Looks like we have 3 days to pull 10 years worth of WEG Cash links

[Greenguy]

WOW!

Today’s communication with our affiliates comes after much deliberation, as well as a heavy heart. After 10 years, and millions of dollars in affiliate payouts, Wegcash has decided that the continuation of the affiliate program is no longer sustainable. Therefore, we will no longer be accepting referrals effective May 21st, at 4PM PST.

The reasons, many of which are obvious to all of us, revolve around the decline in membership revenue. The continued proliferation of free adult videos has spawned a market which does not support an affiliate program. This communication should in no way be interpreted as an industry, political or ethical stance, nor should it be deemed dispiritedness; rather, we choose to look at this as a time to embrace the future.

While our company is closing one door, we are working steadfastly on new opportunities. While we could all engage in the revisionist history of "what ifs," events leading up to the current free tube models aren't negotiable; we are better served focusing on the future. We also feel that energy is better served realizing the true successes that our affiliate program brought to us, and to our thousands of wonderful affiliates (without whom we would never have achieved the success we did).

The gravity of this announcement is in no way lost on our company’s staff, from executives and programmers, to its owners. The Wegcash brand was conceived by two passionate and driven entrepreneurs. Throughout the years, its continued prosperity is attributable to the hard working staff members, past and present, who stayed late, came in early, and passionately put their heart and soul into the product. It is also very much attributable to the thousands of affiliates that entrusted our brand with their business.

While today undoubtedly is revealing in terms of the current market, it’s also the lore for the successful future.

Our sincerest thanks to each and every one of you for the past decade of fruition,

Wegcash.

[Fonz]

The irony of this is that the dutch word for GONE is WEG, I guess that's appropriate now...
Glad I didn't sign up for the program although I almost did for about 20 times or so but for some reason didn't.

[oldbrad]

Never had much success with WEG, but it's too bad they are going. More links to remove now, just got done with the 6buck links and now have to find these.

Thanks for sharing the email Geenguy, I never seem to receive them.

[abatis]

yeah i just read that email. is this some kind of a joke. i have years and years of weg links. omg this is just making me want to go mainstream with things like amazon, ebay, etc....all that work and links and content etc....wasted. what a bunch of crap.

-abatis

[pc]

Damn I still have some money with them. |chainsaw|

[oldbrad]

I just rechecked and Stats wise I did good with the xxxstories4free. Just didn't pay well.
6702 raw / 4730 unique / 79 signups

Definitely wish they gave more notice.

[Cleo]

I guess without cross sales they were no longer profitable.

I pulled their links a long time ago so I'm unaffected by this.

[Twiceshy]

what a pain sorry to see them go but dayum not much time to remove links

[Ms Naughty]

Well shit. The question is, will they pay out any remaining amounts owed?

I still have links out there in numerous places, it will be a pain in the arse to hunt them all down.

[SheepGuy]

I believe they own CashTraffic as well. I don't make a lot with CashTraffic but I'm wondering if I should pull their links.
My to do list is entirely too big as it is.

[bluebrit]

Well at least they gave us some notice in this. I wish them well but now I have a whole load of new work to do pulling yet more links.

[Maj. Stress]

For once I lucked out. All my links to their program are on one domain. Guess I'll just park that one at pimproll and let it expire now.

[SCORE-Cash]

My fear is that this is just the start. Now that the xsells are over.

[Nymph]

Oh, this just blows! More busy work I didn't need right now.

[Greenguy]

Let me throw this out there: Why not just remove all the PPS options & go revshare?

[Toby]

Let me throw this out there: Why not just remove all the PPS options & go revshare?

That business plan requires member area's that actually rebill well.

[Peedy]

That business plan requires member area's that actually rebill well.

ouch. BURN! quoted for truth.

[SheepGuy]

Let me throw this out there: Why not just remove all the PPS options & go revshare?

Not a bad idea. Toby makes the point though.
I would love to find sponsors that have the tools I need that don't ruin surfers forever with cross-sells that would make any rational human being refuse to ever spend another dime on porn.
I'll admit that I have used sponsors like that, but I'm starting to think that surfers who can buy, like oil, coal, trees, etc. are a finite resource, and the more of them we burn the shorter our future in this business is.

I really think we need to think about this business in a long term way. Those of us who want to stay in it anyways.

A lot of people think of the old days when we all made good money as the cowboy days, no rules, no mercy. I don't think that's true, the problems started with sponsors, with cross sells especially. Before that, in the boom days, we used a lot of techniques to get signups that most LL's and TGP's have banned now, blind links, thumbs leading to html pages, javascripts, etc.

The common reason given for these strategies being banned was and is webmaster abuse. Like we are the ones fucking the surfer |huh
The most obvious reason I can think of as to why business is not as good as it once was is sponsor abuse though, through cross sells and fucking the surfer who thinks he's signing on for a cheap or even free trial, and gets dinged $100 on his cc, sponsors have killed off a lot of porn buying surfers.

Anybody who pays for porn is gold, and should be treated as gold.

Maybe those of us who have been around, who have survived this long, should boycott the surfer fucking sponsors, make a list of the sponsors who do give value for the dollar and only promote them.

