Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Adult Traffic (NSFW)

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Avoid Cupid (39)

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My advice is to stay away from cupid when starting in the adult dating space.

I spent a little over $300 on TJ (the most expensive traffic) to send potential customers to a cupid offer. I was barely getting started (A/B testing of various landers and banners) had about 57 conversions when they were all erased from my account, without a single warning or note from them.

When I asked my rep. if this was some kind of reporting error, I received this response:

We asked early on for a skype handle to try to develop a rapport. We never received a reply.

So let me try to wrap my head around this. Cupid just keeps the traffic that makes money for them after 50 conversions and cancels conversions to all others. Basically a zero risk business and zero effort business. If this is how they operate they should just state it:

"If after 50 conversions we do not receive an order we will remove all conversions from your account without warning or notification"

I've been doing affiliate marketing for 7 years. I've had professional rapports with 100s of vendors and have never seen this. Here are things they could have done:

1) A warning about the traffic not converting. For example we typically will receive on order after 20 conversions you have now sent 30 leads without an order.

2) Some idea of the typical time from a conversion to sale? Is it a few hours a few days or a few weeks?

3) Some idea of the amount of conversions they will permit before voiding them all.

4) Some idea if they are willing to work together to optimize traffic.

For the last 30 days, I've had to work with testicles going up and down and breasts the size of watermelons bouncing off of penises the size of baseball bats. All that for nothing. Thanks Cupid

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The "dangers" of going direct I guess...

Did they give the leads time to mature? How much time passed from the first lead to the time they were all erased?

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Hi dragoshsd!

I don't think so. Most leads were probably (29,30,31 of March) when they were all canceled April 1st. I started around the 19th of March. It took me about 10 days to tune my stuff. But I'm not certain what the lead time to maturity would be in the country I'm targeting (my guess is probably more then the US).

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Hmm...as far as I know new affs are capped at 100 leads per day for 5/6 days then quality check.

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This is why networks exist. We are in the people business. Contractual agreements are in place to prevent bs like this, and our ability to drive more traffic than a single affiliate gives us the advantage to negotiate when shit hits the fan. Besides, our losses are never passed onto you. Cheers...

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Yeah going through a network is looking better these days. One of the things I hate about Cupid is that the traffic going through a network is great and they ask for more but when you go direct the same traffic is called bad and you lose conversions. That's without changing anything. Fuck that.

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damn...just had the same thing happened to me. also like OP I started sending them traffic around 29th of March and ALL leads till 1st of April got erased(3 offers - around 200 leads all together) I just talked with the rep but I didn't get straight confirmation that these leads are lost and I am kinda confused with the convo. Hmmm

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Yeah I posted my issue about this in the big Cupid thread. I PM'ed the cupid guy about trying to figure out what went wrong but haven't heard back yet. Every report I ran showed things were running great and then they all just disappeared. Only response was that I did not hit 4% conversions. This happened a few months ago and I just logged in to see my stats since the Cupid guy said things will carry over if I don't meet the conversion but everything is at zero. Carry over what is what I would like to know. Everything is gone.

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What I will recommend too is not to run any traffic with them before getting AM to agree on anything. They will come back saying the traffic didn't convert but somehow the traffic after is fine.

Shady fucks!

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I feel you man. Consider it a paid lesson lol...Cupid.

I burned about 2k there just over a month ago on PPS and a PPL test period. Worst free to paid CR ever. I really didn't expect such a shitty CR.

My AM was saying that I had a lot of paid 3 day trials to try convince me to keep sending traffic, I asked how many and was told "I can't share that info". That's when I paused all traffic to the PPS offers. He can tell me I have a lot of paid 3 day trials but he can't tell me how many? I mean seriously? Yeahnah fuck that shit lol. Turns out "a lot of 3 day trials" = fuck all.

Ok so, 900 leads apparently made 14 sales lol. Actually it was 15, but a sale disappeared from my account a day or two after the conversion XD This campaign was a $2.5k loss.

^^ This campaign had a 1.55% CR, 14 sales per 900 leads.

We then did a PPL test period on a mediocre payout, but getting paid no matter what the CR. I sent more traffic from a different source. The result was 600 leads and 2 conversions, I just logged in to look at the stats now and the conversions have mysteriously changed to 1. This campaign was a $500 profit.

