Are your CCBill Sponsor ratios high? Here is the reason why.....
 

First off I'd like to state that CCBill is TopNotch and this thread is not meant to bash them in any way, it's just to educate and explain why you may appear to have a higher ratios with programs using CCBills affiliate script.

Take time to read this and learn why.......

Short Version:
Programs using CCBIll's script have ratios that are based on 1st page non-unique clicks.
Most other programs ratios using NATS and other like scripts have ratios that are based on 1st page unique clicks.

Long Version:
If you promote sites using CCBill's affiliate software you may have ratios that seem to be higher than other programs that use their own affiliate software.

The main reason for this is that when CCBill's affiliate software counts clicks they are counting all clicks not unique clicks. So if you make a gallery for a CCBill sponsor and a surfer clicks your link to the tour, a click is registered in your CCBill stats. If he backs up to the gallery again to have another look and clicks through to the tour again, CCBills software registers yet another click. If you make aggressive galleries the surfer is going to click thru more than once or he may come back later and click through again.

This same theory holds true for blog sites and tgp/mgp sites or any type promo pages that have banners and text links to CCBill sponsor pay sites. Each time the surfer clicks through to the tour a click is registered. So 1 unique surfer can click through as many times as he likes registering click after click after click and CCBill's stats registers them all and does not show that 1 unique surfer clicked through twice or three times, or whatever it may be.

Now when I first opened my paysite I used CCBill's script and it worked well and is definitely the best out there as far as 3rd party processors scripts go. But a few years ago we decided that we needed more bells and whistles such as cascade billing, better stats, better tools, etc etc. All that is not possible using CCbill's or any other 3rd party billers script. So we coded up our own script that is pretty unique in that we now offer all those Bells & Whistles yet we still have 3rd party payouts by CCbill & Paycom as well as the merging of accounts with CCBill.

So with that being said we now offer some very impressive stats which include all the clickthroughs plus all the unique visitors. With this information we can now see that you usually get twice as many clickthroughs minimum as you do unique visitor clicks. Thus the reason why sponsors using CCBills script tend to have higher ratios than those that use their own.

Also adding to this mix are the sponsors that use their own scripts and base their ratios on 2nd page uniques or join page uniques. This tends to make the ratios appear even lower.

I hope this helps some of you out when it comes to comparing ratios.

Cheers,
BV

Short explanation for lazy people:
1000 hits in ccbill stats = 500 uniques = 150 2nd page = 15 join page(billing)
Many big sponsors count 2nd page or join page uniques and yet, some ppl brag about 1:500-1000 ratios with them.

A lot of programs have changed over now, most display 1st & 2nd now, some even show join page hits. What is odd, the ones that do it this way, often do the ratio off of the 2nd page hits.

NATS programs track the link click, as soon as someone clicks the linking code, even if they never see the tour, the hit is tracked. Most 1st page tracking happens once the tour is hit, so the ratios look a bit better.

good information here lets just hope people know what a unique hit is ROFL

The CCBill link code works the same way, when someone clicks it a click is counted in CCBill's admin and the ratio is figured from those clicks no matter if there are multiple clicks from the same surfer. The main difference in the two that I'm trying to make a point of is that NATS as well as most others affiliate scripts like ours are also tracking if the clicks are unique and bases the ratio from that.

Wot's dat then?? :winkwink:

Your prob correct Barbie!

there's one other significant reason why ccbill affiliate programs tend to have poorer ratios: ccbill depends on cookies for tracking aff codes; people who bookmark a tour page & come back to sign up days or weeks later are most likely not credited to the affiliate.

NATS type programs encode the aff code in the url of the tour pages, so the affiliate is always credited for a signup even if they return to the bookmarked page weeks later when a ccbill cookie would have long since expired. This accounts for a large portion of traffic to paysites, and is one of the reasons affiliates see superior results from NATS type programs.

Not trying to bash ccbill (a great processor with a FREE INTRODUCTORY affiliate tracking system) or BV (I have no idea if your custom software uses cookies, encoded urls or what) but this certainly has an effect on the ratios affiliates see.

very good info thank you

BV-

why dont you go to NATS??????

The only right way to compare convertion across sites and processors, is to log out hits from your site. I doubt many do this, because the use of FHGs/galleries complicate it. But if you run a pure link site, you can get a fingerpoint of how different the stat systems are.

Anyway, ratios does not matter.... $$/hit do :)

because we have our own custom script we wrote with all the bells and whistles nats has

and we still have 3rd party payouts by ccbill and paycom and allow ccbill affiliates to merge us with their existing accounts

Have used ccbill for years now. they are the best.

i think it's ashame that ccbill don't work like Nats when it comes to tracking a sale.
To my best knowledge ccbill uses cookies and the paysite owner can set it to expire within 30 days or whenever they want. I think 20% of my NATS sales are listed as BookMark sales. That's a lot of $$$
The only shitty thing i can think of about NATS is that you have to log into every programm and see what your turnover and ratios are. It would be great if you would have 1 affiliate login like ccbill does where u can see all the clicks and sales from all programms.

That's why I prefer CCBill...I can merge many small sponsors under one account

other facts:

when someone's paysite sucks people say it's ccbill's fault
when it does great they say the sponsor rocks

NO, its cookies and IPs.

NO, the program owner can set the lenght of the cookie in ccbill. May it be 30, 90 or 300 days.

Uhm, the CCBILL cookie can expire like months later. It also has IP tracking nowadays.

heh okay, just pointed that out as well, without reading your reply:)

some ccbill sponsors who have fhg's, clicks
to those galleries are counted the same as
clicks to the tour. which will obviously throws things
way the hell off.
not that I care.

At least people have to notice it. :)

ccbill is workin on this, they know ppl compare raws with join page uniques and make an issue. Anyhow itll change hopefully soon with new stats.

i still get ratios close to 1:500 in ccbill. i guess i promote the right sites.

Bottom line, Unified Stats reports that CCBill sites account for 30% of this month's revenue and 44% of this month's signups, even though I'm only sending them 14% of my traffic. This includes rebills...

...and its not entirely accurate, as CCBIll stats seem to be screwed up and aren't reporting revenue for me for the past couple of days :(

CCBill tracks affiliate in a few different ways, including cookies and IP. That said, I don?t recall ever doing a test on a link and seeing the sale not get tracked, considering that I have done this several times a week for some time now for different clients/affiliates

Grace, if you are still noticing issues with your stats, please icq me 45471840

Try StatsRemote. It's awesome and will do exactly what you're asking.

RE: CCBill ratios: My CCBill ratio for last year, sales per unique was 1:331

RE: What I don't like about CCBill's affiliate system: I love that all the programs can be grouped under my one account, but I hate that there's no way to show all click-throughs to all those programs at once. You have to choose them individually and let it load just to see how many clicks you sent that day to one of the sponsors. Frustrating.

That's a downside in StatsRemote also, is that if you have your CCBill sponsors grouped, CCBill is just one entry and isn't split up into the individual programs, so there's no way of knowing which sponsor is getting your traffic without jumping through hoops.

.

Woah this is actual information, on GFY?! Good info :)

emphasis on the word "CAN"

The expiration date on the cookie can be set by the program owner to anything from 1 or 3 days (don't recall off the top of my head) to many months later. Why program owners are even given the option of setting the cookie expiration date at anything less than the maximum time possible says volumes about ccbill's stance on taking care of affiliates.

That being said I do promote plenty of ccbill sites and some of them do decently however my best converting sponsor programs running under NATS consistently outperform those relying solely on ccbill for affiliate tracking.

I don't think IP tracking helps much for matters of returning bookmarkers; don't most people get a different IP address every time they log on the web?

NO yourself dude. It is impossible to set a cookie expiration for 300 days with CCBill.

From CCBill:
"The Affiliate System allows you to specify the number of days to track a cookie before the life of the cookie expires. This cookie is set in the surfer's browser when they click through a banner on an Affiliate's website. Valid ranges are 1 to 255 days. The default cookie expiration is 3 days."

A program owner can make CERTAIN an affiliate does not get credit for a referral in as little as 24 hours 1 minute after they click the link. Do you honestly think some program owners aren't going to take advantage of this?

Ok, I was wrong about 300 days, 255 is max then. :) About the other thing, I agree, ccbill should show to affiliates for how long the cookie is set, as they do it with payment settings. Mine are set for 90 days.

That's good to know. And that's a very good idea to show the cookie expiration time; the default is only 3 days and having run a site myself, I know 3 days is not nearly long enough to catch alot of sales.

I will bother ccbill a bit so they show the info to affiliates. :)

Having too long of a cookie could also be bad. Especially for guys that trade a lot of traffic that might be promoting the same sponsor.

Surfer is on Affiliate1TGP views gallery visits paysiteA goes back to TGP1 clicks on another gallery, gets skimmed to affiliate2TGP and views another gallery then tour for paysiteA and signs up. Who deserves credit?

adding to the scenario above:

Surfer is on Affiliate1TGP views gallery visits paysiteA goes back to TGP1 clicks on another gallery, gets skimmed to affiliate2TGP and views another gallery then tour for paysiteA and doesnt sign up. Then say 6 months later visits Affilaite3TGP views gallery then tour and signs up for paysiteA Who deserves credit?

What's fair?

nice post/read :thumbsup

Anybody needs CCbill Sponsors now?





:thumbsup

i didn't bother to read this post because it has a lot of words in it, but the way it works is last-touch. last linking code the surfer touches gets credit. this is how every affiliate program works. :thumbsup

Adult Stars Pass Promote Busty Adult Stars Lisa Sparxxx, Tyler Faith, Olivia Olovely

The affiliate who get the surfer to join gets credit, isnt that fair? :)