Shaving - Something We Dont Talk About That Often..

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Originally Posted by Lee

Oh and another thing i just thought off..

Sponsor who close their sites and dont bother telling affiliates about it and redirect the traffic to a different site without crediting the affiliate.

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ouch! That is fucked up

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

Well technically, shaving is not crediting a referring webmaster with a sale.That means if you have an exit console and my surfer didn't buy your site's membership, but he bought one off your exit console and I didn't get a cut - you shaved.

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If a sponsor is selling DVDs on their site and only giving wm's credit on memberships, that's shaving. If they have banners for other paysites, that's shaving. If they have traffic leaks to their own link lists and blogs and TGPs, that's shaving.

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Absolutely 99% of sites in this business shave.

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It must suck to think that 99% of people you do business with are doing you wrong and "shaving" you.

Relating your "technical" definition of shaving to other industries online you're defining the basic affiliate and advertising model that all businesses use online as shaving, at minimum any website that has affiliates and a link to another site.

Our slang term of shaving is an offset of skimming which is defined as: To fail to declare certain income to avoid tax payment. Shaving is the failure to credit sales through affiliate program manipulation.

Offsite links are offsite links. Exit consoles are exit consoles. Banners are banners, etc. etc.

Programs/sites manipulating their affiliate programs so that affiliates wont get credited for sales is wrong, no matter how you try to defend it. If it was ok people would disclose that they will change links and divert your traffic, or periodically take some of your money, and they don't do that, because it's wrong and nobody would do business with them.

tomaaaaaaaaaaaato, tomahhhhhhhhhhhhto

If I send you traffic and I didn't make a sale because your exit console got in the way and diverted the surfer away, then I call that shaving. I don't care what the "official" definitions are.

I've come to accept certain kinds of shaving because, well, you're not going to change the whole industry. I prefer to deal with sites that don't have exit consoles (or allow me to shut them off). I prefer to promote sites that don't do PPS. And I stay away from the conglomerate programs as much as possible.

And I find the best way to combat shaving is to be vocal with your sponsor. e-mail them and ask questions. Don't rage. Just say things like, "My sales have dropped in the past couple of months and I don't understand why. Can you help me figure out what the problem might be?" And keep talking to them. If they are shaving, they'll know you're watching and perhaps they'll unshave you. If they're not shaving, then you'll probably get some good advice.

As far as this "It must suck to think that 99% of people you do business with are doing you wrong and "shaving" you." No it doesn't suck. I'm in a sleazy business. It doesn't me I'm sleazy. And I've certainly met a lot of people who aren't sleazy. But the fact is that there are a lot of quick money makers and scam artists in this business. There are a lot of people who will say whatever necessary to get your business.

Michael

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

If a sponsor is selling DVDs on their site and only giving wm's credit on memberships, that's shaving. If they have banners for other paysites, that's shaving. If they have traffic leaks to their own link lists and blogs and TGPs, that's shaving.

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I hate sites that have a "links" or "friends" section. they could create a tour without traffic leaks for webmasters to send traffic to.

I just don't think is fair having me making sales for them. when I'm the one generating the traffic

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

And if your sponsor is using a NATS or MPA3-type program, there's heaps of opportunities to shave. They don't call it shaving, but from the NATS demo I saw in Vegas, you can set up all kinds of perameters that result in the sponsor making as much as money as possible and the referrer not necessarily getting everything that's coming to them.

And I'm sure that as transactions fall through the cascading referral information falls away at times. If Microsoft can't make an operating system that doesn't need to be restarted and burped several times a day that cascading software doesn't hiccup occasionally.

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Well, I dunno for sure, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that the folks at NATS and Mansion can probably code more reliable software than the folks at Microsoft... they have to, they rely on a much smaller base of clients to stay afloat.

Also, keep in mind that just the way these programs operate... the software is in the background all the time as the sale is cascaded, determining where it's being sent, and so it's unlikely than it's "losing" the affiliate information, as that would be kept in the same place as whatever token is keeping track of which biller to go to next.

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

If a sponsor is selling DVDs on their site and only giving wm's credit on memberships, that's shaving.

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We were guilty of this one, and until one of our affiliates pointed it out, it never occurred to me that it was a traffic leak. So when we redesigned the tour, we took out the link. We'll soon have multiple tours for our affilaites to choose from (none of which will have leaks, at least none we're aware of), while our direct-traffic tour will have links to our other properties.

We also had a problem at one point that our written policy on payouts was different than what was actually programmed in the CCBIll affilliate panel. One of our affiliates pointed it out, so we manually recalculated and sent checks to all the affiliates affected.

I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes, traffic leaks and such are unintentional, and I think that your comment about communicating with the sponsor is a really important one... if the sponsor is responsive, then you're hopefully dealing with an honest but perhaps under-educated sponsor. If you get no response, or an evasive one, then it's more likely the sponsor knows exactly what's going on and is intentionally trying to take advantage.

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Originally Posted by boyfunk

it's unlikely than it's "losing" the affiliate information, as that would be kept in the same place as whatever token is keeping track of which biller to go to next

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Chip,

Its unlikely but, does happen, just last week there was a thread on GFY that someone started telling NATs that is exactly what was happening because he was getting sales to sites that he didnt even promote.. From a sponsor he didnt even promote LOL

So no system is inperviable to bugs however, it seems a lot of these affiliate script companies simply dont care, as long as people keep using them.

BTW, the outcome of that thread was that the NATs guy who responded basically called the guy who started the thread an asshole without even checking if he was right.

Gives you something to think about at least.

Regards,

Lee

Yikes.

I had no idea, just from my minimal background in programming, that seems like a no-brainer, but then again, I really have no idea (nor does anyone else, since it's compiled in Zend) how the NATS script is assembled.

I will definitely keep an eye on that issue.

Thanks for the heads up!