Quote:
Originally Posted by takethebluepill
^What he said (except for the adding sales bit. Pretty sure that doesn't happen)^.
Affiliates like myself watch our stats religiously and anything that doesn't match our carefully tracked performance stats is quickly noticed. They know that many of us are just as sophisticated in our strategies and analysis as they are. Notice something peculiar or traffic isn't performing, and in my case I can change where my traffic goes with a single line of code.
Be rest assured, the large reputable companies aren't going to risk losing their top earners. That being said, there are some low life scum on this board that undoubtedly consider shaving to be an active part of their business strategy.
I would argue that one sale affiliates do have value as well. I would assume that they account for over 95% of the affiliates. (Programs like AFF have thousands of affiliates, but from past experience, I would say a handful of 50 or less account for the vast majority of the gross). And if you only make one sale, you are never going to reach the minimum payout, which means the program wouldn't have to payout anything on that single sale...no shaving required.
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Excellent thoughts....
To clarify:
I think many companies DO value one sale affiliates, however I do not think any would bother shaving one sale affiliates... it doesn't pay enough to be worth the time. While 95% of affiliates are of the one sale variety, 99% of sales do not come from them. There are much more profitable uses of their time and resources preserving the traffic from 99% of their sales than there are scamming traffic that generates less than 1% of their sales... and as you pointed out, the 99% of their sales come from professionals who understand net Earnings Per Click (EPC) - so 'shaving' would only serve to make that traffic go somewhere else.
One sale AM affiliates are likely to get shafted in the wake of this mess... and many probably STILL haven't changed their link codes to go somewhere else yet. Other reputable dating sites are brainstorming every idea they can to differentiate themselves from AM, to secure their own data, to preserve their own traffic sources, and to
pick up the whales who used to send AM traffic but are now looking for new offers. They aren't wasting 30 seconds trying to create an elaborate scheme to shave a few bucks from a guy who is unlikely to ever reach the minimum payout threshold.
