are paysite owners not worried about 1%?

50 chargebacks

KK, on the contrary, i was once paid to do market research for someone and signed up to well over 40 sites, many of which had the same fucking bullshit content on the inside. most were very hard to navigate, and about 60% of them i would have cancelled based on deceptive marketing on the tours and lack of delivery of said goods. let alone the fact that they all had 80% of the same feeds, and images. most of which sucked.

kind of like content blowout, how many companies just did all new updates with the same freshphotos.com content they got for cheap as hell? id bet a lot.

these people would rather invest in parties and bullshit then invest in making thier customer happy. i for one would rather see someone show proof that they can hold an average retention of 6+ months and convert well then go to some stupid party at a show paid for by them.

some people got spoiled by fucking the customer right and left back in the 90's and that shit just isnt going to fly anymore. i guess when they start loosing thier ability to do business they will realize how fucked up what they did for so long was and that they shot themselfs in the feet.

i think a lot of companies have very fucked up tours that promise all kinds of shit that they dont have. they think that the surfer is just an idiot and doesnt care. which is bullshit from the ground up! $40 is a chunk of change to some people, kind of high pricing, they may call it the industry standard but i call it rape, unless the site is truly wonderful inside, which most are NOT!

anyone looking to join something for free, is probably a bargain hunter, i dont think they really want to pay $40 for a porn site. make them commit to something.

now the argument may be, a porn dvd at the arcade is $40, and once youve watched it 10 times its pretty played out, but at least they dont have to be worried about fuckers dinging them for $120 dollars for shit they didnt use and maybe didnt even know they were buying,(due to a very fucked up method of marketing which is pretty shady on total disclosure of whats really going on to the customer) and they they get thier statement and it doesnt even know what it was they bought. just a "discreet"(id call deceptive) "paycom" on thier bill. id sure as fuck chargeback anything i couldnt identify.

anyone with a business model which includes "hoping they forget" is a fucker. let them cancel if they want out! for fucks sake, otherwise your fucking them. and in return they fuck you back with a CB or two. can you blame them?

its like that fucking cabby in vancouver, wouldnt let ryan out of the cab, he got knocked the fuck out for it. a lot of this is transitive. dont let people out of paying for some shitty site, and they charge the shit back. its a good way to make it happen eh?

and back to the dvd subject... at least when you buy a dvd you know what you're buying because whats on the BOX(think tour) is ON THE DVD(think members area). and most of the DVD;s are truly differant. unlike porn sites which chances are have the same, non exclusive content(that is advertised ont eh tour as exclusive) in the members area.

you give what you get, your a dick smoker to people, youll get it back in the ass in the end. its like fucking karma!


this is just my on the matter. just calling them as i see them.

How do you make your money, Why?

I don't think Visa would call it quits. I think they want to see the ammount of fraud in the industry go away though.

The current model will not stand in the next few months. Slam the sign ups in, slam them on checked cross sells, slam them into a shitty member area that they have seen 100 times before, slam there card a few more time's. Slam them into an opt in list, slam them with rebills, slam them with no way of canceling.

I have stated this before and I stand by it. When the hammer falls its gonna be FIERCE where talking RICO fraud cases's here.
I've seen A LOT of sites that operate on a completly fraud based business model.

They key to all of this is making the members happy about buying the product. Avoid the charge back. Some sites are worried about the 1% some are not. Find out why your charge backs are so high and work on that. Keep member retention in mind when designing the sites.

But the problem does not only exist with the sites, its the fraud that exisits in the affiliate programs, its the poor customer service on the 3rd party billers. I havent signed up for a while onto a paysite but it used to be impossible to cancel, and alot of times i would get charged 3 months after i canceled what other choice do I have then to charge back. As a customer it was impossible to get to the billing company. I know things have changed but the fact that this was a problem shows that the very companies that we are doing business are not set up to do good business.

- Good billing practice
- Some form of customer service when needed
- Easy cancel options that WORK
- More secure systems
- Weeding out of the fraud affiliates
- Custom Content, Exclusive Content, Good Content
- A member area with as much care put into it as the tour
- Gadgets designed to increase brand and recognition
- Consistant bad customers (chargebacks refunds) should be blacklisted and scrubbed out.

