Win or Lose: Marketing Gambling, Sex and Drugs Online
By: Jennifer Meacham
The profits can be alluring, but it takes a special type of affiliate to promote gambling, pharmaceuticals and adult entertainment.
In a lot of ways, Cynthia Fanshaw is just another star in the affiliate marketing universe. With a specialty in search engine marketing, she works hard to drive traffic to her company's site and then to convert visitors to customers. She's anxious to learn new tricks that give her an edge over competitors, and glad to share a few tips with newbies.
But there's one thing that sets her apart from most of her colleagues. Fanshaw promotes adult entertainment, a completely legal yet unmistakably controversial product that has simultaneously emerged as one of the most popular and most vilified areas on the Web. And she makes no apologies.
"My friends and family don't mind," Fanshaw said. "They just don't want me to be involved in being in the content, which I really have no desire to be. I'm actually doing pretty well for myself, and as long as I'm happy, they're happy."
Along with online gambling and prescription drugs, adult entertainment is a subject that is sure to spark furious debate whenever it is discussed among lawmakers, affiliate marketers, prosecutors or parents. Each category, in its own way, offers benefits to the consumers who support it. And each draws bit- ter ire from its detractors.
What can't be debated is the soaring popularity of the three industries. Nielsen//NetRatings showed 115.6 million Americans visited adult, gambling or drug sites during January – nearly double the number that watched the Super Bowl. They're also ubiquitous, thought not always in a good way. Worldwide, more than 13 billion spam email messages are sent each day, com- prising about half of all email traffic. According to London-based email security company Clearswift, two-thirds of that spam.
The rewards for affiliates are generous. Revenue spoke with numerous program managers who said they often pay monthly commissions well into the tens of thousands of dollars in .
"As an affiliate myself, I can tell you my motivation for joining such programs is money," said Graeme Eastman, owner of Australia's AffiliateGuide.com, a network that promotes gaming and adult entertainment affiliate programs along with more mundane pursuits such as autos and computers. "There is really no other reason to join an affiliate program."
Or is there? Many of the affiliates we interviewed spoke of the thrill of working in areas considered by some to be on the fringe of polite society. And many pharmaceutical vendors earnestly discussed the need to provide low-cost drugs in the American market, the only major Western power that doesn't cap the cost of medications. In all three cases, it was clear that something in addition to money was motivating affiliates.
Yet shifting laws and long-standing taboos have left these industries in a social twilight zone where most affiliates are afraid to publicly acknowledge how they make their living. Revenue contacted dozens of affiliates in these areas, and most declined to be interviewed, citing fear of harassment by authorities or simply fear of what their neighbors might say. Although we observed virtually no evidence of criminality, we found a nearly universal desire among these affiliates to operate in obscurity.
It isn't hard to understand why. Each area carries a special burden for those in the trade:
Gambling Affiliates promote offshore companies that cannot legally operate in the US, at least not yet. Affiliates are stuck in a legal gray area somewhere between free speech and abetting a crime, and nobody – not even federal prosecutors – could say exactly where the line is.
Drugs While most online drug stores operate with high ethical standards, the unrelenting river of spam pushing narcotics and male potency pills taints the public's perception. Plus, some offshore pharmacies have been caught shipping drugs that fall short of US standards.
Adult Entertainment Tens of millions of Americans view it, but few will admit they do. And the all-too-frequent nightmare of child pornography leaves the industry with an ugly scar that darkens against a backdrop of X-rated spam. Controversial maybe. But affiliates have the US Constitution on their side. "Commercial speech, such as advertising, is entitled to First Amendment protections under well-established constitutional law," said Larry Walters, an attorney for the Internet Freedom Association who represents clients in the adult entertainment and gambling industries.
Still, problems like these have caused some mainstream companies to shy away. Such large affiliate networks as ValueClick's Commission Junction won't carry adult or gaming programs, partly because credit card charge-backs are more common in these industries. Insiders say the rate is higher because customers are caught by spouses or parents when credit card statements show up. Rather than owning up, cardholders tell the credit card company that someone else was responsible. "With CJ, you can see why they stay away from online gaming sites," said Allan Schneider, former director of the Interactive Gaming Association. "You don't have disputes with the other industries. [In other industries,] if a guy bought $10,000 in products, I get my commission."
Even payment processor PayPal backed out of servicing adult transactions in May 2003 and gambling transactions in October 2002. "It's still unclear how online gambling is going to be regulated, and based on that we felt that we had a legal risk," said Amanda Pires, spokesperson for PayPal. "We saw higher rates of charge-backs in the adult businesses specifically – and that means a higher operational cost (for us). With adult sites there was a risk and it was just best to exit the business."
Even Yahoo, which launched a gay and lesbian portal in April 2003 and runs its own dating site, won't allow adult sites to use its hosting service. "We're so brand-conscious that we can't be on a site that contains adult content," said Michael Brucker, affiliate marketing manager for Yahoo. To be sure, Yahoo flirted with adding adult content in mid-2001, but email campaigns and threats of boycotts persuaded the company to back away from the adult entertainment industry.
Trash or Treasure?
But one man's trash is another man's treasure, and some companies have rushed to fill the void. Take dating service FriendFinder.com. Soon after its 1996 launch, "we found people were pushing the envelope (with risque content and photos) on the site," said CEO and founder Andrew Conru. "Rather than pushing away the industry, we decided to embrace them. We rolled out AdultFriendfinder as a kind of relief valve for the more erotic content."
Now AdultFriendFinder has more than 8 million members, making it the Internet's largest adult personal site. While other personal sites downplay their adult content, FriendFinder promotes it just like it does BigChurch.com. "We're one of the few companies that looked at their marketing and said we're going to make this a legitimate offering rather than the stereotype of the dark and seedy underworld," Conru said.
Many niche and mainstream affiliate networks also list adult entertainment, gambling and prescription drug affiliate programs. Continued on Page 2...
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