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Originally Posted by Brujah
Isn't it obvious ? AFF reps usually respond to threads fairly quick when there's an AFF topic. They're AVOIDING this thread.
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Not avoiding at all, Brujah.
We've just been attending WebMasterAccess this last week, and are still catching up on things.
Thanks all for your patience.
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Originally Posted by gleem
Don't get me wrong, I have been making bank with them for years, but the fact they don't show rebills drives me batty.
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In response, I want to focus on gleem's important observation above -- "I have been making bank with them for years..."
This has always been and remains our primary concern -- to make as much for our affiliates as possible. I have seen no post on this thread to dissent that commitment.
The simple answer is rebill information on AdultFriendFinder DOES NOT mean the same things it does with other programs.
All of you are essentially saying the same thing -- you ARE happy with the money you make, but you can't help but wonder WHY we don't break-out rebill orders.
The order make-up for AFF is EXTREMELY COMPLEX. It is NOT like the orders types and patterns most of you are experienced with for promoting other (content-oriented) programs.
Let me explain...
For content programs, if a visitor is going to convert, he will do so within 10 minutes of clicking your ref. link. It's simply the nature of that traffic. By contrast, only 25% of AdultFriendFinder free members convert to paid within the first 24 hours. Moreover, conversions to paid occurring months after the initial free registration are not uncommon. Such orders would have the virtues of a rebill, but not be. This shatters the ability to directly correlate "traffic events" to "revenue events" -- which is at the heart of properly gauging the value of your traffic. As Brujah indicates...
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Originally Posted by Brujah
When you buy traffic, you can't just " care less ." You need to know if it's working or not. You could be sending worthless traffic, and coasting on rebills, wasting your money buying traffic.
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Consider also, that AdultFriendFinder (as a personals site with a very different pricing scheme from content sites) has memberships of different durations (1 month, 3 month, 12 month), with different initial prices and different rebill rates on renewal.
And to add even more to the complexity, remember that affiliates also enjoy a percentage share of all the feature upsells available to paying members -- like chat packages, and profile highlights.
This means there would have to be several columns to properly represent this complexity. Not as my good friend Ozman suggested...
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Originally Posted by OzMan
It would be nice to see a separate column in stats but it's not like they are hiding it from you for some devious reason as you seem to imply.
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So, to offer you an answer I hope will allay the concerns expressed in this thread and to give you all some insight into our unique reporting challenges...
We don't breakdown rebills because:
1. To do so would greatly misrepresent the ultimate value of your traffic.
2. The revenue stream for an AdultFriendFinder affiliate is so complex and so different from what most of you are accustomed to (from promoting content programs) that it would be a programming colussus and a UI nightmare -- and in the end would not tell you what you want to know.
Instead, I would encourage all of you to focus on the best predictor of your traffic's actual value -- Long-Term Member Value. This is simply the sum of commissionable orders divided by the number of free members sent. This allows you (so long as your traffic quality and promotional methods don't vary greatly) to make a CLEAR and DIRECT correlation between "traffic events" and (ultimate) revenue consequences.
On a person-to-person basis, as many of you can attest, I am (and, under my direction, the entire AdultFriendFinder Affiliate Management Team is) EXTREMELY FORTHCOMING with rebill information and future order projections. We have put a lot of thought and programming time into building the tools that allow us to gauge the ultimate value of affiliate traffic.
We are only to happy share this with all of you, and to help you make the best (informed) decisions about your traffic and promotional strategies.
Beyond that, on the strength of the opinions expressed here, I am requesting the addition of a Long-Term Value Predictor to the affiliate's stats page, that will allow all of you to make the same assessments we can make (of LT Member Value) even when we're sunning ourselves in Cancun -- LOL.
As always, I am deeply grateful to all of you for your traffic and your loyalty. Please accept my promise to be not only the highest-paying program on the Web, but also the most honest and ethical.
Regards,
j-(ack Mardack, General Manager FFNet)
ICQ: 222141571
f: 650.847.3129
e: jack AT friendfinderinc DOT com