30 minute trials are a bad idea....hell I think that trials are a bad idea...

no one else gonna touch this?

Diversification is always a good idea, no matter the industry.

Well, the part about Phil being absolutely right is absolutely right.

But the rest of this logic has some serious flaws in it, I'll give you a few points of contention.

First off, you need to look at the Audiotext industry for guidance here, I'm not the only one saying it, hell everyone who came from audiotext will tell you this and they are the biggest of players in adult internet.

Visa doesn't create IPSP designations in order to ban them, they create it in order to control the market and manage their risk. I'll bet you money that the IPSP model lasts longer than having one's own merchant account. Unregulated aggregators, sure, they are out and they deserve to be out, they cause alot of problems for people in this business. Want to guess how many out of business billing company db's WITH card numbers and IPs and perhaps even CVV2s I can buy for next to nothing right this minute?

Next off, VbV -- does NOT prevent recurring billing. No more than CVV2 has prevented it -- rebilling has a different designation when run correctly and is exempt from needing that verification. VbV also doesn't mean there are NO chargebacks. Nothing will ever mean there are NO chargebacks. Any time you get people stupid enough to store their passwords and card numbers in a Windows (or any other electronic) environment, there will always be fraud. And that fraud will not be shoved under the rug by Visa or any bank, its just not good business for them.

If someone else already picked this apart, sorry, I just didn't feel like reading the rest of the thread after I saw those statements.

Cross sells and upsells are not the problem. Shitty member areas are not the problem with chargebacks. Rebills are not the problem. Mailers are not the problem.


Affiliate marketing is the problem with chargebacks.


Find any company that will let you have a peek at their numbers, provided they do at least 500 sales a day. You can see the problem right off the bat if they separate their own sales from their affiliate sales and track back to the initial transaction in order to see what is happening.

Phil's right.

Another factor that no one has mentioned is the monthly fee. If you charge $40 a month people are gonna charge that back. It's a lot of money, especially 3 months of it. If you charge $15/m it's not worth most people's time, so chargebacks are much lower.

I think some or all of the following will happen:
1. monthly fees for internet content will lower, per above. Or...
2. content will move to DVD, CB are lower when people need to put their address and sign for it. Fees stay high with this model.
3. affiiates will be gone. Just plain too many cb with affiliates.

VbV is a wildcard. It might even save the affiiate model. Not sure. I've read that when it with the pw challenge 50% of all surfers actually sign up for VbV and complete the sale. That's what Visa says, anyway. Might not be true, or might not be true for porn. If true, would you take a 50% hit in conversions in exchange for maintaining the current affiliate business model?

Only problem with the dvd model is who's going to accept the inherent liability of shipping potentially obscene material across state lines? It's more relevant now than its been in years

KK-

Don't get me wrong alot of what I mentioned is due to the affilate model gone horribly wrong.

Care to comment on why you think that happened? I'm curious

Too much do to (like.. real work. :P) so I won't touch anything here, it looks pretty well covered.

Why, while I agree with some of your points on principle, and to a lesser extent in the real world.. The real numbers just don't add up. As Donnie orginally said, his retention is more or less the same, or less (I would explain the less just as a fluke.. different traffic, whatever) no matter if he has a "good" backend, or a horrible one. The sad FACT is that for any large program pulling the amount of sales that MAKE this industry, customers forgetting to cancel is the largest source of revenue. I never believed it either until actually peering in the databases kept on this stuff from a few 300+ sales/day programs.

I still however, think there is a definite payback if you will for straight-shooting your customers. These sites you also have to remember market to a somewhat different target niche, even if it's inadvertant.

But anyways, the reason I posted:

The DVD model is somewhat interesting. KK makes a great point though. If the shit really does hit the fan bad, I see a great opportunity for a company to have "outlets" in each state that provide in-state shipping. I think also the DVD model will get rid of a lot of the IMO crap out there.. The rape, extreme bondage, etc. junk that I think gives this industry a bad name. Not that I neccessary feel it should be illegal, it's just something I sure as hell won't be missing if that comes to pass.

