My ICQ chat with ***** about shaving. The names have been changed to protect....
 

My ICQ chat with ***** about shaving. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

---------------------------------------------

******* (10:10 AM)
thread about shaving: http://gofuckyourself.com/showthread...hreadid=91601=

Ray (10:10 AM)
In in there as now, lol...putting my 2 cents

****** (10:12 AM)
i agree with the dude that says who cares if they shave as long as you get paid the most

Ray (10:13 AM)
lets not go there Look at my numbers, not stats, but $$$$$.

Anyway im working on a new tgp plan for ***, Ill link you in about half hour

****** (10:16 AM)
what's you opinion? (and don't make this about ******..lol)

Ray (10:17 AM)
You know me, I would never mention names...cmon!

Ray (10:17 AM)
I posted, check it out

****** (10:18 AM)
what people never talk about is the cheating webmasters... if someone has ripped you
off of $1000 before they get caught.. how can you compensate on a slim margin as it is?

Ray (10:19 AM)
dude,,,i dont cheat, therefore i dont want to be cheated. You must deal with cheaters
with your own resorces, not mine

******(10:21 AM)
ahhh.. see.. you're only seeing it from a webmasters point of view.. now let's say a
sponser is honest.. and things are only worth $15 a signup.. would you or any webmaster
in their right mind even signup to promote your program in the first place?

****** (10:22 AM)
now lets say there's a $75 promotion day.. would you throw all your traffic to that
sponser on that day?

****** (10:23 AM)
truth is MOST webmasters are attracted by big payouts..

Ray (10:26 AM)
from you are saying here, You mean **** does shave and sort of has to because of cheaters
and because $35 promise is to high..Its simple, a sponsor should not promise $35 just to
attract webmaster. If they offer $35 they should be able to afford to pay that. How do you
afford it? Simple, make the members area worth it for the horny surfer. If the members ares
is decent, the sale will convert and reccur. As for cheater, why the fuck should the honest
one pay for that?

****** (10:30 AM)
no i am NOT saying that.. these are my PERSONAL feelings and does not reflect the company i
work for (i've been only working here for ******) i have no stake in the company.. why must
you make everything about ******?

Ray (10:31 AM)
I dont make it about *******, its just cause you work there. And Im only speculating ******
shaves, Im still pushing the program, are'nt I?

******(10:31 AM)
buddy what world are you living in? is your car insurance sky high? why is that? umm.. are
you paying for all the fraudulant claims maybe?

Ray (10:32 AM)
wrong world buddy

****** (10:33 AM)
you're an honest and good driver i'm sure.. wtf should you have to pay such high insurance
for some shitty ass driver? why do we pay such high taxes to cover all the deadbeats that
can't get real jobs?

****** (10:33 AM)
this is the world we live in.. lol.. not your "ideal" dream world

Ray (10:34 AM)
Im aware of what I pay for and why. As for shaving, thats stealing.

****** (10:34 AM)
see.. that's why i don't want to even post.. it migh be perceived that it's based on
my working at ****** which is totally untrue

****** (10:35 AM)
so you're saying your car insurance is not "stealing" your honest money with high premiums?

Ray (10:36 AM)
yep, when its time for them to pay, they do. They dont keep 1/3 pf the money for them

****** (10:37 AM)
dude.. some billing companies have shavers built in

Ray (10:37 AM)
I know

****** (10:38 AM)
billing companies need to make money too.. they probably even cheat the company they are
working for (to compensate for all those chargebacks)J

Ray (10:38 AM)
so the whole industry is filled with a buch of fucking cheats

****** (10:39 AM)
LOL.. this is the world we live in... there are cheaters in EVERY industry..
big and small.. if you find one that isn't i'll give you a million bucks.. lol

****** (10:40 AM)
it's the balance between good and evil

****** (10:40 AM)
hehe

Ray (10:40 AM)
to conclude, I dont cheat and I wish I was not cheated

****** (10:41 AM)
are you saying you never cheated in your whole life?

****** (10:41 AM)
in any way whatsover?

Ray (10:42 AM)
hmm, good question. Im sure I did, but I NEVER STOLE A FUCKING PENNY. I work very hard for
my money

****** (10:43 AM)
are you sure you never even cheated $1 on your taxes? found a way to cut your taxes down
a "little" bit?

