Do you hide your traffic source from your sponsors?
 

Just wondering if anyone here (like me), tries to keep their traffic source and filtering methods away from their sponsors.

I know this might sound shady, but it's not. All I'm good for is creatives, and I don't want even my sponsors seeing my presentation. Naturally they are welcome to check out the performance of my traffic, but not my method.

Does anybody else participate in this? I have zero webmaster/programming skills.. All I do well is out think the next man.. (landing pages, micro-placing, text, pitch angle, etc). I essentially purchase every hit of traffic that my pages see, as they are not SEO friendly, and as I know jack shit about SEO.

This method has it's benefits and shortcomings, but it's what I know and have been doing forever. I do like the idea, and have recently spent time checking out how to slowly start earning some money through very little investment (blogs, seo, etc).. but I have a long road to go there. In the end, I would like to have a little stream of revenue coming in from a few things once I stop buying traffic all day and take some time off.

Regardless of that.. I'm interested to know if anybody else is a freak like me?

Somebody is not going to like this

Who gives a shit?

To me, it's a very valid practice. No offense to program owners but if they see someone kicking ass with a "unique" method of filtering traffic it's only a matter of time before it's duplicated. They are the only ones who know about my productivity, because they can see it on the back end and would know it's worth pursuing.

Times are tough, things are competitive. People see something that is working, they won't forget it.

I have personally had programs try to do this before.. as I'm sure other people have. If your a webmaster who is doing things that are pretty much by the book.. (seo, blogs, etc) there is no cause for concern. But if you have a unique method of filtering traffic, or generating traffic, it's always in your best interest to try to keep things quiet.

Now, as long as the traffic converts and is productive.. no more chargebacks than normal.. on the up and up.. I don't see how a sponsor could have cause for concern, when there is no scamming involved.

You don't do programming, you aren't a webmaster and you don't do any SEO...are you going door to door or something?

He said he will hide the method.

If the traffic converts and retains. I dont see a problem.

I'm sure someone will make some fuss about it though :2 cents:

Funny that you bring this up. Just had a pretty big sponsor basically oust one of my traffic sources this year. Funny how no fucks are given anymore.

So yeah, as long as your traffic is legit, why not hide it?

i dont buy traffic anymore but when i did i hid the traffic source. too many assfuck programs will fuck you and buy it direct when they learn it converts

I don't blame you one bit. I've read stories of it happening before that sponsors steal ideas and traffic sources. There are a couple programs I won't send traffic to from certain sites because I'm worried about the reps stealing my ideas. Just keep in mind that many of these guys have it in their terms that you have to divulge traffic sources.

I still remember this one. A very interesting read.
https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=999548

I used to all the time when I spent a lot of money in PPC traffic. I actually had a sponsor once ask me to run their own campaigns because I was getting much better performance (they asked my ROI, which is how they knew).

A couple of times I would see a program them start their own campaigns bidding on the same phrases and even using the same ad group names in their URL strings (Analytics tagging). I had someone develop a program for me which would make the traffic appear to refer from my site.

It may seem shady, but to me that was my livelihood and I wanted to protect my investment and not let them in on the "secret sauce."

Well as a program especially if you pay per free signups (cpa, per lead) you may wish to see http referer or some info simply as it could be fake signups the guy does himself using vpn and such. As a program 50% or more of the new affiliates who choice the pay per free are actually scammers (esp. from china, phiippines, vietnam, india, pakistan...). Some are so "smart" to even setup a fakesite.com with banners to our site, then put the fakesite.com in the http referers. So they think we're stupid, see traffic come from fakesite.com and believe it. Just to say a program does not want to know where traffic comes just to steal the method, but mainly to ban the scammers.

Said so, a year ago I posted in GFY about an affiliate who made lots signups and sales from youtube videos of clothed cam girls dancing, with links in comments or over video. I got accused as revealing the most secret and new method of own affiliates: youtube videos with links in comments and/or over video. Someone laughed at the fact this was not a new or secret method (and it is black hat since youtube ban videos with adverts as soon as finds out), anyway I learned affiliates think their methods are so secret and programs would spend all the day in copy them.

I hide the source of my adult traffic when I redirect it to mainstream sponsors. Basically, I do not want DirecTV to know that the traffic I am sending them originates from anallygapedcumslutmidgettrannys.com...

Yes, I run a fake TGP to run my traffic through to appear as the source. It's a dog eat dog world.

Is always better not show your referrers to the affiliate programs.

^see sig
:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

What i have found funny in my experience is an Affiliate and a Program could buy banners Side by side and more often then not the affiliate will do more sales. In rare cases a Good Rep will work on the traffic and match them

I just got this email i wonder if its related

It is a good idea for many reasons. If you run review sites, it helps remove any hint of a conflict of interest

my question is how would you hide it? wouldn't the refering url show up in their stats?

You can bounce it off a neutral domain you own instead of the actual source. I see this being more of a problem with mainstream than adult though-unless your site isn't the typical tube and has siiiick conversion rates.

back in day when i was one of the regular paid advertisers on Thehun, I found out some good sites from one particular sponsor which were averaging around 30-50 sales per gallery .In few months sponsor was running his own gals similar to mine. Fortunately you had to wait to for the paid spots on Thehun if you werent one of regulars.

