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minusonebit, the deal is that the online adult industry as a whole is built on a sort of trust and "work together" mentality. Affiliates do tens of thousands of dollars of business with people that they never meet, with their traffic, sales, and payments all tracked without anyone screaming "auditor" or "lawsuit". It is only very recently that the term "lawsuit" started to pop up around here, and that has been a very disappointing thing to see.
We have all long since accepted to some point that shaving MAY occur. We have also all pretty much accepted that some clicks are lost en-route, idiots charge back, and that toolbars steal some traffic. We don't like it, but the cost to fix it in the past has far exceeded the return. For the most part, the sponsors have been pretty darn good about making it all come clean in the wash, and the payouts to affiliates have been good.
But this year has been different. More and more people are seeing very poor conversions, levels that have never been seen before. Yet the programs aren't complaining, and in fact, the major cam sponsors have all been trying to outbid each other for traffic. If their conversions were as bad as mine, they would be crying in their soup. They are not, which tells me someone's conversions are significantly better than average.
It points to adware, toolbars, or outright shaving... one or more of those things (or other things) are coming together to finally make most affiliates feel the pain. What was a 1 in 200 business because a 1 in 400 business and now is something more like a 1 in 1000 business. I have some sponsors showing 1 in 4000. My official cams count is (when I checked this morning) almost 14,000 clicks without a money sale.
There is a point where the numbers come together and people start to wonder what the fuck is going on, and then they see this... and they go through the motions they have gone through for years, in a business where we talk amoungst ourselves and try to find solutions.
It beats making the lawyers rich.
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