As it approaches its ten-year anniversary, Silvercash has decided to reprioritize. In early November, it had a total of seven gay sites as part of its online affiliate program, less than ten percent of its 107 sites that catered mostly to straight content.
“Silvercash has had a number of gay sites in its portfolio for a number of years, however it was never its priority,” notes Albert Lazarito, Director of New Business Development. “In November we launched a very aggressive promo that is almost a crossroads for our company. One of the things that is included in this promotion is a reinvestment into making Silvercash a credible gay player to compete in the gay market for online affiliate programs.”
To spearhead the effort, the company hired Robert Sons — formerly with AEBN — earlier this year as the Divisional Sales Manager for the gay side.
“I’ve been in the industry for about six years, and I have a lot of contacts,” says Sons. “I’m starting a lot of new advertising with a lot of gay companies. It’s pretty much a revamp. We’re buying online advertising and everything, been working with a lot of great gay companies.”
Bringing on a strong leader was the company’s first priority. With Sons in place, Lazarito notes that the next step was a massive reinvestment into the marketing aspect, with an emphasis on getting in touch with top gay companies and sites run by gays.
“Our research suggests that the gay market knows when a straight guy designs the site, or the content is created by a straight guy, even just the way the verbiage is put on some of the member areas,” he says. “We realized that there were improvements that had to be made.
The idea has been in the back of the company’s mind for a while, with active business planning and strategy work hitting high gear in the last eight months. “We’re going to have a gay section for the gay webmasters that focuses on them and what they need,” says Sons, echoing Lazarito’s concern that gay webmasters sometimes get lost in a sea of straight content and tools.
“We’ve realized very quickly that the gay community of webmasters is tough to break into if you’re predominantly a straight company,” Lazarito says. “Silvercash has got to almost take a backseat and say we’re here to build relationships with the top gay companies, learn from you, work with you so that it’s a win-win situation, but technically use the Silvercash philosophy that’s made us successful and combine that with what the current gay market demands.”
And Lazarito knows that content is king and sites have to be updated frequently with exclusive, innovative content with a retention perspective in mind. “It’s very niche specific as far as what the gay community wants. It’s not an umbrella effect where we can just throw together all different niches, knowing that it might just be hot for a little while.”
Among the qualities that have made Silvercash a big player with the straight market has been a dedication to customer service, a readily available sales staff (both Lazarito and Sons have their cell phone numbers on the site) and a wide variety of tools to enhance the webmaster’s experience.
“You can brand it as much as you want, but at the end of the day, people want someone on the other end of the phone when challenges arise. So what we’re doing is making ourselves one hundred percent accessible,” Lazarito says. “You see all of us at all of the shows, we’re constantly online and we have nothing to hide from our webmasters.”
He adds that there are only a handful of really strong gay players in the affiliate market that control 90 percent of the traffic, “and ultimately a lot of them have different models with their affiliate programs, so now it’s a matter of getting a market share with just a small group of competitors.”
Part of that effort will include a strong presence at gay-specific shows, and an effort to get strong sponsorships and strategic alliances in the community. By the end of the year, he is confident the company will have another ten to 15 sites on board. Lazarito adds that new technologies will be utilized, and the company also offers an abundance of free hosted still and movie galleries.
“We’ve looked at what other gay affiliate programs are offering for galleries, and they are minimal compared to what we think we will come up with,” he says. “It will be a full facelift for the gay division… a year from now, Silvercash will be a different business model, and the greatest division to grow will be the gay division.”
CONTACT INFO: Silvercash.com; [email protected]; 951-509-7676.