^^ This campaign had a CR of 0.16% according to Cupid, 1 sale per 600 leads.

Both campaigns combined gives a 1% free to paid CR, 15 sales per 1500 leads.

Normally I'd blame something on my end for bad results, for IM and things in general. I'll be critical of my own side before making any speculations of a third party being at fault. In this case I know the traffic is good and the free to paid CR is a joke.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Sales are still tracked with cookies even after your leads have registered. So if you get a DOI lead through your link and they purchase using a different browser, computer, phone or tablet you don't get the sale.

They could also simply use private browsing/icognito mode, clear their cookies, click a competitors ad or get a popup for the same offer. Each scenario would also result in no sale being credited even though the user has already double opt in through your aff link.

2. 3 day paid trials do not show up in your account and are not considered any kind of conversion. After 3 days, they will show up in your account (if they are even tracked at all).

3. Sales are only tracked for 30 days, so any sales that come later than 30 days will not be credited. Their cookies expire after 30 days.

4. They advertise their sister sites prominently to your leads using banners inside their sites which offer 1 click cross registration. So you can refer a user to site A and they 1 click register to site B and make a purchase on site B, yep, no sale for you.

Highly not recommended +1

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I've also been burned around $2.5K with Cupid for similar reasons.

I know there are guys doing really well with them and they are legit, but their policies for new affiliates are very shady and their support team is not the most friendly. I've avoided building a direct relationship with them despite their high potential in some demos.

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Cupid has run into a lot of issues the past week or so which I believe are related to this:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/h...ics.1363966561
There response to the allegations here:
http://www.londonstockexchange.com/e...entId=11528384

My guess is they turned off or slowed down there Artificial Intelligence while the heat is on as there has been a considerable drop in Free to Paid with them starting around the 28th I believe. We have stopped sending for now and waiting for confirmation to start sending traffic again.

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I got burnt for about $300 while testing adult mobile with them. I was constantly asking my AM for any kind of quality feedback and he wouldn't tell me anything until all my stats were deleted and my account restricted.

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Hello everybody,

There have been a lot of critical comments above. To be honest, I regret that our business relationships haven't worked with you guys and that most of you haven't had luck running our offers. I would much rather chat with you here about your success. It's never pleasant to incur losses, and I can understand why you're upset. At the same time, I feel like a lot of the remarks here aren't completely fair, and quite often they are rather emotional than rational. So I want to address the key points being mentioned.

1) Everybody who grabs their links in the affiliate account can see that there's an explicit statement about the 4% conversion requirement. It's clear and unviersal. Everybody who chooses to run our offers by doing this agrees to comply with this requirement. If your conversion is lower than 4% we adjust the requirement accordingly to reflect the price that we can pay for the traffic that generates lower value than expected. However, if your traffic conversion is 0% it means it generates no value on our sites. The money that we pay as commission doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from the payments your users make. If an affiliate brings users that give us no value, how can we pay? In peformance marketing affiliates are paid for performance indeed. We feel bad to leave affiliates with 0% conversion with no payout, but this is a simple business logic: if we start losing money by paying for non-performing traffic we'll be out of business sooner than later.

2) Please ALWAYS get in touch with your AM BEFORE you start doing any major things: test new offers, increase volumes, test new sources or make any other considerabe changes to your campaign, etc. This is The First Commandment of any affiliate campaign. The moment one starts making decisions on his own is the moment he bears full responsibility for his actions. It's not OK to test offers for two month without talking to your AM first; it's not OK to start campaigns right in the end of the month without consulting with your AM first (more on this below); it's not OK to scale up wihtout warning your AM first. Another important thing is that NO RESPOSE DOESN'T MEAN SILENT APPROVAL. If your message hasn't been answered yet doesn't mean that your AM isn't just sitting around doing nothing. It means that s/he is busy right now with other work making it through to take care of your request. But it doesn't mean that by not answering shortly s/he approves whatever you're requesting. I work as a biz dev manager and I speak to/recruit dozens of new affiliates each month. Those ones who work closely with their AMs have no problems even if their tests don't go well, just because they don't get to the point where it's a mess. Then if there is lack of conversions this situation is a mutual responsibility. If an affiliate chooses his own way of actions avoiding agreement with an AM then we can't share this responsibility. We are willing to work together to optimize traffic, but PLEASE STAY IN TOUCH.