Ah well, great thread. Be very interesting to see what happens 5 months down the road, and pull this thread up to see who was most right.

-Phil

I just don't believe it's the affiliate model that is causing the problem across the board.. I know all of my affiliates personally (I only have a few) and they all send at least 50 sales/day. The fact is people charge back regardless, and most of the time it isn't fraud.

The facts are:
#1 Aggregators have poor customer service.
#2 Cross sales are too expensive for surfers to afford (Surfers are very broke people, as I will illustrate below)
#3 The recurring model is based on forgetting. I don't see any successful programs emailing their members reminding them they have a membership.
#4 Any site with a real member's area is something memorable enough for a surfer to realize he still has $40/month membership, and at $40, that is just too much for you average gas station employee, or receptionist, or consultant
#5 With other programs paying $40/trial sign up, it becomes a case of 'Keeping up with the Jones's'. A program that only charges surfers $20/mo cannot compete for affiliates when others are charging enough to afford high per sign up rates.
#6 The only way that the affiliate issue makes a difference to a large program (I know from experience, I am not large, but large enough) is that sponsors are competing for market share within the webmaster community, and the only way they can do this is to pay higher rates, which requires charging the surfer that little bit extra
#7 With a normal site (Any silvercash, python, ARS, etc site), charging $40/month w/o notifying surfers of updates (Basically reminding them they have a membership, and offering good customer support [i.e. helping them cancel], there is no way to be below 1%.
#8 It is possible to be below 1% if you charge less money, have good content, and are willing to expect surfers to only retain 3 months or so (By keeping them posted that they are a member), which is NOT enough to pay affiliates $40/trial join.

Kimmy is completely full of it if she says Epoch's cross sales did not increase chargeback ratios. I can look at my cross sales way back from when I started and they have had on average 1-2% higher ratios than straight sales. That is just her personal bias because she is affiliated with them.

How could anyone honestly say that $120-$160 worth of memberships/month are not prone to getting charged back a lot more than one $40 recurring sale. One $39.95 paycom.net charge is easier to overlook than 3-4 right next to each other. She is just a consultant though, so what does she know, really...? about the same as a $50k/yr university professor teaching investing.. not trying to hate or anything, just being honest

Would be good if she could offer some sort of substantiated proof that cross sales have not increased chargebacks, especially considering her consultee preaches that ridding yourself of pre-checked/overpriced cross sales is part of the recipe for lowering your ratio, along with eliminating free trial memberships, and lowering recurring rates.

Would like to see her monetary accomplishments..

Absolutely, this may become the way the affiliate model survives. The cost will be at least 50% reduction in recurring, if not 90%.

This is "apparently true" but not really true. It is apparently true because most affiliates don't believe it can be any other way, so attracting affiliates to another method is difficult. But it's not really true.

I have an affiliate, who I personally trained and he tells me like it is. He works both my $15/m revshare and my competitor's $40 per signup. He tells me that he consistently makes more money from my program. Convincing the average affiliate of that is a hard sell, however.

I still want to see Kimmy's responses.

Wimpy, I agree with you. I think consistency and stability are more important than the quick dollar, so it's best not to have to depend on affiliates, really.. Cheap memberships and no affiliates is probably where it's at.

Or of course you could charge per minute and rape the surfers for hundreds or thousands, and just hope you get enough transactions to be abl to cover their high CB's... that is another model that works (iFriends)

You can believe what you like, it's your prerogative. I've talked to many people about this and I'll believe what the numbers tell me, especially on large programs.

Can you show me these facts please? Having worked at CCBill for years, I didn't see poor customer service. I've also been in the Epoch offices and seen the giant call monitor screen that's in there, seems to me they are taking care of calls quickly and efficiently.

No argument with #3, but number 4 I simply don't agree with.

And you're doing how many sales a day with how many thousands of affiliates that qualifies you to make these statements?

Surfers havent stayed 3 months on non-niche content for years. This fantasy number that people keep pulling up is belied by the real numbers in processing, be it with your own merchant account or an IPSP. I've a good friend with 300+ sites on his own accounts that has the same issues that someone with an IPSP has.

