Affiliation Rules - Too Strict?

[kayden]

Mar 22, 2010 5:19:48 GMT -8 BTTF Site Founder said:

I've noticed a general trend in role play sites these past few nights when I've tried to get affiliations under way to get my site going. I go to work up the code, get their banner up on my site and then go to reply to theirs only to find rules such as this:

"Must have 30 or more members a day active on line and so many posts per day before you can even affiliate with us."


To me this kind of alienates new sites like mine that are trying to get off the ground. Yet in their same advertisement sections with link backs and such, there are no requirements.


What I want to know and understand from role play site owners, is why such a strict ruling on affiliations? I don't see many sites that can achieve this sort of thing right away. If you don't have such rules for advertisement, then why restrict the affiliations in this manner?

I agree. I've started out many of sites hoping to affiliate with a much more well off site so that I can hook members but the affiliation and ad rules that limit others like this sort of repel me from being able to post.

I only require that my website affiliates have the proper size banner so that the forum isn't stretched but other than that I don't limit according to the website's activity.

BUT, I can understand why they do it. Advertising in plug boards has gotten out of hand lately. Many new sites get eaten up in other websites ads and it sucks but there is no other way to draw attention to your site unless it is canon.

And now i've swayed off topic....

[Michibaka]

I've gotta agree that some of the new rules are ridiculous in terms of having lots of members. Such as 50 members, I look at that and the first thing that pops into my head is "....Are you KIDDING?!" and it just seems so...snooty for a lack of better words. Honestly, it's a little discouraging more than some kinda messed up form of encouragement, know what I mean? It's almost like being back in high school and the popular kids won't invite you to their table. That and some sites just don't add your banner even though you've had theirs up for weeks and the staff has been logging in, I dunno why people do that but it's rude. That's probably why I've been doing advertising rather than my usual looking for sites to affiliate with since I know it's a pain when you're starting out.

Personally, I really think sites should stick with traditional rules like "If you're gonna request affiliation, you should have ours up first and then we'll put yours up!" and if they wanna focus on traffic for their specific genre/series then that is a reasonable one. I affiliate with all sorts but I see the logic in genre/series specific stuff. Member limit though? That's a joke if you're gonna go beyond 10, it's like saying "POPULAR KIDS ONLY~" then me (Or people who think similar to me) thinking "Pffff fine, I'll make friends with the new kids and we'll all have an AWESOME time! >T -Smacks up an advert and skidoodles-"

[Berserk Liger Zero]

You know, I think when it comes to affiliating and advertising, you can advertise and affiliate your butt off and yet never get anywhere with a site.

Gaining activity I believe is based upon several things

1) Design of the site, it's simple, not over baring with images, the colors arn't loud and in your face, and the layout is organized. Basically an inviting design thats fairly easy on the eyes.

2) The content of the site. This is where sites live or die. Now a days, [at least in my opinion as this is what I have experienced in the 7 years I've been an admin] rps go through phases in which their interests shift in what type of rp they like. For example, a younger members, say in the early teens, might be really interested in say, Naruto. Then as they get older or just because they loose interest in the series after the thrill of it has warn off after several months, they move on to another type, say left for dead.

People tend to make sites based off upon what is popular at the time. I can't even begin to tell you how many Twilight themed rp sites I have come across while searching the net! There are thousands of them! As far as the exact amount of them which are hosted by proboards I do not know. Sometimes an admin might get lucky, they pick a popular topic and yet they implament something that no other site based off the same thing does and it's what keeps the site going and keeps the members around.

Personally, I've always tried to avoid creating a site that was based upon something very popular because I know I'm going to have a TON of compatition out there. Which will make it harder to get the site off the ground.

On the other hand I don't want to pick something so old and retro that no one save for people who do not have time to rp any more because they now have the responsibility of family and job, a home and so on will be the only ones to know about it.

So I aim for something in the middle. Something that people around my own age will know of yet something that will catch younger and older people's attentions.

Of course there is another problem there. If you take something and change it up too much from what the fans know, then a lot of them might be too rooted in the fandom and ignore the site because they feel the admin is doing the series an injustice. Not everyone appreciates another's interpretation of a series.

This last one, is something I will admit that I have had problems with in the past. I knew sites of the topic I chose had once been popular and then they died off, the series might have had another season or something pop up or whatever and I wanted to do something which I had never seen done before with this type of topic. I wanted to do something that was different, yet still stayed within the believable range for the series. I've had hits and I've had misses with this. I suppose it really depends upon the topic of choice for the site.

Now as far as affiliating and advertising goes, I don't bother to advertise since my advertisement is going to get lost in a sea of other threads and very few people have the patients to sit and look through everything.

