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I would rather risk a sponsor shaving.. they can't shave too much or they lose my traffic... than do a partnership and have to rely on the site retaining. From my experience, most sites don't retain all that well. I do have a mix of recurring and per sign up sponsors that I use and it works, but when I try a new sponsor, I want to try the per sign up to see how they convert first before I stick around to see how they retain.
If people don't want sponsors to shave, then they have to lower their expectations. You can't insist on $50 payments on a free trial. Give the sponsors some leeway and allow them to put up a reasonable payout per sale, etc and the business would get cleaned up. The long time webmasters know this and several people have said it here. But it does all come down to the amount of money you make. I could send all of my traffic to sponsor A who has a 50/50 recurring and make 1/3 as much upfront.... or I can send it to sponsor B who pays per sign up and I don't have to worry about the rebillings. I don't support shaving, but I'm not naive and you can pretty much tell who will need to shave if you look past the big $$'s and see what you're sending your traffic to.
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