Shaving

[Dzinerbear]

Hey all,

Aside from a sale not showing up in your stats, can you give me some other examples of things that you'd consider to be shaving.

Thanks
dzinerbear

[DonMike]

Don't get me started... :5ymca:

[Paco]

A). Total RAWS sent not reported accurately.
B). What one does to remove hair from certain regions ... such as the big toe.
C). A process used to created a type of luncheon meat (shaved ham).

BTW, some sponsors hate it when web masters refer to the act as "shaving". I believe they would rather hear or it called traffic adjustment
or internet errors or something else 'innocent' sounding.

[Top Cat]

At Internext I noticed on one of the sponsor banners in the elevators (one with a big photo of a naked woman) someone had written "Get shaved."

"Funny," I thought, "she already looks shaved."

About five seconds later I figured it out and started laughing.

[DonMike]

Andy, that happens to me all the time. I see the word "shaving" in a board thread and click on it only to find that they are talking smack about an affiliate program. I sometimes forget the my work life and my home life are not connected. LOL!

[basschick]

shaving is a term that was invented to describe the deliberate removing of sales, so some of what people call shaving on this board isn't.

if a sponsor discloses that their program does not pay for certain countries, i can't see how it's shaving. you can use a script to send people in those countries elsewhere. of course, if they DON'T disclose that they don't pay for those countries, that's shaving. and it's gotta be in their terms or faqs - telling someone on a message board is bullshit.

basically anything a program does that removes sales from my account - not paying if the members i refer don't log in, not paying if the members cancel right away, not paying for signups from certain countries without disclosing it - that's shaving. shaving is stealing, and it ain't legal.

shaving hits is another matter, but it's not really one i worry about. i don't get paid for hits. lots of programs don't show raw hits, and that's not shaving - they simply show unique instead of raw.

[thetwink]

well, there was the infamous incident where CCBill made the amount of rebills paid for avaialble to the affilliates, and more than a few sponsors that claimed 'paid for rebills for life' were actually only paying for 1 or 0 rebills. Was a fun day... the info became available to the affilliates during a convention, so sponsors like Perfection Cash, got caught with their pants down and didn't even know it for a few hours.

This is still a way to shave, but appearantly CCBill will automatically send an e-mail to all affilliates if changes are made to this setting by the site owner. I've never recieved one of these e-mails, so either this form of shaving has stopped altogether, or this e-mail doesn't get sent.

Also, I'd imagine that any custom affilliate software could still do this with rebills.


Interesting story... a few years ago when a friend of mine had her site, a major sponsor had one of those $100 signup days. So, inside her member's area, she offered a free month to her site if they bought a membership to this sponsor's site. All they had to do was send her the subscription id, and she'd give them the free month. She recieved 12 e-mails from members with subscription ids, but only 5 joins showed in her stats for the day.

[desslock]

What do you do?

You make periodic test purchases from time to time. In fact, mainstream affiliate discussion boards have forums called Periodic Test Purchases where people can report their results.

That is the only way to really see.

Steve

[basschick]

you know what's a trip? some programs don't allow test purchases... i think topbucks may be one. i can see one reasonable reason why this could be, but i'm very curious as to the reasoning...

[Paco]

shaving is a term that was invented to describe the deliberate removing of sales, so some of what people call shaving on this board isn't.
basically anything a program does that removes sales from my account - not paying if the members i refer don't log in, not paying if the members cancel right away, not paying for signups from certain countries without disclosing it - that's shaving. shaving is stealing, and it ain't legal.

shaving hits is another matter, but it's not really one i worry about. i don't get paid for hits. lots of programs don't show raw hits, and that's not shaving - they simply show unique instead of raw.

The removal of anything, such as traffic, sales, commission, web master referrals etc, is shaving (which I do consider stealing)! The importance of what is being 'removed' varies from person to person.

Clicks are extremely important to me, as I want to know what the exact worth of a type of traffic is. How else can I gauge if the traffic I sent to sponsor ‘A’ is as productive as that which I sent to sponsor ‘B’ ? It is impossible if one of the variables is not available.

The following, in my eyes, is correct: lots of programs don't show raw hits, and that's not shaving - they simply show unique instead of raw.
Different companies use different tracking techniques, no biggie ... like many others, I am somewhat use to life little inconsistencies.