Ray (10:44 AM)
You make it sound like its ok to steal money from webmaster who bring YOU money.

****** (10:45 AM)
no.. i don't think it's ok..

****** (10:45 AM)
i'm saying this is the real world we live in

Ray (10:46 AM)
Im glad you dont think its ok

Ray (10:46 AM)
Webmasters will unite and put a stop to it

****** (10:47 AM)
i also think it's not ok to pay high taxes.. it's not ok that we're giving refrigerators
and ACs to poor people because of 9/11 with peoples donations

****** (10:47 AM)
but what can i say? it's not gonna change

****** (10:48 AM)
yeah right.. lol.. and all the sponsers will ban together and do with per signup and all
the webmasters will cry foul

****** (10:48 AM)
do away with*

****** (10:48 AM)
there's 2 sides to ever situation.. you seem to be only seeing from the webmaster's point
of view

Ray (10:50 AM)
Would be cool if I posted this chat on GFY. I give you my word I WILL NEVER reveal who you
are. You have my word.With your permission(as a freind) you allow me to post this?

****** (10:52 AM)
yes

Ray (10:52 AM)
dude, dont worry..I stand by my word.. Ill send a copy

****** (10:53 AM)
i read a similar conversation a while back.. some "honest webmaster" wanted to start a
pay site.. and veteran webmaster was giving him tips about shaving.. etc..

Ray (10:53 AM)
yea, i remember that

-----------------------------------

Thats it, may be nothing new, but still interesting.

later
Ray

People that defend shaving are the same as people that defend spamming.. They always claim that they would never do it, but that it's the industry norm and you should accept it.

Cheers,
Backov

COOL! Wait till my new program comes out.. www.revshave.com 40 Bucks a sign up per $2.95 trial!! We're going to shave your fucking ass raw but, you'll get paid $$ cause we convert..

All the shaving talk makes me feel like going back to bed.

I guess in future I'll read the banned countries list on sponsors to see its long enough, the less fraud they deal with the less they need to shave I guess.

you can always deal with a prog that has 3rd party stats...
makes it pretty hard for them to shave!!

That guy's argument makes no sense at all. You know ahead of time what your insurance company is going to charge you and how much taxes you have to pay. They're not lying to you. But the shaving sponsor is telling you he will pay you so much for every sale. He's not telling you ahead of time that he will only pay you for 4 out of every 6 sales. Shaving is fraud and theft, and it's illegal. There is no justification for it whatsoever, so you can tell your friend to pull his head out of his ass and take a look at the "real world" where there are laws governing this kind of conduct. Just because you run an internet company doesn't mean these laws don't apply to you, and eventually the system will catch up with you.

All this shaving talk makes me want to shave my face

I agree, it eventually does catch up.


Ray

One point that he brought up was true however.

How many people would continue to push the program they're with if they changed the payout from $35 to $20.

Or, a brand new affiliate program came out with 60 + sites. Would you promote them if there was no startup gimmick (ie. 12 signups gets you $1000). Just a flat $20 per signup.

My answer is this. If the sites appear like they'll convert, I'd push them for $20 per signup (I already do in a couple of cases). If I don't think the sites will convert, I wouldn't. Simple.

Webmasters that chase the huge $$$ payouts per signup promote shaving, it's a downward spiral. Eventually someone will have to blink.


Be an HONEST webmaster, and realize that almost no paysites can make any type of money on $35-40 signups (paying on free/cheap trials). I've worked with some rather large paysites (nothing HUGE), some with just horrid member areas, and some with what I feel are some of the best I've seen.

Guess what? Retention is not all that different. 30% across the board really, with the higher quality sites maybe hitting 40% if they are real lucky.

The fact of the matter this industry is based on selling, selling, selling. Then having surfers forget to cancel. :)

It was an eye opener to be sure.. I saw this guys member areas (after some REALLY NICE tours, some of the best I've seen there) and though "no fucking way ANYONE rebills!". When I saw he was getting within 5% of other "high quality" member areas I've seen I was astounded.