You can remove the ref-URLs by a double META-refresh.

i hide my traffic source, by putting it all up my bottom...


Unfortunately, they dont seem to want to look up there :(

yup allways :)

I use paid traffic only. Technically I am a webmaster, as I know a lot about conversion and traffic sources. But I know fuck all about programming, seo, backlinks, blogs, or gaining traffic through many other sources than paid.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one.. I too use a vanilla site to bounce off of. Plus I've only used a few different sponsors in all my years.

I'm perfectly ok with my traffic being examined and scrutinized in terms of conversion and performance.. but am not ok with them seeing my landing pages that convert it or the sources I send from.

Thanks for the honest answers fellas :)

Some sponsors will ask to know your promotional methods to make sure you're not engaging in false advertising. Of course this will normally only come up if members are bitching after joining though. If you're actually doing a good job as judged by all, then good for you.

Sent you an email to your yahoo email addy in your sig.

This is a very good question, in some cases it's easy for a sponsor to replicate what you're doing, but in other cases where they have more control over which sales you get they might think "I'm not giving them a sale for that, it only took them 30 Seconds"

Whenever you see a owner or rep say any comment like "affiliates are getting money for nothing" it means to run like hell for that very reason. It's a rationalization for shaving or screwing the affiliate. I've seen it time and time again. The same is true for a comment like "they made lots of money off of us" implying that it was THEIR work and not any of your own. That you didn't earn the money, they earned it for you and you did nothing or provided nothing.

Wise words there signupdamnit :thumbsup

Around 1 year ago I found an easy technique to pull in sales from one particular sponsor, I could see the referring URLs so I knew it was working. It was far too easy really for a nice PPS payout, one day they mysteriously disappeared, all my other sales kept coming from the sponsor, I checked everything out, nothing had changed with the technique, I could only assume that it was seen as too simple to be deserving of the nice PPS sales I was receiving. :2 cents:

Affiliates and sponsors, a Catch-22
 

Makes sense to me but unfortunately I think you have to be that way by pragmatic necessity rather than by logical strategy. Most affiliates should do it that way because I think most programs do actually try and steal the "recipes" for sales from their affiliates, rather than cultivating a strong mutually supportive bond, which would make way more sense for a long term strategy imo.

Unfortunately, of course, doing it that way probably does raise suspicions of your methods and might cause issues with new sponsors that haven't developed the trust yet.

So, that kind of ultimately creates a true Catch-22 where it might be better to do it another way, one where you work more closely to achieve best results based on trustingly shared proprietary methods, but cannot due to inherent safeguards to protect those techniques.

[Originally Posted by Diomed View Post
Just wondering if anyone here (like me), tries to keep their traffic source and filtering methods away from their sponsors.]


Sent you an email Diomed to your yahoo email addy in your sig the other day, did you get?

If you give good reviews, there are no conflicts. If you give bad, why send traffic? :upsidedow

You can ask if sponsors would like to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)

[Originally Posted by Diomed View Post
Just wondering if anyone here (like me), tries to keep their traffic source and filtering methods away from their sponsors.]


Sent you an email Diomed to your yahoo email addy in your sig the other day, did you get?

Ok a sponsort could not disclose but use the method for themselves still. A "non use" agreement perhaps is needed.

going up, for Diomed, to see if he see's the post above

do not spoof shit

I did.

Interesting. Will hit you up to see what this is about ;)

Appreciate the consideration.

any program with a fraud system worth a damn doesn't need to request that shit anyway... On top of that, any webmaster worth a damn doesn't need to hide shit, because if getting sales were as easy as checking a few sites copying them and using the same traffic anyone could do it--which is and never has been true. You guys aren't giving yourselves enough credit. We pay our webmasters what we do for a reason, they are good at it.

if you do your own knowhow sure better to hide, if you just copy and paste, sure you dont care :) :winkwink: and if sponsors demands sources of your solid quality legit traffic, you know the reason :winkwink: happenned to me, and it hurts, but what to do :)

i've had a sponsor start buying adwords for the exact term of my domain that was sending them good sales. i thought that was a bit rude.

in mainstream it is common practice

they use tracking software to hide the ref and are very protective of the source.

:2 cents:

As well as affiliates purchasing adword for the sponsor program main sites :)

Well said! The OP is a wackjob. Just looked up his other post to confirm he is a troll after he took his precious time to post rude comments in one of my post.

Thanks.. I needed that :thumbsup

Of course you should always try and hide your sources of traffic. For the most part, webmasters are just a form of outsourced labor to affiliate programs. The more webmasters who are working doing all the manual tube submitting, gallery building, and descriptions, the better. But when a sponsor can easily take a wembasters traffic source and do it better or cheaper without the affiliate, they will. This is especially true with buying traffic.

If your traffic is valid and no CB and other shit, you have all rights to protect your traffic sources from my point of view. But some sponsors will not like that.