Morning Folks!!
I first made a name for myself in the adult
business. I became a whistle blower of sorts. Through my testing I identified companies that were largely
in business to screw webmasters out of their earnings. In other cases I mediated many times between webmaster
and sponsor to work things out before they went public. Once they went public,
all bets were off. Once something goes public you can’t put it back in the box.
I can’t tell you how many companies went out of
business overnight or disappeared once they got caught. Once they got caught,
they would collapse within days. Any webmaster sending traffic would pull it
and the word would spread like wildfire. They would try and pop up under a new name and they got tracked down like hunted prey.
In adult, once you are found out to be a crook, it
comes crashing down no matter how big you are. Watched it too many times. I am
sure someone will post some of the folks that fell. So long ago, it is hard to
remember.
Point of this post is this is about to become a
problem again. As companies struggle to survive, it is YOU and ME that will keep them
in business. The easiest one to target is the webmaster or domainer that sends traffic. The easiest one to shave or not pay at all. Shave? You don’t know what “Shaving”
is? Let me cut to the chase, if your earnings were not being “Shaved” over the
years, you would have enough to pay off everything you owe and still have more
money left over than cash you have on hand. In other words, you can’t talk
about “Shaving” but it surely exists.
But I have gotten off the main subject. The point
is that the crooks outnumber the legit guys by a very wide margin. Some may
disagree. I know better. I test. I retest. I know things they don’t even know
because I understand numbers and they don’t. They leave footprints and other clues when they
bastardize the numbers by cheating you. Even some of the affiliate managers may not know what the site owner is doing.
So as you look for new solutions, also look for
crooks. Problem is when most find a crook they don’t say anything. When I found
a crook, I exposed them. Let them deal with the mess. Not my problem. That’s
the crap you just have to live with when you are a crook.
So as you venture into CPA, Commsssion based programs, Lead Generation and
other ways to monetize your traffic, MANY WILL SCREW YOU! That’s a fact folks!
Only the naïve don’t believe it, don’t see it or don’t want to see it. Sometimes it is more overt. They
just make an excuse not to pay you. Not to pay you AFTER you did your part and
sent them traffic. So in the early days folks knew if they were getting screwed
to come to me and I would investigate things. Most of the time I was able to
get resolution behind the scenes. But when that failed, it went public and
since the crooks always lost, I gained some friends and a reputation for
getting webmasters the money that was owed them. The boards are very
unforgiving when somebody gets screwed. Usually the public outburst lead to
others coming forward with similar stories. Then they either pay or fold.
Not much in between. However some still survive to this day. They just prey on
folks that don’t know better.
But it was
this treatment and problems that lead to the rise and popularity of PPC. It
largely took that crap off the table. There was finally some consistency.
Payouts would fluctuate but did not have the swings you had to deal with when
you employed other solutions. They have provided a platform to park, host and
monetize those domains. What that does is free up your time to develop or do
whatever you want to do.
The reason
for this post is with PPC payouts as low as they are we begin to look for
alternate methods to monetize. My suggestion, get paid first! Have a relationship BEFORE you send your traffic. You will hear
every excuse in the world or accusation. Be prepared. Be prepared not to get
what you think you earned. Be prepared for some to just disappear. Be prepared to
suffer losses you did not worry about with PPC.
And when
you get hammered by somebody, make sure you share your story so others don’t
have to get screwed and you don’t keep making these crooks more and more money. Making it public becomes your last and only option. But making it public forces them to make things right or it is over for them. Plain and simple. Done! Also share the stories of the good merchants that have done you right. This helps to squeeze out all those that would cheat and deceive you, me and everyone.
Have a story? Did you not get paid for traffic sent? Please post your story so others understand the power of what I am saying. So others understand the mine field we are about to go through. So others understand that this has been a very big problem in the past and a much bigger one to come in the future.
Have a
GREAT Day!
Rick
Schwartz
Anthony
Rick my experience bears out everything you stated … shaving is the norm and even the biggest companies do this evil when they proclaim otherwise. Another practice is to make someone a poster boy of their success in order to sucker in more affiliates that will not get their true earnings.
Anthony
Aron - XF.com
Gotta love it when you check your affiliate account and $100 that WAS there yesterday has mysteriously disappeared for whatever reason.
Happens all the time over here.
Chris
Generally quite pissed-off with most affiliate/CPA programs iv’e tried, just dont trust them, how can it be that 100+ thousand ad impressions a month and between 10 and 30 click throughs doesn’t generate a single sale on one of my affiliate accounts? iv’e tried several and they are all crap in my view,its about time we named and shamed these companies.
Farid Mammadov
This is true. The companies are shaving us. And they will continue to shave us. But if we become united and start dictate our conditions then the game will change in our favor. We should say to companies: Do you need our domain traffic? Then let’s discuss the price for traffic. We have to sell our traffic instead of been paid some cents from the companies. I see it this way.
rippedoffafewtimes
Very hard to figure out when they are shaving. Not only are cpa and affiliate programs screwing us but what about”webdesigners” that promise, promise, promise and never deliver anything of value. There should be a”Hall or Wall of Shame” with all of the info posted. Most of us just sit and take it. There is a Federal FBI site that you can file a complaint at for outright internet fraud IC3.gov . Good on you for calling them out. Thanks again.
Best.
Steve C
I have had no choice but to bring my parking in house. I, like Rick, test alot. The patterns of abuse are clearly there.
Kind of off topic but related to how weird it is getting. I am a big affiliate of a ticket broker on one of my college sports sites. They moved their affiliate program to CJ. I went over there created an account and signed up. I was rejected because too many people have signed up who had no record of sales and the person keeping the gate did not know or checdk to see who I was.
The effect was to loose a big market share including the others that head the same problem.
That’s the affiliate market that is dependent on PPC. A house built on sand.
.02 worth
stevec
Steve C
I have had some weird experiences at parking. 770 names, 10.00 a month?
Since we have a software company and a data center we manage the servers in we can produce accurated data on this issue. We are bringing our parking in house, one name at the time and building out mini sites.
WAND was supposed to help but was largely ignored.
I hope you are also aware that anyone that has access to your server, like in a data center, then they have access to your server logs and can find out how your market works. Don’t host on servers where you do not control access.
The same with services that monitor you site performance.
It’s the little things like shaving and misuse of logs that are taking away a little at the time.
.04 worth
steve
Albert
Rick,
Hope all is well! Keep up the great work! Watchdogs like you and this blog will keep the industry in check!