shave me
 

ok, is there a program out there where shaving does not occur. seriously.

http://hairy.amkingdom.com/02/ |couch|

sorry, couldn't resist :)

Fonz, you know better :)
You would actually be surprised how few sponsors actually shave. Feel free to use any listing on this site if you are worried.

We don't shave, so hit me up if you're interested in using a sponsor that does not shave!!

I can't say for sure, but I seriously doubt cybernetbucks.com shaves. I've had great experience with them. I'm sure there are many honest ones out there that value their name and reputation long term.

If there's a shaving command in the ccbill admin, I'm buggered if I can find it LOL

That doesn't read like a very professional sponsor-type statement, does it?

Perhaps I should rephrase it and say: We here at Purple Dollars are fine upstanding members of the webmaster community and would never cheat our webmasters because:
a. We're too nice for that sort of shenanigans,
b. Our processor does not allow us to shave :D

what does "shaving" mean?

Shaving is when sponsors do not count all sales. So you made 4 sales but they only show 3 and pay you for 3 only. The thing is contrary to popular belief shaving is VERY rare.

Really when you think about it. If a program got caught shaving (it has happened) they would be done in this biz. Is it worth it? Losing everything to make a little extra money? I can't how it would be.

its when you get a little older and you get hair growing on your face you have to buy a razor and some foamy cream and cut the hairs off :)


sorry couldnt resist

I can only pray Ill never have hairs on my face! or hanging out of my ears growing out of my eyebrows or anything like that. (then Id never get laid!)

I've known some people in this industry who swear up and down that shaving happens, happens often and you gotta live with it. I've never seen any proof though myself.

what about the scrub?

That's not shaving and is not controlled by the pay sites. Scrubbing is done by the credit card processors.

Every CC transaction comes with some risk because after approval the card owner can deny the charge (sometimes for valid reasons sometimes not). Each week, month, quarter, etc. the processor can only take on so much risk for rejected transactions. If during one of those periods they have a high number of bad transactions they have to be more careful and start scrutinizing each transaction a bit more. When this happens they start denying a higher percentage of perfectly good transactions.

This process is known as scrubbing and it is controlled only by the the processing companies and the credit card companies.

Program owners have no control or even influence over scrubbing.

Most accusations about shaving based on conversions simply don't have enough data points to be statistically valid. There's just way too many variables involved that people forget about.

I usually shave, then scrub. Shaving in itself won't make those pesky buggers go away. I'm itchy just thinking about it.

I only shave my feet, especially their soles, so that my steel toed construction boots are more comfortable to dance in.

if you are too fanatic about shaving, I would go for the 3rd party between you and the sponsor -> use CCbill sponsors, VXS, Paycom, etc.

I'm rather less than 100% convinced of that but in the absence of clear proof, I'll abstain from pointing specific fingers.

BUT... the shaving (in general, not talking about specific sponsors - yet) isn't always found on the sales side, but with actual hits to FHGs themselves. The best way to determine this is by clearing your browser cache, and then clicking through to tours and signup pages from your own FHGs. (Use FHGs for sites you don't have actually listed anywhere and just add your affiliate code to 'em so you'll know it was your clicks). You'd be surprised at the number of sponsors that simply don't count the hits at all, which leads to the suspicion that they wouldn't count the sale either if there was one. It's certainly not true of all sponsors, but I'd guess that at least 50% of 'em shave some tour hits.

This isnt 'shaving' as defined and accepted by the majority of webmasters. Different programs count uniques in different ways - some Raw, some 1st page, 2nd page, join page, etc with different criteria. For example, we count only 24 hour rolling unique IPs to the front end. So, what appears as 'shaving uniques' is most often a case of not counting raw hits. Does this affect ratios? Yes, but it is a more clear indication of efficiency since it reflects (within the limitations of IPs) how many unique individuals visit a site in a given 24 hour period and subsequently join.

In your case above, if the sponsor didnt count raw hits to the gallery, visiting the gallery yourself over and over within a certain time period would only count 1 unique - which is completely reflective of the reality.

You can shave with a CCBILL program as easy as any other program you like... it's not difficult at all. Slow down and think for a minute how it works, and what potential there is, and you will see... it would not be hard for a sponsor to shave any percentage they like off of CCBill sites.

The method got explained to me about 3 or 4 years ago, and to my knowledge, has not been fixed because it cannot be fixed.

Alex

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

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..

I'm talking about clearing all cookies and caches, then sending 1 hit to a specific site, clicked though all the way to the signup page. 24 hours later, these sponsors would still show zero hits for that day for that site. A fairly common occurance by my experimentation.

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.....

lassiter, the "unique" visit isn't usually measured by your cookie, but often by IP address or other information to track apparent individuals. Merely clearing your cache and your cookie will not always create a unique impression.

Alex

Yes, I see your point. I'd just add that in many cases there are both "raw" and "unique" columns on the stats page, and the tour/signup page hits don't show up in the "raw" columns either.