I won't get into shaving all that much. But I will say no paysite I've ever worked with could make enough money on $35/signup. Say retention averages 30% (make it higher if you want) month-to-month. This means that say 100 people signup for the trial, 30 convert to fulls, then 10 go on to the next month, 3 the next month, and so on. You guys can do the math yourself. ;)

Sure, sites could maybe break even, or even make a little on $35/ea... But it's not enough to run a business off of.

Shrug. After working with the mix of sites I have, my personal stuff I send to either known-honest revshares (like lightspeed!), or per-signups with a reasonable payout ($20) and a good rep from a friend or whatnot.

So.. if you are disgusted by shaving, be part of the solution and stop promoting sponsors that are quite honestly nearly forced to do it to survive in this market. Vote with your wallet guys.

In short, it's my opinion nearly anyone paying $35+/signup is shaving. Period.

-Phil

bullshit.

Ray, out this guy and the company he works for. You're not protecting the innocent, you're allowing the crooks to continue cheating the innocent. Believe it or not, some people are stupid enough to believe they're getting $35 per signup without being shaved. :1orglaugh

In the 4 years I've been doing galleries I noticed that certain sponsors only convert good for a few days. After that it seems they active the shave button or smth...
It's not a bad thing if they do such things. You just have to know it so you can make sure you don't promote them to long. Just 4 days.. every month or so ;)

And uh.. CCBill has an option to 'shave' affiliates because its possible to set the amount of times the webmaster will be payed for recurrings!
So using sponsors that use big CC Compagnies can shave ya ass 2 :Graucho

What planet is this fucking moron on?

Basically what he is saying is its ok to advertise high payouts to get more people to prompte your program then when you can't pay because your shittly little program sucks ass you just shave and screw everybody to cover it... dose this about sum it up numb nuts? What a fucking idiot.

Also it's seems that it's ok to screw the honest webmasters because of the cheaters? Fuck that noise! If that logic holds true then I should be a cheating you because you are cheating me by shaving and therefore it's my duty to cheat you back.... huh? yeah, thats what I said

Fuck him and whatever shitty little program he works for and all the other cheaters out there that are lazy, sorry, scumbags.

You cheat = You suck :321GFY
This is the real world I live in!

As long as webmasters will move bulk traffic to higher paying programs, the payout will continue to go higher. People can scream to the high heavens that they don't send traffic like that, but the reality is they do.

And yes, sites can make money on a $35 payout without shaving signups. In order to do it, the site operator has to truly understand the revenue model and take advantage of every chance to make ten extra cents.

While smaller sites look at the per surfer profit as being as much as they can get -- and design their sites with an eye to it, large programs make their money on volume, and that is their bottom line.

After all, going by my money at the end of the day calculations, if you have an average of $100 per member and you get 10 joins a day, you aren't making more than the guy earning $10 per member on 1000 joins a day.

FYI: This guy that I chatted with was talking in general. He was not reffering to "his" program.


Ray

It's still his shitty attitude. :thumbsup

Pay per signups are designed to get the newbies/fringe operators to sign up looking for the quick buck. If you plan on staying around for longer than a couple of months then revshare programs are the way to go. Make sure the sponsor has decent sites because your recurrings depend on it. :)

KimmyKim -

Good points.

Yes, I agree some of the HUGE programs can maybe, just maybe, get away with $35/signup and still make money. But, I would say there are no more than 5 or so programs that *I FEEL* could do it.

Even then, I have not seen the numbers there. However, I still am very pessimistic. ;) I for one do not think the huge programs are "shaving" in that they have a nifty little tool that sets a percentage. Those places have far too many employees, and eventually someday, someone will get pissed off and let the cat out of the bag.

However, I do feel there may be some "inadvertant" stuff going on there.. I.e. tracking not up to par, whatever. When you're talking razor-thin margins on huge volume, it doesn't take many "oversights" to make that margin increase substantially..

