First things first, what are PPL and RevShare?
PPL When an affiliate program pays you for signups or registrations. A one-time payment that can scale depending on the location of the person registering.
RevShare When an affiliate program pays you a percentage of every purchase a customer makes. This scales in time, most are for a lifetime, but I have seen a few that were as low as one year.
Which program should you use?
One thing to consider is the amount of capital you have initially. How long can you go without collecting a payment for your hard work? PPL is good for “startups” that need the funding right away. RevShare is good for those that are in it for the long haul and have time before they start getting more leads.
Ultimately, the biggest thing to consider is what kind of traffic you’ll be sending. You need to know the demographic of your leads. Are they the kind of people that will signup for the free program and never spend a dime? Or are they the kind of people that will pay for the premium service and continue to pay.
I know one program, a certain adult webcam service that pays out affiliates with both pay per lead as well as revshare. If you do the PPL option, you get $1 per free signup and that’s it. One and done.
If you choose the revshare option, you don’t get anything when people signup, but every time that person pays for the premium service, you get 20% of what they spend.
Unfortunately, most people won’t go on to become paying customers. But those select few that become repeated paying customers continue to make you money for a long time. At the same time, you don’t know which of those people you thought wouldn’t be paying customers will go on to spend thousands, making you thousands.
Here’s an incredibly simple chart of which is better, using round numbers and assuming no growth and whatnot.
After 9 months, you’ll find the “break-even point”.
Of course, this example is just showing how revshare can be more beneficial over a period of time. If you did the revenue sharing and no one ever bought anything ever, you wouldn’t make a dime.
If you landed a whale, you would make quite a bit more money.
If you landed a whale using PPL, you’d still only make $1.
Conclusion
If you need a quick buck, go for pay per lead. If you are looking for making money in the long run, go for revshare.