Can be this considered as cheating webmasters (shaving)? [biz thread]

50..,.......

we do it

then they are far from professional and i'd never work them with. i can't see not crediting affilaites with sales from other processors or even phone numbers in any other way than shaving/theft. like others said there are ways to send a referral id to another processor without nats and the like anyways. there is no excuse.

affiliates are not in the business of sending free joins for you, give me a break.

Is that your own personal opinion or Verotel marketing policy?

In the end, programs doing this will get less affiliate signups and those "caught" will lose existing ones and bad reputation. I don't see how this should bring more money for their wallet... maybe it looks good as long no one react, but you can't account for those affiliates not signing up because of it. Especially the established ones who know what to look for...

bump for more opinions

If there is a cascading billing maybe not ... but if you're under the ccbill affiliate program yeah they are cutting grass.

very interesting thread! thanks

Paul you just need to send affiliate traffic to another page that only has ccbill.

First off, I use NATS so Every sale is tracked....

However

Let says 20% of transactions decline, 5% of those are due to scrubbing and may potentially bill on a different processor, what do you suggest a CCbill based program do? Let the user head back to Google where NO one gets paid?

Unfortunately this is lost affiliate revenue anyway you look at it.

Yup it is shaving.

if they are using cascading billing how are they a ccbill based program? as an affiliate, they might as well go back to google. it doesn't benefit me in any way. i just lost a potential future customer and lost my % from the program because of it. obviously programs with this mindset are only looking out for themselves, so why shouldn't affiliates?

http://www.paulmarkhamteens.com/tour/join-us.php

Avg Joe see CCbill and Pay"something" on the join page... He's looking to join and pay, but the words "CCbill" is jargon and so he clicks the Pay"something".

At least make it clear for the surfer, "Click here to join" and then a 2nd "If you have problems joining with CCbill, Click here".

If the promo is too spendy thats not an excuse to add a 2nd processor to skim the costs of the promo... WTF. I would expect this to be more thought out from you Paul. That's shaving man.

glad someone agrees, if a big program would do this theyd be bashed all over and get a 500 pages thread. Shaving sucks.

i'll say it again

there are 2 ways using ccbill's script that you can at least make this less of a shitty thing to do to your affiliates

remove the paymonde button on the join page
show your ccbill affiliate traffic only the ccbill option at first by sending all that traffic to a "CCBill tour" by setting the redirect url in ccbill to this url.
(this way u can save your root domain tour for your own typein and seo traffic)

then when you have a decline on ccbill you can set the the join form declines to redirect to a page where you have the paymonde (or any other 2ndary biller) page set up explaining that ccbill declined so now enter your info for this processor
This way your ccbill affiliates traffic never has the option of choosing the secondary processor until after ccbill declines it

ALSO, available with ccbill's system, you can send your declined transactions an email, this gives you even another chance to send them to your secondary processor

20% can be seen in the stats, thats not real declines. For example out of 10 declines can be 8 for 1 person and trying him again and again. So its not 10, but 3 declines then. Most people ignore this fact when checking the declines statistic.

Second, many people are accepted at their second try, so even though the surfers signs-up, you see a decline(first attempt) in the stats. Is this a real decline? No.

Third, most of the other declines are people who charged back before or don't have enough money on their bank account.

So seeing 20% declines in stats can be 5% real declines, maybe even less.

Of course I did what's your fucking problem?

If CCbill didnt support cascade billing then NATS wouldn't even work.

You can cascade to another biller without using a 3rd party script, you just can't track which affilaite sent it..

So if you dont want this to happen, dont promote programs that run use the ccbill script. Simple

"lets say" -- I was using those figures as an example.

me too

well according to this guy...

What's your site? Do you have Nats MPA3 etc, running your affiliate program? Do you have an affilaite program? Lot of talk if you don't. It's not as easy as you think to get this stuff running. You seem to think that you buy some software and it magically gets setup overnight.

Some of us are trying to run a site. 1 fucking site. not 30 or 100 sites. A cascading affiliate program requires a hell of a lot more work than a simple ccbill program. You suddenly have to deal with hosting issues and content creation for the program etc. PLUS you have to be able to send out payment to the affilaites every 2 weeks or what ever your schedule is by yourself. will Ccbill they take care of that for you. Your going to drop at least 3 grand right from the begining to get everything setup. plus pay out another 300+ a month to rent the software. Ccbill charges nothing extra. How many extra member signups per month do you figure a single site would have to get in order to cover these costs?

