Signups only paid if surfer stays 4+ hours
 

I signed up to a sponsor this morning, but now I've looked more closely at their terms and conditions, I'm reconsidering whether I should promote them.

Their terms said:

"[Sponsor name] will pay the Webmaster $35 per sign up referred, as soon as this is not cancelled within the following 4 hours after the registration, and an access is confirmed, within the same period, to the selected content."

Now, I can understand why they would do this, as they don't want to pay me $35 when the surfer has just paid $2 and bogged off again...

BUT I have to say, after going to all the effort of pre-selling the surfer and getting them to to the tour and eager to sign up, it's not my problem if they don't stay for more than four hours. I did my job...

Do other companies use this "minimum time before cancellation" thing?

Do you think it's fair?

Not my fault if their member's area sucks.

Move on…

I agree. It's up to the sponsors to convert and retain customers. We should be paid for holding up our end of the deal.

ugh, 4 hours?!? This is why I choose my sponsors wisely, and promote sites that i myself would sign up for. 4 hours... most of my surfers that rebill, rebill for 4 months or more! ive even had a few that have been rebilling for over 2 years at ATK, they seriously need to look at their shitty members area and see why people wouldnt stay 4 hours...

sounds like an easy excuse to shave your sales to me! I would not go with that sponsor.

cheers ,
Luke

Hmmm.....that's really shitty. I guess I need to start reading more TOS before I sign up. :(

hmm
 

I didnt even think of that Luke, they could easily shave (even when its a valid, recurring member) and just give the excuse "They didnt stay for 4 hours".

|angry|

and the sponsor is...??

They dont have to stay for 4 hours, they just have to login within 4 hours of purchasing a membership. Thats what I understood.

What sponsor is this?

Well, the sponsor is a board sponsor so I'm not sure if I can name them.

I'm now going to check the terms of several of my other sponsors to make sure this doesn't appear elsewhere.

Sean, there's two conditions - one is they have to login within that first 4 hours, and they other is that they can't cancel in that time.

I guess my title implied they had to be logged in and looking at porn for more than 4 hours. I don't think any sponsor requires that kind of stamina LOL

hehe, that would be impressive stamina, but no, it was this comment that made me think it needed to be cleared up.

The four hours only applies to the PPS links, you could always use the revshare links where at least you'll get a cut out of whatever money the surfer can be convincd to part with.

they wont pay you a dime but they collected this guy email....

I think Nasty Dollars does something like that. It's just to save the agro of crediting you for chargebacks, refunds and dodgy cards. Actually I suspect that most sponsors do it - it's just that some are upfront about it.

Damn! I know who the sponsor is! I had this problem with them and I was told I got no payout because I cancelled my test signup like 15 mins after signing up. I the fact that I didn't read the TOS!

Here are the terms that are being debated. I've hidden the programs identity with the clever use of 'GABBO'.

I'm pretty wishy-washy on this subject. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but at the same time, I don't push enough traffic to notice whether or not something like this is hurting me. I would assume that, under normal circumstances, most surfers would immediately login after registration and most wouldn't cancel with 4 hours. But someone looking to just get inside and rip the site would cancel that soon. A site would have to really suck balls for a typical surfer to cancel the quickly.

I can see why the sponsor would want such a condition, but as an affiliate I'd want email notifications of both sign-ups and cancellations that included the actual time of the transactions.

Gee, does any sponsor actually provide that info? I'm grateful if they will let me know the actual referring URL that the signup came from.

I would think the 4 hour thing is so webmaster scammers dont just go around signing up for trials and canceling right away, but still get paid PPS.

ronnie

CCbill provides that info to affiliates for sign-ups, but not for cancels. I can see when a rebill is no longer pending, but I don't get email notification of the cancellation nor the time/date of the cancellation. They also don't support the "4 hour rule" so it's not an issue.

There is a lot of seasoned surfers out there who join a trial, try to dump the entire members area content to their hard drives, then cancels.

Personally, I'm not familiar with the sponsor in question, but I can certainly see it as a legitimate attempt to combat the huge losses by paying out $30+ for what amounts to be just a leech..

I'd prefer that to be classified as a "Pay Per Active", than a "Pay Per Signup".

It seems to me that while this policy may make business sense for the sponsor, like some sponsors deduct chargebacks from the webmaster's commisions, the webmaster has sent a sale and it's up to the sponsor to retain the surfer for more than 4 hours. If the surfer cancels within 4 hours it should be part of their business expenses. I don't know how many other sponsors have this in their terms, but since they put it in theirs maybe there's a problem with cancellations within 4 hours? Plus if there's a serious problem with downloading huge quantities during trials, the trials can be setup to only offer limited content.

I doubt many (if any) of your surfers signup, never login, and then cancel within 4 hours.

Does anyone who runs their own paysite with CCbill or similar revshare billing ever see this happen?

The sponsor is just being upfront about what constitutes a scam signup to them imho... I would assume most PPS signup programs would not pay you if they detected that same thing happening. Probably by closing your account and refusing to even speak to you... they just don't declare it in the TOS so clearly.

I get several signups where the cancellation is under 4 hours from the time of sale. Not the majority, by any means, but enough of them that I wouldn't want to promote a sponsor that used that policy.

It's my job to make the sale. Whether they stay a member 60 seconds or 60 months is not my problem.