I really think that if we don't get our shit together in a surfer friendly, but not coddling way, the illegal tubes will kill us, and we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Sell the memberships any way we can, like back in the day when we were all making the big bucks, but refuse to deal with any sponsor who cuts into our long term futures by fucking the surfers.

[Mayhem]

Oh boy.. I got some $$ with them aswell ( more than I would like to admit) :/
Was this far out of left field or what.. they were my best sponsor back in the day.. and by far my most respected.. top notch programs/support
At least we can still login to ponder over how much money we *wont* be getting |cry| I'm gonna miss their Xmas cards and AMEX gift cards..

I guess this is a lesson to not set your minimum payout too high and to collect monies (rewards points, etc.) on a regular basis and not use the sponsor as a sort of ..bank. dammit Seriously get all outstanding monies paid from sponsors and pull my life savings out of ePassporte and hide it under my bed!! This cold melbourne night suddenly became a lot chillier :(

[Ramster]

Wow, a whole 2-3 days notice? Glad I never promoted them.

They can't go revshare because as Toby said their sites probably suck. Plus don't they mostly run free trials nad free membership sites making their money on xsells and upsells. That model is going.

SheepGuy
Finding sponsors that actually do update are not that hard to find, there are many out there.

But people still promote cheating sponsors and we as webmasters don't seem to care. Many people still promote Brazzers yet they xsell on all their sites and they own pornhub, keezmovies and a TON of other tubes... and webmasters still send them traffic. Webmasters still fill their pockets so they can build more tubes and buy more traffic for their tubes. I just don't get it.

[Greenguy]

The continued proliferation of free adult videos has spawned a market which does not support an affiliate programFrom the people that brought you 30 different Tube4Free sites.

[Busty]

|spam|

[AdultLabsPromo]

|spam|

[RedCherry]

Crapola. Guess I know what I'm doing today. I have them hard coded all over the place on my link lists and blogs. |banghead|

[Far-L]

I bet there are a few more set to go down in similar fashion.

Anyone care to wager a guess which program is most likely?

I am just glad we never have gone down any of these shady paths to profitability.

The truth is though, this is not about program owners vs their affiliates in terms of which party brought about the demise of the other. Greed and carelessness were rampant throughout and endemic to both. The race for highest payout was bound to have repurcussions - certainly everyone here is savvy enough to realize that things would have to implode sooner or later. That is not so much an "I told you so" as it is just a plain fact.

[babymaker]

From the people that brought you 30 different Tube4Free sites.


And redtube.eu lol they ripped off the rip off artists :D

Revshare won't work with these kind of sponsers I bet their members area is crap and all videos people can get for free.

[GJ_Servers]

I think Sheep Guy is spot on and that industry fallout will cause everyone to focus on providing what the customer really wants - not free of course!

[abatis]

the only things truly working for me these days is cams/dating style. sure i use paysite ads as well but i find the dating and cams do the best as well as on demand video still does pretty well considering people that are willing to pay want the security of not using the tubes. some surfers are scared to surf tubes due to viruses and installs. imho


-abatis

[Trixie]

You know what's working really well for us right now?

Torrents and stuff! Apparently it's all free for the "customers/fans" and we don't have to see a nickel of the money each time someone downloads our ripped members areas representing years of work and investment!!

>insert hysterical laughter coming from sinking ship here<

You may think this is off topic, but it really isn't.

[Trixie]

On a more lucid note, for paysite/program owners like myself, it doesn't make me sad to see corporate porn programs going down who ripped off customers to overpay affiliates to make it impossible for ethical small outfits to compete.

If all of these fuckers who cared more about glutting surfers with free porn than about delivering quality to their PAYING members and cared more about coddling their affiliates than their CUSTOMERS go under maybe *everyone* who is left -- affiliates and paysite owners -- will make more money. I do understand how hard it sucks though to see work become suddenly worthless and for big payouts to go away, because we do webmaster work too and it can all be so CREAMY and easy with the corporate porn people.

[Senator_x]

WEG had cookie cutter sites with shitty content.

I only promote site that give me full access to their members' area. The content has to be updated multiple times a week with original content. Ultra high resolution photos, anything above HD 720p for videos and customer service 24/7.

[Simon]

And redtube.eu lol they ripped off the rip off artists.

From a story in February:
RedTube said that Boca Raton, Fla.-based WEG purchased RedTube.org, RedTube.pl, RedTube.fr, RedTube.com.br, RedTube.br and RedTube.ca between 2007 and this year in an attempt to ride on RedTube.com’s coattails of “success, fame and goodwill” by using “confusingly similar names and domains.”
-- more at http://www.xbiznewswire.com/view.php?id=117387

Someday adult affiliates are going to understand that most sponsors and most affiliates are not partners in any way, shape or form. In fact, in many cases they're on opposing sides. SheepGuy has a good point about identifying those sponsors who fuck over affiliates and making sure not to send any traffic at all to them, no matter now enticing a Pay-Per-Sale offer they may make. (Ideally we would have a big, powerful affiliate group with an "approved sponsors" list that good sponsors would want to be on and stay on.)

