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Originally Posted by signupdamnit
It's not just a matter of what they are supposed to pay you. It's also a matter of actually getting paid. Will the sponsor actually pay you?
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If a sponsor does not actually pay you, the Net $/click from that program is $0.00. It is included in the metric being used. No payment is the same as paying 0.00, find a new sponsor and move on.
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Originally Posted by signupdamnit
Revshare. Revshare is typically based on a long term relationship with the sponsor. You could have rebill income tied up for years with the sponsor and you are hoping to actually be paid in the future.
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When banks accept deposits of 'could haves' I will begin to track them. Until then, what you "could have" is exactly the same as what you "dont have." Every penny someone could have paid me but didn't pay me reduces the $/click I earn from sending them traffic and increases the likelihood someone else will pay me more for my clicks. Since I am not in the excuse business or the explain why it didn't happen business, I spend 0 resources on wondering what could have been.
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Originally Posted by signupdamnit
Collective consequences. If all sponsors start shaving/adding uncredited popup offers/etc that is going to cause your affiliate income to decline as the effect is undoubtedly that your income will be reduced all things being equal. If you only focus on $ / click for the individual sponsor then you miss this part of the big picture and you are still subject to the collective trends within the industry.
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All sponsors DO shave according to your idiotic notion of could haves. Every single one of them. Charging a fee per check reduces $/click (shaving). Having a min payment amount reduces $/click (shaving). Having terrible content or infrequent updates or anything else that reduces $/click is shaving what you 'could have' earned. YOU are trying to differentiate what you "feel" are good reasons for a program to pay you less from what you "feel" are bad reasons for a program to pay you less. That is nonsense. Focus on who pays you the most and send them your clicks to earn the most money.
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Originally Posted by signupdamnit
Volume issues. Not everyone has enough volume for all sponsors or in all niches to have reliable $ / click data immediately or even within X months. And we are all almost always trying something new. Where you just blindly throw the few clicks you have at the sponsor you are potentially losing income. You have to go by other factors and information you do have then and make an intelligent decision. This is a big one which hits many I suspect. If you are sending 100 clicks a month to 500 sponsors then it is going to take a while to gather meaningful data. And it will take even longer to actually see if they will pay you. Many people who are not actual affiliates or who never were do not get this one but it is a big catch!
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First, if you are a low volume affiliate, what you need to try and find are higher volume affiliates willing to give you an idea of who the best $/click sponsors are in a particular niche. I get that sort of information constantly from people I have worked with for years. If you are 'throwing clicks at anything blindly' you are a fucking idiot. Even if you send 100 clicks a month, you should know where they went and how much each one earned from each sponsor. If you focused on increasing your volume and $/click INSTEAD of why you could have or should have earned an imaginary amount instead... you will soon have more traffic and more dollars and the the entire could have crowd ever will.
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Originally Posted by signupdamnit
Labor and time. This goes a bit with #4. When the typical affiliate puts up a sponsor it requires a certain amount of time and labor in investment. Your time is not free. If you don't attempt to look ahead and at other factors besides the immediate $ / click then you are potentially making more work for yourself later on down the road. If the sponsor goes bad this means changing links, pulling content, maybe removing domains,etc. Instead of constantly running around putting out fires you probably want to be building instead. Remember $ / click can change fast. It's true that a smart webmaster will try to reduce the burden of making these changes but regardless it can be a hassle and unnecessary stress.
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When you put time and effort into promoting a sponsor who is completely 100% honest, ethical and pays you for every click.... before that sponsor goes out of business, closes their affiliate program, takes their program private, sells to someone else, has a heart attack, gets hit by a bus, etc etc etc you are at the exact same risk. Bad things happen to good people... usually more often than bad things happen to bad people unfortunately.
If you send each click where it earns you the most, you will have the most money for your effort. If you try to guess who will be honest in the future and who will be in business in the future and who will pay you in the future... you are mentally masturbating to "feel" better regardless of why you are failing to earn more.
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Originally Posted by signupdamnit
Touched on earlier. $ / click does not take into account CTR. ($ / impression does) It matters how clickable the creative or the link is.
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That is an internal matter that has zero to do with any sponsor. /facepalm
Your impressions on your site and CTR on your site are entirely under your control. Why you think that has anything to do with any sponsor program is beyond me, and does make me thing you do not even own a website. You have total control over your own site content if you own a website, you need to get a grip on your own impressions and CTR before sponsors ever enter the equation. When discussing affiliate program payouts, how many clicks you sent them matters... how many impressions it took for you to generate a click has absolutely zero to do with them.