i agree 100% with that, do not do business with people you can't trust.

I also think that the goal of this thread is to help ccbill become even better, which is entirely possible. We should all be able to agree on something that makes our online business more secure.

If it is being used then those programs doing it should be called out. However, you cry for them to remove this entirly. So those that use it correctly will be punished. Do you want to loss functionality because it could be misused or should it be regulated so its not misused. In that case give up your bank, credit card, house, car, guns, personal property, and everything else cause as it can be misused and has been at some point of time in history. Under your theory they shouldnt even have an affiliate system cause it could be misused. Dont use a boulder to kill a fly, there is no proof of its misuse, just that it could be.

Not at the cost of sacraficing something useful.

Here is my official 2 cents.

CCBILL needs our help. For the most part ALL PROCESSORS need our help.
What we have today are amoung the last solid processor's and we need to protect them, report exploits, report abuser's of the system.

Cuz if a processor takes a bullet odd's are it will go like a house of cards fucking many Companies accross the board. As hard as they try, we as a community must as well.

I commend CCBILL for taking an active rle in the community and posting on these boards and other boards. It takes balls to come out and address situation's and it is far easier to hide beneath a veil like so many others have opted to do in the past.

You see somthing fucked up, get behind the scenes and send info to the right people, take a part in protecting these guys and the remaining processor's.

True true... So then a simple and effective solution would be ccBill adds a rule to their terms, and allows webmasters to finger any sponsor that chooses to use that particular option in ways that rob hard working webmasters of their rightful earnings.

Anybody see a problem with this solution?

I say bump this thread untill that becomes a reality. I am only here because I saw the same thing with a ccBill sponsor a long time ago, chose not to use them, and have since forgotten which sponsor it was. It may even be the same sponsor that Swedguy ran into for all I know - the point is, there's no excuse to allow a sponsor to rob a webmaster and if this thread makes a good system better then we should make it happen.

(Edit-AlienQ, we typed at the same time :P)

Sponsors will always find a way to shave unless of course processor's step up and begin a stance of "No Shave" policies for any programs under the processor TOS.

But really think about that for a second.
Its akin to a fire breathing dragon on a rampage of glossy accusations and finger pointing by other parties. Dumb people rule the earth the smart ones watch and cut the brush where the fire does not need to go.

I've had quite a few ex girlfriends tell me I live with my head in the clouds and my dreams and goals were completely unrealistic, because I chose to believe that i could make my business work and become successful. Maybe I'm living with my head in the clouds right now -

But I say ccBill is as good a place to start as any :thumbsup

We all live with our heads in the clouds dude...

The day you wake up is the day you die.

The difference will always be that ccbill has a dedicated interest in keeping the affiliate program open and honest. Exploits, when found (like the famous # of rebills limit) will be fixed and made public. If anyone can defeat the program ccbill looses money.

Compare that to a closed program offered by a sponser. There is no transparency, no audit of the shave engine, and nobody knows what makes it tick. Its basically a promise not to cum in your mouth.

I promise I won't cum in your mouth. :winkwink:


Where the hell did Swedguy go, he's the one who's supposed to be taking action. Swedguyyyyyy... Swwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeedguyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy....... ...

PA=111111 probally not a valid id#

Sorry, I needed some sleep :)

A lot of valid points has been expressed and I'm happy some people has woken up and realized something needs to be done instead of just defending CCBill blindly. Don't take me wrong, I have nothing against CCBill. But if I see an issue, I address it.

First time I saw this in action was a long time ago (the sponsor is long gone). When I saw it I didn't think much of it until couple of days later. I emailed CCbill and asked why the webmaster ID's didn't match up and they answered everything is in order because I had cookies turned on so the cookie will be used. I trusted them and went on with business.
Some time later I noticed another sponsor that used the same form variable, that's when I figured something was up and has since tried to get a proper answer from CCBill, with no luck.

