Are the sponsors shaving? Is that myth or fact? - Page 2 - GoFuckYourself.com

tammix · 07-21-2009, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Relentless

Idiot. Read the post.

If sponsor A pays you $1 per unique
and sponsor B pays you 2 cents per unique

Which sponsor is paying you more for your traffic?

Relentless... you should teach math in high school, no offense. You explain things in a very interesting manner :-)

Fletch XXX · 07-21-2009, 08:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kenny

I don't even know if a sponsor has the option to set it as anything else.

then why would it be an option lol

Relentless · 07-21-2009, 08:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tammix

Relentless... you should teach math in high school, no offense. You explain things in a very interesting manner :-)

If you want excellent SEO text for any of your sites take a look at www.enginefood.com or contact me on ICQ# 266942896. My writing ability is for sale, and it will earn you far more than it costs.

Dirty Lord · 07-21-2009, 08:56 AM

Hahahaha, lol

teomaxxx · 07-21-2009, 09:11 AM

I did something like 5 testing joins since 2003 and they were all counted except one big sponsor.

Quentin · 07-21-2009, 09:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Relentless

If you want excellent SEO text for any of your sites take a look at www.enginefood.com or contact me on ICQ# 266942896. My writing ability is for sale, and it will earn you far more than it costs.

Typically, I shy away from personal recommendations, but in this case, I'll make an exception.

I've worked with Relentless extensively over the past couple years, and I've always found his work to be high quality and -- arguably more important -- on time, every time.

Anybody in need of writing for their sites/publications would be wise to contract Stewart for the job.

- Q.

Relentless · 07-21-2009, 09:40 AM

Thanks for the kind words Q.
Coming from you they mean a lot.

Dollarmansteve · 07-21-2009, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Relentless

I own several affiliate sites that generate sales for many sponsors. I also own my own paysite affiliate program that uses NATS for statistical tracking with direct payouts from CCBill as a hybrid of the best of both systems.

It would take a program owner MORE time and energy to shave a sale from you than it would take them to generate enough traffic to earn an additional sale. Why would any program owner take hours of their time to try and shave a few sales when they can put the same amount of time and energy into earning 10x the number of sales that you will ever send them instead?

When you consider the possibility of sponsors shaving there is only ONE important fact that you should always keep in mind: Nobody cares how many sales you get from a sponsor. The only thing that matters is total number of dollars they pay you divided by total number of uniques you send them.

Total Dollars Paid Divided By Total Uniques Sent

If you send a sponsor 1000 uniques and they pay you $100.00 that sponsor is paying you 10 cents per unique. If you also send 1000 uniques to another sponsor and they pay you $20.00 the other sponsor is paying you only 2 cents per unique. Whether one or both or neither are shaving you DOESNT matter at all. The only thing that matters is how much each is paying you per unique.

Send your traffic to the programs that pay you the most money without scamming or screwing your traffic. If a sponsor pays you $1 per unique and shaves 50% of your sales you are still earning $1 per unique. If a program pays you 20 cents per unique and shaves 0% of your sales you are earning 20 cents per unique. The only thing that matters is how much they pay you per unique.

If you think about it, the only shaving that makes sense is REVERSE shaving where a sponsor might pay you MORE for your traffic than you actually earned by adding sales. If a sponsor adds a few sales to your first 10K uniques you are way more likely to send them another 100K uniques even if the ratios aren't very good because you aren't tracking with enough detail.

I hope that answers your question. Shaving does not affect how much money per unique a sponsor is paying you, and since that is the only relevant monetization data when deciding who to send your traffic to... it becomes moot.

Think....

Bump for truth. Unfortunately:

a) Webmasters are lazy. They don't want to do their own tracking, they expect the sponsor stats to be the gospel
b) The lazier the webmaster, the more time they spend posting on message boards. Lazy webmasters have more time to complain, accusations of shaving are on of the favorite topics.
c) Webmasters are entitled. They think it's their 'work' that adds value, when in fact, the affiliate programs absorb 99% of the risk, yet payout a disproportionate amount of profit. Thus they like to accuse the programs of stealing 'their' money.

blonda80 · 07-21-2009, 10:52 AM

interesting thread

Ronzo · 07-21-2009, 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDoc

Adult affiliates want and expect the world... and when it doesn't go how they expect, they point fingers and blame others, that's the only shaving really going on in our business.

