ø Realtouch Forum ø

First of all I'd like to say I'm very impatient with lack of news concerning the affiliate program. I e-mailed AEBN two weeks ago and still haven't had a response back. Today I received the AEBN affiliates newsletter and it didn't even mention RealTouch. I understand that they are rolling this thing out (RealTouch still not shipping outside of the US), but as someone who is spending a lot of time promoting the product, it would be nice to recieve some encouragement and at least a confirmation that they still plan on running an affiliate program.

I think it's fair to say that whatever the reasons behind it, it was a blow to have launched RealTouch in the media nearly a year before it was finally able to be released to the public. Massive online sites such as gizmodo and techcrunch don't give a product $millions of free advertising twice in the same year. Type in RealTouch into google.com/trends and you will see that it's going to take a lot of effort to get the RealTouch buzz back to what it was at the start of the year.

I have two suggestions to AEBN.

The first is, I believe it is vitally important that you launch your affiliate program as soon as possible. After the delay in launching RealTouch, you are going to be relying on affiliate marketers such as myself to help you to spread the word again. I am more than willing to help beta-test the program for you, and I'm sure the webmaster of this forum would be as well.

The second suggestion I have already made on this forum, and it seems like AEBN are applying it. That is to promote a different spin on the RealTouch. The virtual sex thing in itself has already been promoted (last january), so if you want the major online (and offline) media to take another look at the RealTouch you will have to stress something different about it, such as a human element - that RealTouch can change lives and bring hope to people with disabilities etc. That it is more than just another sex toy or porn product.

As I said, it looks like AEBN is going down that route as the latest press releases included the following :


I'm still really excited about the RealTouch and how it might change porn and truly lead to a massive growth in virtual sex. The book I read recently - 'Love and Sex with Robots' - actually states that if the adult industry found a winner with virtual sex/teledildonics then a mountain of money would be poured in and we could see sex with realistic androids within 15 or 20 years (instead of the 40 years the author more cautiously predicts). Reviews and feedback from intial sales have been highly encouraging. It's just that the marketing seems to have not matched the product, as yet. A lot is riding on this AEBN!!

I had the response from Aebn concerning the realtouch affiliate program
Basically, they said, there's no any date yet set, for the program launch.

There is another point here. If Realtouch would allow the Adult Industry to sell and market the product and encoded videos, they could raise the prices of and sell more Realtouch machines. Other companies would be developing the market for them. They would build the demand for more encoded videos as well as sales for the Realtouch. The income from the Adult Industry paying for license and encoding services would also generate extra revenue streams. They then could post encoded videos that the production costs were not paid for by Realtouch. It would mean that Realtouch could charge less per minute but sell more of the minutes as it becomes cheaper for subscribers / more subscribers. It could be a win win for both.

That's a very interesting suggestion, Reset.

With the RealTouch, AEBN have a complete market monopoly on 'virtual sex' (other than the VSM). They need to look at every possibility of exploiting this fact while it lasts.

Every adult porn company is feeling the pinch these days (I've seen my affiliate porn ratios go from 1:500 to 1:5000+). Every online producer of porn would love to climb aboard this idea that 'you can't pirate the experience' and be able to sell their content in a form that can't be made available for free on the tube sites.

AEBN has been the online porn company adventurous and brave enough to invest in making this high-tech toy. I can see that Reset's suggestion could lead to a market dominance that would be hard to shift...if they take up ideas like this quickly enough. And if in 2 or 3 years time 50% of the professional porn out there is haptic encoded for use with the RealTouch, it would be very hard for any new teledildonic toy to get a foothold.

As far as the affiliate program is concerned, I'm just a little worried that ABEN are going to try to see if they can sell this without affiliates. Absolute madness if that is the case.

I really have no idea why the affiliate program is not up and running. They have had 11 months to set it up - all those months during which the release of the product was held up. Likewise, I cannot fathom why the RealTouch is not on sale outside of America. 2 million Europeans will buy the Tenga Flip Hole next year instead of the RealTouch because...AEBN can't find a company to ship it???