3) We close affilaite accounts monthly. This means that in the beginning of each new month we look at the affiliate's performance in the previous month and at the conversion rates. All non-converting leads get rejected. That's why you don't start a test close to the end of any month without speaking to your AM BEFOREHAND. If you speak to him/her you'll be told that maybe you should wait until a new month starts. Or even if the AM gives you the permission to start right away s/he will keep in mind that this traffic should be carried over. But your AM agrees to do that BEFORE the test, he's not supposed to be asked after. There is no such thing as rejection after 50 or something non-converting leads, it's done monthly, unless you're sending a few hundred non-performing leads daily: such an inflow of inefficient traffic will be stopped shortly. But on all volumes there is also such thing as campaign management on affiliate's side. An affiliate has access to the real-time statistics where he can see all his leads and sales. If he has some quantity of leads he's gotten in a few days of testing and no sales for a given campaign, and he knows about the 4% conversion requirement, isn't it obvious that the campaign isn't working? Why does he need an AM or someone else to tell him this? Pause this campaign and don't get yourself and merchant into trouble and further argument.

4) Your conversion time depends on your traffic. Some users convert faster, some will take time. Anyway, an ideal test lasts for 5-6 days. Within this time frame it's possible to see whether your traffic converts at all. And yes, we have a 30-day cookie, which is a pretty common approach in this industry (if you look at other advertisers) and ample time for the dating traffic to convert. Yes, sales are tracked with cookies. If anyone has any suggestions as for how to improve this we're open to consider them.

5) 3-day trials aren't considered a full sale. But in any case they don't generate substantial value and serve as a gateway for full-period membership. Unless a user unsubscribes within the trial period, his membership converts into a full sale, which will be posted in your account and you'll get a full credit for it. There is no real issue here if your traffic is good, since all quality 3-day trials convert into full sales. In this sense these trials are to both affiliate and advertiser's benefit since they motivate quality leads to convert. But in any case the number of 3-days sales is a closed information. It's not up to AMs to disclose it since this restriction is imposed on them. Affiliates can access all information available to them via their account. This information is enough to make meaningful conclusions about traffic quality and its performance.

6) We don't randomly reduce the number of sales. It can become smaller for two major reasons:
a) There was a fradulent sale (we reject it for obvious reasons).
b) The customer cancels the sale and does chargeback (in this case this sale is lost both for an affiliate and us).

My final remark is that if our offers don't work for some affiliates it doesn't mean they're bad or non-converting. There are other people who make 6 figures monthly on them, and, as one of the discussion participants has agreed above, they are legit affiliates. If the latter group of people does it, it means that our offers can work, but any new affiliate needs to make it happen.

Thank you.

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Are you saying that traffic that didn't convert immediately or when quality check is done 5/6 days but later turns to a sale are re-credited to the affiliate? No you didn't, they are lost in the supposed bad conversions you guys removed.

Secondly, what's the difference when you request more traffic when going through a third party then when direct with Cupid it causes problems? I know there are legit affs working with Cupid doing big figures but your business model sucks brah. In my case I run your offers but no longer directly.

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If any sales happen indeed you should be able to see them in your account even if leads were earlier rejected.

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You could/should track by user ID once someone has registered? Otherwise as kyuss mentions, affiliates lose the sale if any other machine is used to purchase a sub. In this day and age everyone is using 3-4 machines (laptop/phone/tablet/work desktop).

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I just want to chip in here with my POSITIVE experience with Cupid so far. Communication is EVERYTHING. If you decide to run an offer yourself without talking to your AM first, you HAVE to check the box which states you agree with the terms where you have to get a 4% lead 2 sale conversion rate. I don't get it how you guys can complain about terms you agreed upon yourself. Do I think it's a good business model? No, I do not. But I'm not here to judge the business model, I just want to show here that they don't do anything fraudulent if you agreed with the terms yourself.

That being said, I can say I have a good relationship with Cupid. The key to success with Cupid (and any other direct advertiser) is to communicate with them on a (very) regular base. If you want to run a certain offer, talk to your AM, tell 'm about your experience in the specific country (and if you don't have experience, tell them as well). You'll get setup with a certain test payout and if you agree together on the payout and amount of leads, you WILL get paid for the leads you've sent in this case. After the test period you'll evaluate the quality together. If it's good, you can often go uncapped and even get a payout increase (for some countries I've gotten a 100% payout increase).