First - as far as the definition of shaving - Steve has a good point that what most of us from the "old school" would consider shaving is very possibly different than what someone newer to the biz might think is a shave
A real good example is what a "newer" Wm confronted me with at a show - he said that while the sponsor was tracking hits to the site ok, and paying him for signups to that site just fine - he wasnt getting a cut on the sales generated from the little checkbox on the join form that sponsors use (usually pre-checked and known as a cross-sale).
And of course the sponsor had in black and white in their terms and conditions that they did not pay their affiliates for these sales - which I wouldnt expect them to knowing that this where sponsors get a good percentage of their overhead taken care of - it just baffled the WM though

As far as CCBill - there are quite a few programs out there that rely on the fact that since they are using a middleman you will expect things to be on the up and up - something I learned from another WM here - that I should have known but didnt take the time to look at - was that each sponsor can set the number of rebills that get credited to the refferring WM and how much gets credited over time - although you would think that programs advertising rebills at 60% would pay that for the life of the surfer - it might be worthwhile checking that in your ccbill stats to see how long you really get rebills for - I was amazed to see one program had it set for 1 rebill and another that had it set for no rebills.

As Alex also pointed out - it really doesnt matter whether a program uses CCbill or any other software out there - and I dont care what any rep or even owner of an affiliate software company says - if a sponsor "wants" to shave - they can - just depends on how much they are willing to spend towards accomplishing that shave.

With us, if an affiliates trial to full member conversion is truly terrible, we kick them to revshare only to spread the risk.

Well there you go, you learn something new every day! Well, I'll just go and adjust that, shall I...

Ooh, did I say that out loud?

:D

We don't shave. We're nice. Our rebills, like diamonds, are forever.

Damn, I should be in advertising.

|bananna|

The only thing I shave is my pussy ;)

And I don't. SIG POST! SIG POST! Promote me!

It all adds up.

Say a program with 10 sites gets 100 sales.

90 @ 4.95 = 445.50
10 @ 29.95 = 299.50

for a total of 745.00

If 90% are pps @ 30.00 they payout 2,700.00, which is a big nut to crack along with paying for updates and payroll, hosting, promotion...etc.

Of course they get conversions and rebills and some income from exit traffic.

Programs can also "shave" through issuing false credits that appear to rescind an otherwise seemingly legit sale.

This falls under the "one for you, one for me, two for you and one two for me" method of shaving.

Third party processors like CCbill, or DHD - who we use - have a strong incentive to prevent shaving of this sort since they make more money on the affiliate webmaster earning their fair share.

Any program worth its weight in honesty - (cough cough, ahem, like us) - would allow affiliates to conduct audits of their system. If you want to find out if your program is shaving or not then see what happens when you ask to see the books.

I believe unfortunately that shaving is a lot more prevelant than many folks realize.

I agree but usually I think these have more to do with webmasters not reading the terms and conditions closely enough. Certainly if the sponsor says how or if they pay on rebills and/or cross sells should be clearly laid out. Only if it is not spelled out and the sponsor is taking advantage of those rev streams would I consider it shaving - and by that I mean in the classic, as in old school, sense of the term as well.

true revshare program will set cookies to unlimited time.. so even if your surfer visit site directly after a year you will get credit..

most of pps sponsers dont sent cookies at all.. or set it maybe for real short period of time..

this means you will never get credit for sales which happen next day after 1st click etc etc.. so i guess they get lots of "direct" sales.

and dont forget about upsells etc ;)

there's a lot of ways to make money on your surfers.

sponsor will never pay more then what he earns himself ;)

Aww cmon

don't be such Sheep

they all shave, think about how easy it is
you check your stats they grab your ip which comes from some Isp in Texas

so they know they are safe keeping all traffic from New Jersey or Germany

think about it... if your making 2000 dollars a month and they shave you 20%
that's 400 dollars a month
that's a BMW

do you think they are gonna give that up for someone they don't know

They are gonna think everyone else is doing it and they have to stay competitive

and how many afflilates are probably cheating them

Ding...ding...ding!

We have a WINNER! :D

Most major PPS sponsors use PHP session tracking which works a whole lot better than cookie tracking. There are too many cookie blocking systems out there now.

Also if I send the same surfer to the paysite a few days after you and they signup, I figure that I was the one who actually convinced them and should get credit. Otherwise the major traffic pumps like AL4a, World Sex, The Hun could set a gadzillion permanent cookies and nobody would get credit.

That is absurd. Go back to GFY where they will give you a tinfoil hat for free.

LOL. You think its worth the risk for $400? Why would any program shave some little affiliate who sends 75 joins a month and risk your company's credibility and lose the guy who sends you 2500 joins a month?!??

Large programs think in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars per month.. not pocket change, and you dont risk a business of that scale by knowingly defrauding your affiliates.