Test joins
 

Has anybody here ever signed themselves up to a sponsor to see if everything works properly?


Is this a good pratice?

It's a great practice as long as you let the sponsor know first. And, wait for the reply saying, "go ahead".

Do you think it will be cool if I tell them that I'm going to test join within the next 3 months?

What about revshare sponsors? Is it necessary to even let them know?

Has anybody here discovered anything from test joins or is it largely a waste of time and money?

Sorry for drilling the forum with all these questions.

I was thinking about randomly testing sponsors to see how it goes.

I remember a guy named Andy that would test dozens and dozens of PPS sponsors every month with every worker in the office's credit cards......

:)

Did he always get credit or what?

I'm not as plugged in to sponsors as Jim is so I can't answer that question, but I can give you my personal experience.

I had a freind who wanted some adult products, so I sent him the links with my referral codes and then I watched how it flowed through the backend being as I knew exactly what was purchased and the purchase price.

It was very informative to me, because the payout was different then I expected it to be. I'm not saying that they did anything wrong, I'm just saying I didn't pay enough attention to the affiliate aggreement when I signed up. So with that info, it mildly changed the way I marketed the site.

As for adult sites not stores, if I wasn't able to get my hands on the members area content, be that through a members pass or just a robust free content area, I probably would not market the site, and I trust programs to not shave or skim enough to not test them for that in that manner.

But that's just a little guy's opinion.

yeah, until he got tagged for fraud.

Back in the mid to late 90s, it was like the wild west. $2.95 joins paid $35. Payouts were made quickly, fraud control was new and if you did it late enough in the pay period, it couldn't get reviewed quickly enough and the check was cut. I know a lot of companies that paid their bills by scamming sponsors like that.

Nowdays, you'd get caught in a heartbeat -- probably even the day you made the charges. Ask Jim about his amazon fiasco or search the board -- and that's a mainstream sponsor with tens of thousands of affiliates.

Almost as good as the other scam where the webmaster would pay any surfer that signed up some fee for verification that they signed up using their code.

Revshare was the quick answer to this for smaller programs. PPS programs scrub transactions and eyeball anything for trends.

Like Jim said, if you're going to do that, let the sponsor know first -- lest ye be terminated very quickly. PPS sponsors today have very itchy trigger fingers -- and usually very few have any method of rebuttal short of Jim's Helpdesk.

lol, that should be very effective :D "hey, are you guys shaving me i am gonna test tommorow", affiliate says to sponsor, sponsor replies,"ohh, sure go ahead :) we would never shave and welcome affiliates to test us as long as they only do it now and then and warn us in advance." simple minded affiliate replies, "wow! great thanx guys i heard you were great! |thumb "

sponsors says to tech guy, "hey, this dumbass is gonna check if we shave him tommorow, make sure you turn off the shavebot on his account for any ip addys comming from his area, ohh and since he's being a cunt after tommorow push his shave up to 85% for the next period."

:lol:

ok, would never happen :) sponsors are all on the level.

Most affiliates are a little smarter in their wording. When ever someone wanted to test any program I was running, they never said they wanted to test for shaving. And, they almost never gave me a date as to when they were going to do it. If they did give me a date, I always told them to do it within the next week or two and let me know after they did it.

And Sparky, did I ever let you know someone was going to test our signup process so you could make sure we turned off the shave machine just for that guy? :)

Not sure what other programs do, but we have robust automatic fraud screening in place so most self-sign ups are screened for fraud.

People would be very surprised at how many fraudulent webmasters there are. We have at least a few every week try to fraud a few joins.

I tested several sponsors when my ratios crashed and always let them know before. Most even refunded the signup fees and i never really got one shaving.

So shaving is a very smart technology or maybe it really depends on the traffic you send to the sponsor?

I haven't done a test sign up in quite some time, so security measures may have tightened up since that time.

Last time I did do a test sign up...I first checked with the sponsor in question to verify it was something they allowed. I did not tell them when or even IF I would be doing a test...just wanted to know if it was something they permitted. I was told of course they allow it, just be sure to let them know immediately following the test...keyword being IMMEDIATELY.

Think it was about three weeks later when I ran the test through...it showed up in stats within minutes, and I contacted them immediately thereafter to remove the sale.

I wouldn't do it like that, lol

If I'm going to run a test signup I'm going to have somebody thats in another state do it at a random time.

If I hit all my sponsors 1 time like this and they all pass then thats a good sign.

However even if 1 fails thats a bad sign across the board, because that means it's possible that the next time I do it a different one would fail.

I sign myself up with every rev share program I use (I don't use a lot of programs).