As one person has showed, this feature has a valid use, but it is also being abused. The same thing as with the "stop paying after X rebills", where CCBill stepped up and made the info available to the webmaster. That time you protected the webmaster, what about this time?

That is one of the reasons why we carry the affiliate ID in our URL, with our CCbill program. This way, there's no manipulation, everything is transparent, and any affiliate can see, and follow his code going through our pages.

I wonder why everyone doesn't do it. CCbill did this for us, but it's available to every site now.

I have seen a couple of sites doing smarty things, thinking that referrers would not notice. The same 2 sites where turning off rebills credits, every once in a while, but got caught, when CCbill introduced a feature that warns referrers of such changes. Of course, CCbill was blamed for some kind of malfunction, but in reality they were turning off rebills for webmasters. Many referrers wrote us expressing concerns about these 2 sites not rebilling at times...The answer was pretty easy. The same sites put their own referral code in the tour, and when they got caught, they blamed it on an unfaithful employee, and claimed they fired him (false). Stupid tricks.

Some people still do not realize how the net is a small place. They're playing clean now, as far as I know, but it took them two years to become good boys, and stop stealing your $$$.

Force the sites you send traffic to, to carry the ID like we do, your sales are going to go up.

Do not forget that there's nasty spyware to, that steals traffic. We've been target, last year, for a week, of a popular company, that stole our traffic, and 10 other top CCbill clients too, for a week. When caught, they lauched an attack on the site, with their spyware program, for 3 days.
These guys used to be on GFY all over the places. It was a popular program.

You never know who's going to screw you. I think that we've ben doing so good, for so long because we always run things clean, and always pushed CCbill to make good changes.

Believe us, CCbill is VERY responsive to good changes. If you have a good, and effective idea, they are going to listen. You just have to tell them.

MET Staff

http://hosted.met-art.com/generated_...0000&pa=111111

Use this as a test. You can see the code in the URL, it carries through the pages, up into the signup page. It works even with a fake referral ID.

https://bill.ccbill.com/jpost/signup...9,148,149,3788

Sweet. Even if the cookie is blocked, and now it happens a lot, you get credit anyway.
I wonder why not all the sites do this :-)

I know that this change has been made for us, but now it's available for every CCbill client... Push the sites to have it, your sales will go up!

MET Staff

That gets me thinking. There was one sponsor that had a very hot model in Playboy (she also did the whole adult expo circuit that year so people knew who she was) and I sent 20,000 uniques and didn't get one sign up in spite of all the traffic being SE traffic. Very fucking suspicious.

It's Monday and everybody should be back at work, including CCBill.

* bump *

I am eager to hear the answer

Sorry for bumping this. But I just have to.

I hope that CCBill does not give in to this non-sense and actually does something about it.

The referrer variable has to be overridable for anyone switching away from a CCBill-only affiliate program. If you switch to anything else you HAVE to be able to override the referrer code. Why? Because CCBill by default does not give us a way to rewrite link codes. This means that the following might happen:

1) Surfer A goes to Site A with an old CCBill Link Code of Referrer A.
2) Surfer A does not signup
3) Surfer A goes via a new link code of Referrer B to the Site A 3 days later
4) Surfer A signs up
5) CCBill pays Referrer A 60%
6) The new program pays Referrer B 60%

Great, so now I am paying 120% on that member? Awesome!

This is just one sample of why it has to be possible to override the referral code in such a way.

This is even worse if the CCBill Program was setup to allow cross-site-promotion because then even creating new sub accounts would not help to get the cookie to not count! Not caring about the fact that getting new subs approved by Visa takes ages anyway depending on the sites.
Opening a NEW main account is madness also with the visa charges and even SLOWER registration involved.

Just had to say all this so people would maybe finally realize that most features are there for a very good reason. Just because you can not think of one does not mean thats not the case.

And I also have to agree with Kimmy, its all about trust. If its CCBill, NATS or anything else, you HAVE to be able to trust your affiliate program. If you can not, why send traffic to it?!