If you want to take the next step and go direct with any advertiser, invest in your relationship with them and show them it's a business opportunity for them as well. After all that's what you're doing, running a business.

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I will also add that my experience w Cupid has been good. Payments always on time $x,xxx. But definitely communication is key here, and is clearly not their forte. You will have to be fairly aggressive and make it clear you are there to make both of you money.

I would suggest running their offers through a network at first if you are still a bit iffy. If your AM comes back and tells you that Cupid is requesting more of your traffic, then start a conversation with them directly and that should get the ball rolling in the right direction. If your initial traffic looks like shit to them, they won't give you a second glance, and lump you with fraudulent traffic.

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Thanks for the advice, Connaissance! I'll most certainly bring this to the attention of our affiliate team.

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I suspect that this happens because CPA networks have more leverage when it comes to bundling traffic. What I mean is that if your traffic converts below the target and someone else's does above it by properly mixing these two sources a network can still maintain the required conversion. When you work directly you have to hit the target on your own. This is where this mismatch might come from. But in any case we always test new affiliates on low volumes (and if you come from a network quite often we can match the payout).

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Comments are more emotional than rational? I don't appreciate you trying to discredit the feedback of members here with your condescending comment. Comments posted have been completely rational, it's called negative/positive feedback. Listening to it would be a win-win..

Here is rational..

Chrisd sent Cupid traffic (AKA value) near the end of the month, including the 29th, 30th and 31st of March. Paid trials convert 3 days after the payment has been made provided the sub isn't cancelled.

His leads disappeared at the beginning of April. This means there was no chance for his leads to convert if they paid for a trial.

There is no warning saying that affiliates should not send traffic to Cupid at the end of the month and it is not common knowledge.

This would be somewhat true if the paid sub tracking was reliable. Is it fair to use the affiliate as a scapegoat though? Using this logic, I could go to an ad network and say "send me traffic and if I fail at monetising it (or tracking monetising it) then I won't pay anything."

Isn't that a bit counter-productive? Wanting high quality leads but not disclosing the number (and subids) of paid trial conversions. I mean what difference does it make if we can see full subscription conversions but not 3 day paid trials?

Sounds extremely shady to me. If I knew any better, I'd speculate that AMs can't even see this information and 3 day trials aren't tracked at all.

Cupid offers convert to leads just fine, but tracking sales is incredibly unreliable (I pointed out some big reasons in my previous 'irrational' post).

I don't think it is fair that affiliate leads are siphoned off to sister sites with prominent banners without giving any compensation to the affiliate.

Do you think it is fair? An affiliate sends a DOI lead to site A, the lead is then siphoned off to a sister site and pays for a subscription there. The affiliate does not get a commission and has a lower CR because of it (which can mean not getting paid for affiliates running on public terms).

Do you really believe that for my PPL test period (second campaign) out of 600 leads, only 1 converted? I mean, seriously?

Individual affiliates get optimised off offers through affiliate networks though, unless Cupid never does this.

Rusyaev, I have nothing personal against you and when we were talking on Skype about running some offers, getting set up and being paid, you were very professional. It would really speak for your professionalism and affiliate program you represent if you took this feedback and did something positive with it.

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I want to chime in here, and I agree with scito & thefalcon.. The key is communicate with your AM before run any traffic.. I always tell my AM if I want to run offer A, offer B, etc and he give me fixed rate for testing, note default rate if we check the agreement without confirmation.. In the first time work with Cupid I asking this question too "if my quality is bad (let say zero sales from them) are you pay the lead?" and my AM say they always pay their testing lead even zero sales.. I'm doing this to have proof if they don't pay me the testing leads.. lol.. Beside that I know they want to make money too, if I can't give them good quality traffic so I'm fail to be good affiliate marketer.. But they love the quality of my traffic and I still make $x.xxx/day with them until today and yeah all my leads getting paid, nothing less..

I'm not defending cupid here, i'm on affiliates side but this is my experience with them to share with you guys.. (My share can give me more competitor but I love stacker guys.. lol...) If I have issue on the next day I will post that too in this thread asap.. The only problem right now for me with them is their weekly payment is too long to get in my bank account, they pay the weekly payment between Tuesday n Thursday but not one day service so the money come to my bank account on Monday or Tuesday next week.. It's like weekly net 9..

