Are the sponsors shaving? Is that myth or fact?

Relentless... you should teach math in high school, no offense. You explain things in a very interesting manner :-)

then why would it be an option lol

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Hahahaha, lol

I did something like 5 testing joins since 2003 and they were all counted except one big sponsor.

Typically, I shy away from personal recommendations, but in this case, I'll make an exception.

I've worked with Relentless extensively over the past couple years, and I've always found his work to be high quality and -- arguably more important -- on time, every time.

Anybody in need of writing for their sites/publications would be wise to contract Stewart for the job.

- Q.

Thanks for the kind words Q.
Coming from you they mean a lot.

Bump for truth. Unfortunately:

a) Webmasters are lazy. They don't want to do their own tracking, they expect the sponsor stats to be the gospel
b) The lazier the webmaster, the more time they spend posting on message boards. Lazy webmasters have more time to complain, accusations of shaving are on of the favorite topics.
c) Webmasters are entitled. They think it's their 'work' that adds value, when in fact, the affiliate programs absorb 99% of the risk, yet payout a disproportionate amount of profit. Thus they like to accuse the programs of stealing 'their' money.

interesting thread

I don't think adult affiliates should be scolded or put down for wanting a fair shake for the money, time and effort they expend when they partner with a sponsor program they have little choice but to trust blindly.

I'm always taken back when I view stats that show I've sent a sponsor 500 or 1,000 uniques and have nothing to show for it. Can you imagine owning a "brick and mortar" business where 500 to 1,000 people visit your "store" and not one of them drops even a penny into your cash register. Yet, this is what adult affiliates have learned to tolerate and accept. It really kind of defies common sense and logic.

Consider the adult affiliate who SEOs a website to perscribe to exactly what a surfer who uses a search engine is looking for... in other words, what the affiliate is delivering is just what the surfer says he wants. Can traffic be any better targeted than this? Yet, there's no sale made. And, this happens with unique after unique after unique. It's no wonder the concept of shaving enters into the scenario.

Your analogy is flawed.

A closer analogy would be:

Can you imagine taking 1,000 people (including children, the homeless, people who don't speak any English, the elderly and a handful of people with money in their pockets) on buses from all over the globe to the world's largest shopping mall and having none of them use the ONE specific gumball machine YOU recommended to them which is at the East end of the mall beside millions of other potential points of sale?

Review sites are most likely the best qualified traffic possible. SEO traffic for a specific keyword chosen by the surfer and then filtered more deeply by detailed niche-specific reviews about sites related to that keyword.

By your reasoning that should generate sales at nearly a 1:1 ratio.

Your logic is flawed. Not every person online has money. Not every person online with money intends to buy anything. Not every person in the mood for Chinese food eats at the most highly recommended Chinese restaurant.

When you understand that out of every 1,000 internet users you MIGHT have 5 or 6 who are potential buyers, you quickly start to see why the math works the way it does. Of the thousands of uniques you send, how many are potential buyers and of those what percent become converted sales.

By overestimating the value of your traffic you are left to balance the equation by falsely underestimating the sites you are pushing.

Apparently there is an option in some of the backends to pay on trials only if they stay a member for X hours.

In NATs look for referring URLs with 0's

I've been in this business since early 1998, most of the time spent under a different "board" name. In that time, I've run a few hundred sites, taken a lot of photos, and seen a lot of things. I have to say...

What Relentless wrote is the goddamn truth. That is the ONLY COMPETENT AND ACCURATE way to compare sponsors. Anything else is just inaccurate dumbass bullshit that clouds your mind with superfluous crap.

Dollars/uniques and you can't go wrong. You can assume that every sponsor shaves and dollars/uniques still won't lead you astray.

Don't forget the part about excluding sponsors who screw your surfers. That really is VERY important and often overlooked. Being paid 30 cents per unique by a company with xsells below the submit. draconian TOS, hidden cancel links etc... is NOT better than being paid 28 cents per unique by a good clean and honest sponsor site.

True, I was only referring to the "which sponsor makes me more money" question.

The gumball story is a cute one, but it's not all that enlightening. Anybody who's been pushing porn for awhile knows there are underage people surfing the adult net, and that there are probably more people out there WITHOUT credit cards than there are with them, and also there are those people who wouldn't buy porn if their life depended on it.
That's basic, fundamental stuff.

The point of my post was missed. And, it's simply that there are two sides to every story. The original question put forth in this thread is, "Are sponsors shaving?"... to which another poster responded that shaving is mostly a non-issue and the real problem is that adult affiliates expect too much.

I don't care what you're selling or where you're selling it at... if you send a "partner" a thousand referrals or leads, and that partner reports back to you in some form or manner that they could do nothing with your referrals that resulted in even one sale... then it's perfectly reasonable for you to question, suspect or doubt the integrity of your partner. This is the core controversy that has revolved around the shaving issue since it was first raised way back when.

It has nothing to do whatsoever with making comparisons between which sponsors provide the most return per unique... regardless of whether they're shaving or not. Who the hell wants to waste their time on that exercise if they suspect they're dealing with anyone who's less than honest? The point is... do your sponsors... your so called partners... cheat? Do they steal from you? From strictly an integrity standpoint, do they live up to what they promised in exchange for your hard work, time and effort to send them traffic? If not, there's really no point... and in the long run... nothing worthwhile to be gained by patronizing a sponsor who shaves. A shaving sponsor should not be tolerated on any level. It's only going to serve to perpetuate a very unsavory business practice. Rather than look the other way because I'm happy with their per unique return, I'd rather figuratively kick a sponsor's ass from here to Timbuktu and let the whole world know they shave if I have proof. Per unique comparisons should only be used to evaluate honest sponsors... not those who shave or are suspected of shaving.

Actually, it was available for some time before affiliates were able to see it. A few programs were caught with their pants down when that information suddenly became visible.

The issue with theappletwins.com was (I believe) a $0.00 trial with full rebill, which is why affiliates were only seeing rebills. Not sure why it wouldn't still show as a $0.00 initial sale though?

At the end of the day this is pretty much what you have to do, but at the same time that attitude is indirectly encouraging programs to continue (or start) shaving...

Sponsors don't shave the way they use to. They just do shady shit with your traffic and it's totally legal.

You have summed up the losing argument very nicely.

The winning argument looks more like this:

1) Sponsor A shaves 30% of my sales but the payout of dollars/uniques still works out to 75 cents per unique AND Sponsor A does not screw my surfers in any way.

2) Sponsor B shaves 0% of my sales but the payout of dollars/uniques works out to only 42 cents per unique AND Sponsor B does not screw my surfers in any way.

3) Sponsor C shaves 0% of my sales and the payout of dollars/uniques still works out to 1.43 per unique BUT Sponsor C uses xsells below the submit along with all kinds of other tricks to screw my surfers.


Given the 3 Sponsors shown above, Sponsor A is the one who should be sent the maximum amount of traffic. Sponsor A is paying me the most money per unique without screwing my surfers. The fact that Sponsor A is managing to do that while also shaving 30% of my sales really doesn't mean anything at all... because the alternative sponsors B and C either pay LESS or screw my surfers.


Send your traffic to the sponsor who pays you the most money per unique without scamming your surfers. It's very easy to track, it's always 100% accurate and it makes you the most money in both the short term and the long term.

It really is that simple.