1. I want to make sure I get creditted with the sale. I haven't twice.
2. It's nice to know what your selling.
3. It's a tax write off since I end up reviewing the site.

Yeh I test signup, each time during a time when sales are so bleak I think the sponser is shaving me, this is when I get no sales a day. The signup works everytime. I then Icq the program. If they dont mind, job done. If they do. I stop promoting them. something like $200 in my account is worth losing to find a sponser that is not trigger finger happy. Or later on in the day I may find my account shut down with a lot more money in, for some reason.

Sleeper, we don't mind people testing (and you don't have to advise us beforehand) so long as you advise us once the signup is there - to see in realtime, click the 'clicks' for the day on that site and it should be there unless the billers are delayed in updating.

By the end of the day or the next morning (at the latest), you should advise us so we remove the sale from your commissions. If not, yes, you do get flagged for fraud - so all we ask is that you let us know *yes, that was me, remove the sale from my commissions*.

For those who do it to get see the members area or get content :

1) Most people who qualify already have the option in their menus on TopBucks.com (mouseover MARKETING - it would be the last option MEMBERS AREA PREVIEW) <-if it's not there, you don't qualify
2) You can contact your Account Manager (mentioned with the Greeting once you login - with their contact info - email & ICQ) and they should be able to get you temporary access if you need to see the sites. For content, you need to ask for that specific permission.

I hope that helps - if you need anything, I'm always around. :)

We have no problems at all with test signups. On the contrary we appreciate them. The process to be as impartial as possible, we just ask that affiliates notify us after for two reasons: 1) so we can credit you back for the test and 2) let us know additional details, such as the surfer experience of our signup process and possible ways to improve it.

It's an amazing concept that there are sponsors that have such fantastic natural conversion ratios to their sites (especially the large cookie cutter programs) that they wouldn't be fighting to have the best ratios out there. I would image some reverse shaving taking place to pad the numbers and get an affiliate buzz going. But those would only be fleeting good results that would show up soon enough.

Other factors to consider are programs that have their affiliate rebills turned off after a certain number, and there are probably a few programs that don't have their programming act together. Meaning there are holes in their signup process with a custom script or their post back scripts are not working properly.

Good thread :)

No problem whatsoever with resellers testing our programs, but one thing we mind is when a resellers try to make a few bucks signing up himself for a trial and getting paid PPS. Had a few of those, who we caught and their explainations are always fun to hear!

Anyway, if you want to test our PPS, do the test signup and let us know afterwards. Even go ahead and test our revShare and I will refund you afterwards.

Want a pass to checkout our memberareas, just lmk.

Ive always done test signups - and dropped a few programs because of it just like S Moby
The only one I really ever had a problem with (and yes I did inform them 10 minutes after I did it) was wegcash - they threatened me with turning off my account for abuse in the reply email to the one I sent them informing them I had just done a test signup - I guess they must have something in their TOS that dosnt allow it???

Other than that I still do them and will always to new sponsors and occsionally go back and check old ones - not for any distrust reasons - just to make sure that my surfers arent running into any problems with payment processing

I do test signups whenever I get suspicious about stats. I have a couple of good friends who do them for me, one in Texas and one in Milan. I just paypal them the money for a join and they get free porn... for them its a good deal!

For me its a good deal too. Over the years it has saved me thousands and of course thousands saved = thousands earned. Well worth the few hundred dollars. Its not always the fact that the company is trying to cheat you either. Sometimes (but rarely) its a genuine scripting/database problem.

Heres a scenario that actually happened:

Traffic on my website doubles, all the money from my sponsors comes close to doubling - except for one which is a revshare program. This stays nearly rock steady with maybe a 10% rise. After a month I get one of my friends to sign up - his nick appears on my signup stats and his initial spend and my % is ok. A month later I am still foxed so I get him to spend again. This time nothing appears on my stats. Give it one final college try and the same.
Since I have been working this sponsor for years and have a good relationship (read 'make a lot of money from them') I email my personal contact in support and explain what I have done and ask him if he can sort it out before I get fed up and pull all their ads.

A day later I get an email back. It seems that in my subaccount for that site (I created a new subaccount) one of two flags on the database that marks it as revshare was not set resulting in secondary payment not being credited and would I accept an ex-gratia payment (bribe) of $2000 for the four months I had missed since they had fixed the database and the faulty script that had caused the problem by not setting the second flag (and they explained they had also gone through a few other peoples data and fixed it). Since I was probably only $1000 or so adrift I was very happy with this.

That one incident more than paid for all the test joins I have ever done!