My affiliation with Epoch? And what would that be? I don't work at Epoch or consult for them, nor do I have access to any of their data unless I ask a question just like a client would. Get the facts right.

I see IBill, CCBill, Jettis and Epoch doing cross sales; given the disparity among those businesses, obviously cross sales aren't the problem or they'd have all stopped doing it with only one month to go before d-day on the new ratios.

You can call me whatever you like, it's not as if it matters to me. I've been the VP of a processor, I've run affiliate programs larger than yours, and I started as a plain old webmaster with some very smart folks giving me guidance and advice.

If you want to see my track record on these things, all you have to do is search and see how many correct predictions I've made regarding the state of things.

I think there are two distinct 1% issues and the distinction is very important.

MasterCard is looking at the IPSP as the vendor and their cumulative numbers will effect all of their clients. Even if you have MC chargebacks and refunds of less than 1% if the IPSP exceeds the base number of monthly chargebacks and then exceeds the 1% combined Chargebacks and refunds all of their vendors are screwed. One good reason to get away from IPSP's if you can deal with your own customer support and billing.

Visa is looking at each IPSP client individually and not the IPSP as a totality, they are also not considering refunds as chargebacks. Here the burden falls on you.

It is my personal belief that not rebilling is a good practice. We have had a few customers pay annually for seven years, many more who stick around for many months and recharge after an email notice. I think rebilling, "free trials" and x sales result in more headaches than they are worth.

I have no access to IPSP data only seven years of our own experience and very few chargeback problems to reference.

We are not a BIG program, we do not pay affiliates, I think a very significant issue but we do hundreds of sales every day and have for quite some time.

only time will tell

#1: Aggregators have poor customer service.

When I said this, I mean that they are not equipped to deal with each site personally, since they do not know the details of the particular site that a member joined. All IPSP customer servce knows how to do is cancel people.

#4: I am just going on my experience. And with me, the worse the site, the better the retention.

#5: I think common sense would dictate that your average affiliate would choose a program that pays $40 per sign up over one that pays $20.

#6: Common sense again. If they want to pay $40/sign up, they have to charge the surfer more money. Howexactly can this be disputed?

#7: I do between 750-1000 sales per day, charge $40/month, and have done pre-checked cross sales. There is very little fraud as my traffic comes from a small concentration of people, and my ratio is above 1%. Surfers will charge back 6 months because they forgot they were a member.

#8: You misconstrued my statement. Surfers stay way more than 3 months on non-niche content. This is because they forget. This goes hand in hand with my contention #4. If there is niche content, at $40/mo, the surfer is more aware that he has a membership if it is a site he is fond of, because he frequents it. This was all I was saying. And I am also saying that if you do more 'honest' things, like charging a little less (per Epoch's suggestion for lowering chargebacks), eliminate cross sales (another of their suggestions), and even go so far as to notify the member regularly that they have a membership (Which would destroy retention), your chargeback ratio would be a lot lower.

And to respond to the affiliation with Epoch. Are you not affiliated in some way with ePassporte? If you call Amparo's voicemail, you will get "Hello, you've reached the desk of Amparo with Epoch and ePassporte".

Epoch says the path to being under 1% is:

#1: Have a good member's area, consistent with the tour (No fraud)
#2: Lower your monthly recurring rates
#3: Eliminate free trials, and possibly even paid trials
#4: Eliminate cross sales (At the very least aggressive/pre-checked ones)

If cross sales were not at least part of the issue, why would they say this? I do not understand how you can be so irrational as to say that a surfer is less likely to charge back $40 than they are $160. But I suppose it's of no consequence.

You always make enigmatic phrases like "i've seen the numbers" or "if you knew what I knew..." but you never actually say what you've seen. But I guess it goes with your whole image of being an oracle. Poetic and ambiguous. Maybe you should start a psychic hotline. Perhaps you should actually state some cases in point, or some real numbers.

