How can I cheat you? Let me count the ways......
 

The boards are always roaring wih talk of shaving. Personally, I think there's a lot of shaving going on, but as the name implies... it's not "slicing" .... it's "shaving". And while it is cheating, I think that on a percentage basis it's not the highest thing on the list for webmasters to be worrying about. It's not like the "good old days" where sites would just turn the counter off for half a day or so (gee...... who ever did that?). It's a little cheat that shoudln't even be noticable (if anyone can notice YOU'RE SHAVING TOO HARD ;) ). But there are LOTS of other things which are going on all over the place which can do some real damage.

One example is when you see an email box on the page where you send traffic to so that the site can "steal" your email list.

So, my question is: what ways to cheat do you guys see being used out there, which are the most prevalent, and which one's do you think actually are the most offensive and/or do the most damage?

Good post bump

bump for this biz post :thumbsup

You can't just bump posts without adding any info... Or can you? :winkwink:

BUMP

business threads don't fair good on GFY :1orglaugh

OK, I'll bite...

Revshare sponsors with shitty members areas only there to upsell the surfer. That's why we always ask for a temp pass before sending any major traffic.

My fav sponsor shave is when they have pop up consoles on their sites promoting other websites with your traffic and their ref codes.

or when they 404 their hosted galleries and send the traffic to another page with their ref code..

sponser content with their domain name all over it ...

sponser keeping track of reffered surfers by coookie or sessions .. rather then store the ip permanent in teh database .. wit hthe refferal ... until that ip comes back wit ha other refferal. .. popups wich they don't credit you for ... or or or ...

meh it's all shaving .... aslong you don't get money for every surfer send .. (despite what teh surfer does)

I understand why you might find watermarking the content to be an issue, but how else can they protect their interests?

Also, since you've got so many people with dynamic IP's, I'm not sure tracking by IP is a viable option (both in terms of you still losing signups when the surfer's IP changes, and in terms of them having to credit slaes to a webmaster who didn't send the srufer simply because a new surfer visited on an IP where some other surfer had visited from before)

shaving on the dl

How about changing their link codes without letting their affiliates know. :) That one's my favorite.

Heh i didn't mean it all too negative ... just a few examples .. of how affiliates help name branding .. without 'gettig anything back'.

In the end it's just up to the 'affiliates' who find it worth todo it or not.

But the pay-site owners are the big winners (if they aint to stupid) .. they get alot of name branding for free ...

surfers get pointed to their site ... who maybe don't do anything .. but come back at a later time .. or tell their friends about it.

And if a affiliate send a surfer who signs-up .... it's still teh pay-site owner .. who has teh email that belongs to that creditcard .. :winkwink:

Anyhow if you can't see that as a affiliate ... you shouldn't be here :2 cents:

Shaving has existed since the dawn of time. It will always be here. Just look at your bottom line - that is what matters.

***

maybe just watermark the company name then?

it's probably best to use cookies + web bugs to track signups, since a huge ammount of dsl subscribers change IP's whenever they connect, and then you have aol users as well that go through proxies

I agree.... but my point - if I didn't state it well enough - is that I think people worry too much about "shaving", and not enough about all the other ways they can get "cheated" to some extent, and that I think that shaving may actually be costing poeple less than the real things they should be worrying about.

My point was to see if we can come up with a list of what those others things are, how prevalent they are, and which one's bother us the most.

That was my point.... but you also have the problem of people who wipe cookies.

That's where the web bugs come in at :)

bump time!!

Perhaps my understanding of web bugs is lacking. I thought that they could provide:

The IP address of the computer that fetched the Web Bug
The URL of the page that the Web Bug is located on
The URL of the Web Bug image
The time the Web Bug was viewed
The type of browser that fetched the Web Bug image
A previously set cookie value

If that's the case, how does that track if someone has a dynamic IP and clears their cookies? (Isn't it really just cookie + IP?).

Having a secondary tracking system is better then nothing though right? Yes if they change the IP and block/erase cookies your screwed, but at least 2 things need to happen then.

true dat

Ok well, lets see


Let's say you accessed http://www.someserver.com/someimage.gif , the server would send back a header that says the date it was last modified.

The web browser caches the image and remembers the date the image was last modified.

if you happened to load the pic again, the web browser would send a header that tells server to only send the image if the last modified date is later than the value that had been originally remembered by the web browser.


the way "web bugs" work is that they will send a fake unique last modified date, so when some surfer loads the image originally they will have a totally unique last modified date

if they go back to the page, the web browser will resend that fake/unique last modified date even if cookies are cleared and the ip is different

ahhhhhhh.... gotcha.

Next question: don't the popular "washing" programs defeat this anyway (or even toolshahahaha=> internet optionshahahaha> etc. which people also use who delete cookies)?

good question, i'll have to try a few of them out and see which ones do

I've never been a fan of extensive watermarking of photos and video. To say that it protects their content is total BS. You don't hire a graphic artist to design a big fancy watermark to protect copyrights. It's for over branding with the goal of stealing affiliate traffic. Pure and simple.

A tiny text copyright watermark that gives the main non-porn company name is sufficent to notify there's copyright..... but that doesn't steal traffic from affiliates, so nobody is going to do it.

I personally won't promote anyone guilty of over branding. That's a serious traffic leak.

While I understand your point, I also disagree: one of the big reasons for doing the watermarking is so that when people either hotlink or download your shit and put it up on Kazaa or Limewire, you at least get something in return.

Are the images on my site www.relishxxx.tv/videos to over branded?

I think this model is over branded
http://www.chbe.dk/lightsite/BITMAPS...ng_flammer.jpg

OK..... so what are some other ways we're seeing people "take" without properly compensating for it?