@rusyaev : If you can make the weekly payment in one day service it's really great and help our cashflow..

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Yeah, I'm glad the payment came through for my PPL campaign regardless of CR because I did a test run as well.

My main concern is with paid subscription tracking using cookies being very unreliable, especially combined with running on sources with a lot of competition.

This is because your cookies can be deleted by other affs even after the the DOI lead has been acquired, meaning you won't get credited for the sale. This can cause affiliates CRs to appear lower then they actually are and is extremely bad for affiliates running the public offer or PPS.

I think most people will agree, if you send a lead that has double opted in, any resulting sales from that account should be yours (besides some mega sites like Amazon).

Also, if Cupid wants every affiliate to talk to their AM before running any traffic whatsoever, why is the network auto-approve?

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Thank you STMers for sharing your experience with Cupid. I didn't perceive any irrational or "emotional" responses. I did take note of some good information and even some good humor.

@rusyaev Thank you for trying to address the issues. Cupid seems to be full of hard working individuals like you trying to do their best with the resources given. Please do not take my comment the wrong way. I think you might be missing our points and might be taking this from the wrong perspective. Win-win is the only way to go for long term partnerships. The reason I say that, is because your "long" post states the obvious and missed the points I and others have made. I understand it is impossible to please everyone. I ran a hosting company for 8 years! However in my opinion, all participants (notably kyuss) made very valid comments, that might be useful to other STMers.

At this point, I'm "satisfied" with the information I obtained. I will consider this experience with Cupid a relatively cheap "tuition" fee (my wife's suggestion).

For newbies considering Cupid, I would recommend to following points:

- You must obtain a test run agreement with your AM! AMs at Cupid are assigned by countries. You must HUNT down that AM and engage in a test run agreement. Do not assume because you are talking with an AM about your account that s/he is aware of anything going on with your account. Please hunt down the AM for your target location and make a specific test agreement for a specific offer.

- If you do not initiate a test run agreement with your geo-AM. All leads, that do not convert at a 4% rate, will be VOIDED on the 1st of the month without notice. Regardless of the number of leads (1 or 10,000) you have accumulated. This could result in a serious lose of funds.

- If you run offers without a specific test agreement. You should run them on the first days of the month as this will increase your chances of them converting to sales. This is counter intuitive , I recommend you understand this point well before starting.

- Cupid AMs are very busy. You might want to consider using a network to avoid failure due to mis-communication.

- You might have to ask many times, don't give up, you will eventually get their Skype handle.

Personal I'm going to reflect on this for a few hours or a few days and decide what I will try next. In any case, I hope to see many of you in Amsterdam next month!
My goal was to generate the cost of my trip (excluding hooker & pot charges ) by using tips I have learned here. Looks compromised now, but might still try.

This is fun! Have a great day!

PS: @mrrealdeal definitly something to consider, especially in the long run. Thanks!

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I agree with scito here as well. We, as an affiliate, are not here to comment if their company/business model sucks or what. The offers are there, and if you want to run it, you have to agree to their terms and go through the test period, like it or not. They are doing this because they want to ensure your quality backs out for them. After all, they are a company, that just like us, want to make money.

That's why communication is very essential. They don't carry offers like CPA networks, and you can just run traffic to them anytime. Remember, you're now going DIRECT instead of going through a CPA network. When going direct, your responsibility of sending quality leads increases a lot as compared to working with CPA networks as they can leverage on better quality affiliates to even it.

I have to admit that, working with Cupid at the beginning is a pain, because I used to go through that stage back in 2010. However, once quality check is passed, that's the time where you get to make good money because they carry some proven offers that convert.

And to those affiliates that are new, you have to really shift your mindset when working direct, instead of "I want to make good money with Cupid", you have to think "Well, what is the best way I can send quality leads to them?". Trust me, when going direct, quality is king. I'm not here to defend for Cupid or what, but as your proceed, you'll realize that good quality leads will reward you at a later time.

A good point that was mentioned is, if you don't want all these troubles, then go through CPA networks first, and once you get good feedback on the quality, then only approach them directly.

@rusyaev

I believe affiliates commented on this thread have mentioned a few important points that you should feedback to your company. They do carry the points there. I believe working closely together = win-win situation in the end. Everyone happy

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Kyuss,

Just wanted to give some more clarification after reading your and my comments on this thread.

