found this in another forum board. Message from Becky who works for ARS regarding this whole ARS Sig whoring thing.
Wouldn't you know a thread about ARS pops up when I'm out of town LOL Just to get my two cents in...
1. The wm referral program was not created with sig whores in mind. I have never been one to hang out on boards, despite the fact that I've been doing this since 97. I honestly didn't know that sig whoring was a problem because of my lack of participation on boards. Anyway, we realized after the last 3-4 years that advertising on boards and other wm resource sites didn't offer a return anymore. Most of these buried your ad in a rotation of too many others and they were rarely seen. So we came up with this program as a replacement for our ad campaigns. It was designed to be put on webmaster pages of sites such as link lists, tgps, mgps, pic posts, etc. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be a sig whore's favorite program.
2. We police this program dilligently. We haven't yet, but probably will very soon not allow anyone who doesn't promote ARS in any other way to participate in the wm referral program. We want webmasters who use us and are happy with us to talk about us and promote us. Someone who has never particiatped with ARS before can't sell us very well at all and is usually deemed a sig whore.
3. To answer the original question, we pay per impression and per click. Each click get's you $.50 and the CPM rate varies by creative size. More info is here -
http://www.ars4real.com/program.php.
4. The little guy on the banner is great because he gets your attention. Love him or hate him, you still saw him and that is what we want
PS Don't forget about our $75 per signup days every Friday this month for the CHAMPS program
I've been with ARS since like 1999. How many of you who created your account in 2004 and are displaying the ARS Sig.