Whose fault is it, the affiliate's, or the sponsor's if....

theres good traffic and theres bad traffic

never heard of that before....i think it is the sponsors job to have retaining sites, but at the same time if you have shitty traffic then you are at fault

I think it's the affiliate's job to drive the traffic to the tour.

I think it's the sponsor's job to close the sale.

if they threw you out or kick you out there is a good reason behind it

Once they pull out their credit card, that makes them "qualified" traffic. So the sponsor can't blame the affiliate after the surfer signs up. It's the sponsor's job to sell him after that. Unless it's something like "See the Paris HIlton video inside" and there's no Paris HIlton video would there be a problem.

I've always thought it was the sponser whos responsible for converting trials

I agree with you if the affiliate misleads the user then you will have shitty conversions

how can an intelligent, good lucking guy like you be wrong???

Exactly. That would fall into the "False Advertising" category, which would be ENTIRELY the affiliates fault.

I know, but no matter what the issue is with the wife...I'm ALWAYS wrong

I/we don't know the specifics here, but I disagree with the "traffic is traffic". Considering that program actually lose money on 3 day trial sign-ups, they have to be carefull if any particular source provides mostly trials which don't convert.

Let me give you the "rediculous"/extreme example which shows one end of the spectrum. Let's say you had some site which had a lot of SEO traffic for "Porn sites for only $4.95". You take that traffic, and send it to different programs, and it results in a lot of trials bought for $4.95, each of which you collected $25 to $40 for. But 99% of them cancelled after the 3 day trial. You would be making money, the program would be losing money, and the "root cause" would be that you started with traffic which was only looking to spend $4.95 on any site. For a lot of these surfers, it's not that the program's content was bad, it's that they only will spend $4.95 on any site, and that is the over-riding principle which they make their purchase decisions on.

Could you blame the program owner for not wanting more of that kind of traffic?

Sponsors usually only do that if the affiliate really stands out as one that's losing a ton of money... If the sites are doing fine overall and they don't feel they need to do anything better with the members areas there's nothing wrong with cancelling a destructive affiliate.... as long as it's in the terms and conditions.

Payouts are so high these days there's nothing wrong with having expectations on how the sites should perform. If an affiliate does terribly below average, time to clean house.

it depends who the traffic was sent...

if an affiliate is way below the normal cancel rate than the"average" webmaster then there account should be looked at more closely.

Some traffic just tends to be more trial surfer oriented...they come in and cancel after leeching as much as they can on their cable modems in a day and move on to the next site and so on and so.

Also, how qualified is that traffic? Is it sent with unrealistic marketing (promising too much that isn't in the site, based on price over quality of content, etc.)?

Example, our trial area is truly a trial area (they don't get full access until they upgrade to a monthly membership, and yes it is heavily disclaimed on our join pages). Even with the disclaimers, if an affiliate markets the site as "See everything for only $2.95", then the surfer will have the expectation no matter how well it is disclaimed, whereas if the sites were touted as "home of all natural big breasted amateurs" or "home of colossal monster cocks", the expectation of the surfer is based on the content and not the price.

This is why it's important to be in constant contact with your affiliate rep if you notice poor trial to full month conversions (for revshare programs). This is also where affiliate reps should hit up their affiliates if they notice a lower than usual trial to full month conversion. Sometimes changing a few simple words on a text link or an ad ca make a difference. I've often hit up affiliates on ICQ if I notice something like that in their stats. Sometimes it's just a bad run of traffic and others it's a marketing issue.

I've seen some members areas that I went "how the hell are they ever going to get people to recur outside of people forgetting to cancel?" So, who's fault can vary from instance to instance and I don't think a blanket statement could be made either way.

Excellent post

Conversions equate from quality traffic when a program is marketed correctly. Conversions are up to the sponsor.

sponsor.

it why i using mostly partnership programms - noone kick you because of poor rebillity and conversion.

sure - 'traffic is traffic' position definately wrong from start to end. even not need think about this. when you at revshare model - you can see yours rebill ratios. and (as i see at different programms stats) most safe use trials - because if surfer rebills to full membership - you earning extra. if no - you decreasing possible chargeback/refunds.

also - rebills from trials to rebills depends from ads. and, sure, from traffic source.
for example - for se traffic rebills anyway be better/longer - i mean continuing rebilling then for example from traffic what comes from tgps (especialy bookmarkers based) - freeloaders buying trials sometimes - but not too often rebills to full membership.

both i guess

the biggest cause of issues with early cancels that we see is false or misleading advertising. fixing the copy can sometimes fix the retention and then everyone wins. chargebacks are another story when 1000's of affilaites have zero and a few are high percentage-wise.

HotelHeiress retains better than we had hoped and we are launching a cascading 50/50 per several webmasters' requests.

I think if someone is flooding a site with junk traffic that doesn't convert and eats excessive BW then that's one good reason to can someone. Also if an affiliate sends multiple signups that result in chargebacks.

my thought also....

another thing I don't see why some have qualified hits in there stats, it just don't compute with me. I don't give a flying fuck if they are qualified or not.

its the sponsors job to retain them most of the time, but certain traffic sucks. i think they have the right to can you, but you should still get paid what you're owed. if they were smart they would tell you that they need to switch you to revshare.

stupid me revshare is what I was thinking when I posted above... really have no ideal what I was thinking I know what it is you got's 2 have something 2 think with 1st