With affiliating. Yes it is hard to get noticed when you are a brand new site just starting out. But in truth affiliating is all supposed to be mutual. Large sites, unless they honestly think affiliating with a small site will bring them something good, aren't going to bother because of one, loading time, and two, the new site might actually threaten the older one if it's a topic no one has seen before or in awhile. People might all of a sudden jump to the new site and the old one dies.

I will admit as a member it can be hard, you see something that catches your eye and you really think about joining but you don't have time to add another site to your list so you decide to give up an old site for a new one. Now I've only done this if a site I'm currently on is dieing. I prefer staying loyal to the old sites.

Also, only advertising and attempting to affiliate with sites of a similar genre, people, unless they are really hardcore, want variety in their rp world. So picking sites which are opposite of your own is going to attract people's attention.

Activity rate and people's interest in a site also stems from how strict the site is with it's own rules. Sites which seem to allow their members to get away with anything is going to be a turn off to people because it makes others feel as if they are nothing more than just another number and they don't matter.

Being too strict and people don't want to put up with all they "nitpicking" finding that sweet spot between easy going and strict can be hard. However this level I find differs depending upon the genre of the site. There are just so many variables.

Now I will say the forums mentioned earlier which are rpg advertisers, they've become alot stricter as time has gone on I've noticed. More than likely because they were getting hit with sites that died out in a month or so because their admin's got frustrated and left or something occured and they no longer could keep it up.

I've gone to META tags and I find these get traffic but not always members. They are a hit or a miss really. I've recently started trying advertising on thos free web search sites where you submit your site url and you'll get put into their data base and when someone searchs something with a key word it pops up. They're different than meta tags though. I've noticed an increase in traffic but not a lot of members yet.

Frankly I think the golden age for rp forums has long since past. Things have changed so much since I fist started rping. New generation members seem so impatient and they want everything right off the bat and they seem to have very short attention spans, loosing interest very quickly even if a site has a wide variety of events taking place. Very few of them seem to want to take the time and effort the rpers I grew up with took, the elder generation.

A lot of them might have never rp'd before, which is perfectly alright, but in my experience not many of them seem interested in furthering themselves in experience and ability as an rper. They figure it's fantasy and they should be allowed to do and get away with what they please. This isn't right seeing as they have been invited in something someone else created.

Maybe it's just me, but there doesn't seem to be the same soul there was years ago in rp anymore. Not that I've found.

Anyways, thats my thoughts.

[el oh el ya *]

I get why people put rules on the affs, I do it too, though, only for the static ones. Most of the time there is a limited amount of static positions and you only want the best ones on there. The site with the most active members, the most guests, so that your site looks good to be in association with them. Another reason for the rules is because if you have a site that has been open for a week and has a total of five accounts and four of those are yours, the chance that the site dies is rather high, which means that that brings extra work for the admin to search through the affs and take out all of the inactive ones again.

For static i get the rules, for scrolling (because that is mostly unlimited) i think that they should all be accepted. EXCEPT when it comes to the size of the aff, that just has to be right or it will throw my entire layout off xD

[endo]

As someone trying to get members on their site, I really can't be picky or have too strict rules in place about the affiliate thing.
The way I look at it, is we're both getting something out of it, at least I hope so. I take affiliate requests from almost any site. Its advertising for me as well as the site I'm affiliating with.

The beauty of it, at least to me, is that you're reaching people who may not have joined your site, but they see the affiliation tab and click it, and like what they see and join.
I recently got an affiliation request from a well respected site that has aspiring authors. I jumped on that, since my site is a horror site, and there are aspiring horror authors out there. I have 26 member and they have over 1500.
In this case, I think the site admin was being as un-snooty as possible adding me.

I just think it's a great way for all of us in the ProBoards community to help each other. I actually thought that was the reason behind it to begin with....but what do I know?

[Chatadi]

I'm kind of 'on the fence' over this issue. I can see the points made by those who have strict rules on affiliation - ie all the buttons slowing down their sites etc, but can also see the point made by those of new sites that are alienated from affiliating.

I'm just wondering, for those forums that were slowed down so much, how many affiliation buttons are there on those sites ? How many is 'too many' ? I wonder too, how many of them are actually seen by anyone, how long a list of buttons are people willing to sit and watch glide past ?

[endo]

You don't have to have the scrolling affiliate bar. I don't know the code, but the site of authors I'm affiliated with has an affiliates "page".
Basically there is an affiliate button, and clicking that shows all affiliates on one page, non scrolling, and as clickable links.
Of course, that may be two clicks too many for some folks, so that might hurt more than help.

[shistavanenjedi]

I've never tried affiliating my forum with any forum sites but I have done this in the past with a website.

