Our Pay It Forward program pays $25 per join on FREE TRIALS.
It doesn't matter if they stay an hour or a month, you get $25. No deductions, no cancellations.

We also give you credt for sales made to other Pay It Forward sites in our exit rotation.

We offer the same rate of $25 per FREE TRIAL even if you turn of the exits.

On top of that we have a pretty sweet rewards program with CEVault.

Mike B

excellent timing on post placement LOL

CE has certainly seen the development of the affiliate program, riding the ups and downs, especially during the attempt at lowering payouts in the past.

With offering $25 per join on a free trials, are you concerned about getting a big wave of traffic that creates signups?

What if hundreds of people, in the US, in China, in other countries, got together under an affiliate and did the free signups?

College kids have been caught doing these kinds of rings to take advantage of programs.



Fight the Chinese Traffic!


ps. for those jumping directly to page2, lots of great posts by various GFY members offering insights and observations into this topic. (thanks and respect to those that took the time to participate)

HAH!!
That's too funny....I was in that program long long ago (back when you guys still had homegrownvideo)
You raised your monthly prices from $40 to $50 and then kicked me out of the per sign up program to the active member program because of "excessive cancels"

I always got a kick out of how you raised prices to $10 more a month than ANYONE else was charging but somehow it was my fault that they weren't converting to monthly members.

ElvisManson posted up the idea of evaluating your track record with paysite programs by looking at Value Per Click (VPC).

The idea he presented is to take the total amount of revenue you received from a sponsor and divide that by the total number of raw clicks you sent to that sponsor.

The end result is a $ amount of how much each click to a paysite was generating for you.

Example:

The sponsor stats show you sent 500,000 clicks to the site.

The total amount of commissions received to that program is $20,000

$20,000 / 500,000 = .04 per click


If you do this analysis on each program, then you have a way to measure your campaigns and spot which is providing you the best return.

The simplicity of this formula doesn't care about shaving, conversions, chargebacks, etc. All of those factors are rolled up into the net result of how much you got paid. These factors could explain why you have a low VPC for a particular program.

Another way to possibly look at the ROI of your efforts is to take the total amount of commissions received in a month, and divide that by the number of hours spent in generating that revenue. This might be the DQYDJ stat (Don't Quit Your Day Job). If your DQYDJ value is constistanty higher than $20/hr then you could quit your day job :)


Any other ways of measuring success of a program besides conversion ratio and VPC?



Fight the Numbers!

VPC is nowhere near as reasonable as it may sound. For example, unless everyone is deluding themselves, the GEO ads produced (fairly) recently by AFF were responsible for a big hike in visits to the sponsor. But as a general rule, although an increase in CTR may lead to more sales in total, it usually (although not always) results in a lower conversion ratio.

Earnings per impression is superficially a more appealing yardstick, but that starts getting complicated when you recognize all advertising spots are not created equal. Physical location (which of your sites, which page on a site, which spot on a page) is not the only fly in the ointment: a promo placed near one which is very successful is going to suffer simply by that proximity. And how do you (fairly) compare the results you should expect from a half-page ad against those from a text link placed in a table with a dozen others?

All of which forces me into a more pragmatic approach. I look at the sponsors performance each month, trying to identify those with low exposure that have done better than expected so have earned a higher profile, and those which have been disappointing. I look at the weak promos to see if I can do something to make them work better. The weak ones I don't believe I can fix get dropped and new sponsors or sites get exposed initially according to my instincts.

I don't pretend that is very scientific. On the other hand if someone running his own business doesn't have a good instinct for core details of that business, he/she isn't going to be successful for very long.

Jayeff I agree that revenue per impression is a more accurate yardstick.

All I look at is how much traffic did my pages get versus how much revenue I brought in.

Not all clicks are created equal. Banner clicks convert different than text link clicks....text link clicks vary widely depending on what text is used etc etc etc

Maybe I am referring to VPC in a way that is confusing. VPC is a term used in the online ads space.

Maybe to be better named as RPC as in Revenue Per Click. Where the statistic is looking at individual program and the performance of the payouts based on the total number of clicks sent (ie. from traffic driven from a website, other than and ad placement link).

I think that what you are talking about (ie. Earnings per impression) relates to an online ad strategy.

