Is There A Likelihood...?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by housekeeper

The long and short of it is I'm seeing significant 'join hits', but no sales. ... Just curious, is anyone is noticing any similar situation to where you feel your traffic or promotions should be converting but they're not.

Take a close look at the specific sponsors where you're seeing lots of join page hits but not actual joins. See if they're using a two-step signup where they ask the surfer to enter not only their choice for a username and password on the first of the two join pages, but also their email address.

If that's the case, then it may be that a lot of your potential signups are in fact signing up, but only later on, when they receive a follow-up email from the sponsor. The email may even have a discount price offer since the surfer didn't jump at the full price the first time.

Of course that email will have a link to the paysite that contains the sponsor's own affiliate code, but that's just for the sponsor's "internal tracking purposes" and the fact that it overrides the cookie you set with that surfer earlier is just an unhappy coincidence. But one that does result in you getting no credit for the signup.

So visit those sponsors and if any of them do use that kind of two-step join form, go ahead and enter an email you can track* so you can see what else they do with that email address later on. Don't finish the signup process and then see if you start getting emails from the sponsor and if those emails have links with affiliate codes that aren't yours. Also see what other emails you eventually receive at that tracking address so you'll know what else is being offered to the traffic you're sending to those tours.


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* a trackable email address is one that, for example, might have the sponsor's or paysite's name before the @ sign and will go to one of your domains that has a catchall email option, so that anything sent to that domain will be delivered to specific email box you've selected. For instance, for a sponsor named ShaveFreePorn.com and a paysite called WeOnlyShaveSluts.com, you might enter an email address like shavefree-shavesluts@yourdomain.com and then all those emails would wind up in your webmaster@yourdomain.com box or whatever catchall address you chose.