Quote:
Originally Posted by signupdamnit
I'm with you on this. Actually you don't even have to go to the realm of the hidden to see that some programs aren't giving you a fair deal. Cams is typically the worse of the two. There are so many shenanigans...
{snip}
I did some work with both cams and dating but I don't believe I'm getting the revenue I actually generated (for the most part).
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Exactly. That was my precise experience. As a fairly new affiliate many years ago, I figured out that these programs were jerking me around long before I started understanding all the nuances of exactly how, and so I stopped promoting them. Stocktrader, that's why I was a little bit sarcastic when you stated the obvious. It's true that I don't know how to promote cams and dating "properly" -- because I realized a long time ago that these programs don't treat their affiliates fairly. At the end of the day I wasn't getting a payday for my traffic, and there were endless threads with information like signupdamnit has provided making it clear to the discerning eye why I likely never
would.
In any case,the business of "how they are promoted" is a red herring when we're talking about an apples-to-apples comparison of banner advertising on the same sites, comparing affiliate banners to sponsor-purchased banners. Obviously there are better ways to sell the product if that's what I want to sell, but given my traffic sources, the banner inventory has always been something I need to monetize as best I can, regardless of what else I may also be doing.
Stocktrader, I'm trying to work my head around the math of your suggestion that it's perfectly normal for a company to be paying a high multiple of a customer's annual expected value in order to acquire a new customer. That part is right and fits what I know of mainstream business practice as well, where new customer acquisition cost metrics are closely tracked. But then you say "They don't do this with their affiliate programs because they don't have to" and that's where we differ. They
do have to, they just don't have to do it up front, they get to wait until the money actually comes in. It's when they try to avoid this obligation that they lose me as a potential affiliate.
I'm a revshare affiliate. It's my expectation -- my
demand -- that a program pay me a fixed and fair percentage of what they actually make off a customer they acquire through me for the lifetime of that customer. So, when I see them paying a premium to acquire new customers through my traffic sources that far exceeds anything they ever paid me for the actual customers I sent them, I can only conclude -- and in this I am strongly backed by all the well-known jiggery-pokery practices they use in their affiliate accounting -- that they are not dealing fairly with affiliates.