Of course, we're getting far out of my actual experience here, so it's all heresay. :)

-Phil

I'm really hoping the FTC or someone gets involved real damn soon and just starts inspecting all these major players from Sponsors to Processors.

And for those of you who think they won't do it...guess again...the gov would love nothing better to do than make an example out of a big time pornographer.

Do you people working for these companies not realize what this is?

It is organized crime pure and simple.

No it's not Soprano's type bullshit...but a bunch of computer geeks scamming hundreds maybe thousands of webmasters a day.

And it is organized crime...here is one definition of Organized Crime:
If a big sponsor decides he wants to start shaving wm's who would be involved?

For sure the CEO, the CTO, the CFO, some techs, and maybe even a few of the help/sales reps for the company.

Now let's look at what can happen to those individuals involved in such matters...ever hear of the RICO act?



Hmm...interesting.

Let's not forget the criminal aspects of the CRIMES these sponsors who shave are committing.

I'm serious...I truly hope one big sponsor gets busted, is exposed, loses everything he owns, and ends up in jail...then maybe we just might see some clean up on that end of this biz.

And if you are some techie working for one of these companies...I'd seriously reconsider it...because the day will come when a company will get busted...and are you willing to lose everything you own and possibly end up in jail for a few extra dollars to keep your mouth shut for now?

If you know what your doing, you can run a program without
shaving. There are a few that do not shave.

But, if you get above $40 per signup, I can almost bet the boat
that they are shaving somewhere.

Alot of the times, smaller payouts mean less shaving.

Nice post

Its threads like these that reaffirm my belief that affiliate programs are more trouble than they are worth. If you've got traffic, build a site to convert it. If you've got a site, buy traffic to send to it. The only way to ensure that you're not getting cheated is to run everything yourself.

Funny how there haven't been many posts about the other profit producer to offselt the slim margins. Seems everyone is focused on shaving. What about taking the customers into the land of popups. Can we say a zillion or two of them? And where does that revenue all end up?

coming soon 1K pps. muhahahaha!

where do i signup?!?!
:)

per ACTIVE signup programs can afford to payout $50, $70, $100 per signup by knowing their average retention.

Phil,

I will not deny the fact that this goes on in our business, but I feel like a lot of people here are missing some key points to running a profitable paysite / sponsor program. I will not claim to be an expert on paysites, but I spent a good bit of time researching our figures before we chose to offer per signup as we insist on running an honest business.

First off ... KRL is the only one to have mentioned popups.. exit consoles make up for a huge portion of that $35-40 payout. You'd be very surprised.

Cross-sells.. not everyone has / uses them, but it is becoming more & more popular & also makes up for a huge portion of the payout. Paysites can put these on the credit card page, on the approval page (after they've been billed), and even in members areas & member e-mailings.

Upsells.. live feeds / chats, phone sex, viagra, sex toys, dvds, etc..

Cancel offers.. most sponsors are now offering members access to all their sites or even lower monthly rates if they stay. Of course this adds to the pot, every little bit helps.

Finally .. You mentioned retention rates at 30% .. that seems to be a common figure for trial-to-monthly conversions. HOWEVER, you applied that number to the entire length of a member's stay.. That number changes as time goes on..

For example, during the trial there is perhaps a 30% chance they'll rebill to a full month. There is then a 40% chance they'll rebill a 2nd time. Every month that goes by, the more likely the member is to stay (to a point). The exact numbers vary by site obviously, but eventually you might be keeping around 80-90%+ of your members base..

So as you can see, there are a lot of variables in the equation.. it IS possible to pay an honest $35-40 per signup and make a profit. How many sponsors do, I have no idea..

If you send traffic to an affiliate program and you don't get credit for signups on exit consoles, that's hardly honest.

NetRodent ..

most sponsors have more than their own sites on their exit consoles.. links/ads to other sponsors' sites, this is what I'm referring to..

You can be sure they will go after some of them. Of course all of them think it won't be them. And some of them 2 be making the money they do don't have the smarts 2 come in out of the rain.:Graucho

Some of you people are retards.

"People wouldn't sign up for us if we didn't cheat". Blah blah blah. That's life.

