Tale of two clicks...
I've been in the online industry since working for Galacticomm supporting multi-line bulletin boards in the early 90's. I've been in the online commerce industry since it's beginning, back when Ibill was Logicom, handing out pincodes on 900 numbers for early porn junkies. I've watched the online adult industry from birth and the affiliate explosion from the frontlines. For the past few years, I too have supplemented my income using all the latest tools, tricks, and schemes to get that unique click to one of my sponsor's linkcodes.
Like busy little beavers, many of us code and create page after page of pictures, movies, and links in hopes of a mass fortune like so many others have gathered in this industry. New sponsors and new sites with incredible $50+ per signup payouts dangle in front of us like carrots, feeding our hunger for fortune.
Meanwhile, while all this is going on, while we're all hard at work gathering quality traffic to promote these sponsors and sites, it's totally public and totally accepted in this industry for a sponsor to shave our traffic and steal our sales. Affiliate software has even incorporated shaving percentages, built right in for the exploitation of our traffic. They take our clicks, they take our sales, and they even take our traffic to other sponsors with their affiliate codes. It seems to me that we're getting a very raw deal!
When you have a quality member base, and you know their traffic patterns after years and years of watching screen after screen of stats, you know exactly when a sponsor is taking advantage of you. But there's nothing you can do but NOT promote that sponsor anymore.
With quality traffic being the GOLD of the industry, when are the people with the traffic going to put their foot down and demand more qualification from their sponsors? Or is the shaving just an acceptable loss since you're making so much money even with the shaving?
I would love to hear your opinions on this, sponsors and affiliates, and anybody who cares...
Oh, and before everyone jumps on me, yes, there are some sponsors out there running a tight ship and being totally ethical. But bottomline, most sponsors shave.
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