This comment is in no way condescending and I don't question your or someone else's professionalism. Most importantly, this remark wasn't addressed to absolutely everyone who posted above my first post. In fact, in just one reply I was combining response to miltiple posts above, so not all points were adressed to everyone. If you re-read it you'll see that I said: "I feel like a lot of the remarks here...are rather emotional than rational" A lot, not all. In most comments affiliates shared their experience in a decent and respectful way and there was nothing wrong about it. And we learn from such feedback. The main reason why I'm here right now writing this post is that we care what affiliates say and think of us. However, I felt like the harshness of some of the comments, while probably based on the actual experience, was also driven to a great extent by negative emotions/attitude towards us. For example, when I see that my colleagues and I are called "shady fu**s" or we/our actions are referred to with the use of other swear words I find rather condescending myself. I hope you'll understand.

With this said, I didn't mean to upset any members expressing their viewpoints here, and if I did, I apologize for it.

This traffic has value to an affiliate because he spends time and money on its generation. But this traffic was generated with a specific purpose: to be driven to a dating website in order to generate revenue, which affiliate gets a portion of. If the traffic fails to convert it doesn't serve its key purpose and has no value from this standpoint. For example, if you're a customer and order a good from a manufacturer you expect this product to have certain qualities so you can use it for particular purposes. Good's ability to meet these expectations is of utmost importance because this is why this product is being produced at all. Manufacturer can spend lots of resources to produce the good but if at the end of the day it can't be utilized to serve its original purpose it has no value.

The implication that we failed to monetize the traffic and it's our responsibility
is challenged by the fact that we use the exact SAME monetization approach with any traffic that comes to our side. If other people with their traffic and the same monetization procedure on our side make our offers work, then in case with non-coverting traffic the problem is on the affiliate's side.

Chrisd started sending traffic on March 20, which is 11 days before the end of the month, and since then has generated 0 sales. Leads and sales are recorded separately and rejected separately: this is how the system works. I.e. even if a lead is rejected it's just not showing up in the affiliate account but is still recorded in the system. In case a sale happens it'll be recorded and showed. That is Chrisd's sales from leads coming in on the 29th, 30th and 31st of March would still show up in his account. As of April 4th there are 0 sales in Chrisd's account. Which means that after more than 10 days of testing (even considering 3-day trials from the end of the month) his traffic has generated 0 sales, i.e. lead2sale = 0% and according to our T&Cs that Chrisd agreed to by registering an account with us and checking the box that he accepts the 4% conversion requirement we can't pay for such traffic.

If Chrisd had been in touch with his AM and requested an approval of his test campaign he would be guided and advised as for when and how it's better to start working. But anyway he started testing the offers on his own way before the end of the month, and there was enough time to see his traffic performance.

There are some technical limitations to this imposed on us by HasOffers. As it is in the affilaite report this system mixes leads and sales under one category: conversions. In order to see leads and sales separately affiliates need check the box "Goal" in the report. For all lead programs sales are already set as a "goal" and there's no room for 3-days.

But even if it was an option it would create other problems. As far as I know you specialize mostly in PPS programs and are an experienced affiliate, so you have knowledge and understanding of all campaign nuances. However, we have a lot of less exerienced affiliates who will most likely start sending us multiple emails and create forum posts about sales that disappear from their account (which will happen if 3-day subscriptions are canceled by site users) or, worse, speculate about Cupid "stealing" their sales. Mixing leads, sales, and 3-day sales under one category of Conversions in HasOffers report along with the need to allocate more time and human resources on responding to the messages is a big pain and in our opinion it outweighs possible benefits. In any case affiliates already have access to the vital data that is used to evaluate their performance. Would seeing 3-days change the situation dramatically anyway?

I want to reassure you that 3-day trials are tracked and our AMs can see them.

First, when I mentioned conversion I meant lead2sale conversions, not conversion into leads.

Second, sale tracking on our platform is as reliable as it can be with the current tracking approach. All sales that can be tracked with this method are recored and displayed in affiliates' accounts. Cupid doesn't hide, withhold or decline sales randomly for no reason (sales are canceled only if they're fraudulent or if a customer requests a chargeback and we lose the sale).

