And they say shaving is a myth
 

I shaved this morning ... :thumbsup

Yipes!

I shaved ten minutes ago.

Nice find Labret...

Shaving is no myth.

shaving balls is a must, same as shaving pussy

I wonder if he ment Bic or Gellette ?

Mach 3

Yet, if everyone is shaving.. then its all just marketing hype and gimmicks. There was a poll somewhere, here maybe .. awhile back asking the question;

If your sponsor was shaving, but your paycheck at the end of the week was bigger than the other sponsors.. would it matter to you?

Stupidest question I've ever heard.
I want every cent I earned... no matter what.

This is why you have to run your own program.

There is no acceptable justification for shaving.

Cant sponsors make an honest profit without fucking the webmaster? If they are not making enough money to cover operating expenses via honest programs, then their sites suck and they should not be in business.

agreed

wow theres a surprise

what ever happened to that thing you were going to do to try and catch shaving sponsors labret?

So then you're ALL saying that if Sponsor #1 is shaving, and you make $10,000 per week, but Sponsors #2 didn't shave and you only made $6,000 per week with him.. you would stick with Sponsor #2 ? I find it hard to believe that you would give up $40,000 in 10 weeks for your traffic, because of how your sponsor manages it and reports it.

However, I don't use CEN. When I did it was because they were converting extremely well compared to various other sponsors. I switched same traffic to FlashCash and the paychecks were bigger so thats where I kept it.

Went down in flames. Many valid points raised as to why it wouldnt work.

The problem is the competition to keep webmasters. If you know any of the key programmers at some of the bigger sponsor sites , they will tell you off the record what they are paid to do in regards to this subject and sworn to secrecy about.

Krl,

yep. been going on for years and years.

peace

todd

Krl,

damm i remember bad puppy from 1995.

there isn't alot of us around from those days.

I 'd have to agree with this - shaving is FRAUD and anyone caught doing it should be subject to the same criminal proceedings as financial fraud in banking or the stock market.

Well I tend to agree with Brujah on the mechanics of the money.

I also think that anyone can manipulate an email they give to someone knowing it's going to get around. I also wonder how people get emails that didn't go to them.

In any case, who cares.

Ohmygawd! Sponsors shave? (loud sound of hand slapping forehead) Whoodathunkit?

I've looked at things from both sides, and I can tell you that sponsors, crooked as they are, are only half as crooked as a lot of the partners they have to deal with. No excuse, but in an environment where everyone is a thief, how much "honor among thieves" can you realistically expect? While I would be pissed to think that someone is shaving my hits, I assume they all are, in which case what counts is how much money I'm making.

no i wouldnt
i would be looking for sponsor no3 that dont shave and make 15,000$
per week..

Yeh, I started in the days when the big marketing technique was to post GIF's in the Compuserve forums to promote your BBS's and 976 numbers. They didn't even have JPG's yet. That's going way way back to Windows 3.1 days. lol

Me too! I'm always doing that. The quest that never ends.

Krl,

yep in the early 90's we ran a large adult bbs in portland.

used to sell tons of adult cdroms, and spammed in compuserve classifieds alot:))


nice to meet ya.

todd

Fabian wrote JB: "Will try to read those boards... don't have the time for it ;-(

"We do 'shave' some .. no other way to keep it profitable .. will come up with some new tricks to give more back to the webmasters."

So, JB didn't know that CEN shaves, and Fabian had to tell him ?

do you want every cent that your traffic was WORTH? or what the program offered to pay?

if you want to be paid what your traffic is WORTH, go with a revshare program ;)

I prefer waxed pussy myself.... :thumbsup

"yep. been going on for years and years".

Absolutely. Never seen anyone get their stats page lifted though. That's a first. LOL

Hi Todd, been a while. :thumbsup

Shaving is unethical, obviously, and anyone that does it should be hung in public. I have my own affiliate program, SinTalk, and through the ups and downs I've never once even been tempted. There must be some other sponsors out there like me, I don't believe they're ALL crooks.

Brad

OMG that is fucking funny!

I agree, sad enough instead of being punished they are left alone to take advantage of the next unknowing webmaster.
They can make up all the competition and everyone else is doing it excuses they want but it is still stealing.

And fuck all that paying out to much persignup got make it up somewhere dumb shit. If a program cant honestly profit and pay $35 persignup then dont do it

Nah, they should just have "cheater" shouted at them a couple times and then back to business as usual. That's how it works in this business....

:BangBang: :ak47:

'The final swing is not a drill.'

Basic rule of business: Send traffic to achieve maximum profit

So, if sending your traffic to one sponsor makes you more money than another sponsor, who cares if they shave. Sure, it isn't ethical that they are cutting out some of your profits, but lets face it, this is a cut throat business with margins that are getting thinner every day. The only point that should really matter is the amount you got paid divided by amount of hits sent. I honestly don't care if someone shaves my account, so long as I make the most money with that company.

