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Earlier in this thread (or perhaps another) someone mentioned that they saw a difference in their conversion when promoting per Signup vs. Revshare. They got more signups on Revshare and fewer on the Signup plan. They alluded that they thought this was a sign that their sponsor was shaving.
Its more likely that the sponsor was prequalifying the per signup traffic. On Revshare the risk is split between the sponsor and the affiliate, so there's little reason not to accept every possible transaction. On a per Signup plan, the sponsor might be not be accepting signups from people who are more likely to cancel during the trial. This prequalifiying might be based on the country the traffic is from, whether or not the person's address info makes sense (ie does their zipcode match their state, does their ip address match their country), or even whether or not the surfer has joined any of the sponsors sites before.
We have some members who are habitual trial takers. There's one guy in particular from Italy who has taken 18 trial memberships to one of our clubs and I don't think he's ever rebilled. Since we generate most of our traffic ourselves, its not much of an issue for us. However, if our affiliate program played a larger role in our business, you can be sure we would figure out a way to deny a person like that from signing up when referred by a per signup affiliate.
Different conversion rates are not necessarily a sign of shaving. The best way to test whether signup or revshare is best, is to run the same traffic to each program and see which one works best for your traffic on a particular sponsor.
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"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
--H.L. Mencken
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