hard to sell something you don't believe in. Second of all, most surfers are not stupid. If you tell them the site has amazingly beautiful girls or cheap prices when they can see that it hasn't, you'll lose their trust and they'll go to someone else next time they are looking for cam sites.

It's really quite simple. Choose the best sites, visit their affiliate programs, narrow it down to couple of the best site/affiliate program combinations, and sign up. For your convenience I've collected a long list of webcam affiliate programs (and their sites of course) on the "Webcam Affiliate Programs" page. Once you've chosen your favourite webcam sites, you need to visit their affiliate program. If you are already familiar with terms such as revshare and PPS, and have decided which one you prefer, you might be interested in comparing each affiliate program's payouts. You can do this on the "Best Deals" page. If you would like to know more, keep reading.

  CHOOSING THE RIGHT PROGRAM

As I previously mentioned, PPS and revshare are the two main ways affiliate programs, a.k.a sponsors pay their affiliates. Some webcam sponsors only have one of these options, and in that case it's usually revshare. Most have both PPS and revshare, and several sponsors have even more programs to choose from. Trial conversions, free member sign-ups, different combinations of PPS and revshare... and the list goes on. New webmasters are usually tempted by the big PPS payouts some sponsors offer, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, if you find a webcam site with a lot of potential, and think you're traffic will like it enough to stay and spend money, you're better off choosing revshare. You won't see the results right away, but in the long run you'll be happy you "held onto the customer" by choosing revshare. After all, as long as your referrals keep spending money on the site, you will continue to earn from them. And who knows, you might hit a jackpot one day, and refer really big spenders, a.k.a "whales" ;)

But as I said, there's nothing wrong with PPS either. If you think the cam site isn't all that good and visitors who sign up won't stay for very long, or if you just need/prefer some fast cash, go for the high PPS.

But don't leave it at that - once you've chosen your program, gotten started, monitor your stats. If you chose revshare, and you're not seeing much cash in, let's say six months or so, the chances are that a) the site is crap, b) you marketed it the wrong way and it isn't what your visitors expected, c) your current source of traffic is crap. Then it's time to re-think your plan. Choose different promo tools. Switch to PPS. Ditch the site and start promoting another one. Or, find better traffic. Other program options may include trials or free member sign-ups. The trick with cheap trial subscriptions is that unless the visitor cancels before their trial period ends, he will automatically billed for the standard fee, which is usually bigger than the trial fee. They call this a conversion, and keep in mind that it's not uncommon that the sponsor only pays you for trial sign-ups if they don't cancel.

Some sponsors even offer you PPS on visitors that join their site for free, and I admit, it sounds too good to be true, but let me assure you, they are not doing this just to be nice and generous ;) So how do they get their money from free members? They usually just rely on free members liking the site so much they'll spend money on something later on, and they collect their credit card details to make sure they have spending potential.

Make sure you read the sponsor's fine print before you start promoting trials of free joins, as there are generally some requirements that need to be filled before you get credited for your sale, such as a conversion, an e-mail confirmation from the visitor, or something else. My personal favourite is revshare, but what's even better is a combination of PPS and revshare that some sponsors offer nowadays. You just can't lose with that, can you! You can find such program on LustyBucks, MooCash and Webcams. Almost all sponsors also offer webmaster referrals. When you refer a webmaster to their affiliate program and he signs up to promote their sites, you get paid. The most common method is a small revshare percentage, somewhere around 5-20%. Some offer you a flat amount reward up to hundreds of dollars for every new webmaster, but keep in mind, that generally you only get this reward if the referred webmaster makes a certain amount of sales, i.e. is active.

  PROMO TOOLS

Webcam sponsors come up with new, exciting and innovative promo tools pretty often, so make sure you check their site every now and then. Most of these tools require a website you can put them on though. It's very cheap to set up a website (or ten!), you can get started for only a few dollars, and a good website will pay for itself in no time.

Mary has written a few guides on the subject in her camgirls section, on the "Getting A Website" page, and although they're aimed at camgirls, there's a lot of general information useful to all newbies who need to set up a site. Banners, along with text links, were the first marketing tools sponsors provided their affiliates. And even though they're the most basic way to market sites, they still are one of the most popular tools among affiliates - they're easy to use, they don't take much room on your site and there are dozens, if not hundreds of banners to choose from, depending on the program. Often sponsors offer to host some of their promo tools for you, but if yours doesn't, banners and plain text links use the least amount of bandwidth and load the fastest, too.

