At the Vegas Affiliate Summit this year I was particularly interested in hearing from the poker affiliate manager. Not because I gamble but because the industry is very good at internet marketing. Unfortunately it was a short (but punchy) introduction.
Since it's Sunday and I'm thinking about God and weaknesses, I thought I'd comment on this article in A List Apart blog, "the Devil has its Due…". Rather than stay totally away from evil perhaps we can learn from it. As they point out they need some innovation, but they do some things well.
Bob talks about doing an Alta Vista search years ago and the term God and porn had roughly the same number of searches. More recently, God is far ahead (around 6 million) and porn is about 3 million (though sex may out number both).
Google shows and sex wins (700 million), God (600 million) is next, and last porn (125 million). However the trend for searches for God are flat while the others show growth. I'll try to get a better image of the Google Trends image.
Shawn Collins recently polled (and I'm waiting for results) to see what people thought of promoting the more seedy industries.
Here are some lessons learned:
Give 'em what they want
Porn sites are good at customer service and invest heavily in infrastructure so the customer experience is seemless.
Author Bob Jacobson describes how the porn industry offers many options for parting with your money. "Porn’s pioneering customer-service technology, once limited to credit-card payment, now also employs personal funds-transfer and telephone subscription methods," he said.
Co-operation rather than competition
In Vegas the take home message was how poker sites worked together. If you didn't want to play one site's offering they tried to entice you to a competitor on the way out. This taught both more about their respective audiences. When a customer does go to a competitor the original site still makes money (which it wouldn't have) and gets information they can use in their respective marketing efforts.
The Adult Industry – Early Adopters
The adult industry is cutting edge. They are quick to adopt new technology. Other industries and groups, like Christians, react to what they do. There is supposedly an ebook about this, but I haven't found it yet.