Bingo, iBill or VXS may not short your stats but the program owner can easily show a join page that is not linked to your account some of the time ;-)

ahhhh "Insta shave"

I have seen "the insides" of at least 4 major ones ALL with shave adjust feature.

Frankly I was shocked!! Horrified!!!

Nearly bought one. ;-)))

Til someone said "Mate ,look at this..this is the shit!" ;-)))

Funny you should say that....

Years ago , as a purely hypothetical mind puzzle , a group of us sat round and did the "What if we were a third party processor , how could we shave"

OK we were wasted...but it would be easy...you'd never get caught either.Even , if done right an audit wouldn't catch you. Look just like a...

Nevermind ;-)))

Cause the ULTIMATE shave would be at that level.

do contract killers do it intentionally or just because they like to kill?
;-))) [/b][/quote]
Serge, liking it has got nothing to do with it.

They do it because they can, they don;t have to like it.

:ph34r:

and CTB...

10,000 shaved to 8,000 is just unambitious!! ;-))

Shaving 101

You turn up the shave everyday a lil bit.

When they howl you say "OMFG!! thats ridiculous, let me credit you X and look into it"

You then turn the shave down 10-20%....then you slowly turn it up agaim...rinse and repeat...

There are I believe instances of people being shaved 90% and STILL thanking the program owner cause his CHECK was bigger there than at the last place!!

Nick,

IMHO you have just nailed the biggest point.

Greedy little fucks who don't their asshole from breakfast.

To me shaving is simple, if you send me 10000 hits and 20 joins but your stats INTENTIONALLY only say you send me 8000k hits and 16 joins, THAT is shaving.

Fuck I've seen an off-the-shelf affiliate solution that has 9 seperate shaving mechanisms. I know of a purpose written one that has more.

We personally don't shave, and I'll put down $10k and even pay for the audit if they show WE do, but we use 3rd party processors, and who the fuck knows what some of them do, so the point is probably moot.

Shit we even give affiliates ALL the email addresses they gather under their revcode - members AND mail grabbers.

All we can do is try.

But we do shave our boys.

:ph34r:

I forget who it was.. Audited Sponsor perhaps? That used to track affiliate programs traffic and signups?

They closed down after around a month or two if memory serves me correctly.

Bought out and then shut down a little birdie tells me....

:ph34r:

Unforgivable.... bad.... very bad..... mmmkay? ;-))

CTB,

I admire your principles. Could you sell me some? ;-))))

I made fortunes with and for Serge and Scotty.

Did they shave me?

FUCK YEAH!!!

Hard and often!!! How do I know? They fucking gloat to me over it!!! LOL

But there checks were bigger than anyone elses.

So what does that say?


;-))

Psss ....
How many time do I have to tell you ALL PROGRAMS SHAVE!!

CBT - Not picking on you but will use you as an example
You use CCBill to process, you have an unintentional shave
CCBill uses a cookie based tracking system, approximately 10% (or less) of surfers have their cookies turned off

There's your unintentional shave

Obviously the business is built on smoke and mirrors

Yeah we pay $45 per join (so you get the most traffic) but factor in the shave to make the difference

Take it back to the day of .02 clicks, then someone offered .03 per click. Then .05. Xpics with .30 Sundays. Got to keep your profit margins in line.

Check at the end of the week and how much you earn per click

Vic, if you read my post I already said that was our weakness.

:ph34r: [/b][/quote]
Ok...so you are at 10%

wonder what other holes there are....

Unintentionally shaved , over 1,000 joins.....

I seem to remember between 150 and 300 joins were untracked.


hmmmmm....

An honest program surely would give out a bonus apportioned amongst its webmasters in proportion to the joins they sent tracked , for the 150 -300 Surplus untracked joins.

I'm not unambitious, and I DO know all about it, I just fucking hate it. It's wrong,

But if someone is stupid enough to send traffic to something where anyone with half a clue KNOWS the numbers are just unsupportable, well, that is the CRUX of the problem.

Funny you give the example of the dickhead webmaster - it's not just the small ones...