I don't think adult affiliates should be scolded or put down for wanting a fair shake for the money, time and effort they expend when they partner with a sponsor program they have little choice but to trust blindly.

I'm always taken back when I view stats that show I've sent a sponsor 500 or 1,000 uniques and have nothing to show for it. Can you imagine owning a "brick and mortar" business where 500 to 1,000 people visit your "store" and not one of them drops even a penny into your cash register. Yet, this is what adult affiliates have learned to tolerate and accept. It really kind of defies common sense and logic.

Consider the adult affiliate who SEOs a website to perscribe to exactly what a surfer who uses a search engine is looking for... in other words, what the affiliate is delivering is just what the surfer says he wants. Can traffic be any better targeted than this? Yet, there's no sale made. And, this happens with unique after unique after unique. It's no wonder the concept of shaving enters into the scenario.

Relentless · 07-21-2009, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronzo

Can you imagine owning a "brick and mortar" business where 500 to 1,000 people visit your "store" and not one of them drops even a penny into your cash register. Yet, this is what adult affiliates have learned to tolerate and accept. It really kind of defies common sense and logic.

Your analogy is flawed.

A closer analogy would be:

Can you imagine taking 1,000 people (including children, the homeless, people who don't speak any English, the elderly and a handful of people with money in their pockets) on buses from all over the globe to the world's largest shopping mall and having none of them use the ONE specific gumball machine YOU recommended to them which is at the East end of the mall beside millions of other potential points of sale?

Quote:

Consider the adult affiliate who SEOs a website to perscribe to exactly what a surfer who uses a search engine is looking for... in other words, what the affiliate is delivering is just what the surfer says he wants. Can traffic be any better targeted than this? Yet, there's no sale made. And, this happens with unique after unique after unique. It's no wonder the concept of shaving enters into the scenario.

Review sites are most likely the best qualified traffic possible. SEO traffic for a specific keyword chosen by the surfer and then filtered more deeply by detailed niche-specific reviews about sites related to that keyword.

By your reasoning that should generate sales at nearly a 1:1 ratio.

Your logic is flawed. Not every person online has money. Not every person online with money intends to buy anything. Not every person in the mood for Chinese food eats at the most highly recommended Chinese restaurant.

When you understand that out of every 1,000 internet users you MIGHT have 5 or 6 who are potential buyers, you quickly start to see why the math works the way it does. Of the thousands of uniques you send, how many are potential buyers and of those what percent become converted sales.

By overestimating the value of your traffic you are left to balance the equation by falsely underestimating the sites you are pushing.

Tickler · 07-21-2009, 01:20 PM

Apparently there is an option in some of the backends to pay on trials only if they stay a member for X hours.

In NATs look for referring URLs with 0's

DonovanTrent · 07-21-2009, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Relentless

I own several affiliate sites that generate sales for many sponsors. I also own my own paysite affiliate program that uses NATS for statistical tracking with direct payouts from CCBill as a hybrid of the best of both systems.

It would take a program owner MORE time and energy to shave a sale from you than it would take them to generate enough traffic to earn an additional sale. Why would any program owner take hours of their time to try and shave a few sales when they can put the same amount of time and energy into earning 10x the number of sales that you will ever send them instead?

When you consider the possibility of sponsors shaving there is only ONE important fact that you should always keep in mind: Nobody cares how many sales you get from a sponsor. The only thing that matters is total number of dollars they pay you divided by total number of uniques you send them.

Total Dollars Paid Divided By Total Uniques Sent

If you send a sponsor 1000 uniques and they pay you $100.00 that sponsor is paying you 10 cents per unique. If you also send 1000 uniques to another sponsor and they pay you $20.00 the other sponsor is paying you only 2 cents per unique. Whether one or both or neither are shaving you DOESNT matter at all. The only thing that matters is how much each is paying you per unique.

Send your traffic to the programs that pay you the most money without scamming or screwing your traffic. If a sponsor pays you $1 per unique and shaves 50% of your sales you are still earning $1 per unique. If a program pays you 20 cents per unique and shaves 0% of your sales you are earning 20 cents per unique. The only thing that matters is how much they pay you per unique.

If you think about it, the only shaving that makes sense is REVERSE shaving where a sponsor might pay you MORE for your traffic than you actually earned by adding sales. If a sponsor adds a few sales to your first 10K uniques you are way more likely to send them another 100K uniques even if the ratios aren't very good because you aren't tracking with enough detail.