Banners don't have to be just static banners anymore, some sponsors have banner rotators and other stuff to spice them up. One thing that has been around for a while but still works is geo-targeting, and you've probably seen it around: "Chat with live girls from [insert your country/state/city]" and so on. A script detects the visitors country, state or city, and displays it in the ad, whether it's a text link, a banner or something else. You might not know what an iframe is exactly, but I guarantee you've seen them - they seem to be one of the most popular marketing tool for webcam sites right now. An iframe is basically a page that you can pop onto your own site with one short code, provided by the sponsor. The iframe ad(page) is also hosted by the sponsor, which saves you bandwidth. They are usually dynamic, which means they can, for example, display the girls who are online right now, or even bring live cams/chat on your page. Most sponsors even let you generate your own iframe ads and customize them to fit your site better. One of the newest promo trends are co-branded pages. Co-branded means you can sort of have the cam site on your own website, or rather, make your visitors think you have a cam site ;) The sponsor provides you with a page with girls who are online, and your visitors will hardly notice they've left your site when they click on the links. The page looks like their cam site, but you can customize it with your own graphics and text to fit your site. These co-branded pages are often hosted by the sponsor. Of course you can also use the traditional gallery and freesite submitting to promote webcams too. Most sponsors have a large collection of chat host images and video clips you can build galleries with, and submit to TGP's, MGP's and link lists. Some offer you ready made galleries, or templates, and most have a free hosted gallery a.k.a FHG service to save you bandwidth. And who says you can't use these still pictures and video clips for something more original, only your imagination is the limit ;) They say blogs are the new TGP's. It's very easy to set up your own blog(s), and there are even tools to automate the process of setting them up and posting. All you need is an interesting image/video clip, and something to say. And by "something to say" I mean promotional text ;) Although several sponsors might offer you ready-made text descriptions, promotional text, blog posts, or even whole blogs(!), I personally prefer original text.

If you're not a terrible writer, you'll do better with original content surfers can't find anywhere else, so try to pick out some unsaturated content from the camsite you promote, for example a new chat host who's pretty but isn't at the top of their "hall of fame" list yet. But if you're feeling lazy, you can always auto-set up a few dozen blogs, draw in the blog posts from the sponsors RSS feed, drive some traffic to them and see what happens ;) Often surfers sign up to a webcam site because they see an interesting girl and "fall in love" so to speak. So one way to promote cam sites is through individual chat hosts. Most sponsors have some tools for this, for example a random rotating chat host profile type of tool, or a POTD/MOTD script that displays a different chat host every day. With some sponsors you can generate your own consoles(= popups, popunders...), and that's one way to catch your visitor's attention, but if you find them annoying, you can be sure that most of your visitors will too, so don't abuse consoles. Whatever promo tools you choose to use, don't clutter your site with them. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what tools you use, as long as they are eye-catching.

And finally, here's a little list of tips and tricks from CamSense, the home of CamContacts.com and many other webcam sites:

• Look professional and trustworthy be clear with simple messages and clear idea of who you want to attract and what will interest them.
• Be creative and make a site that stands out from the crowd.
• Make your site even slightly different from all of the others.
• Think about creating niche sites rather than generic amateur girl sites. People are prepared to pay a lot to enjoy their fetish or fantasy.
• Take a look at the CC Network Chathosts and find other girls with unique, or rare, features. If you do decide to create some niche sites.
• Test your links regularly, or you could be missing out on the benefits of all your hard work! There are several useful free programs such as Xenu's Link Sleuth, which can automatically check every link from your site in a matter of seconds.

  THE FUN PART - GETTING PAID

A couple of webcam sponsors still only send checks, which can be frustrating for non-U.S. affiliates, but most at least offer you one alternative, whether it's wire transfer, direct deposit, or ePassporte. Wire can be pricey in fees though, especially if the sponsor is American and you're not. The ePassporte method however is usually very low in fees, as it works pretty much like PayPal, a peer2peer money transfer. With ePass you can request a Visa Electron card, which is very handy. It costs a little to set it up, but some sponsors offer you a free ePass account and a card when you sign up to their program. All sponsors have a minimum payout limit, but if you don't meet that limit in one payment period (lenght depends on sponsor), your money just gets carried onto the next payment period, untill you have sufficient funds. The minimum payout limit might vary depending on the payment method you choose. Usually you can choose your own preferred payout limit from a few options, and if your sponsor's check/wire/ePass fees are high, it's better to choose a high-ish limit, that way you'll lose a smaller percentage of your earnings.

