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Was curious to see what your thoughts on sponsors that shave were?
I think most of us will agree that it is wrong and shouldnt be done but, in reality, will shaving ever not exist in the industry as long as webmasters keep demanding higher payouts?
Also, how do you know whether a sponsor is shaving or not, what are some tell-tale signs that you would look for as an affiliate?
Regards,
Lee
Dammit, and I got all excited thinking this thread was about hot guys shaving their bodies. LOL!
If a program has more than one of the following, I run screaming from the room:
Red Flag 1. More than 10 sites to promote
Red Flag 2. Per Signup payouts of more than $30
Red Flag 3. Lots of Jargon about "niches" and "high conversions"
Red Flag 4. Console or Non Console link options
I have become jaded, I guess. I'd rather send my traffic to smaller programs or sites that truly are unique. The bigger the program, the more tricks they use.
Example--
My historical sales with TopBucks were 1/2000+ before I pulled all the links. My historical sales with Intense Cash (since BrokeStraightBoys) is 1/300 and geting better every week.
Shaving has a lot of definitions and components. Traffic diversions, cross sells, upsells, consoles and pop-ups. Life is too short to worry about it, so I use my little test and put my traffic in good hands.
Can i ask why?Quote:
Originally Posted by MWCren
We have 2 of those items on Condom Cash well, 3 if you take in to account our conversions although that isnt a major focus point for us because any sponsor should be able to have 'high conversions' if they did things right lol
Regards,
Lee
I don't have 20,000 hits a day to throw at a every program available. Every click needs to count, and I've found that sending traffic to programs with original content/unique sites just works for my traffic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee
The other reasons are in the original reply, I'm jaded, and get better sales ratios with smaller programs. The bigger they are, the more tricks they use, based on my experience.
Precisely why you are not one of the sponsors I have chosen. But that doesn't mean you shave, it just means I'm more comfortable with other programs at the present time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee
Cant say fairer than that :)
Thanks for the clarification :)
Regards,
Lee
Quote:
Originally Posted by DonMike
my thought exactly!
i was looking forward to seeing some hot dudes shaving.... not this boring ol' webmaster stuff ;)
thats a good one!Quote:
Originally Posted by MWCren
Looking at my Stats Remote now for the last few years
Ive sold thousands of memberships and had thousands of rebills on everything from gay to straight to shemale, ethnic to facials, anal, gangbangs, grannies, etc etc and when I average everything out it comes to $20.87 a sale, and to .8 cents a click Ive made.
I just cant see $30 or $35 a sale unless theyre doing MASSIVE volume and have lots of upsells in their members area.
Or they make it hard as fuck for their members to cancel, or give them hidden crosssells in their signup contract.
Otherwise it doesnt match out for me
Or, if it's a one-time with no rebills, they could be confident about their retention. Giving $30 on a $25 sale means I only need to rebill each customer you send me once to be making money, and If I know that 70% of my customers stay for 4-5 months (or even 3 months), then I'm totally making more money that way than if I give you 50% over the life of the membership.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc
When we were running our "6 month subscription gets a free DVD" promotion, we were doing about 25-30% of sales as 6 month subscriptions, so our affiliates got like $45 for each sale.
Having recently launched an affiliate program, I'm interested in how other sites may use some subtle methods to shave.
For example, I know not all sites measure conversion rates from the landing page. I've heard some even measure from hits on the Join page!
I also saw one site that told webmasters that cookies were unreliable so they use session IDs instead...meaning you only get credit if a vistor signs up on the first visit!
Any other observations or experiences?
Only my partner gets to shave me. ;)
I have limited traffic to send. But it's damn good quality traffic. I put a value on every click. If I'm not profiting, I stop promoting. So for me... shave at your own risk, AFAIC.
Will it ever not exist? Well, is every webmaster/program operator honest? I think that probably answers that. :(
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee
I think sponsors that shave are dishonest scums that get off on fucking ANYBODY over for as long as they can. Sponsors that shave know they might as well put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger if anyone found out what they were doing. I don't do business with dishonest companies, or individuals. When I find one I blacklist them.
I can tell when a sponsor shaves by clicks and conversion ratios. Certain ad spots on my site retain a tried and true click value and corresponding conversion ratios, as do particular kinds of content.
Red flags are:
1) Sites or programs with many sites running their own affiliate software
2) High payout values
3) Reps constantly pumping sites that don't convert well
4) Click and/or conversion ratios that consistently don't match to ad spots on my site with steady click conversion ratios.
5) Content and/or sites consistent with high conversions that don't convert
I tend to trust sites with third party processors that run the affiliate programs. My best conversions are almost ALWAYS with sites where the processor runs the affiliate program, except for one site.
The fraud perpetrated by surfers is bad enough, let alone having to watch our backs with affiliate sites running shady programs, but that's business.
Does anyone here favor shaving?
You know, THAT is the biggest turn off for me with affiliate programs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Squirt
If they are using a program that was written by them and only used by them, we have no way to know what else has been 'coded' in to the affiliate script.
Regards,
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.
Regards,
Lee
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. I didn't send my traffic to Hairy Ass Fuckers so they could sell that traffic a membership to Hairy Cock Suckers, owned by someone else.
And I hate exit consoles that pop on top of the intended site.
I hear what people are saying about site owners having to manage the mechanics of $30 PPS. But in their greed to take the money and run, what most webmasters don't understand is that if you're promoting though a PPS program, you're most certainly being shaved.
One well-known program that I promote didn't seem to be doing so well in the rebill department, so I switched all my revshare codes to PPS. Suddenly my conversion rate went from 1/300 to 1/600, 1/700, and 1/800. Coincidence? Perhaps, but when I changed my codes back to revshare my conversion rates went back to what they were.
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.
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.
Absolutely 99% of sites in this business shave. It's just that we've come to accept some of the practices as benign and we've stop calling them shaving.
Cheers
Michael
ouch! That is fucked upQuote:
Originally Posted by Lee
It must suck to think that 99% of people you do business with are doing you wrong and "shaving" you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzinerbear
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
I hate sites that have a "links" or "friends" section. they could create a tour without traffic leaks for webmasters to send traffic to.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzinerbear
I just don't think is fair having me making sales for them. when I'm the one generating the traffic
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzinerbear
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzinerbear
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.
Chip,Quote:
Originally Posted by boyfunk
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!