Let's say you want to hire a secretary and the secretary market is extremely hot right now. You won't get secretary offering her $6/hour with the way the market so you decide to offer to pay $20, then shave her paycheck by 15 hours each week. Lawsuit. Illegal. Will be prosecuted.

Why not lie about the # of pics in your site then? Surfers will signup if they think you have 600 million pics of bearded female midgets fucking donkeys. Why don't you advertise that? We all know the surfer market is so competitive. Oh, wait...you can't...that would be illegal.

Sort of like promising to pay $35/signup then shaving signups.

That's bullshit. I could care less about getting the highest PPS....it's the check I get that determines who I deal with....I'd rather go with a $15/signup sponsor if I had more money coming in at the end of the month than someone shaving 30-40% of my earning.

And you can run sponsor programs that don't shave. I developed and maintain a fairly successful sponsorship program (don't own though...sigh) and I know for a fact they don't shave. They also pay around $28/signup and the guy has to be making good money still cause he can still afford me =D

This market is so saturated now so many people give a rats ass about the webmasters they have promoting them...without considering the fact that without them....they're programs would all turn to shit.

HEAR YE HEAR YE!

This man speaks the truth. Infact this is the ONLY well educated post i've ever read on this board.

Haha.. Phil's post is SO awesome. He is bursting all your bubbles. The truth shall make you free.. heh.

$20/join is the most you can afford w/o shaving. Members areas don't matter. They really don't. A members area makes about a 10% difference. Big deal. You could have FREE content on your members area and still retain at 25%, or you could go out and get all unique stuff, shooting your own photos, et cetera, and get 35%. I have a members area that is like half clickcash upsells, and it still retains at 30%~ or so. :)

I just looked at my processor stats to see. In the past three months, every sign up has been worth about $22 over time (niche/site doesn't matter.. I have pretty much everything covered).. Programs paying $20 stand to make ABOUT $10 per sign up, but it will take them about 3 months to get their money back, and another 2-3 months to make their profit. In the meantime, they typically get by by selling exit traffic, members area upsells, or spamming.

Anyone who pays more than $20 shaves. (note the full stop) But human mentality is weird. People would rather get paid $35-40 per join with a program that has a custom script (Despite pure human logic that dictates that they can't afford to pay this honestly) than $20/join program and see raw processor stats.

The way people's minds work is fascinating. Maybe I'm just pragmatic. I think porn is porn.... who cares.

DirtyJack...

I know how the game is played, but its still dishonest in my opinion. The affiliate sends traffic to the sponsor and the sporsor siphons it off to a place where the affiliate doesn't make money. It doesn't matter of the sites are owned by the same sponsor or not.

good point/reply :thumbsup

I love chaos and I think it would be fun to see an investigation, but the problem lies in PROOF...how do you PROVE to a JUDGE and JURY that the sponsor is shaving? They can claim technical glitches, script defects, etc.

And the real fun part will be seeing the smaller webmasters who may be working under the radar of friends and family get exposed as being porn site operators...

it would be messy on both sides...

and a whole lot of fun...I better stock up on popcron :)

it's only dishonest if the affiliate says they pay on exits and they don't....

never assume that a higher paying sponsor is going to credit you for exit consoles unless it's explicit mentioned in their TOS....if it's not, contact them...doesn't anyone email their sponsors anymore? Amazing how you can do business with someone and not even maintain contact with them...so, you're going to send your hard earned traffic to someone you've never even contacted? why?

DirtyJack is my damn hero...

Dude you fucking invented the toplist!!!

All this talk about the members area not making a difference in REBILLS, reminds me of an old post from GURU OF GIF!!!!

OLD NEWS... But shit DirtyJack is right -- most of the money is in upsells and other shit...!!!!! PASS IT ON TO THE AFFILIATES YA DAMN BASTARDS! You can afford less than 50% anywayz...

I dropped dollars4all when they decided to switch to pay per signup AND stop paying recurring for the recurring members I already send.
I used to send a lot of traffic to their daily galleries and made descents signups from it

There are some really informative posts on this thread...thx phil21, dirtyjack, and donniegangsta.