Lead Shaving

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thekempo

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Jul 26, 2007
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I signed up for a network and started advertising an offer. Everything started off great, I was getting a lot of clicks and conversions.

I made some money, 'n took a break for reasons until recently, then I started again. Suddenly the conversions aren't anywhere near as good as they were before. The thing is, I'm almost 95% certain I'm getting more conversions than the network is listing. Due to the way I get sign up's, I can be pretty certain of that.

I talked to an experienced affiliate marketer who is a friend of mine, and he told me about lead shaving. I'd never heard of it before, but after he said I'm pretty sure that's what it is.

Is there anyway to track leads? Do the majority of networks do this?

Thanks to anyone who can help. It seems like there's a lot of bullshit in the affiliate marketing game, at least from what I've seen so far.
 


Alot of offers shave. Sometimes network side, sometimes advertiser side...it's just part of the game. Why should an advertiser pay you for data they already have?

If you feel that you're being cheated, however, you should definitely get a tracking tool to help confirm your numbers.
 
Is there anything I can do to somehow stop them doing it? My friend said they'd just deny it to death.

Thanks for your reply by the way.
 
No network around will ever admit to shaving simply because it would completely destroy their credibility. That's not to say that certain networks don't do it, as while I don't have proof of anything events like this do happen fairly often in this industry. Aside from running offers from a network that you trust and have a good relationship with, the only other way to really monitor your conversions is to install conversion tracking.

Most AM's won't have a problem letting you upload your own tracking pixels so long as you aren't wasting their time. Sometimes affiliates will come and tell me that they've had XX converions today and I won't even be aware of it since I haven't refreshed my stats, but sure enough they're there.
 
So if you have this software and say I got X amount of conversions and then tell the affiliate network...what do they do? Do they then come back and say Yes but the advertiser already had those leads. Or do they usually pay you anyways cause now you have the software to back yourself up?

This is what I don't undertand, what are the rules here? I can understand an advertiser not liking having to pay you for leads they already have but isn't that part of the deal? I thought it was, I bring you a lead, if the lead does everything it's supposed to do (aka converts) you pay me, period. Then if the advertiser doesn't like your leads they can drop you.
 
turbolapp said:
but isn't that part of the deal? I thought it was, I bring you a lead, if the lead does everything it's supposed to do (aka converts) you pay me, period. Then if the advertiser doesn't like your leads they can drop you.
Click to expand...

This is what I thought too. I'm not paying PPC out my pocket for guesswork here. You either pay me for what you tell me to do, or alert me ahead of time so I can steer clear.
 
There really are two completely separate actions being discussed in this thread. Shaving and scrubbing. Although the end result is very similar (lowered conversions), the reasons are significantly different. Briefly:

Real-time scrubbing: A merchant validates the surfer data real-time and counts a lead only if it passes all of the validations. You might see conversions go down month-to-month if a merchant adds new validations that are important to their business model (i.e. we can no longer accept leads from Alaska, because we cannot resell them to anyone). However, you should not see leads get reversed once they've been credit to you.

Delayed scrubbing: A merchant validates as much as they can real time, but cannot validate everything at that time. So you might get a lead credited to you, but reversed a couple of days later. This typically applies to higher CPA campaigns that require credit cards. For example, if someone had purchased a satellite dish system on Monday, you'd get the lead credited to you on Monday. But if they called and cancelled their order on Wednesday, the merchant would go ahead and reverse the lead.

Scrubbing is legimate and happens across the board on all campaigns as it is a reflection of a merchant's evolving business model.

Shaving: A merchant (or network for that matter) find themselves in a position where they are not meeting their revenue targets, so they put code in place to RANDOMLY not credit leads to an affiliate or RANDOMLY reverse the leads already credited.

This is extremely shady (fraudulent actually) and no merchant or network would risk their good reputation to do this.
 
Nice post, MaxSteve. There is a difference between scrubbing and shaving, but I think you already covered it pretty well. As a side note, zip/email submits are notorious for scrubbing.
 
MyOwnDemon said:
Nice post, MaxSteve. There is a difference between scrubbing and shaving, but I think you already covered it pretty well. As a side note, zip/email submits are notorious for scrubbing.
Click to expand...
That's because over the last year hundreds of millions of e-mail addresses have been collected and stored in DB's.
 
I just ran something a minute ago, and the conversion was more like what I was originally getting, so I'm pretty pleased about that. I'd still like to track it myself though.

Is there any reputable software around so that I can track it myself, I would have a look, but you're all more knowledgeable than me, so I'd like your opinion on this.

I appreciate the replies everyone.
 
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