Playa's right. Its going to take 3 months of sending the same # of joins to a partnership before your $$ will be the same as with a per sign up.
Then depending on who you're promoting, after 3 months you should see a steady increase in your revenue. And you get the added bonus of having a recurring base to get you through the times when the signups just aren't with you. And those happen to everybody.
As far as hold times go, right now I'm really happy with
Oxcash
and you can't forget
Porn Mega Bucks
I'm having good conversions with some new stuff right now, but its too soon to tell how well they'll retain the members.
Hope that helped
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90% of this business is half mental.