Originally Posted by lazycash

I send some traffic to them and will probably end up making them my number one cam sponsor soon. I've been promoting HSN for the last 18 months and did over 200k with them. No matter how many tests I did between HSN ($25) and CC ($40), HSN always gave me a higher $/unique despite the lower payout. Unfortunately that all changed in early Jan of this year when HSN was forced to abandon their old backend and switched to using ifriends as their backend. Along with using ifriends as their backend they are also using their processing and this has finally answered questions I've had about CC for over five years.

Immediately after the changeover in early Jan, HSN webmaster's ratios doubled and in some cases tripled and worse. Keep in mind, only the processing was changed and the backend, which the surfer doesn't see, and all promo pages remained the same. After doing 1/45 with HSN for well over a year, I now was doing 1/100 which is the same ratio I've had with CC for years. HSN webmasters had never seen ratios this low and it now became obvious that ifriends processing was the culprit.

HSN has had a mass exodus because of the huge drop in ratios across the board and unfortunately ARS hands are tied right now because they are having to use ifriends processing. I've watched my income fall in half overnight and am still using HSN even though I should now probably be using CC because of the higher payouts since they both have the same backend and processing. I've mostly stuck with HSN out of loyalty, rewards points and far superior webmaster support and promo materials in comparison to CC, but I may have to change if HSN doesn't come up with an alternative soon.

I've been a long time supporter of CC, they have always paid me on time and I never bought into the shaving allegations of many webmasters as my conversions with them have remained relatively constant. However, with the instant huge drop in HSN conversions after switching to ifriends processing, I began doing a bunch of tests to find out why and what exactly was causing it since my promo pages and traffic sources hadn't changed at all. I watch my stats daily like a hawk and began seeing large stretches of uniques go by with no conversions at various times throughout the week, something that I had never had with HSN in 18 months promoting them.

So over the last month when I started hitting these pockets of 0:300 or more, I would do a test signup through HSN frontend and it became clear what the problem was. Ifriends processing was either shut off or on super high scrub mode because none of my credit cards would work, I live in the USA and all my cards are used regularly. Not only was this my experience, but many other HSN webmasters who did the same thing. When ARS contacted ifriends to get a response, supposedly all ifriends told them was that their processing was on a hard scrub. This is the reason why ratios have fallen and why I'm reluctant to go back to CC, there is nothing more frustrating than knowing you are sending a horny surfer with a valid credit card and they're unable to signup. I know I should be thrilled at being able to do 1/100 with CC, but when that same traffic was doing 1/45 for over a year straight its somewhat disheartening.