For those of you who have been following the decline of the Ringtones game in Affiliate Marketing, this might sound like a doomsday warning. FlyCell is going to be dropping the affiliate payout on all of their campaigns to a measly $6.
Remember when FlyCell used to be promoted by affiliates on forums as, “The Ringtones offer that pays $16”? Those days are gone, and I doubt they are ever coming back. There have been more lawsuits by the Florida A.G., there have been more talks of the carriers taking control of the market and selling through their own sites exclusively, and now payout drops.
This also comes shortly after the announcement that Flycell no longer accepts Sprint traffic. Oh how the mighty have fallen. There are still some Ringtones offers that are doing well. At CPA Empire we have Ringtones.net with an affiliate payout of $10, and it accepts Sprint traffic (EDIT: As of 10/10/08, Ringtones.net is losing Sprint as well. Sprint is dropping pretty much all of their ringtones providers). Jamster is paying out $9 at NeverBlueAds and $10 at ClickBooth. There are a few other smaller offers, but until someone figures out how to monetize Ringtones better on the backend, I doubt we’re going to see prices much higher than $10 for a while.
In an announcement dated today, the ringtones provider Flycell announced that they will no longer be accepting traffic from Sprint, Nextel, or Boost customers through its landing pages. There is a process being put in place to allow affiliates to become certified to accept Sprint traffic, but it is going to be looked at on a case-by-case basis from Flycell.