Even though the article sorta educates about Affiliate Programs and the possibility of shaving, I think its worth while taking note that there are probably different types of shaving.
– Player becomes “inactive” in your stats – this could be just normal behavior of a player stopping to play, you just don’t know.
– Traffic you send never shows up in the stats – if the player never tracked through but signed up, and was untagged on purpose, you wouldn’t know that the player was missed.
– Player untagged because it could cost the program a lot of money… eg player deposited $100 one month and built a balance of $30K which they took over into a new month and then proceeded to lose all that money back to the casino. And at 30% as an affiliate we’d get ~10K while the casino just lost $9900 on that player on a $100 deposit.
For me, I want to go with a program I can trust, who have been around. I want to be able to look someone from that company in the eye, shake their hand, have a drink or meal and get the vibes from them. I think I am a good judge of character – but then I have made mistakes before.
Saying all that.. I’ve worked for 5 affiliate programs, and I don’t know one program that shaved. Although.. I did suspect one software provider for shaving their licensees. eg a casino being shaved by the software provider.