If you’re an affiliate in the dating vertical, I have a couple questions for you.

• What have you done to protect yourself from possible lawsuits stemming from the unauthorized use of someone’s likeness in an advertisement?
• Have you ever had a creative disapproved for copyright reasons?
• Were you an affiliate on MyAds prior to their now banished requirement to provide proof the model in the creative was above the age of 18 and that you were allowed to use his/her image?

Sometimes you’ll even run across an advertiser who wants you to submit your creatives to them for approval prior to running them or risk the chance of having all your commissions reversed.  Sometimes they want to make sure you’re translation is correct on the creative and other times they want to make sure the models in the creatives are a good representation of their brand name.

A few months ago Singlesnet sent out a lawsuits notification to all their affiliates that were working directly with them.  When I got this email, my heart dropped. I just knew that I was getting sued, but luckily I wasn’t involved!

In the dating vertical you will see most everybody uses the same images which exponentially increases the likelihood of the person in the creative to be noticed.  Remember Justin Dupre’s image pack?  Those images are whored out.  Matter of fact, I even know of an image that I stole from a random girl off MySpace and used it in my creatives.  I then noticed this same image in his image pack.  Thanks Justin!  This same exact girl noticed her ads on Facebook and made a big bulletin on MySpace about how she was pissed off.  Luckily for us affiliates, she didn’t have the money to take it to court.

If you’re big into the dating vertical, like myself, what have you done to remedy any and/or all of the situations above?

I was laying down to sleep the other night and I had a great idea hit me.  Have you seen those creepy ass old dudes on Facebook and MySpace that are trying to be professional photographers.  They go around finding hot girls and asking them for a photoshoot and often times enticing them with money.

Luckily for me, I know one of these photographers personally and she also happens to be a girl.  I contacted her and asked her if she and her models would be interested in letting me use their likeness in some of my creatives.  She also tags the girls in her photo shoots so I went to their page, told the girl how I came about their pictures.  I explained to them exactly what I do so they know why I need them.  They were all for it.  All they wanted to know was how much they were getting paid.

Another girl specifically had came to mind that I know, who also happens to be smokin’ hot.  So I hit her up on Facebook, explained to her what I do and asked if she would be willing to let me use some of her pictures in my creatives, she too was all for it.  She just wants to know how much she is getting paid.

So as of right now, I’m waiting on my attorney to draft this letter of consent up for me.  This will alleviate any concerns I have for a lawsuit or unauthorized use of images.  I can provide this documentation to any advertiser and traffic source and inform them of my authorization to use these pictures.  For what it’s worth, most of my images can be rated PG at worst, so its not like I’m requesting to use some of the girls’ most scantily clad pictures.

So if you’re into the dating vertical and are also worried about the concerns I addressed in this post, try the method I described above.  Let me know how it works out for you!

Recently I was flown out to Los Angeles by AKMG and was selected to give a presentation at Meetup202 LA.  The topic I chose was how to get started with buying banner inventory on websites.  If you read my recap you’ll know the story about how I was really nervous about it.  Smaxor being present didn’t help my nerves because I knew if I had any slipups, he would know.  But after it was all said and done, I handled it pretty well.  A lot of people came up to me after wards and gave me great information and let me know they gained some good information, which is was my objective in the first place.  So I considered it a success.

The purpose of this post is to let everybody know that my Guide to Buying Banner Inventory is now public information.  There’s a link in the menubar above, so you might have seen it before.  I just had it set to password protected to tease everybody for awhile.  I had a number of people contact me on AIM asking for the password so they could check it out.

I did let a handful of people check out the guide in rough fashion so they could check it out and provide feedback.  They pointed out a few things I’ve added to the guide, but for the most part it’s pretty much a direct copy of the presentation I made at Meetup202 LA.  A few of the people that have already seen it have used the tips I’ve given away to get some campaigns up and running.

For what it’s worth, I consulted with a few affiliates who I trust to get their feedback on whether I should turn this into an eBook and make some money, because this guide definitely gives out some great information that you can use to fatten your bank account.  However, I didn’t want to be labeled a guru or an eBook marketer so I decided to go the Nickycakes route and release it as a guide on my blog.

I’m sure there are some small parts I’ve missed, but I believe that I have covered pretty much what you need to know when it comes to buying banner inventory.  If you guys see anything that I should change in the guide, just make a comment on those pages and I’ll add it if necessary.

Without further ado, just click the link above in the menubar or click here for my Guide to Buying Banner Inventory.