So if you sent 2k SE hits to a sponsor....
 

Would you expect a sale or 2? Would you expect them to report all the hits?

Just wondering...

I would expect 5+ sales

If it all went to a single site, yes

don't beat around the bush man, give us names already....

2 sites one sponsor.

And no I absolutely will not give names. i don't know what's going on and will not implicate anyone. I have a feeling its to do with hijacked traffic, so fuck naming names.

I'd say at least 2 sales, maybe 4 or 5 depending on the many factors.

Bro calculate it like this..

Sales Ratio = Actual Hits - Shaved Hits/ Actual Sales - Reported Sales
Hit Ratio = Actual hits - Shaved hits

So your doing ok !

i had the same problem this week

Oh, and the person I just spoke to on ICQ, its not you I'm talking about. :)

I deal almost exclusively with direct SE traffic and I can tell you that it is a FACT there are lots of companies who are shaving. It really should come as no surprise to anyone, what I suggest people do is do their own research like you are doing Mike and youll know exactly who to promote and who not to. Also when new programs pop up do some research on who started them, lots of programs are friends or former workers of other programs and youll know then who to stay away from. Good luck.

Can NATS programs be trusted?

Depends on what you mean by trusted? :upsidedow

Very few things in this business can seriously be "trusted", I dont mean that in a paranoid way but over the years Ive seen good programs go bad and bad programs go good, programs change hands and affiliates never know so NEVER let your guard down and always track everything, if you see serious deviations obviously something is up.

nats can be trusted in that its encoded source so it can't be modified. MPA3 can be trusted, probably to a lesser extent as they only have their class files encoded, so one could technically rebuild some of their classes to shave.

You sure about that? :error :error

I agree, whenever I take a closer look many things don't add up, at many programs, established or not.

Depends on how targetted the traffic is, how saturated the keyword is, what kind of content you're trying to sell.. too many variables.

SE traffic doesnt always mean instant or guranteed money. 2,000 people searching for "free porn" isn't going to get you much, 2,000 people searching for "gay male midgets fucking horses" will probably get you sales.

The only true test is to send it to different sponsors and weigh the results.

you can't expect sales everytime with 2000 hits, maybe you will get 8 sales the next 2000 and it will all even out, if you are saying the hits are not showing then that is a whole different thread.

Splum is right, there are a lot of sponsors who still shave. While it's not always the obvious way of removing sales, some of it is done through cycling signup pages that reset affiliate ids, traffic leaks, and even not counting all clicks (thus making ratios look better). It's not as simple as deleting sales.

When it comes to SE traffic and sponsors, some sites are built well for it, while some aren't. I've seen as low as 1:100 consistently and as high as 1:2000. Usually takes a lot of testing and data to find the right combos. 2000 hits is a very small sample size to work from. Wait till you've sent atleast 10k.

I know this is spammy but there's no hijacking going on at CleverBucks :)

We all know new sites sell a bit better simply because surfers have never seen them, so it's a good time to send :)

Give my sites a try with that traffic, see how it does for ya.

Hit me up if you have any questions.

do adwords or ypn allow you to put a page in between?
maybe you can post to your page then send the user to the affiliate link. you track hits/uniques on your side then compare them all...
does anyone do this?