I was just concerned about the whole 1% thing. Interesting to see what will happen. Everyone can speculate but I suppose you just have to go with what you think is correct, in the end. Was just trying to get advice on this board; but apparently what I'm doing is correct anyway I'm not complaining..

Cheers.. you're right. But then you give up a lot of money now for a bit less money on a consistent basis, but consistency is what counts.

It was a strategic business decision to be around long term rather than flame out. I am not sure it will matter long term because I suspect we will all go down in the same ship if they finally just abandon the industry.

There is way too much money to be made here. It might be piss in a bucket to Visa, but it's a lot of money to Epoch or Larry Flint or someone like him who has the bucks to bankroll a billing solution for adult sites.

There will always be a billing solution.

If Visa cans adult sites it might be the best thing that ever happened to us.

Once again only time will tell

With a merchant account you can have more information of your customers and more ways of avoiding fraud.

Victoria

Perhaps you aren't aware of a thing called a non-disclosure statement Donnie? I have one with every one of my clients and both my former employers.

As for my friends or acquaintances that I don't work with but do occasionally answer a question for, I would NEVER disclose their numbers, even without naming them as the owner of those numbers, it's simply not something I would do.

And for the last time... I don't have anything to do with Epoch. I have the marketing contract for ePassporte, which is a totally separate company. Can I make it any more plain for you?

There are many speculative ideas about what will address the issues that Visa and Mastercard have put in front of this industry.

I'll use Lee - Probono - to make my point. He has no affiliates, he hasn't had any affiliates. He also has no recurring but he does have multiple sales to consumers on the same billing cycle -- not a pre-checked cross sale, but sales that will show up simultaneously on the surfers statement --

And he has no issues with the threshholds, currently or in the immediate future.

" I'll use Lee - Probono - to make my point. He has no affiliates, he hasn't had any affiliates. He also has no recurring but he does have multiple sales to consumers on the same billing cycle -- not a pre-checked cross sale, but sales that will show up simultaneously on the surfers statement --

And he has no issues with the threshholds, currently or in the immediate future."

Kimmy is correct, we have some very large sales and many people buy many times in a month. I do however think the difference is they know they bought. They had to affirmatively select each item and put it into a shopping cart.

I think X sales are a cheap shot to increase revenue. Most of these guys are buying with only one hand on the keyboard and not reading what they are agreeing to.

so if affliliates are the whole problem then there is no place in the biz for big affiliate programs anymore.

Before the clickthru affiliate programs came around people paid for ad spots on websites like PK, still do but maybe that's what more people will be doing, getting away from paying per signup.

Could never grow to the size some companies have that way though.

Haha.. Why do all the reps voice mails say Epoch and ePassporte? Why does Epoch issue ePassporte news in their newsletters and announcements? If one logs into Epoch's master stats and clicks announcements, the first thing that comes up is that ePassporte isn't a newbie anymore. Why is the US office address for ePassporte the same as Epoch's? So Greg Elias might be the company director for ePassporte, N.V. but that is only for legal/tax reasons.

When you were made a marketing consultant for ePassporte, or what have you, the announcement was made to Epoch clients from Rand.

Hey Probono, you're totally right. Cross sales are a scam because the surfer doesn't realize what he's buying. I have a per minute site where the some guys are spending thousands, and they don't charge back because they know what they are getting. But Kimmy can't answer the question: Why does Epoch encourage people with CB issues to get rid of cross sales in order to reduce ratios if cross sales do not cause a CB problem?

Your reading comprehension could use some work Donnie. That is the answer.

are you serious?

do you really expect her to spew out confidential / privileged information like that on a public board?

if she did, she wouldn't have too much further access - that's for sure...


**

I also don't understand why you can't grasp that epoch and eppasporte are two seperate entities...

I have four very different entities where I am the common denominator - they all have the same basic contact details etc - BUT they are all seperate - one does not OWN the other - they have some different directors, they are not liable for each other...etc

PornBroker,

Piss off.

Kimmy,

I did not expect you to say This company does this many sales and has this much of a ratio. You could use proportional hypotheticals with nameless companies.

But you do not because you are full of shit.

Love,

Donnie

Whatever you say little man.

make too much sense did I?

