ccbill scrub up?

[wicked1]

Originally Posted by Simon

Mornin' everyone,

I noticed this thread because I've seen scrubbing become a real problem at times too, although I'd say that in general we don't have as much trouble with CCBill scrubs compared to some others we've used.

But we do use CCBill in our webmaster program, and one thing I really want to comment on here is about the affiliate code not being carried all the way to the join page at times. This was a personal peeve of mine for a long time, and it was one thing we wanted to see if we could improve on a little with our own webmaster affiliate program and with our (soon to come) Hosted Free Sites.

We think we're doing it a good way now on our tours, where the initial link to us begins by setting a CCBill cookie before the surfer even sees the warn page (or whatever tour page the webmaster wishes to target). We do that in the background with php, and you often won't even see anything happen. But if you check that you don't have a cookie from CCBill named 925611 (our account) before you enter our tour, you'll definitely have one as soon as you do.

From that point on there's no need to carry the code forward to our join page since the cookie already exists long before that.

Yes, if a surfer has a 'no-cookie' browser, or surfs with cookies disabled, they're not going to get tagged, but surfers who disable cookies (and/or Javascript) in their browser aren't usually our best candidates for membership -- particularly since CCBill (and others) require those capabilities to even process a signup.*

In our HFS, we'll be using another method to "bury" the webmaster's affiliate code in the URL (a big thank you to swedguy for help with that one!), because we don't want to see the code easily snipped off the end like happens a lot. With this method we're really hoping to see lots of our HFS appear in search engine listings eventually with the webmaster's code right where it should be.

I didn't mean to help hijack this thread to talk about webmaster affiliate code tracking instead of shaving, but the mention of CCBill and hosted promotions not tracking just kind of pulled my trigger this morning. ::grin::

Simon


* Note: I wonder if it would be worth it to identify the no-cookie/no-javascript surfers, and send them someplace other than tours where the join pages require those functions?

Thanks for following up with your experience Simon.

I'd actually been waiting for a few Sponsors to to attack my findings on my previous post . I do have examples and evidence of there problems and have mentioned it to many sponsors too many times in the past. Most have either denied it happens or we have a disagreement and I no longer send traffic

We are all in the business to make $$$ so I'm tired of sitting on this and keeping it to myself. I personally have "Unknowingly Donated" quite a bit of quality traffic over the years to sponsors with faulty codes.

The problem needs to be brought to the attention of webmasters so they can make up thier own minds why thier traffic either is not converting or is erratic at best.

NOW THIS BEING SAID, The ratios you saw in my previous post are from highly targetted se traffic using lots of pre selling. No TGP or FREE SITE traffic there.

The reason I detected this is I know how much traffic goes to each page and then to each sponsor. I can see if the hosting stats are not registering when compared to my ccbill stats.

Regards,

Wicked1

[Linkster]

Wicked - thats a good start at the tracking and I am glad some WMs are starting to do this type of tracking.
Its very important to realize that while there is a small minority of non-cookie traffic out there, that wont bring you a sale, there is also a large majority of traffic that has been cookied without their knowledge by some rather dubious site owners that set cookies on free sites, galleries and other SE listed "doorway pages" that although the LL owner or TGP may have sent the surfer, will never see that sale. Recent sites we have detected have little 1x1 pixel inserts in their galleries and free sites that are setting all types of cookies for different sponsors (not just ccbill) and atleast in my opinion, stealing sales from the WM that should be getting credit for it

[RawAlex]

Here is an interesting little story:

I started with a new sponsor recently. I didn't really do much with them, but by chance my link code ended up as the #1 search term for their main site's name. It stayed like that for 2 weeks or so, and generated about 500 hits per day... averaging about 1 signup per day (I love free money like this).

About a week ago, this finally dropped off as google shook things up, I guess.

Anyway, I decided that any sponsor that converts at 1 in 500 these days is worth a little shot of other traffic, so I put up some banners, text links, and partial page ads in some pretty good place. Please understand, I use a banner rotator for all of my stuff, and I track the clickouts pretty closely (I track views / clicks on a per banner location per site for all my sites owned). I tossed about 5000 views at a mix of their partial page ads (rotated 3 of them) and let it run for a couple of days.

I had a click out rate aa bit over 5% or about 250-280 clicks. The sponsor counted exactly 11 clicks.

I checked the link codes twice, three times... they are correct. They are exactly the same. The link code tracks all the way to the end of the process (right to the signup page) - but they don't count that many clicks.

Now I am starting to wonder: How many hits was google really generated? Based on this, it must have been generating closer to 10k hits per day.

