Questions surrounding these sites revolve around the costs involved and what sort of earning potential these sites have, as well as how they can best be promoted and ways in which their effectiveness can be maximized.
XBIZ set out to answer some of these questions:
“Companies offer white labels for free as a tool for promotion of their products,” TopBucks Sales Director Kristin Wynters said, adding, “Many types of companies have utilized white labels including dating, cams, mobile, paysites, and the pioneers — video-on-demand.”
As to why white label sites are so popular, Wynters says that it is all about consumer trust and extending the site’s personality.
“Many companies came out with white labels because they and their webmasters saw the increased value that they brought,” Wynters said. “White labels keep with the brand and theme of the site promoter, thus building trust with surfers because it is a recognized name and because it is so seamless — it looks as if the surfer never leaves your site.”
Brad Estes, Video Secrets’ manager of operations, told XBIZ that the company does not charge any fees for creating a white label live video chat site using its system. All that is required is that affiliates own a suitable domain in order to setup a site — a domain that is pointed to the Video Secrets’ servers using a CNAME or a DNS ‘A’ record change.
“The affiliate can control colors and other elements via our management panel,” Estes said. “Affiliates seeking a more customized solution can use a custom external CSS file hosted on their servers.”
As for page errors, such as 404s or any other potential problems that could cause traffic leaks, Estes says that with Video Secrets, the traffic stays on the white label site.
Wynters says that TopBucks hosted solution is also customizable through CSS, returns error traffic to the white label, and can accommodate Google Analytics as well.
Dating Gold offers a similar white label solution that also protects affiliate’s traffic.
“Any good white label product will host everything themselves to help prevent any downtime,” says Dating Gold Affiliate Manager Jay Davis. “All traffic stays on the white label — we are highly against hijacking traffic or leaking traffic to a white label.”
“We have a very good track record or making sure affiliates are happy and to potentially lose an affiliate’s trust over traffic leaks is definitely not worth our time,” he added. “Trust is important and we are happy to give out passwords to existing white labels so that affiliates are free to roam around and to see exactly how the product works from a free and paid user perspective.”
Despite this minimum level of initial investment, the earning opportunities for white label marketers are impressive.
“Since launching our white label platform several years ago many of our affiliates using white label sites occupy the top spots in our monthly sales charts,” Estes said. “We have white label sites generating in excess of $100,000 in monthly commissions, so the sky is the limit.”
“There is very little cost in developing a white label, most companies are more than happy to set them up for you free of charge,” Davis said. “The cost from the webmaster’s end is based around whether or not they purchase traffic to promote said white label.”
“The earning potential is then a variable of how well they are able to promote their product but the sky is the limit,” he added. “We have many affiliates earning thousands of dollars a month promoting their dating and webcam white labels.”
When it comes to promoting a branded white label website, one obvious route is to encourage affiliate participation. After all, if the white label provider was able to “sell” you on promoting the site, you should be able to sell it to your own affiliates too. This will provide you with a free stream of traffic and revenue, since costs such as content and free gallery hosting, etc. may not be adding to your site’s overhead, so even splitting with an affiliate can equal increased profits.
Some white label providers make the process very easy by offering tiered affiliate payouts, which allow white label site promoters to recruit their own affiliates, with the white label provider handling all the sales tracking and payouts.
“Affiliates have two options in this regard,” Estes said. “First, any affiliate can refer other webmasters and earn a five percent override for the life of their sales. Second, more sophisticated integrations are possible where you integrate your white label site into your own affiliate program.”
“We track the sales and make the data available through a series of APIs,” Estes continued. “We pay you and you pay your affiliates; this is how several large companies like Hustler Live via Hustler Cash are setup.”
One of the most common means of promoting white label websites is through search engine marketing — an area of affiliate promotion that has seen some controversy lately, over claims of trademark infringement and unfair competition, as unscrupulous affiliates try to outbid their sponsors for their own brand keywords. This, however, is an issue that many white label site providers do not seem too concerned about at this point.
“We do not have any prohibitions on keyword bidding with white labels,” says Wynters, “as long as they stay within ours and Google’s Terms and Conditions.”
While Video Secrets does not currently impose any restrictions on PPC bidding for white label sites or any restrictions on how these websites are loaded, Estes says that webmasters that try to take “shortcuts” might not receive any advantages from doing so.
“The best white label sites in our system are those which extend a powerful brand,” Estes said. “The white label provides for a transfer of trust and brand loyalty between the two sites and the revenues from these implementations can be substantial.”
