shaving

We all know cpa companies shave, but how much? I decided to run a little experiment to find out. I chose 5 simple email submits from 5 different networks, each from unrelated advertisers. I put them on a landing page and promoted it for a week so it was receiving steady traffic and conversions.

I then selected 20 trustworthy people that I know, all adults, educated people who never filled out a CPA offer in their lives. I asked them to test my website for me and gave very specific instructions...they were each to fill out one of the five offers each day for five days. They used their real info, confirmed their email addresses when required, and logged in to the websites when applicable.

I had them send me proof such as URL of page after submitting, user names, passwords, etc., and asked for all of their IP addresses from whatsmyip.org so I could see how many of the conversions registered on my snapshot.

I waited an additional 5 days after their submissions to allow for tracking delays on the network's end.

Out of 100 fully completed offers from real people, people who live in California, Boston and everywhere in between. Not microworkers, not freelancers using proxies, not incentivized "guaranteed sign-ups" workers, real normal human beings that I know well (not even relatives), I got 37 recorded and accepted conversions.

That's a breathtaking 63% failure rate.

If you ever feel a twinge of guilt for using BH methods, remember this thread, get your head straight, and go make sure you get paid!

wow 37% is shockingly high.

You must have found very generous offers/networks.

Sacrilege said:

wow 37% is shockingly high.

You must have found very generous offers/networks.

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Yes I totally agree. I get around 90% shavings so OP, you should be a happy man.

Well, CPA companies really shouldn't be shaving at all (isn't it illegal or something?). I once tested with ******* and I found they were shaving at least 2/3, and I was using VPNs.

Yes, the truth hurts!

You could ask the "chicken or the egg" question, did the networks start shaving because of black hatters, or did black hatters start black hatting because the networks were shaving?

Not that it matters, our beds are made, we have to sleep on them.

I make a nice income with CPA, but it sucks knowing what I could be making!

This is very interesting evidence. If this is true, it was a well done and thought out experiment. I would definitely contact each of those companies and ask them to explain here on this thread.

I would agree that all CPA companies shave to combat bad leads. Which in my book is unacceptable. But I'm sure they justify it.

I find it crazy how shaving is an accepted part of this industry. In any other area of business this would be considered stealing. In my opinion this is unethical and it shouldn't be accepted.

Also, OP - Keep in mind that your leads would not be converting for the advertiser since you probably paid for your leads.

facebookdude said:

I find it crazy how shaving is an accepted part of this industry. In any other area of business this would be considered stealing. In my opinion this is unethical and it shouldn't be accepted.

Also, OP - Keep in mind that your leads would not be converting for the advertiser since you probably paid for your leads.

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I din't pay a red cent. I tried to think of every variable that might justify shaving and take measures to avoid any possible evidence of it. Yes, these are people I know rather well, but there's certainly no way the networks could know that.

My guess is that if someone duplicated an experiment like this using microworkers or something similar, the shave rate would be even higher.

I stopped with CPA just because of this, I'll get back into it soon enough ^^

I'd be curious to know if the rate of shaving would vary considerably for different kinds of offers. Email/zip submits and downloads, as they are the easiest offers to complete, are the easiest ones to generate BH conversions from.

I may duplicate this with something like prepaid visa card or educational program offers and see if the numbers are different. My guess is that they'd convert better, but shit, who knows, maybe they just shave the ass hair off of every kind of lead!

Unfortunately though, we have no alternative. CPA is the only viable form of monetization for 50% of the types of websites/methods in our industry.

Not every type of method works with adsense, or direct affiliate type companies like amazon.

Some methods just have to have CPA.

Why not go straight to the advertiser instead?

Agree with Cnotey, few CPA's just do to earn money! Ofcourse not all..

LoveStain said:

Why not go straight to the advertiser instead?

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If you go straight to the advertiser, you lose your volume of possible products to push. You are stuck with a few advertisers, rather than having CJ or Maxbounty and having hundreds.

A lot of the shaving comes straight from the merchant.

With CPA you're the last man on the totem pole.

Cnotey said:

If you go straight to the advertiser, you lose your volume of possible products to push. You are stuck with a few advertisers, rather than having CJ or Maxbounty and having hundreds.

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Ah, that makes sense. It's like having a middleman...he marks up the prices, but he provides a lot of products.

Sacrilege said:

A lot of the shaving comes straight from the merchant.

With CPA you're the last man on the totem pole.

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Never knew that. I always thought that the CPA network was the shaver. Didn't know it went that high up the ladder...

LoveStain said:

Never knew that. I always thought that the CPA network was the shaver. Didn't know it went that high up the ladder...

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The merchant may call it "scrubbing" as in tossing out bad leads, but this practice is at their discretion. I think it would be nice if I could choose to pay or not pay for my business expenses based solely on my own discretion. It's still shaving, just under a different name.

If that is true, then it would do well to track all of your BH traffic/submitters/shaving by the ad and not necc. the network, and dump the bean counters. This might get your shave rates down. No?

no wonder i never made it in cpa. unless you have money to burn or are sending traffic this doesn't even seem like it would be worth your time. how do you feel knowing your hard work and getting paid depends on how an advertiser feels that day and your just supposed to bend over and take it? nice eye opener OP!

BHMillionaire said:

Are you guys serious??? Do they shave THAT FUCKING MUCH?

You totally blew my reality.

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Some network shave MORE than others network. Ultimately there is NO such thing NO shaving. Just spread out your earnings on different CPA Network. Like the old saying, NEVER ever put all eggs into the same basket !