You first want to move into a great neighborhood before you buy and test your alarm system.

(of course you want to test your alarm system too)

Installed on the confirmation of sale made page would work as long as a rotating script to turn on and off the tracking was not used.

My main concern about GA would be a white label for selling hard goods.

Release The Kraken.....

http://www.qhdu.com/Kraken.jpg

Shaving is 100% irrelevant. What matters is who pays you the most per click. As long as someone pays you the most, it doesn't matter why they did not pay you more. If they pay the least and never shave, they are a much worse choice than someone who always shaves but still pays you the most. :2 cents:

Hey I heard shaving doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is $ / click


Let's get this thread to 7 pages!

This may be possible, but I cannot give any input on it to be completely honest.

At the end of the day though, it's all a risk. On one hand you risk your money making potential by sticking with the safe bet, on the other hand you risk your money making potential if the [in house] program doesn't pay.

There's really no concrete answer on how to do things. But to be honest, the last thing I really worry about in regards to whether or not I'll get paid for my traffic is whether or not a program is "shaving".

This is simply because I have yet to see enough evidence to support the notion that it's really being done... and I usually make my decision on whether to promote a site/program or not long before I think about the whole "shaving" aspect...

You have 100% accurate data for only two things...

1) Exactly how many clicks you sent

2) Exactly how many dollars were deposited into your bank account

NET $/click is all you do know... and all you need to know. :2 cents:

Of course what matters is how much you bring home, but from experience I can say that that steal a load of bread a week and get away with it, will most often then try stealing 2 or 3 loaves a week and slowly bleed you dry.

It is interesting I heard 2 times in the past few weeks sponsors in hard goods offering GA. It sure as hell will offer more intelligence that any other sponsor stat program I have seen before.

:)

Okay, you test:

Site A vs B. (for shaving)
Site A vs B. (for conversion)

What's the difference? Only thing that matters is what you are actually testing. You can test oranges in a shop and call it testing apples, but whatever you call it, in reality you are testing oranges.

Testing shaving is almost totally out of your control, since you would need data, that you don't have and can't get.

I like grapes :)

It's obvious you are coming back from some time away. In 2014 you have very little chance of knowing who actually owns any particular program. In most cases the 'good guy' you think owns a program is just the face for a larger company that owns it and many others.

Pay attention to the only stats you can actually track. Dollars and Clicks.

Hope that helps :2 cents:

Choose sponsors with good reputations, who strike you as honest.

Do the occasional test join, if you like. I know I don't care if an affiliate wants to buy something on his or her refcode and most revshare programs won't mind.

Mostly, do the math on whether what you are doing is profitable and worthwhile.

Edit: Ya know, when you talk about getting back in the game, it is clear that you in fact do have a safe office job. You were name-calling in that other thread and acting like your office job gave you the judgmental right to force other people to live by your rules for them.

Most importantly, regarding this thread and that one, you are not just extremely risk averse, you are unusually loss averse. This means that you would actually rather spend $100,000 to have a $20,000 loss covered. It also probably means that entrepreneurship is not for you. Most successful entrepreneurs are risk neutral. If you view risk neutral as basically risk taking (which you do), then business is not going to be your thing.

Edit 2: 50

i like poo...

My advice is to choose a program that is really established in the biz with a proven track record.

Check us out, been in this game since 1996 .

See Sig

Great point.

Yessssss 60 pages here we go!

A) Getting back into ADULT, mostly hard goods with sending surfers to pay sites as an added bonus. I have been self employed since 2001. I have had 2 businesses prior to the point, each sold at a nice profit.

Mainstream, has been good to me. I work out of home offices in Boca Raton Florida, the Smoky Mountains and Long Island NY and go where ever the weather and fishing is better all year long.

B) I have been burned hard in the past and I am wise enough to cover as many bases as possible. I plan on working for maybe another 10 years and I am done having to work - without scaling back my lifestyle. Could do it sooner, choose not to.

C) People who I have trusted most in the past burned me the hardest. In one case a business partner and best friend of more than 30 years.

D) My risk tolerance lowers each day I am on this Earth as I am in my early 50's. At this point in my life I am more careful and I don't have to take chances.

I don't want a regular office and people under me along with the responsibility any longer, I just want to work at what I enjoy and get paid for what I do. My goal is to build things up now adult in order to flip them.

I do not want to chase people for money nor deal with scumbags who cheat, thus this thread.

It may sound crazy but I would rather make $10k in this with honest people that $100K with scumbags.

In the case of cam sites however, all run own affiliate program, merchant account and custom stuff. So the shaving-detection formula is? :)
What we do in our program it is to display in the affiliate stats all the usernames, free or paid, that are created. This way an affiliate can always make a few usernames himself here and there and see if all are counted.. let's say we shaved 1 every x, there is the risk we shaved the username made by the affiliate for testing, so we would be uncovered.

Won't be much good as the deviation is quite huge in here and you would need a shit load of data anyways (from different programs). Lets say 100 programs and a 1000 conversions per each, or 100 000 unique visitor view per program (landing page).

good thing I have popcorn ready... :):)

So to recap, using a 3rd party like CCbill is safer (not he best convertor though) and Google Analytical is not foolproof.

So let's hear that based upon the fact I am an affiliate, other than CCbill who I should be linking through to have the greatest chance of being paid what is due to me.

All that matters to you is which one gets you most money. Based purely on financial perspective, even a company that shaves is best, if it still produces you most. So, don't focus so much to billing companies, etc.

