To be honest, it seems like you yourself are over complicating things. AFF revshare has two types of payouts: new orders, and recurring orders. Depending on how much traffic/how many free signups you send, the percentage can change, but there are only those two types of orders. If you can simply it to that point in terms of how much an affiliate gets paid, I am confused as to why it suddenly becomes complicated when showing stats.

As I've said a few times, you keep track of which orders are labeled as Initial Orders, and which orders are considered "Recurring". Can we see which orders are recurring now please?

The difficulties I describe relate to presenting that data in its PROPER form -- that is, the numbers that would give affiliates a TRUE indication of their traffic's value.

Of course I know it would be simple to just throw numbers into two columns.

What I'm saying is we choose NOT TO -- because it would (WE FEEL) mis-represent performance and hamper accurate traffic/revenue correlation.

But, let me remind you, darnoth, this is a policy choice we are making with regard to stats. I have put in on record (above) that, on a person-to-person basis, I will work with ANY revenue share affiliate, as closely and as forthcomingly as needed, to give them all the info they need.

I would expect my affiliates to put greater faith in what the General Manager of the world's largest single-site sponsor program tells you publicly will be the truth, than in what impersonal stats say, which I myself have admitted occasionally err*.

Let me work with you, and then you can post here whether or not I gave you what you needed.


j-


*(But never for anything other than purely honest reasons of temporary technical trouble.)

I'M WITH YOU MAN!!!

Just *feels* deceptive.. but hey, rock on.
:2 cents:

I hear ya...

But...

That is a *feeling* you are invited to let me personally dispell -- :)


j-

I somehow don't believe a single word. This is what I think right now: If you are able to correctly credit me my rebills to my account you must be able to display them in the stats area. This somewhat does not sound complicated to me.
as simple as that, don't you agree :winkwink:

are you saying they shave?

I say I don't believe its complicated to implement a rebills colum into the stats area...
not more not less... If they know on how many rebills they have to pay me they should be able to display this in the stats area, don't you think so?

I don't want to see the rebills. PLEASE DON't ADD THEM.

... exactly, we wanna see sexy jack in his undies !!!
:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

One of the original points Gleem made was that because income is muddled together, it is impossible to tell whether a new traffic stream or a different sales approach is working. Perhaps residual (for want of a better word to describe income which comes along later from various sources) should arguably be analyzed to be meaningful, but it would surely be valid and not especially technically challenging to separate "new" (conversions within a month (?) of signing for a free membership) income and subsequent income.

I get decent rebills, I can tell because rebills are a lower % than initials, so you can see what % you are getting and have an idea that way.

Again, for all those arguing how *easy* it would be to show numbers in a column, I'm not saying otherwise.

I'll quote myself from last night:




j-

True, but what I and I know a few others are thinking is "It doesn't matter that I'm making good money, I need to know how many of my sales are new and how many are old members that have been billed once already. These are simple concepts in the adult sponsor world.

yes it is the same, it really is. You have new billed orders, and orders that have been billed before. pretty simple

YOU ARE 100% WRONG!
Free signups are free signups, when they whip out the credit card and pay up whether it's that day or 3 months later, that is called a "conversion" and thus a "new sale". This type of sale goes into the "new sale" column.

This is simply the dollar amount you would put in the "new sale" column of your stats.

No, you could still lump em all in 1 column as you do now, if you want you could even do what several other programs did since 1998 and call this special column "upsells".

this is rediculous

I think you are wrong. 3 columns for your complex stats:

1. # of new sales, dollar value
2. # of upsells, dollar value
3. # of rebils, dollar value

No this does not give me a clear and direct correlation, it give me smoke and mirrors stats that I can't figure out if I got 100 new sales and 1 rebill or 10 new sales a year ago that keep rebilling everymonth.

Sounds like a nifty little tool, but again, not what 99% of the serious webmasters need. Here's what you need, BARE MINIMUM for your stats:

Column 1. Number of free signup, Total dollar value
Column 2. Number of new Sale, Total Dollar value for those sales
Column 3. Number of Upsells, total dollar value for those upsells.
Column 4. Number of rebills (when a member gets charged his monthly access fee for the second time or later) Total dollar value for those rebills.

These are pretty simple stats compared to some of the recurring programs I have used.

Having come from an AVS background where some of these AVS's had 10 different types of membership types and rebill types, stats that seem complex are pretty simple to report on. you can always have the simple summary stats as I have described above on 1 page, and have each stat break down by sale type (1, 3, 6 month initial sale, what kind of upsell, what the lenght of the rebill was) on a second, again, a common industry practice by any good sponsor. This way we can finally see what traffic does best with AFF and tweak our traffic streams to maximize both of our profits.

THIS ISN'T THAT COMPLEX JACK, I am scared to see the frankenstein of a tool you guys make up, you should really hit me up on ICQ again and I'll swing by the office and show you on my laptop what your stats should look like from a webmaster point of view!!

to summarize, what you said jack, is your stats are too complex to show rebills, and instead we should look at what each free member is worth.

