[BUSINESS] Is a Trial Required for "PPS?"
 

If you want the back-story, here's the link: fucking-around-and-business-discussion/770644-xxxjay-regarding-stats-hushmoney.html

Otherwise, the question is simple:

Is a "trial membership" a prerequisite for a "PPS" program, or no?

Thanks for your input.

No, it's a plus though ;)

I am trying to recall if I am promoting anything that is PPS without a trial.

Besides my AVS of course, but that doesn't count.

Anyway I don't think it's "required", but I do think it is a bit deceptive to announce you have PPS paying only on monthly joins, without actually telling the affiliate. Then again, affiliates should actually know what they're promoting... I know I will click through a tour til biller on any new site I send traffic to.

Making it a black and white issue is silly, obviously you can call it PPS if you want, but if you expect to be compared to other sponsor programs using the same label, people are going to point out the differences.

not required but generally all pps is done with trials, thats the whole point of the pps system.

I personally wouldn't do PPS if there was no trial. For sites with not trial I only do revshare. If I can sell them a $30-$40 membership I don't want to just make $30-$35 for it, I might as well take the chances with revshare.

I think so. PPS without trials is more like pay per active, and if you are going to pay per active you better be paying like $40+ on a 29.95 join.

What is the reason you guys don't use trials anyway? Seems to me your content can retain members.

Basically - in my understanding, if you're call a program PPS, it's assumed you have trials.

I checked the program - I checked the TOS but for the life of me, can't see where it is mentioned that it doesn't offer trials - nor what the 'up to $35' represents. *in this particular case*

Out of curiosity - when they signup for 90 days - what is the affiliate paid?

I'll answer all questions in regards to HushMoney in due time (or sooner if you want to hit me up on ICQ)... but for now, I want to keep focus.

This isn't about any particular program... it's a generic industry question.

So far, we have some mixed results.

Thanks for everyone's continuing feedback.

I don't think it's required if you're paying much more than the average PPS sponsor. I'm talking $40-$55. But no matter how good your tours are, how good your content is, you are always going to have a tough time selling a $30/month membership next to a guy offering a $2.95 trial.

But I think you should do what you think is best. Affiliates are going to choose the sponsor that makes them the most money. It doesn't matter if it's revshare, PPS, trials or no trials, if company A makes more than company B for me, they'll get my traffic.

I think you can do fine at your current setup if you had more of your own traffic feeding the sites. I think it's very difficult these days to run a program setup like yours that count exclusively on affiliate traffic (since your program probably won't pay as much as others). Since your sites are of high quality, you are better off targeting review sites and such that will cater toward members that are looking for strictly quality with less emphasis on price.

Some sites with no trial converts better than others with.

I can think of one in particular... $29.95, no trial does 1:437 on TGP traffic! And it's not even a well defined niche site.

With that kind of ratio do you think I give a shit if it doesn't have trials? No. Not at all.

I'd even be willing to roll with them if they raised the price to $39.95. It would probably still convert better than half the $1 trial sites out there.

Trials are great, but if a site has those kinds of ratios you can do whatever you like. I think where most programs fuck up is by just making sites to fill concepts/niches and forgetting to try out different tours on various traffic sources in order to get that number down. They get a great design and throw the site out there just to get it into the marketplace then worry about the conversions later. You know I'm telling to truth, a ton of programs do that.

Do what you want, pay however you like, just make sure I'm converting well enough to make at least 5 to 10 cent a click on most of the traffic sources I send.

Of course it's not required. It's all about $/click.

You guys aren't the only ones that have PPS without trials.

/bump for the Monday morning crew.

is it weird that I have never even thought about that?

I push traffic, if I make money I send more, if I don't I stop it

the only time I really noticed it is when someone advertises "$50 payouts on $1 trials"...or something of that nature, otherwise I have never even thought about it

If you're paying PPS and not offering trials then payouts should be in the $50-70 range.
Paying $30-35 when the surfer is paying $30-35 upfront is insulting.

If you can't afford to pay $30+ on trials and $50+ on monthlies then you should stick with revshare.

Yes, you actually should. :2 cents:

$70 sounds very high

$70 on a $30-35 signup shouldn't sound high if a $35 payout on a $3 signup doesn't sound high.

People who join for a full month upfront stay on average a full month longer than trial members who convert to full monthly members.
Plus, if your site is "great" then you'll convert half of your trial members to monthly....that's a big "if", not every program can do that.

So if you can pay me $35 on a 2.95 trial...when only half of the trials will convert to monthly (if you're lucky), and the ones that do will stay a month less than the members who take a full month upfront....I don't think doubling the payout is unreasonable. :2 cents:

I guess in a way yes, the only chance how to compete is to be very strong in $ per click stat.

I know we won't be able to start with PPS per trial right away and I am also sure many that will send traffic for a revshare should earn more in a long term, because the retention numbers should be above the standard due to the amount of live and exclusive content..

I would also like to ask a question, how many of you are promoting / have promoted pay per active?

is say 35 $ per active member a real option for you against revshare? What are your average trial to full member conversion numbers ?

I couldn't agree more.

:2 cents:

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

That's fucking hilarious!!!

If you're gonna pay per active then the same thing applies, payouts should start at $50 and go up from there.

If that's too much then just stick with revshare until you build up your member base :2 cents:

So Lenny2, let me get this straight,

An affiliate program:

Hires the models, shoots the content and all that entails; photographers, videographers, locations equipment etc., edits the content, compresses the content, builds the sites and pays for programmers, pays the graphic designers, pays for compression, pays for servers, pays for bandwidth, goes out and gets merchant accounts, pays for credit card merchants accounts or billers, pays someone to do accounting and sending you your paycheck.