Changing tracking methods of conversions to make them more accurate and optimal is the whole other level of discussion that is related not only to Cupid but to the entire evolving affiliate industry. I didn't call your post irrational (I've already explained above what I meant and that the remark wasn't addressed to absolutely everyone) and I consider your advice very useful. In fact, in my previous post I asked for any suggestions as for how to improve our tracking approach. And if you notice Connaissance later gave me his tip, I thanked him for that and our team are already discussing this.

Let me give you a hypothetical example. Say, you're running BeNauhgty AUS, your traffic is excepionally good and converts at the rate 6%, so we're offering you $10 per lead. Next you send us 100 leads and your payout is 100x$10=$1000. At the same time the conversion rate of 6% mean that we've gotten 100x0.06=6 sales. The average sale on BeNaughty AUS is $25, so from your traffic we get $25x6=$150. So we have to pay $1000 while we receive only $150. In order to stay in business and still be able to offer high rates we have to use all possilble ways to monetize incoming traffic, including running ads of the sister sites AND 3rd party ads.

Moreover, when we calculate critical PPL and PPS rates we can pay you we take into consideration the revenue that we expect to generate with your traffic through showing ads to your users. So at the end of the day when you get a prime rate (or any rate - even public one - to that matter) you are already indirectly getting paid for sales on sister sites AND revenue we get from 3rd party advertising. That is any money we make on your traffic is reflected in your rate already. If we didn't make extra efforts to monetize the traffic we would either pay our affiliates lower rates or demand a higher conversions.

Finally, these banners are being showed to the users that don't convert into sales after some decent period of time. Instead of wasting these leads we're trying to monetize them on sister sites and pay you indirectly for this via higher commission you're already getting.

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I don't know your traffic to make any judgements or conclusions. I've seen a 100 leads making 7 sales, as well as 800 leads making 0 sales. It all depends on traffic and affiliate.

We have a different CPA team within Cupid that works with networks, and I don't know their methods and processes since I work with the in-house affiliate network side of the business. That statement was just my assumption. But even kokofai agrees that "CPA networks .. can leverage on better quality affiliates to even it"

As I've said, after Connaissance's our team started discussing this improvement.

But in the meantime my simple questions is why an affiliate would accept such model with Amazon but become unhappy with Cupid? Yes, I understand that Amazon is way way bigger than us, but still. It's the same business approach, so why is it acceptable for one company but unacceptable for another? At the end of the day affiliate's key goal is to get the highest ROI on the most favorable terms.

I don't know about other people, but before I would spend any money on any business venture (including running dating offers) I would talk to the company I'm going to work with, and I wouldn't spend a penny until my specific questions are answered and I'm absolutely clear what the T&Cs are. Also, I would understand that even though I have access to all tools already it's better to wait till I have a comprehensive conversation with a merchant. Because otherwise not knowing certain things for sure I would risk to make wrong assumptions and get into trouble. Affiliates are serious business people and as a company we expect this kind of behaviour from them. For example, Kyuss, you reached out to me and then to your AM before making any serious moves, didn't you? And this was the right and logical thing to do.

Moreover, in the end of the 4% requirement statement it's written: "Please contact your dedicated manager for more information and further coordination." I consider it to be a pretty obvious request.

Anyway, we're already discussing removing automatic approval and making it manual to avoid more situations like this in the future.

Kyuss, I have nothing personal against you either and our communication on Skype and via email was nice and friendly. As I've stated above my post wasn't specifically against you or your feedback. You sound like a knowledgeable and hard-working affiliate. So I appreciate your feedback and I truly regret that our partnership hasn't worked out. I think I've addressed all your points: they were either taken into consideration and are being discussed by our team (tracking approach) or I explained what issues there are with other points (30-day cookies, 3-day trials, and cross-promotion).

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Thanks for your input, creathinker. I'll talk to my team about it.

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Chrisd,

I appreciate your nice words. I believe you wouldn't be where you are in life right now if you weren't a skilled and intelligent person. And I really feel bad that you and our company are in this situation right now.

I'm not taking comments the wrong way and in my latest response to Kyuss I explained what I meant talking about the emotional component of some (not all) posts. Moreover, as you can see from the same and other later posts I'm addressing Kyuss and other's suggestions and comments in a respectful and straightforward way, taking useful tips into considertation.