So if sponsor A has an RPC of $.04/click and sponsor B has an RPC of $.02/click and Sponsor C has RPC of $.03/click with this analysis, an affiliate could decide to send more traffic to Sponsor A and some to C and watch RPC value.

If there were shaving, low conversions, chargebacks,etc... the RPC value would be affected and could be a very quickl, high level summary indicator as to what sponsors to be promoting.


Does this make sense when not taken into context of online ads?


Fight the Abbreviations!

ah, i see your point.

So on a page that has multiple banner and/or text links, you assign the page impressions to each one to be used to divide into total revenue to get your stat?


Fight the Stats!

No. The simplest example is that if you belonged to a banner exchange program like SexSwap, you deliberately used misleading banners. "Blind" links are banned by certain sponsors and types of affiliate programs specifically because they generate largely valueless clicks. At the other end of the scale, at least in theory, is the ad which is so on point that it is only clicked by someone who then goes on to buy.

Without some assessment of the factors which make one ad more or less clickable than another, you cannot reasonably draw conclusions about the sponsor/site from the inevitably different income that they generate.

I didn't say it was more accurate, only that at first glance it should be. As we have both said, all ads are not created equal and that is the crux. Unless you can somehow factor in that inequality, then any direct comparison, whether based on clicks or impressions, is going to be misleading.

My system isn't quite that in depth but something like that.

If I do TGP galleries then all that matters is how much $$ did I bring in per 100K uniques to the gallery.

If you own a TGP same thing....if you do mailers how much $$ did you make per 1000 opened emails....that sort of thing.

A link that says "click here to join now for 2.95 with a valid credit card" will convert at 1 in 10.....but may only bring in half the sales of "click here for more free pics"

Although I can understand why paysite owners believe in VPC since the only tool they have to measure by is how many clicks were sent to them and how many did they convert.
Its also the only way to tell if a new tour is ourperforming an old one or if a new processor is doing more sales....etc etc

You are bringing up the issue that stats on their own, need additional clarification or qualification to put it into context.

An RPC value can be greatly skewed if the link is labelled something like "click here for free porn" and a large number of clicks are sent, but the conversations are pathetic because the link was labelled wrong (ie. was really sending to a paysite instead of a place to get free porn). So doing these kinds of tactics will only skew an affiliates RPC value and give them less useful analysis.

Which goes to another point of being specific or clear about what you are advertising for, rather than trying to "trick" the surfer into clicking... unless someone is just going by the shotgun approach, and doesn't care about VPC or RPC or any stat, all that matters is how much money they get in the next payout.

Sponsors may care about mislabelling links, because an affiliate could be promoting words like "lolita" and attract alot of CP-seekers, and when they join the paysite, thinking that CP is on the inside of a teen paysite... the CP-seeker then cancels when they don't find any CP, and the affiliate made the commission (especially true if chargebacks aren't deducted from the affiliate).



Fight the Beer Money!

Revshare is overrated

- Often the retention isn't that great so all the "you could make so and so much" calculations are flawed most of the time

- In a biz as volatile as ours I rather get the money right now, than spread over 3 month with the vague prospect of making 10% more.

- PPS is much better for the webmaster's cash flow (VERY important when buying PPC)

- Usually in Revshare you rely on the program trying to keep the member and not just upsell them left and right. How do I know they do this, or will keep doing this

It is understandable that to an affiliate webmaster, PPS is better for them , and revshare not as exciting due to the factors you mentioned.

To the paysite, PPS could be bad because a high volume/spike of signups could cause them to have to pay alot of money to affiliates out-of-pocket because the CC deposits aren't enough to cover and have to wait 2-3 months of rebills to possibly make the money back.

The ways to handle this situation is to have money set aside as a float to cover payouts, shave, or factor in pre-checked crossales and other methods that bring in money to offset the payouts.

On the paysite site, a rev-share means not going into the red upon a signup, but means potentially paying out more in the long run should a member continue to rebill and also maybe less attractive to affiliates.

Having a PPS that is lower than the monthly membership would certainly make numbers sense, but a lower PPS payout might not attract the affiliates.

From the affiliates perspective, it's not their problem about how the paysite handles their payouts. If the paysite says they pay $40/join, then if a large spike of sales comes in and causes the paysite to have to payout more than it takes in, then that's their business problem... and additionally, shaving should not exist because it breaks the contract with the affiliate that each join is paid out a commission.