The only way to be 100% sure you are not shaved is to make your own site, do your own billing.

How to be sure a site you promote won't close it's affiliate program? You can't control other people's businesses or force them to stay in business if they choose not to be. Even if you really, really want to.

Aside from that, all you can do is pretend (like everyone else does) that no one shaves ever, and that everyone will stay in business forever, and test your results from different sources and optimize for the best ROI. Make sure you have control of your outbound links, and if you need to change something you don't have to dig through 1000's of pages of PHP to change links.

The best way is to split test and use $/impression (or secondarily $/click) to compare the performance of sponsors and track it over time. However for this to work you need past experience with them or sufficient volume to get a good data sample quickly. This isn't always possible. Also it tells you little about their longevity or if they will actually pay you in the future.

That said other factors are good too:

1. Pay attention to how the people who own the program act as well as their employees. If they are unprofessional, always defending scumbags and/or seem in a hurry to disparage affiliates then in my experience it's only a matter of time until they screw you. The forums are great for this. Also typically ass kissers are in a desperate financial situation. That is why they need to kiss someone's ass. They are hoping to stay afloat or get thrown a bone.

2. Pay attention to past performance in the industry. Some say you shouldn't look at this but really that is a sign to watch out for whoever is saying this. There is a reason banks use credit checks. Past performance often predicts future performance.

3. This ties in with #1 but it's a great idea these days to introduce yourself to a sponsor you plan on doing significant business with. See how they respond....or these days even if they respond. Non-responders tend to be on auto-pilot or they no longer are treating the affiliate side of the business as a priority. If they blow you off now the chances are great that they will blow you off in the future when times get tougher and payments are due.

4. Simple rule which tends to work very well with everything in my experience: Try to do business with people who actually need you. 9/10 you will be treated far better.

It's a little bit safer but to make any difference you have to know still what to watch out for. The sponsor cannot shave in the traditional way but there are other tricks they can use such as:

1. No credit for a certain biller in the cascade.
2. Affiliate traffic goes to one biller, type-ins to another non affiliate credit sponsor (in this case cookies basically become worthless)
3. Hardcoded In house affiliate IDs in the join form.

Honestly though if you are thinking about being a paysite affiliate the chances are you aren't going to have much choice per niche because conversions are nowhere near where they used to be and so many have left. If you find one sponsor in a niche these days which converts reasonably you would be lucky. Two or three doing so was somewhat rare even 2011ish.

Key thing I learned the hard way.

Switched everything I am doing to database driven link management porting through my own urls (no follow of course).

Nothing is forever. The most I want to be burned by from anyone if for a few weeks revenue.

Great advice signupdamnit.

Watching attitudes on the boards, on the phone and at trade shows is key.

I also want to add, look at employee turnover too.

If you don't have a a phone number, I will not be doing business with you (even though 98% of my communication is email).

A useful tidbit I have used over the years is to "street-view" prospective vendors and clients before I even communicate with them whenever possible.

This is a really good list. I would add to this to avoid companies with people who don't take responsibility for what happens on their watch e.g. people who have covered for previous shavers or thieves or who always say what happened to affiliates was not their fault.

When Globill went under, SpookyCash paid affiliates out of pocket and I was surprised at how many people just said it wasn't their fault and expected affiliates to promote a new program, after not getting paid.

I have no witch hunt going on. I trust to those with who I do business with, unless something comes up.

I have learnt that you can try to secure everything up, whether it's business partners, customers or whoever, but it's just fucking expensive, impractical and sometimes impossible. It is much more profitable to take a hit now and then, than to trying to secure everything, if that can even be done. You gotta have trust and faith.

Companies can't afford to shave anymore. They need your traffic. If you aren't making the money you think your traffic is worth send it elsewhere.

Afraid they will close up shop and not pay? Do research on who you work with. Fly out and tour their office. Get to know who you are doing business with.

CCBill will ensure you get paid for your signups and rebills, but if you are getting 50% of a $29.95 membership versus $40 on free trials, you could be making a lot less in the long run :2 cents:

I don't think so. In the long run nobody pays for the customers more than they are worth of. Unless you manage to milk companies backed by investors with deep pockets, and find new ones when the old ones go out of business or start paying less.

I got excited thinking this was going to be a beard grooming thread!

It's more often the big programs I find :2 cents:

If everybody would be cheating it would be very easy money. I would just need to file a bunch of lawsuits in US, and on the way to courtroom I will spill some mustard from my hotdog and I will sue the clueless hot dog stand owner too.

Many programs earn more than that per acquisition. They aren't basing their payouts on the value of a join, they are basing their payouts on the total value per acquisition. Exactly the same way you should be basing your traffic decisions on total Net $/click (not just the direct payout per pay period). If someone sends you traffic back, provides you other sources of income or brings you new connections worth money that ought to all be factored into the NET $/click equation.

Having said that (and what I said), there is one scenario in where paysite might pay more money for PPS, than they directly earn from that. Having your brand/ site known is very important part of business. In affiliate model initial exposure is free, as affiliates are only paid for customers, those come through their links and order within certain time frame/ session. Like affiliates do calculate the total value, so does paysites. Exposure, that materialises through brand recognition, type in traffic and google traffic, does produce value as well.

I have done basic advertising in magazines and newspapers (mainstream). You pay x-sum for the exposure. You can do it in affiliate model too.