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Lets use a simple example.... I write reviews on one of my review sites about a terrific site featuring Polish Midgets in Ninja Costumes. The site pays me 26 cents per click for the traffic my review sends to it. I also send traffic to another site about Midgets and it sends me 8 cents per click with the same source. Then I send traffic to a site about girls dressed like Ninja and I get 9 cents per click. I push more traffic to the Polish Midgets in Ninja Costumes site by featuring it and the sales stay about the same for a while. Then I notice they dropped a bit over the most recent 100K uniques. I do not care if they dropped due to shaving, slow updates, weak content, piracy, oversaturation or any other factor. What I care about is the fact that the site is now paying me only 4 cents per click. So I push more to the other Midget and Ninja sites. I find out they have the same 8 cent and 9 cent payouts as before. Here are my options: 1 - Keep sending traffic to Polish Midgets in Ninja Costumes at 4 cents a click 2 - Waste a day investigating why it is 4 cents a click 3 - Accept the other site's offer of 9 cents a click as the new high value and feature it instead. 4 - Invest serious time and money to determine exactly what happened so that I can decide if I want to open my own new Polish Midgets in Ninja Costumes, or see if a site about Polish Midgets in Knight and Princess Costumes would be even more profitable (with the Game of Thrones tie-ins that make some sense). At no point in any of the above does 'did I get shaved' matter at all. :2 cents: |
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On the other hand, if you take $10.00 out of my pocket and give me $100.00 but someone else is willing to steal $20.00 from me and give me $1,000.00 I will put all my time into standing closer to them so that they can reach my pocket. The moment you take $10 and put $9.99 or less back in my pocket... we have a problem. |
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Based on Thread Views many lurkers find this topic entertaining. I strongly suggest you contact www.EngineFood.com for any of your SEO Text needs. Engaging text about your porn niche, mainstream business interests or any other topic is just as fast and easy for me to generate as threads about the ridiculousness of shaving accusations :pimp
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Sometimes I'm just baffled by the mindsets for what's acceptable in this industry. If a company shaves your sales that's wrong. Plan and simple. I don't care if you *still* make more money per-click or whatever with them than another program, they are still essentially stealing from you, as per the original agreement/contract.
As Matt26 said (and it pains me to agree with a holocause-denying conspiracy troll), if a company is paying me $40/hour, but they dock 5 hours off my weekly total, that is fucked up and completely dishonest even if my paycheck still exceeds a $20/hour job. Beyond being an indicator of future dishonesty, accepting it as a matter of course also *normalizes* such behavior. It breaks the contract - which in various forms is the figurative cornerstone of any business environment - and results in a breakdown of trust and paves the way for future contracts to be broken. I'd argue that latter dynamic was and is a challenge for this industry. That being said, I've never complained about shaving myself and I do think it's mostly used as a scapegoat these days for affiliates frustrated at the declining value of their traffic and the overall decline in conversions, traffic aside. I had one affiliate a couple years ago imply to me that I was shaving, which was comical - he'd gone from maybe 2 sales a week to 1 sale a month, it was just so far off my radar as to be ludicrous. But even if it's more myth than reality these days, that doesn't make some of the rationalizations I'm hearing healthy for our industry. |
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Incidentally, I have a paysite network and affiliate program. I've never shaved a single click from anyone. I don't think it's ethical to do it... I don't think it's profitable to do it... and that's a lot of why I don't anyone is doing it. However, even if someone was.... $/click protects affiliates no matter what else happens as long as the checks come on time. Quote:
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this thread is hilarious, and yea i think the main takeaway here is that ya shaving is bad (durrrr), but at the end of the day as an affiliate you should be worried about what's paying you the best / converting, not wasting time coming up with shave theories and shit
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Where there is a will, there is a way. Doesn't matter the system, a thief can cheat them all if he is so inclined. |
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Agreement would not be "I steal from you 10$, but give you 100$". Agreement would be "I will give you 100$". And then I would steal 10$ without your knowledge and against our agreement. |
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What Sly said. Some kinds of programs are super easy to send clicks to, but a small percentage buy. Other kinds of programs, like say cams, are more labor-intensive to send clicks to, but the $ per click is insanely high. The former scales more easily than the latter, but ideally one wants all the plusses. |
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Interesting thread (or rather, 2 threads in 1). What stands out for me is that the really rich look at numbers and dismiss emotions, and rarely do those who let emotions dictate biz decisions become really rich.