Pornbroker,

No, it wasn't that. There is no sense in retoring to someone who spells separate with two e's, though..

None of your opinions really matter at the end of the day; it's just fun..

I'm running at .004% on all 8 my pay sites and I have another 4 coming on line in a week. I agee with everyone that says you have to give your members value for money plus excellent customer service.

We have message boards on our sites and have one person who's task is to monitor and respond to members all the time. We also take requests from our members and do the shoots they want and many of our members have been with us for over 18 months now.

um, did you mean retorting?

I can't help but grin.

to understand credit card fraud, maybe these companies should go talk to people that have commited the crime. i have never used a credit card unauthorized(take it for what its worth but its the truth) but i know many whom have, and VbV is just as much of a joke as CVV2 was, the people stealing/scamming the credit cards, just get the VbV code, which is good for 24 hours correct? from thier scam sites, then they just have to make sure and use it within 24 hours. now they could use that scammed card to get a laptop or something of value, but thats a lot more risk them dumping the fraudulent transaction onto an affiliate program to deal with and just collecting the $40 from each one. on top of that they still have the CC to use on non VbV sites. or trade to other scammers.

point being: visa cant stop it.

they've been putting stuff up to clean up this industry(and others) time and time again, yet these businesses(criminals?) still find ways to scam thier customers and end up with lots of new problems if not FTC lawsuits. which i think there will be a few coming in the next year, but thats just my opinion.

its about honesty and integrity, two highly important qualities that many companies in this biz lack. this industry has a reputation that is so incredibly tarnished it will be there for years and years to come. quite a few people that iv discussed what i do with, have mentioned all the scams and bullshit and ask me... "arent people afraid to buy that shit?" and other questions of the same sort that show distrust and fear.

as far as $40 payouts. they are begging for fraud, for many reasons... one being it attracts new webmasters looking for highest payout, which probably arent promoting sites correctly. and they are bigger targets for scammers that send fraudulent signups. obviously your going to want to get the most pay for each crime commited right?

i personally promote several programs that pay me $15-25 a join and couldnt be happier, for one i know they probably dont need to shave me as much to compensate for the ability to pay me more then the join is even worth. furthermore, i know they arent going to fuck with my traffic as much with chains of popups and scandalous billing practices. to be able to pay out what they do.

why would a program even care to compete for the traffic of idiots. that cant see these things? anyone can see the flaws and bad practices that come along with higher payouts. but maybe im the only one that sees it that way and/or im a conspiracy theorist.

take the hun for instance... arguably one of the largest tgps on the web, you think he has so many bookmarks because you jacks his traffic around? no he has them because he delivers the goods that he says he will. and protects his surfers from fucked up companies that are going to jack them around. they click on a link and get hundreds of popups do you not think they will be wary of clicking another link again. but again that is just my

the same holds true for membership based sites. you think if they signup to one site and get bullshit pulled on them, they will be wary of purchasing again? let alone the thought of shared members areas. if you joined one site and it sucked or you just go tbored with it and cancelled, then later in life you sign up for a totally differant site that has the exact same shit inside on the same layout, your not going ot be pissed.

again all these points kindof go along with honesty and integrity.

honesty would include keeping your members around because you are running an honest business and are confident in your product and your ability to keep a customer around, and sending an email to your customer wont make them cancel, but will make them feel like a "member" of something and might even make them happy for reminding them of your kickass site they they forgot about and should go visit again because it was so good. or even, maybe it does remind them that they should go cancel it, but once they sign in again, it brings back memories of how much good content there was inside and how much better your site was then all the other ones they joined up to and got the shaft from.

i could go off on this all day. but ill save us all the time of that.

maybe i am an idealist but i do think that a little honesty and showing some integrity would go a long ways. but i am of sorts on the outside looking in, as i dont run any sites. i hear from friends and such all thier complaints about this industry(yes these people are YOUR paying customers) im 20 and have a number of friends that frequently buy memberships, shit i even discussed this with my girlfriends dad who had a number of memberships to sites. maybe some of these companies that are sweating would know some of this if they took the time to listen to why thier customers are pissed and charging back and canceling.