I remember a mutual friend telling me the story of once a long time ago when a certain webmaster sending him traffic got 1000 joins in a week and was so stoked he flew them overseas for a 3 day bender of wine, women and song to thank them.

The question was posed as to what that webmaster would have done for them if he wasn't being shaved at 80% when he got the 1000.

Would ge a fucking hilarious story if it wasn't true.

Every industry evolves, and this one has grown up a shitload in the 5 years I have been dancing around, but it has a long way to go. Or not. Depends on your viewpoint I suppose.

I am not greedy and I just try and be the type of sponsor I wish I had when I was pushing shit uphill.

And I won't shave ANYONE knowingly.....

On the processors, some are more obvious than others in how they do it, not only is that level the "best" as you call it, it is the EASIEST. By far.

I a man of few principles and fewer morals, but those that I do have do NOT get bent.

And my original offer is a standing one.

:ph34r:

Vic, if you read my post I already said that was our weakness.

:ph34r:

Don't be so certain that you don;t have more principles than me Nick. Being a nice guy is a relatively recent status quo in terms of my 37 years on the planet.

Evil is as evil does - and another pet hate is people who use that line who, face-to-face, haven't got a real evil bone in their body !!

Anyhoo, I digress.

What other real options did you have way back when?

I should say, I don't begrudge any of the old school ANYTHING - In fact, I admire the guts and hard work it took to grab the opportunities with both hands and shake the shit out of it.

Pioneers in ANY industry have the luxury, nay, the RIGHT, to do things the way they want to, irrespective of whether that be good, bad or indifferent.

Those who have the cajones to do the hardest yards in the early days have the God given right to do things the way they see fit, and more power to them for that.

How many of us would be here if it wasn't for the work put in developing this industry by the likes of Scotty, Serge, yourself and others back in those days? I never forget that.

The point I make, and to steal a line oft stated by Serge, it is not 1999 anymore.

Times change and every business evolves.

And as I have said above, all we can do is TRY to make things different or better, again depending on your perspective.

:ph34r:

Ok...so you are at 10%

wonder what other holes there are....

Unintentionally shaved , over 1,000 joins.....

I seem to remember between 150 and 300 joins were untracked.


hmmmmm....

An honest program surely would give out a bonus apportioned amongst its webmasters in proportion to the joins they sent tracked , for the 150 -300 Surplus untracked joins. [/b][/quote]
I have said this above...

WE don't shave.

We also CANNOT control things out of our control.

We are trying to implement systems and practices to lessen the impacts of the very things you describe.

This is a nowhere argument, because I do NOT have control over the entire food chain, and I have said that above at least twice.

Bonuses is a good idea. I am going to do some math on that. Could be quite a differentiating feature for a program.

Like I said, we give a shitload more than 99% of programs, and are ALWAYS trying to improve that lot by adding new features and doing things differently.

Again, repetitive, but it is the whack - all we can do is try our best.

I know I'm as honest as can be now, because there was a time (for a long time) before this business, when I was not, so it is easy to compare and contrast.

:ph34r:

This discussion is BS ;-)

A good businessman cares about only one thing and that is the bottom line.

If a sponsor program paying $35 on $1 signups and credits for exit consoles shaves 30% you will still make more money than with a program that pays $35 on $29.95 memberships with no trial and no exits.

Some sites also convert much better than others, a shaving sponsor with great sites might earn you more than a goody two shoes sponsor who doesn't understand how to close the sale.

At the end of the day who shaves or who doesn't and if it's wrong or not is totally irrelevant, the only relevant thing is the size of the check you get for a certain banner slot.

Greedy business, not whiney bitches! ;-))

Anything can be shaved -- even something "shave-proof" -- IF someone REALLY wants to shave.

Almost anything can be cheated as well.

Thank you.
See "Nicks First Laws of Traffic" above ;-)))

thats always a good one :)

Of course you can just run a program wand refuse to pay people for cheating and spend your time scouring your incoming traffic for any infraction and refuse to pay.

You keep taking the traffic...

you just don't pay


;-)))

thats always a good one :) [/b][/quote]
Not really, it makes no sense to remove productive webmasters from a program.

