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Truth About Scrubbing and Shaving (From a Network Owner) (18)

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I'm not sure which Wicked Fire douche started the whole everyone shaves and scrubs bandwagon, but affiliates have to understand that when an offer doesn't convert it doesn't mean either of these cases.

Let me outline some things that can go wrong before you jump to conclusions:

Your Traffic Sucks - I know its hard to believe, but maybe your targeting, creatives, or traffic source simply sucks (click fraud and more). Rotate two different offers from two different networks to confirm this.

Tracking Issue - This is especially true with new offers. Sometimes advertisers don't place the pixel correctly, or change something during a tech change that effects the pixel fires. This also happens depending on the technology used to track, for example cookie tracking vs Server 2 Server. Best remedy is to talk to your AM.

Clicks vs Real Clicks - A click is not a click. What I mean is there is no standard definition for click in our industry. To your traffic source it could be a click on a banner while your aff network counts only unique clicks. So that 200 burst you sent may have been from a few users. One way to spot this is if you see the same IP in your click logs.

Delayed Conversions - Make sure you understand what exactly triggers a conversion and if they are counted in real time. For example with app campaigns on mobile some pay per download, others per install, and some activation. There can be a huge lag time between the three. In other cases the advertisers send conversions events in bulk periodically as opposed to in real time. Talk to your AM to know for sure.

Now that we got some of the popular reasons for why you're offer isn't converting out of the way lets talk about the scrubbing and shaving.

Scrubbing - This is the process by which an advertiser or network removes leads. Often scrubbing is done when there are fraudulent or poor quality leads. Most often than not this is done at the advertiser level. They may decide to scrub individual affiliates or a whole network based on the quality they receive. Your AM often won't have insight into this so the best thing to do is split test with other networks. Note don't just look at EPCs or CR since I already mentioned a click is not a click and different networks may show less clicks inflating these values. To avoid scrubbing make sure to abide by offer restrictions and send GOOD TRAFFIC. Often you will be rewarded with higher CPAs.

Shaving - This occurs at the network or advertiser level and is a more insidious practice by which your leads aren't all being accounted for regardless of quality. This can be done by the advertiser without knowledge by the affiliate network, which is another reason to ABST (Always Be Split Testing). To tell you the truth I think Shaving happens much less frequently than affiliates believe, especially with reputable networks. Some affiliate tracking technologies, like HasOffers don't even have a way to shave in real time. Next time you think someone is shaving your leads look at the other possible reasons for why it might be happening before you jump to conclusions.

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This is a great info on basics to scrubbing and shaving by advertisers or networks.

Is there anyway you can avoid if the advertiser is scrubbing a particular affiliate by setting up an exclusive offer for affiliate.

I often see this happens incase of dating and all you can do is just move on to a different offer ( Incase of AreYouInterested Dating Offer )

Any thoughts?
Mehdi

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There are offers that scrub and shave heavily. FindMeLove is a perfect example, known among many guys that experienced pretty much strange drops in CR rates and similiar stuff.

Like with everything in life, there are 2 sides of the coin. You're mentioning about removing leads if fraudulent or crappy traffic is being sent. This is simply wrong in my opinion on the second one. If it's fraud on a certain level, I agree with you. If it's bad quality traffic, it's the network's responsibility to pay the 'poor' leads and simply pull the affiliate from the offer before he sends more crap traffic. As long as it's not fraudulent, it's gotta be paid.

Let's face it: no matter if it's dating, zip's or gambling, scrubbing and shaving is not a unique problem and certainly not new to the business. Some offers convert great at network 1, while for network 2, it's a total blow.

Only way to 'protect' yourselve against this kind of fraud on network / advertiser side is to split. Split the fuck out of your campaign if you can. There is no reason to really 'trust' a network / advertiser for not scrubbing, no matter the reputation is good or bad. Enough examples in past showed that even very well reputated networks can crash or scam - personally I experienced this on a 5 digit amount in the gambling niche with so called 'charge backs' which I later found out due to the country manager dropping out of the company, were common. It was one of the top3 european online casino brands... Strong reputation, great invite parties on conferences and all the fancy $1000 gift baskets for christmas. Still they scrubbed heavily.

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fjk87, about which gambling network you are talking about. I am an affiliate of a few networks and I would like to know from which one to stay away.

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I'm not a fan of spreading shit on the net. Add me on skype and I'll tell you which 2 of the major networks are included.

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Spot on Angry Russian. I couldn't agree more with your post. No matter how much you like your rep/aff mgr at a network, you need to diversify your traffic, much like you would diversify your portfolio in the stock market. There is never a reason to leave all of your eggs in one basket. Come conference time at shows, this helps to get into more parties as well.

