Looking Out For Shaving Pro-Actively.

Whether you are using revshare or pay per sign up sponsors the one thing that holds true for both types of program is that, inevitably you are being 'shaved' one way or another, of course, many webmasters simply think that 'shaving' is the process of removing sale that your potential customers made to any given programs site or storefront however, as you will find out in this article, there are many more ways that program owners 'shave' than you would think and, in fact, some types of shaving have become such common practice that they have actually become acceptable to the general webmaster populous.

Shaving Sponsors - The Basics.

Whether or not a sponsor shaves is ultimately going to be down to each of our individual opinions of any given sponsor however, hopefully this article will explain to you in enough detail the ways in which you are being shaved by a variety of affiliate programs enough so that you can make some informed decisions on where to and, more importantly, where not to send your traffic.

Common Shaving.

The most common type of shaving that we hear about on an almost daily basis it would seem is the method of removing sales from your stats reports or, not showing sales occurring at all. For example, you send 10 sales to a sponsors paysite, that sponsor, through whatever method, choose to display only 8 of those affiliate sales in your stats report, this is shaving in its simplest form however, it is also the hardest form of shaving to actually prove.

Shaving Traffic.

Another form of shaving that many of us will have encountered is shaving hits to a sponsors tour. For example, lets say you send 10,000 hits to a paysite or storefront and, only 9,000 of those hits appear in your stats, somewhere, between the surfer clicking on the link on your site and, them ending up being reported in your sponsors stats, you have 'lost' 1,000 visitors. For the most part, proving traffic based shaving should be an easy task, especially if you are tracking the amount of physical hits you are sending to a sponsors tour by using a third party click tracking script. However, this then becomes somewhat of an issue for many sponsors simply don't count hits sent via a third party tracking script because of referring url issues.

To further complicate the issue of traffic shaving, many affiliate programs now only count first page unique hits, this means, if you sent the sponsor 10,000 hits and 1,000 of those were not 'unique visitors' to the sites tour, you wont be credited with their visit to the site.

In addition to the two methods of traffic shaving mentioned above, you also have another factor that comes in to play, join page hits. Using the same 10,000 hits being sent to the sites tour or storefront as before, lets say you only see that 3,000 of those actually make it to the join page, where did the other 7,000 go? There are simply to many variables to make an absolute decision on this which, in turn, makes it even harder to prove whether or not your affiliate program is shaving your hits.

Console Shaving.

Now we start to get in to the more commonly accepted methods of 'shaving' specifically, the method of using exit consoles. Thankfully many sponsors now offer their affiliates console free options at a lower payout rate so you can ultimately choose whether or not to send traffic to a tour with consoles on it however, think about this, the no console options pays less, why? The answer is simple, by not showing your surfer a console, you are losing the affiliate program transparent revenues, that is to say, revenues that you generate from your traffic that you are not credited for. Links to paysites outside of the affiliate program make on average, $35 per signup for the affiliate program, now consider that many affiliate programs know which links on their exit consoles get clicked on the most, this is where they put the links that make them money, that you do not get credited with.

Upsell Shaving.

Another widely accepted method that sponsor programs employ to shave their affiliates is the use of upsells within a members area, after all, the program has to make money themselves in order to pay you $35 per trial join right? Many of the large programs use a variety of upsells from product sales, through to live feeds and chats of course, these are also added to the members area to offer the sites members a wider selection of content but non the less, you aren't being paid revenues from these upsells thus, by definition, you are being shaved.

Methods Of Shaving - An Overview.

When all is said and done, shaving, although looked down upon in the industry for the most part, also has a more commonly accepted side too, the trick is however, to work out when these more commonly accepted methods of shaving benefit the program more than the affiliate webmaster.

Running an affiliate program, specifically on a per signup business model is nothing more than a numbers game, the more affiliates you can attract to the program, the more traffic they get and ultimately, the more money they make for themselves, by making more money for themselves they are able to offer more niches and paysites or products and, by offering this they are able to attract more affiliates and thus, the process begins afresh.

Next time you signup to new sponsor, ensure you take a look not only at what they are paying you for your traffic but, how much revenue you are actually losing in the process of making $35 per trial membership, you may be surprised.

Article written by Lee.

http://www.rainbowcontent.com