But if you run a PPC program, which nobody does anymore, and do not scour your incoming traffic and eliminate webmasters who use invalid links or open you in a new window or throw an exit console onto your homepage you end end up paying for traffic that does not convert into signups.

yeah that one worked for a while...

of course I have NEVER done anything like that!! ;-))

The ability to do something, the motivation and/or inclination do do it, and the actual perpetration of it are three VERY different things.

:ph34r:

Nick

i might be naive and i might be dumb, but we dont shave and we never will, even if we could we wouldnt.

We have people sending traffic to netpondcash converting at better than 1:50 so if we were gonna shave, those numbers wouldnt exist.

Meat,
I didn't know numbers 1:50 still exist....
are you sure it's not 1:5000...after shave?
;-))))

LOL Serge:)

Meat congrats on having affiliates that do filter/target their traffic - probably means you have less support per affiliate, than the programs that attracts the masses ;-)))

maybe Aga just isn't telling you!!!


;-)))


:ph34r: :ph34r: :ph34r:

Where there's a will, there's a way. B) [/b][/quote]
Where there is a WILL , there is an inheritance !

;-))

Aga tells me everything:)

The ability to do something, the motivation and/or inclination do do it, and the actual perpetration of it are three VERY different things.

:ph34r:[/b][/quote]
Where there's a will, there's a way. B)

EVERY program has at least an unintentional shave. The fact that its the internet is the cause of that. Surfers without cookies on, data that gets dropped in transmission, glitches in stats and so forth. There's simply no way around it.

One post that totally blows me away in this thread was the one that referred to upsells, cross sells and the like giving some sort of additional compensation to the original referrer.

HELLO? Put the crack pipe down. If the original referrer is supposed to continue getting paid out down the line then the ONLY people that should be getting checks are the owners of search engines, link lists and tgps, since that's where the traffic originates. However, I don't see Tommy's Bookmarks or Persian Kitty or even Google sticking their hand out after the fact to collect more money off a signup...

Unforgivable.... bad.... very bad..... mmmkay? ;-)) [/b][/quote]
8000k

thats 8,000,000. and only 16 joins? man your traffic sucks:)

Where there is a WILL , there is an inheritance !

;-)) [/b][/quote]
Where there's a whip, there's a way

hahaha, I remember making that argument to a newbie a couple years ago...they bitched about not being paid on upsells, etc. and I explained I would be more than happy to pay them a % on those if they would be so kind as to pay a % to the hun, tommy and greenguy, where they got their traffic from...for some reason, they didn't seem to like that idea....

another "unintenional shave" isn't so much a shave as a sale being credited to someone else: if you send a surfer to a site that he's already visited and he signs up, his signup cookie would still be credited to the original sender and even though he came from your site, he would be credited to another affiliate.

Call me a cynic..

but..


I'd be more inclined to send traffic to the guy that says :

"Mate , you know I have to shave you , but your wire will be bigger than anyone else will send you and it'll be on time."

Then the guy that says

"I swear , I really really will not shave you at all , in anyway"

I think the first method works on those 5 -10 good webmasters you want.
I think the second method works on the 2000 sheep.

but thats just mho

And remember the only time I think I am not being shaved is when I send my own traffic to my own paysites and even then I'm not sure , cause I'm so crooked I might be shaving myself!!!

;-)))

I also fucking look at processors shifty eyed.

They must be able to shave too.....

hahaha, I remember making that argument to a newbie a couple years ago...they bitched about not being paid on upsells, etc. and I explained I would be more than happy to pay them a % on those if they would be so kind as to pay a % to the hun, tommy and greenguy, where they got their traffic from...for some reason, they didn't seem to like that idea....

another "unintenional shave" isn't so much a shave as a sale being credited to someone else: if you send a surfer to a site that he's already visited and he signs up, his signup cookie would still be credited to the original sender and even though he came from your site, he would be credited to another affiliate. [/b][/quote]
Isn't a discussion about shaving your nutsack more your thing? :P

our ratio at netpondcash
1:169 uniques
= 1:203 raw

this is on montly memberships, no trials [/b][/quote]
Even I gotta say , they have some very good sites , that I would imagine convert very very well.