An Affiliate;, builds and submits galleries and tweaks SEO.

and you want 2 MONTHS of the customers payments?!?!

Talk about insulting!!

This is the thinking that is making the affiliate programs go after their own traffic sources and not depend as much on affiliates.

That's why you are basically talking yourself out of future income.

If you think these companies are not working to push you out for these very reasons, you are sorely mistaken.

exactly :thumbsup

i think we need trials after all this thinking about it. my stats make baby jesus cry.

I concur.

Again... I concur.

You are 100% spot on. And though it's not widely discussed, most large program already have OR are going after their own traffic sources.

Unfortunately for affiliates who only send a handful of sales, I think your days are numbered. Whales will always be whales, but it is not them who are so demanding. It is the guy who only sends a few sales who wants $50PPS on a trial + hosting + dedicated employee + instant payouts, or he trashes you on the boards.

Then they get surprised when they hear about shaving. lol

IMO, PPS programs that dont offer trials can still be good, but they can never be the best. Basically, because they're stating, "we dont have confidence that our sites will convert trials to monthly subscriptions and retain enough to payout webmasters $30 - $35 per trial and still profit."

Either that, or the program is stating, "even though our average signup nets us $100+ per member (with xsells, upsells, mailers, rebills, etc), we're too greedy to pay our webmasters $30 - $35 PPS."

That's how experienced webmasters see it.

Given all that though, most webmasters will promote and stick with whichever program makes them the most money, regardless of the payout model.

How about if a sponsor advertises $3x.00 PPS on a $1.00 trial, but in order for the trial to go through, they authorize the customer the monthly amount first, through their merchant account... Is that shady?

None of your arguments make any sense regarding this subject.

Sure programs have alot of overhead, that's part of the game.

HOWEVER, if you pay $35 on a $2.95 trial signup, then only half of the members will convert to a monthly membership.
On two signups you've collected just shy of $40 (one monthly at 30-50 and two trials at $3 each) and you have to pay me $70. ($35pps times two)

So in the monthly membership scenario, you're making the same payout on the same amount of immediate revenue, except you're going to keep that member on average a full month longer than in the scenario above.
You seem to think it's too high a payout. I think if you take an objective look at the numbers you'll see that it's really the same payout.

That's why I said the PPS payout in a no trial scenario should be at least $50 and as high as $70, depending on what the monthly price is.

Nah, you can find a program using NATS that has good PPS payouts.

I personally have made over $45 per signup with a revshare program this year. These are $2 trial signups and the monthly recurring charge is $25.

This is no statistical anomaly either, we're talking thousands of signups.

So if I can make over $45 per signup on cheap trial memberships that rebill at cheap monthly memberships, why would I push a no trial $30 a month site for a $30 payout?
You sell 3 times as many memberships when you offer a trial. (my research on this mirrors that of several big companies that have tested this)

So I stand by my original statement, if you're not going to offer trials then that puts you in the same category as a "pay per active" type program, and those payouts start at $50. :2 cents:

Um, ok. however, it's quickly becoming a different game. While you are demanding more and more money for doing less and less, the game is changing. Why would an affiliate program that does all the work, pay you between $50-$70 for doing a little bit of work, when they can do that little bit of work and keep the money for themselves?

They are asking themselves that and making the appropriate changes.

You're wrong, the affiliate model will never go away.

Are programs trying to generate traffic in house so they can keep 100% of the revenue? Of course, the smart ones have been doing that all along.

As long as programs make a profit from the sales that affiliates send they would be morons to not continue taking those sales.

BTW....I have no idea what you're talking about saying that I'm demanding more and more and doing less work. I have to do more work now to make a sale than at any time since I've been in this business.

I haven't demanded anything, and I push primarily revshare programs, it doesn't get any more fair than that in a sponsor/affiliate relationship.

I was simply pointing out what I thought a fair PPS payout would be if trials weren't offered, and if you would get off your soapbox bitching about "greedy affiliates" and actually do the math, you'd see that sponsors would make more profit (per member) paying $70 with no trials than they make paying $35 with a trial. It's simple math using industry averages, there's really nothing to argue about.

To me it is all a simple equation. If someone owning a paysite can be their own primary source of traffic and they can make good sales doing so then they get maximum profit, but I think there is a cap to how much one person can do on their own. I think most paysites are built around the affiliate model. If you have 300 affiliates that all send only 3-4 sales per month to your site that is 900-1200 sales per month. It's not a huge amount compared to some of the big sites, but that can be a pretty good chunk of income. How many full time in house employees would someone have to have to achieve that 900-1200 sales on their own and how long could you keep them once they realized how much more they could make working on their own? I would venture to guess that 80% or more of the sponsor programs out there would cease to exist without an affiliate model and those that did continue to exist would be forced to scale down big time.

Ultimately I think the really profitable affiliate sites do one of two things to help them prosper. They either have good sites that they know retain well and they know what an average signup is worth to them. With this knowledge they base what their pay per signup will be. Or they work hard to create their own traffic and any affiliates they get are just an added bonus. Since they aren't reliant on affiliates they can name their terms. If affiliates want to work with them, they will and if not, no big deal.

For me it is all about who I make more with. I have a sponsor that I use that is revshare only. I make an average of $60 per signup with them (they have no trial and rebill decently). But, I actually make more using a different sponsor that is pay per signup that has trial prices. The reason is simple. With the revshare program I am around 1:1200 and I have to wait for the rebills to kick in before making much money. With the $30 per signup sponsor I am 1:400. I simply get more sales to them and those extra sales offset the rebills.