We’re a week into the clips4sale “120%” commission incentive… it’s LoyalFans 100% day… ManyVids launches another contest… and iWantClips are probably doing something.

And these incentives, tags, themes, initiaves, games, well…

Of course. It’s always nice to get extra in pay-packets. But wouldn’t it be even nicer if there was proper uplift without hoop jumping?

There’s a lot I get, and a lot of pros and cons of some of these.

All About Traffic

First off, what the sites want is you promoting them. You giving them traffic. You turning them into a brand people trust.
But the most precious thing you can give them is still… content.

It’s a two way thing. Sure. Without traffic then it’s loads of great content sitting unsold. It doesn’t matter if the commission is 30% or 300% – any % of nothing is nothing.
But without good content, all people see when they arrive is a jumble sale.

What would be nice is just being able to upload clips, do no/minimal promo, them sell and we get paid.
And on most of the better sites, absolutely, we’re making from the sites traffic.

And by contrast this is why a lot of start ups fail because there is too much labour on us driving site traffic, especially if we already have somewhere else we’re making from.

So I get sites wanting to give incentives for users to drive traffic. Be in increased commission or potential prize money.
But, there’s some who simply do this better than others.

No One Likes Jumping Through Hoops

When Clips4Sale announced their 120 incentive, it wasn’t met with the response they expected.
People didn’t like it.
Now, they did make slight changes from what was originally announced – but, basically, it had to be with specific tracking links to count.

And people do not like these, they’ve maybe been spending months promoting clips which now will not count cos it didn’t have the right tracker in, alongside questions with how accurate it is in recording sales.

What people instead asked for was an uplift. For everyone. Instead of jumping through hoops give every one 65-70% either permantly, or for that period.

What instead came back was… OK, we’ll do 120%, but with any external link.
So, seems like a happy result – less hoop jumping but still incentive to drive traffic to the site.

And, at the time folk seemed more acceptant but now a week in we’re seeing the issue.
That some people are getting the extra commission (a couple of my sales have had it) and some are not, and some are disputing why not – and some has been blamed on ad blockers, or user behaviour, or “no, they didn’t use an external link”

Again, issues that could be solved with just giving everyone an uplift.

Uplift Everyone!

Now. What LoyalFans do… one day per month, announced usually at very short notice, they pay creators 100% commission.

And, of course, it causes people to often frantically promote “it’s 100% day!” and so on.
And while some of me is a bit two minds on it… something from LoyalFans comms did change my mind a bit towards it.

The people most likely to benefit from the 100% day are the people who are, well, loyal to the site and pushing it. Because they’re uploading, promoting, etc. any way and are less likely to be flapping when it’s a last minute.
And, I kinda agree.

Contests Where We Already Know the Winner

Still. Any and all of these are at least better than ‘contests’ where it is “whoever makes the most money gets more money” which seem to exist solely to keep top earners as top earners.
What I’d like to see for any kinda ‘prize money’ for clips does involve a bit more ‘hands on’ from sites – but something where the sites are picking out clips from the contest/theme to either highlight, or give spot prizes to, regardless of how well they’ve sold. Either through random (“everyone who submits a clip to theme is entered”) or through whatever merit (i.e. good/funny/sexy/unique/etc) with maybe a little weighting so the same people don’t *always* win.

Because any contest which is “whoever sells the most, wins” isn’t really site wide but only in the interest of the top creators.
Not that I’m saying don’t reward top creators, but they’re not the only ones adding value to the site.

And I’m going to be honest that someone averaging 200-500 (or less) per month is going to appreciate, say, a 50-100 bonus a lot more than someone doing 2000-5000 (or more) per month is.

But still. At least some of these sites are giving something extra back to the folk providing them with content, rather than just paying themselves a £338m bonus on top of their salary (*side eyes OnlyFans*)

Generally, a lot of people do grumble about the size cut some sites do take.
Some of this is due to the charges relating to processing adult payments. That, pretty much, any of us could sell clips directly through our own websites – while this certainly would get us a bigger slice, there are both annual and commission based costs – content would also still have to satisfy the processor/regulator.

And so we kinda accept losing a commission because of the costs to the other sites and the work they do.
Because 60% of something is more than 90% of nothing.

To Really Give Folk What the Want

But if sites really want to encourage more people to hands-on promote their site…

1) Contests based on merit ahead of sales. Acknowledge/Promote/Highlight/Reward folk for their contributions, not their sales
2) Don’t over complicate percentage uplifts – If there is a period where you’re doing percentage lifts, it’s inevitable creators will be promoting this
3) Reward customer loyalty as well as creator. While, if one person is buying only from one store, any discount/perk can be between the two – if someone is spending a lot cross-store (say, they have a specific fetish) site led rewards or incentives for buyers is generally more interest to the people spending money, than uplift or rewards for creators
4) Incidentally, some sites do have ‘sales’ which reduces what buyers pay without impacting seller commission. This is great, and is usually open to all buyers with little/no hoops (perhaps creating a free account) this is great, but further questions why blanket benefits aren’t always available to creators.
5) Aside from temporary uplifts. If one site is paying creators 65% and another is paying 60% – providing they both otherwise get reasonable traffic, which are creators going to promote more? It’s really time to step up what is being offered to creators to maximise earnings, rather than a race to the bottom.

And the worst thing about this all.
This is all stuff creators have been saying for years.