We are already paying for the Hosting, content creation, credit card billing, props, dildos, design, workstations etc Plus I have to pay for all the travel to GET to that content, worry about 2257 and all the other bullshit that's coming down on site owners AND I'm paying ccbill affiliates 50% of the ccbill sale and all recurring. I have other processors on my join page, which all together account for less than 10% of the total signups the site makes. 90% still come from ccbill. The ones that ccbill misses hopefully the other catch. You call it shaving, I call it surviving.

I'm not a server guy. I know squat about unix, linux apachie or even HTML for that matter. I'm not able to take a script and install it myself let alone get something like a cascading program running. It gets to the point where you just say fuck it and stay with the ccbill program.

I started with the ccbill program like 4 years ago, was able to get it running with one phone call to ccbill and 2 hours of time. at that point affiliates where able to make sales to the site and get paid. For the last 2 fucking YEARS I have tried to get a cascading program running yet, it's still sitting undone. Promote me or don't. The ccbill program is there and stable as ever. You WILL make money. If you don't like the setup then promote something else, simple as that. Or better yet, change roles and run your own paysite and look at it from the other point of view.

obviously my point of view is that of an affiliate and not a paysite owner. yeah, there is a lot of bullshit in running a program but there are a lot of things affiliates have to worry about too. we already lose money on popups we don't get credited for, typins from those who dont buy right away, enter your email boxes, cross-sales, etc. im only trying to get credited for sales i send. maybe its just me but if i didn't have the money to invest or the know-how or at least the money to hire someone who does the have the know-how, i wouldn't be opening up a site, one or 30. of course affiliates have the choice to promote you or not, its up to you how you run your site. i do plan to open my own paysites but i won't have an affiliate program.

damn double posts

1. Your harping about Websites and how their affilaite program is ran yet, you don't even plan on using one yourself? Interesting to say the least.

2. As far as opening a website, maybe in my case I had a "little" more to offer than just the tech knowhow. Sounds more like you would rather just promote saturated programs. One of the reasons all the TGP etc are looking the same, cause they are all pushing the same programs.

Also, in opening the site I started it back in 2001. You could start a single site back then and do ok with it. Fortunatly, it became large enough to sustain itself over the years, but it would be almost impossible to duplicate today. The expense is just to great for the risk. EH will be the only site I do. It will always be my first and it will be my last. I guess you get burned out dealing with everyones hands out. I just think you have a sad point of view. You ignor all the creative, unusual sites out there, the smaller sites working to get by, for the larger mega sites. You really think that your not paying for that staff they have? You really think that they are taking less of a % from the sales you "Sent" them than some one me with a couple of extra ways for a surfer to signup? Give me a break. Everyone has to make a profit or we wouldn't be here. Promote the content that sells for you and stop whining about the little things so much. To call it "shaving" that dirty little word in our industy is stupid. It's not hidden. We are not trying to cheat you or fool you in someway. Shit in my case we dont have ANY popups, no consoles, no emailings. Nothing. A person gets to our join poage and either becomes a member or doesn't. End of story.

Bottom line is that is all that counts. Installing NATS and running it for a program of our size is not cost effective, would people prefer I do that and take out the profit from the affiliates payments?

I will make the CCBILL link very clear, but at present it picks up 95% of the joins.

How your traffic performs on a given site is the indication to who is shaving or not. Or just who converts better.

I owe everyone an appolagy. Well all my affiliates and will be addressisng this when I get back to work next week.

The new tour has given far too much prominence to the Paymonde link and we will romove it totally.

I will look at affiliates joins in the last week, the time the new tour was up, and make financial ammends to them.

The amount that goes via Paymonde is not worth bothering with.

http://www.paulmarkhamteens.com/tour/join-us.php

The Paymonde link is gone.

asshat

Hrmm, I stand corrected...

This means CCBILL passes on personal details (name/address) of that webmaster to EPOCH in order to cut the check..

Then why are 95% of our joins via CCBILL?

Maybe because 95% of the joins the industry gets are repeat buyers and already done business with CCBILL.

Bottom line is affiliates have to be more professional about the performance and return on their investment. Their time and money worked and traffic produced.

They have to look at how much they earn per hour or day sending traffic to site A as opposed to site B. They also need to be concerned with the long term growth of this industry. Will sending traffic to a site that over rewards them and shaves the surfer actually harm them more in the long run?

Our site performs well enough and I'm looking at how to make it perform better, this performance is always related to the surfer, not the affiliate, because I believe long term that's in the best interest of the affiliate.