Needless to say, this sponsor is going to have a VERY short lifespan on my rotation (it's almost over already).

Alex

[Linkster]

Alex - thats a very good point - During my recent "downtime" Ive had the opportunity to do some testing of some sponsors click tracking and their reporting schemes. I have been very dissapointed by some of the major names in the biz, while some others are amazingly accurate - Ill let you guess where my SE traffic is going to start going.
I was amazed at the difference of what I had sent out as tracked clicks (I do similar tracking as you Alex) and what the sponsors reported recieving.
Im not gonna bad-mouth anyone here (yet) but if I were a WM that hadnt installed some sort of out-click tracking, I would definitley implement it as soon as possible as you will see in some cases an 80% drop in what you thought you were sending to what a sponsor will report.

[RawAlex]

LInkster, I accept that some sponsors only count second page hits, only count uniques, whatever... but I have a very hard time accounting for a 90+% haircut. Either their system is not tracking well, or there is some sort of coding issue. I looked at it, it seems to track, but damn, those numbers SUCK.

Interestingly I rarely have seen a sponsor overcount clicks.

Alex

[Doug E]

Alex, could the sponsor be re-directing or blocking country codes? im sure that wouldnt be enough to make up for your loss, just a noobs thought.

[urb]

Hi Linkster

Alex, what you posted sounds very familiar to me.

[eman]

Originally Posted by Linkster

if I were a WM that hadnt installed some sort of out-click tracking, I would definitley implement it as soon as possible as you will see in some cases an 80% drop in what you thought you were sending to what a sponsor will report.

Can you recommend an out-click script?

[Barron]

Things are about the same with me. I was checking stats with CCBill this morning before reading this thread, goose eggs everywhere for this month. Ratios are exceedingly bad.

Originally Posted by Simon

Mornin' everyone,

Simon

* Note: I wonder if it would be worth it to identify the no-cookie/no-javascript surfers, and send them someplace other than tours where the join pages require those functions?

I mentioned this on another board recently and didnt get much feedback. Not a single person asked, "How do you do that?" I think every webmaster should be checking everything about their surfer.

I'm checking country, proxies, cookies, third-party cookies, been here before, niche and using a out click script. This is all done server side. When I get the coding done, I'll be doing a double check with java and checking against Norton, Mcafee, and sp2.

I check all the tours for every site with every sponsor for my affiliate code. But, I never thought to check the FHG's and FHS or check by processor. That will keep me busy for a while!

BTW, for those that are using out click scripts, there is a major sponsor that is checking for it. When out click scripts are detected, they will track the hit(I think), but then they turn the traffic and change the affiliate code. I discovered it completely by accident. I sent an email asking what was up, but got no response.

-

[RawAlex]

Barron, any sponsor declining or re-routing clickout counted hits rates high on the scumbag factor, and would be someone I wouldn't want to do business with. I am starting to wonder if this isn't what I am getting.

Anyway, that sponsor is on the DROP list as soon as the two decent size checks for the SE traffic makes it here.

Alex

[Vink]

My ccbill sponsors have also gone to crap. Funny thing one sponsor I promote has nats with ccbill and epoch which I'm doing 1:300 this month. Same sponsor, same tour, same traffic source 1:1754 through my ccbill account. That blows.

[Lenny]

Some people seem to be confusing scrubbing with shaving.

Shaving is when a sponsor doesn't give you credit for all of the sales you've sent to them.

Scrubbing is what the credit card processors do to control fraud. The harder they scrub, the more legitimate sales get declined.

This is necessary to keep all the sites under the 1% chargeback ratio allowed by visa.

I see the same thing with epoch. I'll maintain a consistent ratio for awhile and then for no reason at all my ratio will triple for a few days, and then go back to normal.

Other than getting your own merchant account for your sites there's nothing you can do about it.
(Except bang your head against the wall, which I frequently do)

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Lenny

...(Except bang your head against the wall, which I frequently do)

I'm beginning to get calluses on my forehead.

I was just looking at my sales for the month by date. 1st, 5th and 6th were good days, a bit better than average. However, I made a total of 3 new sales during the other 5 days. Makes no sense to me.

[Rocco]

Originally Posted by Vink

Funny thing one sponsor I promote has nats with ccbill and epoch which I'm doing 1:300 this month. Same sponsor, same tour, same traffic source 1:1754 through my ccbill account. That blows.