The AMs are busy, but you can make your way to them through contacting me. There are plenty of STM members (including Kyuss) who have contacted me and in no time or just in a couple of days were in touch with their AMs (including me passing Skype handle and introducing directly via email) and setting up a test campaign. Moreover, I always help affiliates to follow-up with AMs if they have any questions or there's some urgent issue. Once again, you can ask Kyuss and he'll confirm that I helped him when he reached out to me even after I passed his contact to the AM. It's my job to be in touch with the affiliate community and to recruit new affiliates. So I'm mostly concentrated on communication. Even when I'm overloaded with affiliate emails/skype messages I usually get back to people in 2-3 business days (unless I'm traveling or there are some special circumstances). I've been very busy this week mostly because I have to run lots of errands before I leave for San Francisco to attend Ad:tech (so I'll be out of office most of the next week). But overall you should contact me (email: alex.liman@cupid.com Skype: oleksii.liman) and I'll do my best as fast as possible to make you all set.

Chrisd, once again, I personally deeply regret your test hasn't worked out. Please feel free to share your tips or suggestions with me later on if you want to. Whatever you decide to do in the future, I wish you good luck with your business!

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I agree that there are useful points and as a company we're already considering them. And I believe in win-win situation through working closely together, that's why I'm here

Overall, if you guys or anybody else on this forum have questions or any suggestions/advice about our affiliate program please feel free to post in our official thread here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ts-Discussions

All requests and tips communicated in a respectful and professional manner will be appreciated and handled accordingly.

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I don’t like participating on boards because it is often a form a communication that follows the rule of the "Lowest common denominator". The STM board is mostly able to avoid this because the goal oriented threads keep people focused on the ball (making money online now) + the quality of the members is higher than most boards.

@rusyaev Your efforts and passion for Cupid are visible. I don’t know you, but I like you because of the passion you exude trying to solve and explain people's problems. Plus you are a young immigrant to the US and I was once one too, HA! (I hope I got that right!)
If I may say without offense not all points call for an "official" response from cupid, especially if the response does not address the issues. Sometimes board members might just want to "vent" or share tips with each other and this is their place to do it too.
Customer complaints can be difficult to manage. During my years running a hosting company, I found that a successful approach is to ask the complainer/customer "what do you want? What can I do for you now?". If you can give it to him/her, do it. Problem solved no time wasted. Plus, you just turned a complainer in a happy person and maybe a fan for life. If you can't give them what they want, just explain why and try to find a middle ground. Even an angry complainer will turn around and understand your reality. Ignoring their sense of prejudice or turning them away and they might be vexed with you and your brand for the rest of their life.

Thank you for that! It is alright, I think I will survive the $303 lose. I will just have to deprive my kids from food for a few days, they are getting heavy anyway eating all those french croissants and "pain au chocolat", so it will do them good ;-)

Great week-end everyone!

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I must say, I've been pretty impressed with how mature and professional Rusyaev has been from the start of this thread. Makes me want to try out Cupid.

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Yep cupid is bullshit, I was trying to contact my AM and was getting shitty replies, relaly hard to communicate. Lead conversions was doing really well but wow was the conversion to sale bad.. I was even doing older demographics like 35+ males only for sites like "girlsdateforfree" you would think it converts better... Either way they erased all my commisions but luckily due to how shitty their AM's were I stopped sending leads after I reached $100 (within a day) because I was scared they weres cammy and ya at the end of the month.. all gone. Good thing I did not keep sending traffic there and moved on

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Thanks again, chrisd! Yes, you got it right

It's a very good and smart approach. Every day and every situation is an opportunity to learn something new. I think even this conversation (however heated it was in the beginning) helped me to gain some new experience in the affiliate feedback management. Thanks for that to everybody!

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Thanks, Connaissance! If you decide to test us out now or later please don't hesitate to contact me so that I can introduce you to the right AM who'll handle your account.

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vaalion,

Actually, for older demos it would make more sense to test our mature niche offers: MatureDatingUK.com UK/IE and LoveAgain.com UK/US/CAN/AUS These sites are meant for people of the age group you've mentioned, so affiliates with mature traffic should see better results there.

I'm sorry your test didn't go well and our partnership didn't work out. Wish you good luck with your business in the future!

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Just for information, last 2 week I got the payment in my bank account after two days of your confirmation payment in cupid dashboard.. Another +1 for cupid..

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This is great news! creathinker or anyone dealing with Cupid directly are you doing the payout per lead or per sales? If payout per lead what type sales conversion are you seeing?

Thanks!

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