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Good to see you around Alex <3

great post bud as always

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I should add a point that Smaxor made yesterday. To paraphrase:

If a network/advertiser is going to shave, they will at least let you have normal conversions for a while, otherwise people would just stop running traffic to this campaign and nobody wins.

In other words, if you get no conversions at all from the get go, it's unlikely to be a shaving problem.

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Poor quality traffic is often the result of non compliance and deceptive advertising. For example with dating, if you run a lander that claims falsehoods like "guaranteed to get laid" as many affiliates do, its not the networks responsibility to pay you when you are clearly breaking the offer terms. Of course there are cases where the affiliate was compliant and the traffic just wasn't great and in that case the network should cover it.

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You pretty much look at it same as I do. I think a good way to avoid this happen is keep some standards and if there are doubts, just contact your AM. I'm specifically talking about stuff like monthly chargebacks for all signups etc. where it's obvious it can be detected way earlier.

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scrubbing/shaving is sometimes a necessary procedure, which makes the equation at the advertiser's end make him money.

Let's say a run an email submit with a coreg path behind it. I run it myself on media buys. My RPU is, let's say 8 bucks. I want to bring more volume, so I go to CPA networks. I figure out, affiliates are not going to be so picky as to where they run/what ads they run, so calculate my RPU in volume, comming from the network is going to be 5 bucks. I want to make money, obviously, so I'm paying the networks $2/lead. They offer street payout to the affiliates - $1,50.

Everything is good, but the leads some affiliates are bringing do not make me $5 RPU, but $3 RPU.

Everyone is in this business to make money. If your leads are not backing out for the advertisers like they should, but they still bring money, so he doesn't want to blacklist you, what is he supposed to do? Just lesser the amount he pays you. What is the most convenient way to do this? To not honor some of your leads, basically reducing what he pays per lead. So, in most cases, it's your own fault or you're running with a shitty network, which is being shaved as a whole.

This is why you see some networks performing better than others. It's not the tracking or the networks doing shady stuff. It's jsut some networks don't allow poor quality affiliates/fraundsters sign up and that brings more quality leads to the advertisers, so he doesn't have to correct something in his funnel, in order to stay profitable.

That is the ugly truth, nobody is telling you. You better face it, because it's not going to change. You're at the front end, and are not caring what is happening behind the scenes, but the guys behind the scenes do not care about you. If you bring shitty leads, you're getting shaved, so the advertisers stays profitable. Why do you think he should pay you more money than what he's making?

Networks(good ones) rarely/never shave. It's at the advertiser's end in the most cases. So pick your networks and offers wisely. The more people in the middle, not only they take a cut, but the more people have to make corrections in order to stay profitable. So don't just look at payout and ask for an EPC, do your research and find out what is happening behind the scenes. I hope you get what I mean.

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Those super busty pictures have lead to low quality leads time and time again. High CTR yes, but you're shooting yourself in the foot by relying on cleavage, rather than learning to be a skilled marketer.

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Shaving/scrubbing not only robs you off your money. When you're not credited for 100% of your conversions, the efficacy of your optimization efforts also suffer. I'm talking about higher CPAs. Lowering payouts will do more good for everyone, but that would take balls - something this smoke and mirror industry lacks.

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ROTFL...

ya take that same logic to BANKING or TRADING or INSURANCE and see how far you get.

better yet run it past FINRA or any VC that IPO's and see what they think of it.

seriously... this is the only industry that argues stealing from your sales force is justified. if you can not compete

well.. maybe you shouldn't be in business... thats how the rest of the world operates and why we have commercial laws.

any network owner or affiliate that wants to argue this with me at ASE... lets walk down to Wall St and ask the people who sling millions and billions what they think of it... end of story.

I will ONLY agree in one case. if your production is lower than another salesman and poorer quality... you should NOT make more and recieve lower commisions BUT it should be upfront and something you are told. not something done on the backend behind closed doors.

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Thanks Russian!

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Ha I've had cases when I would look at my day-to-day conversions and realize a sudden drop in $. It is very frustrating, but this is completely normal. Fluctuation in income is part of the game. I remember reading once, not to compare day-to-day, but week to week. Any insight?

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Scrubbing is done oftentimes automatically by the merchants based on quality fo the leads going through the deal (at least the smart ones do that).

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Yea I understand the difficulties that Network owners have to endure to maintain success! It doesn't help when we bitch them out either.. If I do my 100%, I really won't need much from an AM / network owner.

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