How about overall sales? most sponsors do not count all hits or only count second page hits. although they are not shaving they leave you with an impression of a better join ratio. i became aware of it when i had very bad ratios with ars and emx compared to all other sponsors and then i started to count outlinks and found out that most sponsors try to hide the real ratio.

dont get fooled by ratios!!

[Toby]

That's why I track two ratios on my galleries. I track page views per click through (sponsor hits), and sponsor hits per sign-up.

I know from past experience what the normal range should be for page views per click through. When I start getting numbers that are way too high I double check my galleries to make sure all the links are correct, then start investigating why hits aren't getting counted.

Since CCbill's program counts clicks before the surfer gets redirected to the sponsor tour, I've never had a case where clicks to a CCBill program were outside the normal range, unless I'd mucked up the links in the gallery myself.

[Ramster]

Ouch, back to crap again for whatever reason.

Last 2 days: 1:6757.0

[plateman]

I told you I have a bad feeling - with the heavy scrubbing and the natural summer slow down, its gonna be a very bad summer in terms of sales I predict - I hope the fuck I am wrong.. only way to fight it is double your traffic and submitt to more places..

[Linkster]

Ramster - seems to be an epidemic with certain sponsors the last few days

Here's my stats with one sponsor that I started with some SE traffic last week

last week:
6425 10353 14 1:459

this week so far

3093 5091 0 0:3093

So either they have one hell of a shave or they are playing the old honeymoon game - Im giving them one more day and we'll see who it is when I post their name here - since they are a sponsor of this board. BTW - I havent changed one thing and this is with pure SE traffic making up about 90% - no tgp,free sites or cj traffic and no hosted stuff.
Doesnt give you a lot of confidence in the sponsors when you see this especially since I do track clicks extremely well and when the only factors that change are left to the sponsor - its pretty easy to catch oddities.

[koolkat]

I was kicking ass last week with sales, and then WHAM! It was like I hit a brick wall this week! They must have turned it on again!

[natalie]

Originally Posted by Barron

BTW, for those that are using out click scripts, there is a major sponsor that is checking for it. When out click scripts are detected, they will track the hit(I think), but then they turn the traffic and change the affiliate code. I discovered it completely by accident. I sent an email asking what was up, but got no response.

-

Barron I use phpadsnew and am noticing what may be this, could you please pm the sponsor name? Your help would be greatly appreciated.

[Lenny]

Originally Posted by Linkster

Ramster - seems to be an epidemic with certain sponsors the last few days

Here's my stats with one sponsor that I started with some SE traffic last week

last week:
6425 10353 14 1:459

this week so far

3093 5091 0 0:3093

So either they have one hell of a shave or they are playing the old honeymoon game - Im giving them one more day and we'll see who it is when I post their name here - since they are a sponsor of this board. BTW - I havent changed one thing and this is with pure SE traffic making up about 90% - no tgp,free sites or cj traffic and no hosted stuff.
Doesnt give you a lot of confidence in the sponsors when you see this especially since I do track clicks extremely well and when the only factors that change are left to the sponsor - its pretty easy to catch oddities.

We had a day like that yesterday as well......I think something must have been amuck with paycom.
I talked to a few friends who own sites yesterday and they were seeing the same thing....ridiculously high ratios and no drop in traffic.

[Ramster]

Things are weird but there's not much we can do about it.

Today so far with 1 sponsor: 1 sale 1/3256
Yesterday for same sponsor: 10 sales 1/650

[Emperor]

Hi,

You know, it's easy to blame someone else for your failures, and to even go so far as to say you're being cheated.

My CCBill sales are 1:552 for the month (to date), and that's with a lot of sales using more than 10 programs so it's an accurate overall figure.

What type of traffic do you get to your site ? Let me guess, someone at another sites clicks a sexy thumbnail thinking he'll get a nice gallery but instead ends up at your (piece of shit) site, luckily for you he decides to click a few of your thumbs/links because he doesn't mind wasting his time (if he did mind he wouldn't be at the site that circle jerked him to your site in the first place) and after four clicks (and three closed windows) he finally gets a gallery that works. Do you really think he's going to order anything at that point ?

But I have a solution for you: build more sites just like that and keep complaining about how CCBill "scrubs", after all, that's what everyone else does.

Great Emperor
RW

[Toby]

Hmmm, someone must have pee'd in our Cherios this morning. |pissleft|

[Useless]

Originally Posted by Emperor

My CCBill sales are 1:552 for the month (to date), and that's with a lot of sales using more than 10 programs so it's an accurate overall figure.

Ewww... over 10 programs. Wow! You must be a fucking genius then.

Pass the Cheerios, will ya Toby?