I hope that answers your question. Shaving does not affect how much money per unique a sponsor is paying you, and since that is the only relevant monetization data when deciding who to send your traffic to... it becomes moot.

Think....

I've been in this business since early 1998, most of the time spent under a different "board" name. In that time, I've run a few hundred sites, taken a lot of photos, and seen a lot of things. I have to say...

What Relentless wrote is the goddamn truth. That is the ONLY COMPETENT AND ACCURATE way to compare sponsors. Anything else is just inaccurate dumbass bullshit that clouds your mind with superfluous crap.

Dollars/uniques and you can't go wrong. You can assume that every sponsor shaves and dollars/uniques still won't lead you astray.

Relentless · 07-21-2009, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DonovanTrent

What Relentless wrote is the goddamn truth. That is the ONLY COMPETENT AND ACCURATE way to compare sponsors. Anything else is just inaccurate dumbass bullshit that clouds your mind with superfluous crap.

Don't forget the part about excluding sponsors who screw your surfers. That really is VERY important and often overlooked. Being paid 30 cents per unique by a company with xsells below the submit. draconian TOS, hidden cancel links etc... is NOT better than being paid 28 cents per unique by a good clean and honest sponsor site.

DonovanTrent · 07-21-2009, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Relentless

Don't forget the part about excluding sponsors who screw your surfers. That really is VERY important and often overlooked. Being paid 30 cents per unique by a company with xsells below the submit. draconian TOS, hidden cancel links etc... is NOT better than being paid 28 cents per unique by a good clean and honest sponsor site.

True, I was only referring to the "which sponsor makes me more money" question.

Ronzo · 07-22-2009, 12:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Relentless

A closer analogy would be:

Can you imagine taking 1,000 people (including children, the homeless, people who don't speak any English, the elderly and a handful of people with money in their pockets) on buses from all over the globe to the world's largest shopping mall and having none of them use the ONE specific gumball machine YOU recommended to them which is at the East end of the mall beside millions of other potential points of sale?

The gumball story is a cute one, but it's not all that enlightening. Anybody who's been pushing porn for awhile knows there are underage people surfing the adult net, and that there are probably more people out there WITHOUT credit cards than there are with them, and also there are those people who wouldn't buy porn if their life depended on it.
That's basic, fundamental stuff.

The point of my post was missed. And, it's simply that there are two sides to every story. The original question put forth in this thread is, "Are sponsors shaving?"... to which another poster responded that shaving is mostly a non-issue and the real problem is that adult affiliates expect too much.

I don't care what you're selling or where you're selling it at... if you send a "partner" a thousand referrals or leads, and that partner reports back to you in some form or manner that they could do nothing with your referrals that resulted in even one sale... then it's perfectly reasonable for you to question, suspect or doubt the integrity of your partner. This is the core controversy that has revolved around the shaving issue since it was first raised way back when.

It has nothing to do whatsoever with making comparisons between which sponsors provide the most return per unique... regardless of whether they're shaving or not. Who the hell wants to waste their time on that exercise if they suspect they're dealing with anyone who's less than honest? The point is... do your sponsors... your so called partners... cheat? Do they steal from you? From strictly an integrity standpoint, do they live up to what they promised in exchange for your hard work, time and effort to send them traffic? If not, there's really no point... and in the long run... nothing worthwhile to be gained by patronizing a sponsor who shaves. A shaving sponsor should not be tolerated on any level. It's only going to serve to perpetuate a very unsavory business practice. Rather than look the other way because I'm happy with their per unique return, I'd rather figuratively kick a sponsor's ass from here to Timbuktu and let the whole world know they shave if I have proof. Per unique comparisons should only be used to evaluate honest sponsors... not those who shave or are suspected of shaving.

rowan · 07-22-2009, 12:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kenny

I think what they are talking about is this..

In the affiliate admin area go to "tools" than view program details you'll see something like this:

Recurring Subscriptions: Payments for Rebills End After: (Unlimited) rebills

I have never seen a ccbill sponsor have it set for anything but "(Unlimited) rebills"

I don't even know if a sponsor has the option to set it as anything else.

But it can't really be called shaving because the affiliates can see it.

Actually, it was available for some time before affiliates were able to see it. A few programs were caught with their pants down when that information suddenly became visible.