Fight the in the Red!

Fraud is always a concern but we have a great staff that keeps a watchful eye on our programs. I think most will agree that $25 on a free trial is a handsome payout. We have a realistic payout structure so we don't have to play the games that some others might have to. Yes, most international traffic is sent to a dialer. We pay 40% back to the webmaster on this income. We also give the webmaster the option to turn off the international dialer redirect.

Regards,

Mike B

I'm sorry about that Lenny2, but if it was a global problem we would have had to turn down everyone's traffic. At $25 per join on a free trial with no deductions and no cancellations the sponsor has to be diligent and monitor their traffic effectively for profit and loss.

Actually I find revshare to be better for cashflow because if I have a bad week/month for new sales I still have lots of rebills coming in.

I've thrown traffic at ALOT of different programs over the years, and I push revshare almost exclusively.

I don't make anywhere near $35 per signup on my revshare joins, however, using my sales per impression guage that I mentioned before I get over 2 times as many signups pushing revshare programs compared with similar ads/niches/traffic going to a similar per sign up program.

Your mileage may vary, do what works for you

Sure, I can understand that.

However, if you're only going to keep the best traffic in the per signup program and move other people into the active member or revshare programs then you're not really running a per signup program.

When I send to a per signup program YOU take the risk of whether or not you can keep the member. When I send to a revshare program I take the risk of whether or not you can keep the member.
You guys want to have your cake and eat it too, doesn't seem fair to me.

In the outbound traffic I manage I always prefer per signup versus rev share. There are a few programs out there that have great retention where rev share is going to make you more. These are sites that have unique content and a strong following or brand (cali pimp for example). On our URentDVDs program for example, we offer a partnership (revshare) type payout or a per-signup payout. While our retention is outstanding on URentDVDs (http://urentdvds.com), most people opt for the per signup payout, because they don't have to wait months for their signup to generate that increased income.

I understand it does not seem fair. The truth is if we paid $20 join on free trials without deductions or cancellations, we wouldn't have to be as selective with the profit/loss on an individual account basis. Our overall profit would be much greater, but we opted to give webmasters a higher payout.

Yup and this methood also takes care of any worries of sponsor shaving, cuzz if they dont fucking convert as good as the next guy flip your traffic!

I dont understand people complaining about shaving.. All you ahve to do is watch your stats. If a company is not paying you more than the next guy drop them. Economics dictates that companies that shave will eventually be outta biz.

Excellent summary!



Fight the Short Replies!

The simple answer is that it's a breach of contract.

Through this exploration, it's clear that there are many "creative" ways of managing the payouts when having the bankroll to handle the float isn't available.

So shaving could be a variable in the equation for a paysite to factor in when it comes to high PPS models (or high revshare models).... almost to the point that if it happens, "get over it" is what seems to be attitude.

And right to your point Lars, watching your VPC, RPC, Impressions/Rev, etc is a way to monitor what's making economic sense to you. Whether there is shaving, bad member retention (content), etc .... the affiliate webmaster does need to watch and track the performance of their campaigns.


Fight the Floaties!

Evolving the discussion along the lines of the evolving affiliate prorgram:


If Affiliate webmasters are buying PPC type ad placements and able to show good conversions to go beyond break even, why aren't the paysites doing this themelves and therefore have no payouts?

If Affiliate webmasters are submitting FHG to TGP, why doesn't the paysite submit their own links (which is their own content and their own hosting anyways) and gain traffic and signups, and not pay out affiliates?

It seems that the environment of the affiliate program has changed in the last couple of years, with PPC opportunities and large TGP that can drive traffic to submitted links, etc.

Have these sources of traffic that the affiliate webmaster use, become the same sources that paysites can use and bypass the affiliate program?



Fight the Evolution!

Unfortunately for affiliates that's exactly the case.
Of course there's only so much traffic that can be managed in house efficiently so there will always be affiliate programs (which really is just another way of buying traffic)
But the middle man TGP submitter or whatever is getting squeezed out of the picture.
To make it in the future you're either going to have to have your own traffic, your own paysites and $$ to buy traffic, or preferably a combination of both.
The "free traffic" pool is shrinking daily.

:2 cents: