a word of advise for sponsors
 

stop shaving.
why can't you stop shaving?

how about putting most of your efforts in:

a) getting the best content for your sites
b) finding the design that will convert the best
c) hire someone that knows the niche you are trying to see
d) thinking of smarter ways to re-concept the paid site product that needs it

all your $100 or $75 or $200 or $999999 per sale bullshit of $1 dollar trial is an insult to any affiliate's intelligence, who are you kidding? STOP SHAVING

it doesn't help that you host galleries and videos, submit galleries for the affiliate, getting link list/tgp spots and submission accounts - DO YOUR JOB (see a-d) and again, STOP FUCKING SHAVING !!!!

Good luck with that.

Some people are doing it already.

Stop signing up to all the promotions that are obvious BS and sites that clearly do not have a clue or ripping off the surfer and they will soon disappear.

and another thing.

being foreigner I see how many sponsors redirect the traffic I sent them to their dialer pages or tgp or whatever , wtf is up with that ?! who gave you the right to reuse my traffic just because it's unproductive? I sent this traffic to a pay site in order to get comission, remember ? and it doesn't say anywhere in the TOS that if the traffic is from china you can do whatever you want with it !! unless you are giving me credit for the dialer's you plant - this is traffic stealing

:thumbsup

that i can do
the problem is most of the greatest sponsors shave the most

shit man!!!

good point, i have a few that do that - :thumbsup

The day they stop shaving is the day the industry dies.. they never will :(

sig spot secured :thumbsup

this is all not that easy. The easy thing is to give advises.

no, the sponsor that doesn't convert will stand out, get a more affiliates sending more traffic which means more sales which means more money (yes, even if you count the non-shaving little money loss factor)

why do you think so many are promoting ccbill sites with 80% of their traffic ?

My problem is the opposite to shaving, I'm trying to give affiliates more and more. But there are pit falls in doing this.

We now get a massive amount of sign ups that came from previous members. Guys who joined, left and came back. There is no cookie or affiliate code left to track.

We get a lot of traffic from type ins, people see the content somewhere and type in the address. We know it's type in because it goes here www.paulmarkhamteens.com and all the links on the net are to here www.paulmarkhamteens.com/tour/. Type ins convert better than a lot of traffic. Figure it out a guy typed in the URL or clicked on another link on a page.

There are also people who do not sign up the day they came to the site, wipe their cookies and we do not know who they are from. They are surfing porn sites, what's the odds they delete cookies often?

All together it's a big slice.

Now some programs might not get it and some I suspect do.

But here is our problem, we currently pay out 65% at the base level and it rises. I am getting emails from prospective affiliates asking how we can pay so high, they suspect us of shaving when we're trying to be honest.

So how do we attract affiliates without having them think we are shaving and pay them what they deserve?

that's a problem, how about using email address or other unique id to verity it ? in general it is ok by me if you don't track those. keep 'em.

I've heard there are other ways besides cookies to track.
how do you deal with surfers with cookies disabled ?

that is why when someone fucks another in this biz, everyone takes a bite.
you want to hear what I think should be done ? it's going to sound stupid so you better sit down: "shaving tests".
there will be one, a "tester", not affiliate and not sponsors that would be in charge of signning up and checking if the sign up was counted.
if not - that sponsors should be burned.
if so (sign up counter), the sponsor's "shaving rank" should be better.
in case it was a check up, the sponsor should pay the affiliate anything.
the fees of this "testing transaction" should settled out somehow.

got a better solution for fighting shaving ? speak

At the moment CCBILL run our affiliate program.

Have thought about doing out own, but then the accusations of shaving will still come.

The best way to fight shaving is go with sites that pay you the most $$$ for the hours you work. Then the shavers will soon see they have nothing to gain.

it is great to do biz with serious people who really think about their affiliates!!!:thumbsup

Am I the only one who thinks you hijack alot of threads? :error

No gimmicks here. See siggy.

very valid points naja ram

on the flipside.....

START WORKING!

You're right most sponsors do organise a LOT of promotional material for affiliates so over time the amount of work for an affiliate to do is gradually becoming less and less where the sponsor has been doing more and more work, battling with decreasing conversions->monthly and smarter surfers and giving away free shit to webmasters to hold onto those extra sales.

Some affiliates should count themselves lucky to even have a way to make money given the amount of work some sponsors put in.

Get back to work :321GFY

Read what I said, analyse the point I'm making. Then try to think of it worded from a third party perspective.

Just does not work does it if I talk about other programs and give precise reasons why I'm thinking the way I am.

Yes I do think and explain things from my view point. But that's my limitations.

I have always thought long term rather than short term.

But it would be interesting to see the results of putting the new affiliates signing up now back to 50%. see if more sign up at 50% then sign up at 65%.

this thread is a great read, bump for all those who havent seen it.

There is a very simple way to find out if your sponsor is shaving, well it works with CCBILL tell us if it works with NATS and others.

Use your affiliate coded link to go to your sponsor, surf through the site like a surfer would, then go to the join page.

Look in the top menu on your browser, >View > Source go >Control F, the Find window pops up, enter into it your affiliate code and you will find this.

<input type=hidden name=ccbill_referer value='1279884'>

This is the code for Rabbit Reviews, one of our affiliates.

It's that simple to find out if you're being shaved. It's that tough to shave and not get caught.

If the form posts directly to the ccbill page, this could be of some use but like most things, it's not 100%....

Very true d00t. Not all passing the ID through the pages are is held in cookies.

Paul, NATS passes it through the URL (and cookie) all the way through to the join page. We pass it all the way to the confirmation page, which cross sales to our other sites and webmasters get paid on these as well.

so many other ways to shave. :(

was it a fleshlight?

so fucking banned

When a sponsor offers $75-$100 PPS promo and has an email collection box on the tour pages, that should be a big clue for you to pass.

The trouble is wasting traffic (any amount) on sponsors who are more subtle at sideswiping your sales (until they are called out).

I hope for the day that sponsors will take the 'trust issue' up to the next level and have their employees/agents *bonded* (the ones who have access to all your private info) and get voluntarily *audited* by a reputable third party.