What I find is that people tend to use affiliating as a means of advertising which I've dubbed "stamp collecting". Webmasters of any kind of site, not just forums like to have a bunch of buttons which link out to other sites and to have those sites link back to them in the same manner, which is OK, because both sides get something out of it.

However, what I've found is that once people get their affiliate button shown on another website, that's it - they no longer bother going back to that website to see if it's still there, give support to each other etc. If you want an advert, then you can go to a link directory set up for that purpose, but to me, having something that says I'm an affiliate of this site says something more than just I'm linking with this site. It gives visitors the impression that there is a relationship between the sites when there really isn't one. I've also found that if a website moves location or closes down, they don't bother letting people they've affiliated with know that the move has occured, or that they are closing the site (which would be nice to know so that you can remove their button.) Webmasters don't always update their site on a regualr basis either and when you go visit an affiliate to find that it hasn't been updated in two years it looks bad when visitors click on their link.

So I do agree that admins of forums want to affiliate with forums that are active, etc. Another point to consider is that a forum might be looking for a certain type of forum to affiliate with it. There's not much point if their forum happens to be a Star Trek fan forum and yours happens to be on a completely different subject. I would imagne that a Star Trek fan forum would want to affiliate with other Star Trek ones, or at the very least a forum which is in that genre (a Science Fiction forum, or a Fantasy based one like a Lord of the Rings forum as science fiction, fantasy and horror do have some degree of cross-over, a Sci-Fi fan is usually a fan of Fantasy too - you get the idea and this may be why forums reject you as an affiliate as well as the general activity/look of the site etc.)

[Halogen]

I do not have any affiliate restrictions on either of my sites. The only rule is that you must have guest friendly affiliation and that our button is put up on your site. I find it pretty frustrating a site says I need to have so many members or be active at a certain level before I can affiliate. If a site wants to cut down on the numbers of affiliates mini-banners they have, then they can easily close affiliation until they have more available space. Bigger sites tend to be able to get more members because they have a name made already in a sense. People have heard of it, and then they see it. The fact that it is already a name they gave heard of makes them more likely to check it out and possibly to join.

[Cats_can]

I can see both sides of this. Having had both a new site, and currently running a large one; I've also BEEN on both sides of this. The thing is that if you do have a large site, say 100 members, and 400+ guests or so a day, you don't get much out of affiliating with ten or fifteen sites that have four accounts, three of them the staff accounts.

The best way to get a baby site off the ground is to start with something interesting. Yes there are a million Twilight/Harry Potter/Whatever sites, but you can always make yours unique. If you can't be unique, pick something that's not so done. Then advertise. Link to RP directories and databases, C2.0, RPGD, RPC, RCR, the OB, the works. (I'm sure there are advertising sites for non-rp forums but I'm not familiar with those, lol). Put ads up on these sites and keep them updated. Affiliate with other new sites, the ones that have the huge member counts had to work to get that big, guys. If they can put in the footwork, so can you. I seriously doubt anyone gets hundreds of members from affiliates. Once you have a few good, active members things will look up. And for the love of God, be active if you own a board. If you're not on EVERY day at first, your baby board will die. Think of it as a newborn puppy. Gotta feed that sucker every two and a half hours for the first 2 weeks. Then several times a day. Etc etc. xD

I believe that there is overkill, but some rules need to be in place. Large forums don't get much out of small forums affiliating, and as other people have said...they die. It happens. Advertise if you can't affiliate, put the footwork in and eventually (hopefully) you'll be able to affiliate with the larger sites, because you'll be one.

[Short of Daybreak]

I've never heard of such strict affiliation rules dealing with your member count. To me, as an RPG Proboards runner, that is absurd and unrealistic. For my affiliate rules, I put down basics. For example, my banner must be on their site before I add theirs, that way I am sure we have BOTH affiliated. That's a standard and reasonable rule. I also will only accept affiliation with sites that DO NOT break the PB TOS ('cause I still run into sites that allow mature content every so often). And being an anime site, I ask to only affiliate with other anime sites, as just a preference so we can all be linked together.

I affiliate to gain members to, and I'd like to return the favor. Not all sites are going to be as active as PB Support!

[VOSSITY]

That and some sites just don't add your banner even though you've had theirs up for weeks and the staff has been logging in, I dunno why people do that but it's rude.

I've gotten this quite a few times. Some larger sites will allow smaller sites to affiliate with them, but their affiliate requests haven't been replied to in weeks. I always check back to sites to see if they've accepted, or even declined but some of them don't do anything for EVER. However, I see the staff on daily, chatting on the c-box and it irritates me.
I can see if they're very busy, but when you have 4723974932474739 staff members I'm sure one of them can find the time to surf through the affiliates and reply to them.