My new sites will be a little different and at the beginning I wil not be able to offer an attractive payout to affiliates. When we prove the value of the sign ups I might have an affiliate program that is by invitation only, but only when it's proved.

Until that time do I rely on peoples trust of me to do the right thing and add the profit from the new sites to the affiliates rev share and PPS or do I do nothing or do I generate the traffic to the sites 100% myself?

I'm on holiday and will check back later.

This one of the reasons I don't promote CCBill aff programs. If it's only CCBill, you can loose the sale because of high scrubbing (which happens very often), no matter if there is another processor or not. I stick with programs that use 3 processors in cascade and give credit to affiliate for the sale. Ratios are already shitty, there's no need to make them shittier because CCBill scrubs more or less.
Fuck 60%, 70% or I-don't-know-what percentage, all that matters is how many $/click I get. My asset is the "click", and I want to make the most bucks for it.

Dude, no offense, but you should give up running your paysite if it's so hard...or stop whining about it. Is your affiliates' problem that is hard or you don't know shit about HTML?

Nice attitude Mr. Markham...you were caught with the Mach 3 in your hand and you're bashing affiliates to be more professional...very professional of you, you're a real stand-up program owner. I'll jump on promoting your program right now...maybe not.

huh? I actually recently signed up to your program as the content looks fantastic. BUT after reading this, there's not a chance i'd promote it.
How can anyone justify what is essentially shaving? I don't gaf about higher payouts if in the long run I missout on sales.

Let's just think about this for a minute - get 65% for joins and miss a few joins to another biller OR get all your joins at 50 to 55% hmmmm i'll take all joins thanks.

You must have a paysite and make a shitload of sales if you have these scrubbing numbers. But in real world, ccbill and paycom scrub very similar, paycom a little more at the moment. Its just a few % you lose due to unfair scrubbing, other reasons are chargebacks, no cash, etc. So if your ratios with ccbill only sponsors suck, its the paysites you promote, its your marketing methods, its not ccbill. Start blaming yourself, or you will never be successful.

I don't think you read my post.

Myself and anybody with common sense will call it shaving....I'm in the same boat as you with one small site with ccbill and I can understand how you might need extra money to supplement your ccbill sales...But putting another link on the joinpage isn't the answer.

Sounds all very rational. Except it isn't...

I wouldn't argue with you that cascading is a better option than a single processor, but I haven't seen anyone getting rich since its appearance (except perhaps for the companies selling the software). That's because the number of rejections which are conceivably a result of one processor's specific algorithms is tiny: I have seen 1% quoted by a lady who used to be a regular here and did/does work for a processor. That claim makes sense if you look at the actual reject levels (not merely the number of failed transactions) in the way that Brujah describes in this thread.

So let's say sponsors who only process with CCBill do lose 1% of their sales. That's not good news, but it's a damn poor reason to reject them all out of hand. How long a list do you want of all the things you and your sponsors can do to affect your income by a lot more than 1%?

You say, like every smart webmaster should, that you are only interested in $/click, but I'm curious to know how you can be sure you are earning the most you could be, if you arbitrarily exclude 100's of sponsors from consideration. And if that really were your concern, why should you care if someone has a damn great "don't click the button with the affiliate code" notice on his page, providing you still make your $/click?

I think Paul is wrong, but only because of perception. If he did the usual and sent surfers to a secondary processor after a CCBill rejection, he wouldn't have suffered the negativity in a thread like this. It's ironic that because he was upfront about his secondary processor (and he is far from being the only sponsor who is), he is taking heat.

You can't have it both ways. Either you go the "scientific" route, calculating who gives you the most return for the real estate you devote to promoting them, or else you worry about the specifics of how their practises might impact on your results.

I should give up eh? Let put some stats where your mouth is... Show me your's I'll show you mine. I'll tell you right now that I have over 780 ACTIVE members. Billing at 34.95 a month... take out the 13% processor. and you'll get an idea of what the site generates. Affiliates account for 15% of those sales. of that 15% I pay out 50% of the sale PLUS 13% to processor for a total of 63% Plus remove costs for keeping the site up etc, Lets just say 5% so now the numbers 68% making me a profit of 32%.

By my numbers exactly how important are the affilaites to my site? I'm a fetish site. People with my fetish find me. An absolute shitload of my content is floating around the net with my watermark on it. Sure some from the affilaites, but a bulk of it from members taking stuff from the site and posting elsewhere... word of mouth advertising. You would be amazed at the number of people I have talked to that find out what I do. Then they go on to tell me about this video of a girl pushing a full sized football out of her pussy... Only for me to show them that it was me that made that video.

