shave me

[RawAlex]

As for shaving in general, it happens at many points along the process and for different reasons.

"pure" shaving is just not creditting sales to your account. 1 for me, 1 for you... A program paying $30 a sale underreporting by 10% would certain see a big difference in their bottom line for operations.

Some programs also shave certain types of sales (backup processors, check sales, or whatever) as a known part of their program. In reality this is not a shave, just part of the terms and conditions you might not have read.

Some programs "shave" by putting links off their tour pages that don't pay you, or collect email addresses or whatever without paying you for the surfer. This is becoming less of an issue as mail programs have sort of died out due to can-spam rules.

The current shaving I see the most is "hit shaving" and "conversion improvement" shaving. Counting only 2nd page, join page, or similar hits and then reporting your sales ratios based on this. I track every single hit I send to sponsors, and I can tell you some of them don't count for shit, often requiring the surfer to go 2 or more pages into a tour to count as a hit. I think programs do this mostly to make their sales rations look better than they would otherwise. Most major programs these days will display sales based on unique clicks rather than raw clicks.

The other current popular shave is the "foreign traffic skim". Basically, surfers from certain countries never even make it to the tour, and are instead redirected to console hell, dialer downloads, or fluffed off to traffic trades. You get no credit for the hit, no chance to make the sale,and no benefit from the surfer. This is the hardest skim of all to keep track of, because you would have to spoof IP and other variables to see the end results. Programs like SPAcash openly redirect surfers based on IP to different tours, it isn't hard to picture programs using similar technology to other ends (and note, this isn't a comment on SPACash... I don't like their geo stuff, but I don't even suggest that they skim or do anything of the like... they are an honest program based on what I know!).

Good luck....

Alex

[plateman]

I think sponsors shave, they gotta shave a PPS program, what happens when most of the sales for a month or 2 are all 4.95 trials and hardly any convert to a full sale ? would you want all your money you had saved up to be gone..

Plus greed has to come in, and as mentioned if they only shave 10% of sales, thats a lot of money in a month..

plus now think about it, say you had a program and if you shaved a little a month you could make 10k more a month and if you didnt shave you only make 6k a month being honest... Thats a hell of a lot of temptation.. right ?

the thing is nobody can or will prove that a sponsor is shaving from a webmaster side of things..

So another question how many program workers have ever left a program on bad terms and showed the webmaster public that they shaved with proof...

So really I think very few sponsors shave sales because the risk is to high..

[Maj. Stress]

Originally Posted by plateman

I think sponsors shave, they gotta shave a PPS program, what happens when most of the sales for a month or 2 are all 4.95 trials and hardly any convert to a full sale ? would you want all your money you had saved up to be gone..

I'm sure some sponsors do shave. I've seen them openly admit it on another board a few years ago.
A good sponsor really does not have to shave if they are smart. I'm not that brilliant and do not run a paysite but I do see some moneymaking opportunities that they have to increase their bottom line. Upsells inside the member area.
Offering bonus sites when a member wants to cancel their membership.
Offering a bonus site for a single $ on initial sign up that rebills full price.
The obvious: console sales

I'm sure there are hundreds of hooks I have not even imagined.

With the cc processing the way it is nowadays you do have to wonder wtf is going on sometimes tho.....