Your bank balance has no emotions. Money has no emotions. EPC has no emotions. Topic 1: yes shaving is unethical, and a cunt's move, and happens, but on a large-scale basis - doubtful Topic 2: even if it *is* widespread, take your emotions and indignation out of the business side of it, and thus earn the most for your traffic <--- we are obviously all humans, so emotions DO come into play in lots of areas, I'd say it's about training yourself about where to be indignant. If you aren't comfy if a sponsor shaves and you KNOW this, and want to earn less but keep your natural pride/ego intact, fair play. And if you choose to accept that in certain areas of life there are certain skims, but can live with that and go for the best EPC, fair play as well. Valid points on both sides, and I see both sides as being equally 'right', but I'll take my lead from the guys who go for EPC and (hypothetically) skimmed $$$, if it means I get a better house, more holidays, can provide for my kids better, and so on. NB for the inevitable comebacks: accepting a skim /= going to any lengths morally to earn a few $$$ |
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You give me 90 = I am +90 You give me 2,090 and steal 2000 without my knowledge = I am +90 What matters above is that I am +90. How you arrive at paying me 90 matters much less. |
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What OldJeff said about revshare should be true, if all businesspeople were rational actors. I have always offered only revshare and attempted to promote only revshare, on exactly this logic. But it does not always work out. What xxxjay said about number of affiliates is very relevant. I think it used to be very profitable for some program owners (ones not using CCBill or Epoch to power their programs) to shave and especially to shave smaller affiliates. There were so many affiliates that robbing a few thousand people of a couple hundred bucks was a lot of dough. That said, even today, the programs most likely not to pay are never the ones I push a lot of joins to. I think a lot of the bad payers bank on a webmaster not being willing to make a big deal out of pursuing $200 when it would probably take as much effort as just making another $200. The difference is that the low number of affiliates still in the ecosystem makes this much less profitable, so fewer programs are going to do it. |
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If you don't like the people you work with... stop working with them. It's that simple. Successful people aren't sitting around all day long fretting about nonsense. They are busy turning money over. They focus their time, their thoughts and their energy on turning money over and on growth. You will never see any measure of success by worrying about things you can't change. You adapt, adjust and move on. |
It takes one little php <code> to implement dynamic shaving.
I know one big program that shaves mercilessly on backup processor. Make it two programs. Oh wait.. |
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Explain to me how it matters at all... |
Man this thread is entertaining, and that makes me happy. Lets see what trouble I can cause today :)
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Some actual common business sense on GFY, WTF is going on??? :winkwink:
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You just keep saying on both threads "it is OK to shave, as long as I get paid more". One day you will not get paid few thousand dollars and owner will disappear with your money. Will it change something? I am not talking about OldJeff here. Just about shaving. People who steal 10% one day can take all 100% and quit. |
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The list of people who definitely did not shave and then went out of business (paying nobody) is much LONGER than the list of people who may have shaved at some point and paid the most. That is a fact in every business since money was invented. It's the reason there are throngs of lawyers handling bankruptcy claims for honest companies. ^^^Read That A Couple Times So It Sinks In^^^ Bottom line is you need to watch your money. Often. I am not saying your should blindly trust site owners. You also should not blindly trust banks, car washes, affiliates, or anyone else with your money. That being said, the way to monitor your money is by looking at the clear facts in your complete control. In the instance of affiliate marketing those facts come down to 'how many clicks I sent' and 'how many dollars I received.' All the rest is guesswork, conspiracy theories and distractions from what actually matters. :2 cents: |
.... I thought this was going to be about growing a beard
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Enjoying this thread
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it is great how some of you guys trying to convince us that shaving is not, while there have been proven many times that some owners do all and everything to shave affiliates as much as possible ... so sorry, but all i see is some bros trying to save asses from those thieves they knows about ... :2 cents: think what you want, but i have seen other results than your theories few times already ...
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We are allowed to speak. We are allowed to gather and compare notes. If you disagree you are allowed to say so. But it's very telling how AGGRESSIVE you all get when you tell us to shut the fuck up. |
It's funny to me how I can get a new affiliate program up and running and it starts becoming successful and generating a good monthly income. Then after about a month or two that income stabilizes at a certain amount and doesn't deviate by maybe $100 or so every month thereafter. It does not matter how much more traffic I send or even whether I ignore it, that's is the amount I get every month. No up or down, just fairly constant. I've seen this for years and so have most of you. Ever ask yourselves why that is?
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:2 cents: |
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Then you'll wonder why you make less and less money with your website. They will for sure blame the economic crisis for your shitty ratio... but it's shaving... :2 cents: |
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It could be legit. Especially if you are doing a high volume. But it's also the most sophisticated and professional shaver type as well. A performance based shaver which "shaves the growth". It sets a baseline and then shaves any growth over that in a period say 30-90%. A very sophisticated setup might also utilize "fake refunds and chargebacks" (for affiliates who cannot verify them). This would be the type of shaver a multi-million dollar company would be using if they would use any shaver at all. Perhaps with additional functions added in to try to find test signups or add in a degree of randomness while still keeping the shave. The advantages of this setup are numerous as are the possibilities. It might also have built in functions to relax the shave if it detects a huge amount of growth so as not to piss off the new whale. People don't realize that there is a ton of money involved and it's not always going to be the old style "straight 30% shaver" of the past when it's in use at all. Anything is possible with the programming. Any programmer will tell you that. |
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