Unfortunately, by the time most affiliates realize this, many other sponsors will have also realized that they no longer really need a big affiliate network. The new paradigm is that the people will find the porn, all you have to do is offer it for free...so who needs affiliates.

Note to those who think the partnership paradigm is still workable, give some thought to how much notice you give a sponsor if you decide they're not converting well enough for you and you're going to replace their links or move them off your higher-traffic pages. How many of us send the sponsor an email telling them their links will be coming down in 3 days?

Anyway, my point is we need to protect ourselves and not think that we're safe from this kind of thing happening over and over again in the coming years as we get closer and closer to the convergence point for Internet and television. At that point there will be room for only a few very large affiliates (some made up of networks of big affiliates who'll still have to band together to be large enough to matter anymore).

So, that's my happy thought for today.

:)

[NY Jester]

I saw this the other day as well and stated looking for their links. Thankfully I only really used them as a filler sponsor - mostly for the email submit type of sales. Which reminds me they still owe me $2 haha

[terry]

I havent had much success with them, but I do have a bunch of links and galleries up. I really hate when affiliate programs close, but for one to say hey, we no longer need you mr affiliate - that just ticks me right the fuck off.
Im gonna stop here before I turn this into a fucking rant.

[GonZo]

WEG had cookie cutter sites with shitty content.

I only promote site that give me full access to their members' area. The content has to be updated multiple times a week with original content. Ultra high resolution photos, anything above HD 720p for videos and customer service 24/7.

My favorite WEG story is the posturing and reaction when I mentioned that the asian site they had showcased 2 hotties all over the tour but were nowhere to be found inside.

Ranks up there with the marketing genius that created G3X and then asked me if I could get them a feed for the movie descriptions from one of my clients.

Then again this is the same marketing genius that destroyed Mike AI's very profitable Purecash in less than 6 months and also stole my idea for a cannonball contest in Miami. I guess if you rename it to something lame like bellyflop then it makes it ok.

Im guessing the new jobs they have found will garner them the same amount of success in the long run.

[LAJ]

My favorite WEG story is the posturing and reaction when I mentioned that the asian site they had showcased 2 hotties all over the tour but were nowhere to be found inside.

Ranks up there with the marketing genius that created G3X and then asked me if I could get them a feed for the movie descriptions from one of my clients.

Then again this is the same marketing genius that destroyed Mike AI's very profitable Purecash in less than 6 months and also stole my idea for a cannonball contest in Miami. I guess if you rename it to something lame like bellyflop then it makes it ok.

Im guessing the new jobs they have found will garner them the same amount of success in the long run.

G3X... man I totally forgot about that!

[GonZo]

G3X... man I totally forgot about that!

Yeah theres no money in VOD.

[Freedom]

I believe they own CashTraffic as well. I don't make a lot with CashTraffic but I'm wondering if I should pull their links.
My to do list is entirely too big as it is.

Cash Traffic is run by CECash.

[plateman]

i did decent with them on my LL years ago, to bad they were fucking over our surfers with there cross sale bs

I never really built many freesites with them, but the ones I did I had content and for the hell of it.... I will put other links up on them

[khepra]

I know many don't like CCBill, but I have to say that as an affiliate, I've gotten to love them for reasons like this. I don't have to worry about a program disappearing suddenly with my money and they send me a check anytime the account is over $25 to ensure that the balance doesn't grow too much. I prefer having my money in my bank account, rather than anyone else's.

[LoadsaCUM]

Yeah tons of links to remove and I guess the best I can do is *LOL* at the 75 bucks they owe me!

[Ms Naughty]

WEGCash had this to say when I emailed about getting the remaining $50 they owed me.

"Payments will be made as regularly scheduled. Accounts that have not met the minimum will be the last to be paid out."

Better than nothing, I guess.

[Mayhem]

Yep - same canned message I got too, with slightly different wording. LOL. Besides I think they pay weekly, right? So it seems we won't be getting anything as regularly scheduled. Just wondering.. in instances like these, has _any_ company ever come through and done the right thing? Nevertheless.. lesson learned.. emailed all sponsors and lowered min payouts back to original minimums.

Cheers

[ecchi]

they send me a check anytime the account is over $25 to ensure that the balance doesn't grow too much.
Yeah that might be fine in the US, but the American banking system is so bad that outside the US it costs a fortune to cash US$ cheques ($10 to $20 per cheque) because of the problems involved in doing business with US banks, so low payouts are useless. Added to the fact that many non US banks refuse to cash US cheques that are for less than $50.

[Mayhem]

Yep. You won't get very far in this business if your getting $25 checks and waiting 28 days for them to clear. That's how it is in Australia.. ofcourse I haven't recieved a check since 2004.. all payments are either wire or epass. With epass there is no minimum and you can put all that money straight to work (buy traffic, spots, content) and compound the shit out of it.. bah you kids have it too easy these days.

[ecchi]

all payments are either wire or epass. With epass there is no minimum
Yeah I use ePassporte too. Worst support department I have ever come across, but at least it gets the money to me without the high bank charges. Just wish they would hire staff who either cared, or had a brain, or better still - both!