:error

What I am saying is that your proposed "long term value" is just some smoke and mirrors, and doesn't tell enough. your stats aren't that complex, and you can simply solve your complex stats issue with this simple stat table in the WM section:

uniques - free trials/$ - newsales/$ - upsales/$ - rebills/$

THIS IS SO SIMPLE!! don't make it sound more complex than it has to be!!

sadly have to agree 100% with you on this one

I think they just can't answer it with a logical reason other than "we don't want to show rebills" which is fine, it's their program, just sucks they are like that.

And one assumes they have made a calculated judgement that they are better off not showing the numbers separately... leaving us to guess at what the reason might be.

There's no doubt money to be made chucking traffic at AFF and I imagine that the recent spate of geo ads has resulted in a lot more traffic going their way. But I have a suspicion that if webmasters could more easily see how little of that traffic is responsible for their income, they might filter it more carefully. That is presumably what AFF want to avoid.

EXACTLY, well kinda, you see it works both ways, instead of me just "chuckin" traffic at em blindly, I would filter it, and be able to figure out which traffic is converting better for em and send em more of that traffic.

Right now I have no way to tell if the traffic is selling or just a bunch of old members rebilling.

Their overall bidness scheme seems to be, lure em in with rebills, and hold the rebills ransome for a guarenteed amount of traffic everyday. They just want as much traffic as you can send, and if you stop sending traffic, you lose a % of your rebill cash, but we don't know how many rebills we have or if it's even worth it.. grrr

But I guess the whole "min uniques per percent" deal is a whole nother bone to pick. :disgust

I agree with most of these guys seeing the rebills would be a sweet feature. . I have not promoted aff in 7 months and i have got 226 paided signups since then. So they must be doing something right.

the traffic thing is interesting

I disagree.

I promoted AFF for longer than a year and when I stopped promoting it, I was still being paid for a lot of rebills. They just kept coming so my guess is that the rebills percentage must be fair. I would guess at 20% - 30% depending on traffic quality.

As someone said earlier, the rebills percentage is different to the new sales percentage so it averages your percentage differently. It gives a good clue as to how many rebills you are getting.

Right, the only way you can see real rebills is if you stop sending traffic, and by doing that you get less than 100 uniques a day, and go from getting 55% down to 25 or 35% I forget. So to find out rebills you get, you have to lose at least 20% of the recurring money you have coming to you.

how is that a good deal? How many other sponsors would get away with that?

hehe they do get away with that cuz they are the leader in their market and have always been paying.... sad but true.. AFF can do whatever they want.

right they can do whatever they want, that just fucks things up when someone does that. That won't last long, I know they are seeing the competition chip away at their webmaster base, slowly but surely, THEY WILLl NEED TO SHOW US THOSE GODDAMN REBILL STATS!!

putting myself into the role of the program owner I can't think of no other reason for not showing rebills than for shaving off some sales. why don't you guys try some other dating sponsors for a change? Is revshare making you so much more money than per signup dating sites?

yes it does if the traffic is good.
pps or ppc is no option for the huge majority over here I'd say.

revshare SEEMS to be good, I can't tell since they don't show me how many new sales I have, and how many rebills I have.

I already use others, but I am afraid to stop sending traffic to AFF and losing 20% payouts on my rebills. Not that I'm sure it's even worth it since I never know if am getting rebills or not.

That is their strategy! cause if you knew the rebills all died, you have no reason to send their ransom of unique hits everyday to get your %.

Guys, I have already told you, I WILL tell you what your new order/rebill mix is -- on a person-to-person basis.

This is NOT about a REFUSAL to share the information.

It's simply a CHOICE about HOW that information is shared.

So far, NONE of you have taken me up. Why?


j-

this reminds me of Algebra class back in high school :disgust

Having poor tracking also makes the shave a lot easier, and dont tell me that no one does.

And for not showing the rebills. that is also a shave.

My stats show how much I've made each month. And each month shows a few thousand dollars more than the month before it. Works for me.

That's very cool of you, I would call you to get that stat, but you would just shitcan whichever account I gave you prolly.

So if you are willing to do that, why not just put a column in the stats area, I don't get it?

do your affiliates and yourself a favor and have one of your programmers add another colum to the stats area showing the rebill numbers... it is that easy and should be a joke to implement.
AFF must have thousands of affiliates: should they all hit up their sales rep to be told the number of rebills on his account?

I have no doubt that I'm being treated fairly. Nobody has even dared to utter the word "shave" when it comes to AFF...

As long as they keep sending me a check, I trust them and I'm cool.

thats been my attitiude as well BVF, but can't you see how wrong it is??

Not trying to hijack your thread now gleem, but which dating sponsors have a similiar program but better stats ? geoIP is a must.

You could try Adult Action Cash

They have a bunch of geo targeted stuff as well. Banners/search results, show rebills etc. Overall it is pretty nice looking, though I do think the geo targeted search page results could use some work. It isn't (in my opinion) obvious enough what exactly they are showing you.

my same traffic that rocks with AFF, did terrible with Adult Action Crap

pretty much the same technique also

Let me worry about the logistics of delivering on my promises.

It's not fair to say you won't TRY because you think I CAN'T.

I am OFFICIALLY telling ALL AdultFriendFinder affiliates that I WILL satisfy their rebill curiosities -- IF they get in touch with me or with their rep, directly.


j-