We used to offer Rev-Share, but we dropped it in favour for Pay Per Sign-up (PPS) for several reasons.
In order to get anyone to even pay attention to our affiliate program, we had to offer at least 25% Revenue Share. On $5.00 per minute this left only $3.02 per minute after the billing co's trasnaction fee to be split between us, the girls, and other studios we work with.
This would force us to have to hire sub-standard chat models from countries where the US dollar went much further. Most of the time these girls could not speak english, had low bandwidth and shitty cams and computers. We (and our affiliates) made little money because these girls could not convert.
Now by offering PPS, we can increase our affiliate commission to 50%. We actually lose money on the first sale, but make it up on additional sales later.
This method allows us to pay a higher rate to the girls who work for us (Canadian and American Girls) who can then afford better, faster computers, cameras and Internet connections.
These girls do a fantastic job of converting your visitors into paying customers because they talk by Voice (in English!) have fantastic video and audio quality, and know how to keep the end users happy and returning for more later.
This method also rewards good affiliates who work hard to promote us on a regular basis.
I met a webmaster at Internext last summer (I forgot his name) who bragged that he would sign-up only for Rev-share-for-life programs. He would promote them by spam, pop-ups and other ways that would generate low quality traffic, get a few sign-ups, and then do this again and again for any other program he could find (no loytality from this guy). He then laughed at the "suckahs" who keep paying him out for shit traffic while he sat on his hands doing nothing later.
He also bragged that he would sometimes buy video chat time as a customer via his own affiliate program, scamming the video chat company out of money. Good for him maybe, but bad for the companies who have to pay him out.
(This same "webmaster" by the way, was also trying to bum drinks off of me because he said he was boke AND thought that he somehow deserved a drink from me because MAYBE he would become our affiliate too. Um, no dude. Go fuck yourself you lazy piece of shit.)
Sometimes I think some companies are so desperate for affiliate webmasters that they literally drop their pants just to get attention and may make important financial mistakes in the process. (Read this:
http://www.ynot.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=ea_article&s id=46703) We are no exception and have made some seriously stupid blunders in the past as well.
Anyway if you're an affiliate who go after only rev-share deals and this works for you then thats ok I guess. But don't ignore the cam sites like
LiveCamNetwork.com who offer PPS. Send them an email and ask them some questions about the how and why they do what they do. Maybe PPS is better in some circumstances...
Have a good Sunday!