Shanes World - Sponsor Program Review
Hey hey, have you noticed a facelift on the Pond? It’s Shane’s World Cash, a sponsor with some kicking content that looks really fresh. I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of conversion ratios I get, but for those of you who are considering signing up, I thought I’d give you a “behind the scenes” look at their webmaster’s area.
I was excited to sign up, so I filled out the form and immediately got a “Welcome” email. However, when I responded to it, I still couldn’t access the site - as of this writing it’s a double-opt-in to be an affiliate. I don’t necessarily mind that (it means they are actually reviewing potential affiliates and thus keeping a higher quality of promotion) but it did confuse me for a bit.
Once I was approved, I logged in and found Shane’s World Cash is using the MP3 system rather than the more familiar NATS. Well, more familiar to me anyway! A nice navbar across the top features buttons for stats, links & tools, help, account settings, support, and logout. I decide to go straight to what’s important to me, links and tools. Hovering over the button I get a pretty honking large drop down with all sorts of options. Since I tend to do blogs, my interest is in RSS feeds and free hosted galleries. Let’s go get a look at the Shane’s World Cash RSS feeds!
An easy to use interface lets you choose whether you want a “still” thumb or an actual embedded FLV - and I give high marks to the embedded tube style videos. They are sized to fit on almost any blog and contain an average of between 25 and 40 words of unique text below. Better still they actually use the CDATA attribute correctly so these feeds are compliant right out of the box. And BEST of all the text is NONFORMATTED with divs so you can set it up the way you want it, not how some arbitrary designer decided would be best. Want your video on the left? Just put that in your style sheet. I have to say kudos to the Shanes World team for really giving blog network owners what they want. My only complaint is that since some feed items have duplicate titles, those items are NOT imported into Blogs Automater as the program uses post titles as the unique key. However, it’s a very minor complaint.
As a test I imported the College Invasion feed into Blog Automater and it went in slick as shit through a goose. I can’t wait to get these feeds into my network - of course, for best results you’ll want to throw in some unique text! Next it’s off to the free hosted galleries - every webmaster knows that for best results you’re going to want some completely unique posts, and I use Gallery Scraper as my starting point. Let’s see what they’ve got.
The FHG “wizard” uses the same dropdowns as the RSS feed generator so it’s easy too select the College Invasion/Revshare options. But this is where I run into my first disappointment. Try as I might, I can’t find the exporter - my only option is to view page after page of FHG’s and manually cut and paste each link. This is a major hassle, and although I only will have to do it once, it’s a waste of a few hours that could be better spent on promoting their products. Help me out here Shanes - get me a nice slick FHG exporter like I have in NATS, so I can dump all this to a file and move on!
Of course, they have the usual banners, also PDF files and so forth. No content that I could find, but that’s fine; the feds and FHGs will provide everything I need as far as that goes. Banners were all promoting the “generic” Shane’s World rather than a more specific site, so you may want to consider making your own if you’re pushing, say, Penny Flame from Blazed and Confused. I find that home made banners convert better for me anyway, and the PDF files they provide let’s you make your banners as professionally (or crappy) as your heart desires.
You have a choice between PPS and Revshare, with a minimum of $50 in revenue required before you will receive a payout. My choice for promoting this program is revshare - this is unique content which should retain well, and the surfer gets access to all nine sites with their membership. Monthly payouts 15 days after close of payout means you’ll get the money in your pocket fairly quickly (always a good thing.) There is also zero tolerance for spamming, so no emails and no facebook comments, etc. That’s also pretty standard. There are VERY specific tube site promotion restrictions, including no clips of more than a minute in length, and no clips utilizing the last five minutes of any scene (the money shot). Read your terms of service CLOSELY if you intend to use Tube promotion or you could find yourself banned. I found the terms laid out to be fair and not overly difficult to follow.
In conclusion, this is a very nice program launch. Other than a few small snags, I’d say it was worth adding to your portfolio - throw up a few blogs and see how the Shane’s World portfolio of sites works for you! Did I miss anything you’d like to know? Drop me a note in the comments and I’ll find out for you!
Naughty America changing the rules for American Webmasters
Well, I’m only surprised it’s taking this long. Naughty America is now requiring American and Canadian webmasters to receive all their payouts by check, rather than epassporte. Now, I have no problem with this, but with all the pressure on American companies and of course, the recent wave of epassporte audits, a better question would be - how long until all companies require this?
Here’s the text of the email I received:
Naughty America is auditing all of the United States and Canadian affiliate accounts. Effective immediately we will be requiring all US and Canadian affiliates to start receiving checks, in replacement of Epassporte, as their method of payment. Please understand that in doing this, we are uncovering the issues that have been brought on with our stats system and this will ensure your payments are accurate and sent out on time.
Thank you for your support and understanding with this change, we appreciate your cooperation.
Anyone out there affected by this change care to comment?