WG

I understand what you're getting at, but really your statement seems to condone fraud and last time I checked, fraud is a felony.

I can agree with that but it is also very possible to be shaved on a 3rd party revshare program several different ways, and on CCBILL it's possible with a click of a button!

I still think it's safe to say you have a higher chance of being shaved by a big program paying out insanely huge per sign amounts. For Christ sakes, you would almost have to be retarded to believe you would not be.......

......and if by chance you are not shaved and these sponsors are able to make up for these BIG payouts by cross sells and using hard to understand TOS, and other tactics designed to fuck the surfer, then that surfer will likely never buy another membership ever again any fucking where! Anyone with any business sense knows it's all about your repeat business in most any industry.

that's just my opinion, take it for what it's worth::2 cents:

Cheers,
BV

While I do agree that shaving basically boils down to fraud I also understand the necessity to doing it to remain competitive. It's all part of the business equation, paying $35, $40, $45, whatever per $2.95 signup is very difficult if those surfers don't recur. So I can understand when a company feels the necessity to shave certain accounts. I'm not saying it's right or justified, I'm just saying I can understand why its being done...

WG

i'd much rather the sponsor just be honest about sign ups and pay less per. at the end of the day it would be the same amount pretty much, except you can sleep at night knowing you're not dealing with people who steal your traffic. thats pretty much what it comes down to. just because they offer you more per sign up, doesn't give them a right to shave.

I kind of agree that you won't get every cent your traffic is worth. For example, per signup you are missing out on the recurring, and for rev share you are lucky if you make the same or more, depending on the retention of the site. But I would rather that the sponsor be honest with their dealings with me.

how much money was there to be made online around that time ? i didn't get on the net till like 95

Funny, you say that, but the traffic is what talks. Someone throws up a $70 payout or a $75 day and everyone's traffic moves in that direction.

Resellers don't send traffic to recurring for the most part, they don't send traffic to $25 per join programs, they DO send their traffic to the best converting or the highest payout, regardless of the amounts on the checks from any of them...

if i see a program offering like 60 bux per and they have a basic cookie cutter site and members area filled with plug in content, its obvious they're shaving and i look elsewhere.

i'm sure a lot of noobs will be drooling at all the money they'll make on that same program, then wonder where all the money is when they 500 hits a month don't get any sign ups.

Is it just me or is setgo hard to load at the moment ?

DOS attack maybe ?

One can certainly begin to get that impression at times. My take on it is that the industry isn't really all that bad, as frontiers go. Sure, there's some bandits, pirates and theives about, but the majority of the adult web is ethical, hardworking and honest.

Unfortunately, it appears that the greed of some is no longer satisfied with fleecing surfers but has turned to exploitation of webmasters. No surprise there, since the flood of new (read: naive) surfers has slowed recently while there's been a surge of newcomers into our industry.

The market is now saturated with overused content, overexposed programs and tons of free porn and, in the meantime, the average surfer has become more sophisticated. It's a lot tougher sell nowadays. But there are some who got used to that easy money made a few years ago. Easy money that came from jerking the surfer around. So, they've set there sights on other game.

However, webmasters are going to prove to be a bit handier in dealing with this scum than the surfer. Questionable practices that were tolerated when directed towards nameless surfers are going to end some careers when tried on webmasters. We can look forward to a good deal of rock'n'roll in the next year...

ok
question for the peanut gallery...
you run a program that pays $35 per signup

Webmaster A sends 10 signsup a day, but only 1 of those ever converts to a full month membership
Webmaster B sends 10 signups a day of which 8 recur to full month
the average surfer in your program converts 6-7 of 10 from every trial...

do you keep paying Webmaster A the same as Webmaster B, or do you find reason to terminate them? or if it's available in your software, do you shave Webmaster A since their traffic grossly unproductive in comparison with Webmaster B and your "normal" traffic?

while it is easy to blame poor conversions on bad member's areas, there is some traffic that's worse than others when it comes to retention....depending upon how the traffic is sent (advertising methods)...

now, don't think like affiliates, rather, think like program owners...your bottomline is greatly disrupted by Webmaster A's shitty traffic and what if he increases his traffic to 100 joins per day with the same shitty ratios? now you're losing all or nearly all of the money you're paying to "average webmasters" and even your good traffic sender like Webmaster B....


you probably won't have to worry about shaving in about 6 months...99% of all traffic will probably only be done via private deals and "people you know" newbies and a lot of TGP gallery hobbiests will be shit out of luck....ok, it may take 12 months to come to that, but it's most likely going to happen....or you'll have to prove your traffics's worth by sending to a revshare program FIRST and if conversions are good enough, be allowed to join the per signup program....kind of a probation period, if you will


:2 cents:

All this shaving justification from Syk makes me nervous about his programs. :)

that's exactly why we've stayed as a revshare program :)
people who send better covnerting traffic make more....those who send lesser quality make less :)