so take a few minutes each day and figure out ways to keep your customers happy rather then thinking of ways you can fuck them out of thier hard earned money.

some of these fuckers should get off your horses and bust your ass at mickeyD;s or something for a few days at minimum wage and realize that $40 is a chunk of change, and getting taken for it after you cancel, or because you accidently didnt uncheck some stupid box is a problem, and is worth charging back.

you all mention the bigger companies, well maybe if they took the $200k they spent in some stupid show, and hired up 4-5 new employees that had nothing to do but keep the customers happy. they would see what im saying

i guess it really is true, you reap what you sew. you shaft people for so long and at some point it turns back around and your the one getting the shaft. eh?

haha.. but that was obviously just a typo it's easy to leave out a t in retorting because the r and the t are so close to one another.. quite funny anyway

I did not have a chance to read all of the posts in this thread sans the first few and I wanted to give my input (I had touched on a few of these things in a previous post a few weeks back)

Can a large program have a low chargeback rate? Certainly, some very large programs have chargeback well below 1%

Things that facilitate lower chargebacks:

Giving the customers what they want at a good price, value (constant and consistent updates, keep the site up and running, don?t hide the cancel links, etc)

Sites that don?t have misleading sales tactics (if you are promoting a particular girl on a tour, make sure that they are in the members area, be clear and upfront on your pricing)

Programs that keep a VERY, VERY close eye on their referrers (ie, monitor your program closely, when you set payouts, align the incentives of your business with your affiliates)

Programs that don?t ?burn? their customers ie they want good customers who are going to retain and like the site rather than the daily goal being to push as many people as possible through the door, with whatever tactics imaginable.

Webmasters that take responsibility for their business run a good business

Some very common sense things, lot of good points in this thread, btw

also some personal thoughts:

Game theory

Webmasters compete for traffic and the programs that have the highest payout get more traffic than lower paying programs. The programs gradually increase their payouts to the referrers to get the traffic, tightening margins. New profit centers are created over time (upsells, selling emails, etc) that justify an increase in affiliate payouts, which may also be increased by misleading tactics (hiding cancel links to increase retention, promising the world to the consumer on the tour for FREE, use your imagination)?thus the standard payout for PPS programs have increased, generally at the expense of the consumer (due to the lack of previous regulation over chargeback rates)?not to mention that the higher the payouts, the more fraud it attracts

The end result is that some programs use misleading tactics to get customers through the door and keep billing them, the programs can continue to pay the affiliates out, keep them happy, and get the traffic, the customers are not happy about it and charge back

Not pointing any program or group of programs out, only speaking in general, I am sure that there is great traffic out there that is worth $40 per signup, and there are sites that offer an excellent service to the members and are rewarded in return.

So here we are almost nine months later to the day, time to revisit one of GFY's many "The Sky is Falling!!" threads of the past and see how it's affected everyone.

I see little change, maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but the aggressive pre-checked cross-sellers are still doing so, though it does appear that many have lowered the cross-sell recurring price from $39.95 or $29.95 down to $19.95 or less. The ultra-aggressive sponsors on their tours are still ultra-aggressive, some free-trials have gone to paid trials, and a few "$1" trials went to $4.95, but otherwise this 1% cb rule didn't seem to be the nuke everyone expected.

Affiliate programs are still massive, PPS programs still flourish, Paysite operators are still treating their member's area as just another landing page for upsells...lol.

Has anything changed that I'm missing?

Obviously the date.



This thread is way older than 9 months old.

I couldn't agree with this opinion more. For the poster who said our industry was all about our members forgetting to cancel, I don't think so. If our members have a reason to come back, they will. We welcome new members, we write to our members and we answer every support request within 12 hours and we have way more than 10k members. It's not easy but if you make the commitment to run a good business and set it up right, you can do it.

Our chargebacks are very low. Service and content make the difference.

So here we are almost nine months later to the day, time to revisit one of GFY's many "The Sky is Falling!!" threads of the past and see how it's affected everyone.

This pic cracks me up ! lol

Did I miss a year... two? Guess it's entirely possible.