I do also agree with some of the above posts when it comes to how your site actually looks. You can advertise and affiliate for days and days, but you won't get anywhere if everyone who visits has to put on some sunglasses just to view the vibrant disagreeing colors on your forum.
Your site at the very least needs to look somewhat appealing to an audience, otherwise you're going to be sitting there with two or three people with the same color distaste as yours and you'll be wondering, "why?".

And as far as affiliating rules go, I don't usually have a problem with them. I don't complain if a larger site has certain affiliate rules, because their reasons can be completely logical ( referring to earlier replies to this thread ). On the other hand, small sites with outrageous affiliate requirements are another story.

I never put down many rules when it comes to affiliating on my board. I just put down the very basic, most logical rules that basically everyone can comply too. If their forum dies I just take it down because I check quite frequently.
Normally I require sites to have a decent layout. Basically if your site doesn't burn my eyes, you're fine.

[endo]

I still go back to what affiliating is all about to begin with, which is each site benefiting from that traffic and members that it can bring.
To make rules like "you must have at least 1000 members to be an affiliate" is counter productive and redundant IMO because the only forums being helped are the ones that obviously don't need it.

My forum has 48 members, only 4 of whom post regularly, one being me. We've been around for over a year, do banner exchanges, Facebook page, all of it.

It's kinda ridiculous to impose that sort of rule. If the only forums you want to help are ones that don't need it, why bother?

[Sovreign]

Aug 21, 2011 11:49:40 GMT -8 Short of Daybreak said:

I've never heard of such strict affiliation rules dealing with your member count. To me, as an RPG Proboards runner, that is absurd and unrealistic. For my affiliate rules, I put down basics. For example, my banner must be on their site before I add theirs, that way I am sure we have BOTH affiliated. That's a standard and reasonable rule. I also will only accept affiliation with sites that DO NOT break the PB TOS ('cause I still run into sites that allow mature content every so often). And being an anime site, I ask to only affiliate with other anime sites, as just a preference so we can all be linked together.

I affiliate to gain members to, and I'd like to return the favor. Not all sites are going to be as active as PB Support!

Agree with you 100%.

Everyone starts out somewhere, and some sites (especially original brews that aren't Harry Potter or Twilight) will never get '50 members with 25 on per day'. I'd agree with such a rule if it were more reasonable, like 'at least 5 members on daily'. Sometimes there are surges of low activity, and other times the activity really picks up.

When affiliating, I also only cover the basics:
- 88 x 31 banner
- Both are displayed static, on the main page of forum
- Must follow Proboards TOS

I also run into a lot of sites that still have that 'rated M for mature' rubbish. Glad I'm not alone in checking through a site to make sure it abides by the TOS.

[CEM IN WONDERLAND ?!]

Honestly, here is my opinion. It may not count much, but hey, it's what I got.

I will not affiliate with a forum that has 20 accounts or less. Know why? Because a LOT LOT LOT of ProBoards sites are created by people, and then those people do not follow through with the forum. I'm certainly guilty of it, and I'm sure others are too. You make the site, create the claims, make the graphics, do the whole deal, but after advertising your site for 2+ weeks and only gathering 3 members and having an average of 10-13 accounts for those three, including yourself, and then you get tired of your site for some reason. Maybe you think you attracted the wrong kind of members, or maybe you simply don't like the site as a whole. So, instead of fixing what you've made - you abandon it, you make a new one, and you start fresh. Starting fresh isn't always a bad thing, but this is where the poor affiliating comes in.

Say I'm letting any forum of any size, new or not, on my site as an affiliate. Forum A, above, has since died and they are taking up a spot on my affiliates. But, because I have claims to update, members to accept and sort, and my own posting to do as an Admin, I don't have time to click on every single affiliate banner in my table to make sure they are all active.

The point is that newer sites have less of a chance of making it, plain and simple. The newer you are, the less original your idea GENERALLY is, not always, and people are most likely already joined on a site with your same idea. Maybe they like yours better, maybe not, but the fact is that newer sites have higher competition rates with older sites. So, why should sites that most likely are going to die anyway be allowed on your affiliate banner?

There's no reason.

When I affiliate, I'm not concerned about helping out 2 account sites. I'm interested in getting my own name out there. Besides, as an Admin, I wouldn't even attempt to affiliate with big sites because mine would not compare. If you're an affiliate of a big site, do you really think the majority of the traffic there is going to join little you? Why would they join a significantly smaller site compared to an active one they are already part of it? It just doesn't make sense.

So, in conclusion, my rules for affiliating are simple. 20 accounts, 10 online daily. I know that I would never join a site that has less than 10 accounts online a day, in comparison with having 20 accounts, so why would I want to promote sites that even I wouldn't join? I wouldn't, I won't, and I'm really curious of others' thinking of this.