So go ahead, test me. You go out right now and start surfing the web. I would like you to locate a few things for me. All extreme fetish, all real and all with a following of dedicted members.

1. REAL female belly inflation
2. REAL female triple fisting. (that's 3 fists in one pussy incase your unsure)
3. REAL huge toy fucking. And I'm not talking about that stupid "rambone" dildo, anyone can fuck that retarded toy. I'm talking toys as big around as a wine bottle or bigger.

Chances are, I have either produced it, or at one time shot with the people that did.

IF you can find me a site that directly compares with mine, that I have not worked with or provide more extreme content than (And by extreme I mean larger toy fucking. Here's an example...


)

And show me that that site has provided the member at least 400+ HOURS of this content in the members area, Plus 100,000 Picture of this type of content, all exclusive. I will paypal you 500 bucks. if you can't show me another... Then promote me and make yourself some money. Simple test... come on, it should be easy for you since you know so much about the web...

Whining? Na, WTF do I care that I don't know Html, Unix etc.. designers are a dime a dozen, server supports provided by the host. I can pay someone for the rest as I need it done. Updating and content creation. I'm all over that.

My sites had a steady membership these last 5 years. What worries me is that I would open up a great affiliate program and my content would become saturated in a very short time. I'm looking for longevity not a quick buck. As I read more and more here and see all the affilaites bashing this program and that program whining about this, begging for that. I can tell you that if I ever do get MPA3 running over at anotherprogram.com it will be by invite only. I'm not one to sit here and beg you to make yourself money. You most likely don't have the correct type of traffic to send me, if you did, you would be doing it by now as there are very few people that can provide the kind of content I have.

So, Bring it on. I have offered 500 bucks cash. show me that I'm wrong.

We need to be made aware of more sponsors that are cheating. Do you understand now dipshit?

No

bottomline is we shouldnt have to wait and tell you youre scamming. Oh and who decides that the paymonde sales arent worth mentioning? Post stats and let affiliates decide.

I state VERY clearly on the Affilaite signup page "Earn a 50% commission on every Ccbill signup and all rebills thereafter."

It's right at the top. I'm not hiding anything. How much clearer could it be.. should I make it flash and dance around? People are just pissing about the little things. The amount of sales gotten by the other processors is so little that I don't even check the stats. And since the affiliates account for so little of the actual membership my site has it's really a non issue with me. Like I have said before and will say again. I have my affilaite program setup the way I WANT IT. if you don't like it and can find the same stuff to promote then do so. Shaving? Nope. Giving the affiliate a chance to make money off the correct type of traffic. Yup. I'm not in the same boat as a lot of the other "sponsers" out there. They are fighting for affilaites because so many other sponsers have like content. My content is unique. Supply and demand.

I believe Pauls in the same boat, sure there's a lot of that type of stuff out there, but his stuff is beautiful and sells itself. Not many actually compare side by side. Affialites should be happy he's giving them a chance to promote it and make money of his amazing work.

Gerco

no matter how much you try to bend the rules, its stealing from ppl who promote you.

Almost no sales, basically not worth mentioning and more crap like that. Sure make 5 pages posts. Youre shaving and ppl hate it.

And that surviving quote is lame. Youre not some Robin Hood stealing from the rich only. Youre stealing from every affiliate and that sucks.

And, just to make it perfectly clear... Not ONE of my actively selling affilaites has EVER bitched about the current setup. Yet they have in a few cases been pushing steady traffic to me for 2 and even 3 years now. The Ones that tend to bitch are the ones that couldn't send a sale a day anyway. One affialite that I did try and set things up differently for... (And One of the only affililiates that came direclty from GFY) In which I provided a sepreate tour for with ONLY a ccbill signup couldn't send squat in traffic. Now it's a take it or leave it. Play by my rules or play somewhere else. Seems like a shitty attitude, but I'm sick of the all the want to be's on here that talk big and can't do shit.

WTF I just checked HOLY SHIT what else can you add there that wont credit affiliates?

paycom paymonde wts ccbill and password by phone

NICE. NOT.

What about programs that claim "Paying out XX% revshare on all sales" and then have cross sales on the joinforms (CCbill, Epoch) that you're never credited for?

They dont know

If you dont know what youre missing you wont miss it.

Export your aff base and let me email them theyre missing out on every sale thats not credited by ccbill and lets see who keeps promoting you.

Were not talkin bout xselling here. Totally different subject.

Is that an insult?