Some affiliate programs "keep" a part of your earnings to pay possible chargebacks (customer asks for his money back), and if there are none, they will release it to you. Some also call this delay or hold.

  THE HARD PART - BUILDING TRAFFIC

In mainstream marketing guides you often hear: "just have original, useful content and the traffic will come!", but especially with porn it's not always that easy. Sponsors can only give so much content and tools, and there can be thousands of webmasters using the same iframes, banners, text links, images and video clips as you are.

There is so much free promotional and stolen content floating around the web that it's affecting sales, but luckily for webcam sites, sponsors and their affiliates, it's hard to give out too much of the actual product (live cam) for free, and it's almost impossible to steal it, too.

Of course original and useful content helps, especially if you plan on getting your traffic from search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSM etc, but you'll also need to do a fair bit of studying how these search engines work. This is called SEO. I'm no SEO expert myself, so I'm just going to give you a couple of links to websites I read to gain better understanding of SEO.

• SeoMoz.org
• HighRankings.com

Sure there are affiliates who have gotten rich with SEO alone, but for a newbie webmaster the best way to start is to try a few different things. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket! The traditional way to get instant traffic for porn sites is gallery submitting. This is naturally easier for those who promote the standard paysites, but most cam sponsors provide you with still pictures and video clips from live shows, if not even ready made galleries, and often even offer to host them for you. Frankly the quality of this content is often rather bad, but then again, people who are looking for live webcams don't mind that, and some even prefer it, gives them an amateur feeling.

While you probably won't have problems with cam sites' video content, the size/resolution of still pictures is often quite small, and some sites won't accept your submissions, but you just have to find sites that do - always read the submission rules whenever you submit to a new site! When you have a site or a blog with some content, you should always keep an eye out for places you can submit it to. New porn directories keep popping up every day, and no matter how small the site is traffic wise, it all helps. Plus getting your site listed at as many places as possible gives you something search engines like - backlinks.

For example Google counts every link as a "vote" for your site. Backlinks from popular sites are valued more than others by search engines, and un-reciprocal links are better than reciprocals, but as I said, everything helps. Google gives every site a Page Rank, and you guessed it - sites with higher Page Ranks get better Google listings.

So submitting your site everywhere you can is something you should do even if you aren't into SEO. Traffic is just a welcomed bonus ;) The only places you should avoid are "link farms" and places that sell backlinks, at least Google will punish you for paid backlinks. Money can buy you pretty much everything in this world - including traffic for your website. It might is the easiest way to get it, but for most new webmasters it's out of the question, and mind you, paying for it doesn't always guarantee it's any good. I would recommend finding a source of traffic that provides you with quality instead of quantity, and when you've found it, think of ways to multiply that traffic.

For most starting webmasters the help of experienced colleagues can be priceless. There are a few active adult webmaster communitites on the web (see the list below), and along with getting advice from experts, they are also great for doing business, such as link trades. But beware - you might end up spending most of your day on webmaster forums and not getting any work done - all the drama can be addictive :P

  WEBMASTER RESOURCES

• CozyFrog.com
• CozyCampus.com Forum
• NetPond.com
• YNot.com

  HAVE YOUR SAY

Are you a webmaster and would like to add something to this review or have further questions? Go to AWN Forums to share your experiences, knowledge and to get advice from experts.

  SALES STATS

• StatsRemote.com  commercial
• UnifiedStats.com  free

  TRAFFIC STATS

• Google Analytics  free
• AWStats.com  free
• StatCounter.com  free

  SUBMITTING

• ChameleonSubmitter.com  commercial
• DreamSubmitter.com  commercial

  BLOGGING

• WP-O-Matic  free
• AutoBlogger Pro  Commercial

  WEBSITES

• iWebTool.com
• MainstreamWebmasters.com
• DigitalPoint.com
• TLBox.com

  HAVE YOUR SAY

Are you a webmaster and would like to add something to this review or have further questions? Go to AWN Forums to share your experiences, knowledge and to get advice from experts.