Jesus Christ.. this whining fest topic again?! I remember giving a pretty good breakdown of how the game works for almost all sides involved and why you dopes who complain so much shouldn't always point fingers at the networks or advertisers because the fact is, everyone is to blame at some point.
The short story to all of this is that no industry is perfect or honest, because when the name of the game is "who can make as much cash as quickly as possible" there will always be a few people on each side trying to make a lil more cash than the other guy and coming up with all sorts of creative ways just to make that extra buck. Sometimes it pays off, but usually it doesn't, especially in a longterm plan.
A lot of advertisers shave. This is very true in our industry. Some of them may not even realize they are doing it because they are following a protocol that was standard in say infomercial advertising or mail-order, etc. Obviously our rules are different, and since there are pretty much no rules or regulations to follow, everyone just does what they think is good for their business. Simple as that.
The advertisers that do know what they are doing, in terms of shaving, are almost always going to give you some obvious bullshit excuse and try to make it sound legitimate. If they are only shaving a little, most networks just let it slide, especially if the offer is converting well and the advertiser pays on time, you know, just the cost of doing business. For the advertisers who shave a lot or are brand new to that network, typically it doesn't take very long until that advertiser is kicked out of the network or if the network is really leniant, they just cap them and keep a real close eye on them. Don't blame the networks, because they have to constantly deal with asshole advertisers who try and fuck them over by not paying at all or delaying payment for months but still demand lots more leads or sales. But that's a whole 'nother story and I'm sure plenty of network owners here can shed light on that fuck fest at another time.
Another reason why advertisers have begun to shave a bit more lately is because affiliates put a lot of stress on the networks to pay them weekly or threaten to just jump ship to another network instead. Thus causing the advertiser to be able to float a significant amount of cash before they are able to go over the results of the campaign in a timely fashion that they are used to. So they probably figure "Well, if we have to pay you fuckers $300k a week after only 7 days from when the leads/trial sales came in, then we're going to cover our ass just a bit and skim a few points off the top just in case the quality sucks" -- Not a bad way to justify it either.
As an advertiser, you've also got a shitload of affiliates/networks constantly demanding that their leads are "quality". Just because they use quality traffic sources such as Adwords, MSN or Yahoo for PPC and media buys through MSN, AOL or whoever else doesn't mean that the traffic is quality, it just means that the sources are legit. I mean seriously now, how the fuck can any affiliate prove that the traffic really does result in quality customers that convert from trial to paid member? For all we know, there are 50,000 pedophiles that decided to converge onto AOL's properties for a month straight and click and fill out every fucking advertisement they see, you know, just to get back at society for hating them so much.
I mean, while that scenario is highly unlikely and all, how do you guys know that quality people are buying into this shit and won't just go onto ripoffreport or something and whine and bitch about how the trial they opted into is now stealing money from their bank account every month, magically of course! You don't know, so enough of this "I send quality leads" bullshit, because you don't know unless you get to see the data from the advertisers (which I think we may have to someday get to that point, where the advertisers and networks are scrutinized and have to show data reports to affiliates or risk losing that "quality traffic" stream altogether) -- But hopefully that doesn't happen anytime soon. It will though if everyone insists on continuing to fuck eachother left and right so rampantly without think and taking into concideration about the longterm effects or the ripple effects that are caused when each different side and component continue with their bullshit!
See, as an advertiser myself, I was a pissed off affiliate for a very long time. No matter what happened, I was always getting fucked. You'd think that being the owner of a forum like WickedFire that wouldn't happen to you, but it did, all the fuckin time! Even as a huge affiliate, still got fucked over by networks and advertisers. SO, I decided to do something about it. Instead I said fuck this, took on a trusted partner who is also a super duper fuckin affiliate himself and we made our own offers. But we took it a step further. Instead of being an idiot advertiser like the rest, we depend on ourselves, our connections, our credit, and our expertise on ALWAYS getting 95% of the traffic to our offers IN-HOUSE. The remaining 5% we get from networks that we trust. We also decided from the beginning to ALWAYS be 100% FTC compliant with our offer LP's so we don't have to encounter any legal issues from the feds. We did lots of other shit that no advertiser would ever do because they all claimed "it was bad for profits", but we knew it worked, and didn't have a problem spending more cash than the other guys to play it safe. Because we're in it for the long haul. We're not the highest paying advertiser either, nor are we the highest converting, but we sure as hell are the safest bet to go with and well on our way to become one of the largest ex-affiliates to become advertisers in the shortest amount of time, but thats because I have a giant cock and I'm just cool like that.
Sooooooo... with all of that said.. this thread, like the others bitching about god knows what or why this or that happens or how you're always getting fucked solves.. NOTHING. If you're getting fucked, how about you change the scenario so that, yes this is a crazy idea, YOU DON'T GET FUCKED ANYMORE! Bottom line, this industry is going to be going through some major changes in the next 1-2 years. The question is are you strong enough to survive and continue on, and work out the problems you're having now or just whither away with the masses?
Bye.