The issue with theappletwins.com was (I believe) a $0.00 trial with full rebill, which is why affiliates were only seeing rebills. Not sure why it wouldn't still show as a $0.00 initial sale though?

Quote:

Originally Posted by raymor

To answer the question - yes, they are shaving like mad.
That's one reason, but not the biggest reason, you need to do like
Relentless said and compare the income you get from various programs.
If you do a comparison, you might find that one program earns you
twice as much as another program. You can't tell whether the poorly
performing program is sucks because they are shaving, or because
their tour doesn't sell, or because they have traffic leaks or whatever,
but you can easily tell that they send you less money, so you shouldn't
use them. It really doesn't matter WHY your checks are lower with one
program or another - whether it's shaving or something innocent. What
really matters in the end is which program makes you the most money.

At the end of the day this is pretty much what you have to do, but at the same time that attitude is indirectly encouraging programs to continue (or start) shaving...

mikesinner · 07-22-2009, 02:03 AM

Sponsors don't shave the way they use to. They just do shady shit with your traffic and it's totally legal.

Relentless · 07-22-2009, 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronzo

It has nothing to do whatsoever with making comparisons between which sponsors provide the most return per unique... regardless of whether they're shaving or not. Who the hell wants to waste their time on that exercise if they suspect they're dealing with anyone who's less than honest? The point is... do your sponsors... your so called partners... cheat? Do they steal from you? From strictly an integrity standpoint, do they live up to what they promised in exchange for your hard work, time and effort to send them traffic? If not, there's really no point... and in the long run... nothing worthwhile to be gained by patronizing a sponsor who shaves. A shaving sponsor should not be tolerated on any level. It's only going to serve to perpetuate a very unsavory business practice. Rather than look the other way because I'm happy with their per unique return, I'd rather figuratively kick a sponsor's ass from here to Timbuktu and let the whole world know they shave if I have proof. Per unique comparisons should only be used to evaluate honest sponsors... not those who shave or are suspected of shaving.

You have summed up the losing argument very nicely.

The winning argument looks more like this:

1) Sponsor A shaves 30% of my sales but the payout of dollars/uniques still works out to 75 cents per unique AND Sponsor A does not screw my surfers in any way.

2) Sponsor B shaves 0% of my sales but the payout of dollars/uniques works out to only 42 cents per unique AND Sponsor B does not screw my surfers in any way.

3) Sponsor C shaves 0% of my sales and the payout of dollars/uniques still works out to 1.43 per unique BUT Sponsor C uses xsells below the submit along with all kinds of other tricks to screw my surfers.

Given the 3 Sponsors shown above, Sponsor A is the one who should be sent the maximum amount of traffic. Sponsor A is paying me the most money per unique without screwing my surfers. The fact that Sponsor A is managing to do that while also shaving 30% of my sales really doesn't mean anything at all... because the alternative sponsors B and C either pay LESS or screw my surfers.

Send your traffic to the sponsor who pays you the most money per unique without scamming your surfers. It's very easy to track, it's always 100% accurate and it makes you the most money in both the short term and the long term.

It really is that simple.

07-21-2009, 08:56 AM	#54
Dirty Lord Confirmed User Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 2,681	Hahahaha, lol __________________

07-21-2009, 09:40 AM	#57
Relentless www.EngineFood.com Industry Role: Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 5,697	Thanks for the kind words Q. Coming from you they mean a lot. __________________ Website Secure \| Engine Food ICQ# 266-942-896

07-21-2009, 10:52 AM	#59
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07-21-2009, 01:20 PM	#62
Tickler Confirmed User Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 650	Apparently there is an option in some of the backends to pay on trials only if they stay a member for X hours. In NATs look for referring URLs with 0's __________________ Big Sister Live - Live sex club paid in Euros Why all the PSYCHIC ads in the papers, and on TV? Makes $$$s on the web @ Psychic Access

07-22-2009, 02:03 AM	#68
mikesinner Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 5,646	Sponsors don't shave the way they use to. They just do shady shit with your traffic and it's totally legal. __________________ My Best Sponsors MPl l Camsl CUMSHOTSl LESBIANSl FETISHl BJ RACESl TEEN BJl BSDMl VODl USE YOUR PC TO CURE CANCER

07-21-2009, 09:11 AM	#55
teomaxxx Confirmed User Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 2,734	I did something like 5 testing joins since 2003 and they were all counted except one big sponsor.