Originally Posted by Robbie

I just think this is another subject that the consumer has no business being privy to. As I have said in other threads...you don't see car dealerships telling all their customers about the thousands of dollars that they "whack" you for on "product" in the backend. You don't see retail stores explaining that their "50% sale" is really 50% off of the 300% markup they did in the beginning. You don't see the phone company, American Express, the airlines, the grocery store, etc., etc. explaining how they really make a good profit. But yet here on GFY it seems to be standard practice to try and sabotage our own business.

Bottom line is x-sells have been around for a long time. And there would be no uproar about them even now if Mitch hadn't come on here a few months back and made a dumb post about it. My icq lit up with people asking me "what is he thinking" when he did that.

So now all these surfers on GFY are commenting on it like it's something new.

Well, again...here's a newsflash. Pre-checked x-sells are nothing new. They aren't destroying the business. Every major company in this business can prove to you that chargebacks are not an issue because despite all this theorizing...the reality is that the majority of people do NOT get angry about it.

Yes, there will be a vocal minority. Yes, there will be an angry email here and there. But the vast majority not only don't get angry...but continue the membership for many months.

There are a LOT worse things going on right now than x-sells. x-sells have always been a part of this business...and one way or another the things that are being called "shady" and "deceptive" have always been a part of all business. See my examples above.

And NO, I'm not gonna talk about things on here. But I can tell you about the past: Aggressive dialers that cost surfers THOUSANDS of dollars just by visiting a website and having a dialer downloaded on them without their knowledge and disconnecting them from their service and re-connecting them at several dollars a minute while they surfed. Or how about the old redirection of urls via geo-ip location? Or the never-ending pop-ups that would actually keep coming so fast that they would burn up all the ram in your machine and cause you to have to hard boot your machine?

THOSE were the real shady things that happened online. Not only in adult but in every online business.

Pre-checks? They are simply a way to make money that should NEVER have been discussed on a public forum with surfers involved. As I have said...you don't see other business revealing their business secrets. But here we are.

And even though you weren't looking for drama...you kinda had to know that since x-sells are the current "flavor of the month" for the doom and gloomers to spout as the "death of the industry" that there would be drama.

I'm starting to believe that the "bad" tube sites and torrent sites are putting people up to making these statements on GFY. lol Think about it: There are actually ignorant people on here who are making the claim that tubes and torrents haven't hurt anybody, but pre-checked x-sells are destroying the business.

Again...pre-checked x-sells have been around for years and years. Everything was fine. Tubes and torrents started posting up entire members areas for free. Sales declined.

Doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

Originally Posted by tony404

The question is when will we learn, we are down to a 1% cb ratio, checks are now at a 1% ratio,amex and paypal said fuck you. When is the next bomb going to drop. If you think people can keep blowing up merchant accounts and Visa is going to do nothing.I think we are kidding ourselves.

Originally Posted by tony404

The question is when will we learn, we are down to a 1% cb ratio, checks are now at a 1% ratio,amex and paypal said fuck you. When is the next bomb going to drop. If you think people can keep blowing up merchant accounts and Visa is going to do nothing.I think we are kidding ourselves.

Originally Posted by DBS.US

How many time has someone sent you cash for a membership because they didn't want problems using a credit card? I have seen it many many time

Originally Posted by Barefootsies

Ok,... the "bro" of drinks.

Originally Posted by Robbie

As long as I'm "buying" them at a sponsored open bar
And I will have a pre-checked redbull with my jaegermeister along with a hidden pre-checked michelob ultra and a double hidden pre-checked sumpin'-sumpin' in my pocket
heh-heh

Originally Posted by After Shock Media

Sausage this is clearly marked I asked about. Can not see how that would be fucking anyone if it is clearly marked.

As for the revshare issue, I about gag at the thought that even 70-80% with pre checked is ripping off the affiliate. I have a hard time swallowing even the 50% model for the vast majority of affiliates based on the amount of resources and tools they use. I may get very flamed but I honestly do think affiliates are over paid and I say this as both a paysite owner as well as an affiliate to a shitload of paysites and programs.

Originally Posted by Robbie

LOL...why should I get a share of that as an affiliate?

I send traffic to a site to revshare in a membership to THAT site. Once MY surfer goes onto THEIR join page and joins...He is no longer MY surfer. He is now THEIR customer.

All of this talk is horseshit. Every business in the world does the equivalent of pre-checks. As one of the people in this thread already stated...you get hit with all kinds of things when you buy a plane ticket for instance.

Deceptive wording and "scare tactics" drive MILLIONS of dollars in the car industry for backend "product" And yes, every one of you has paid thousands and thousand of unnecessary dollars everytime you bought a car.

And insurance?

Precheck cross sales are no more a part of an affiliates money than all those pop ups were for the first 10 years of this business. I send traffic to join a SPECIFIC site. I get a HUGE percentage of that sale and all rebills for that sale.

And how did I do it? I put up a fucking link. Wow.

The paysite owner? Well, if he's like me...he shot everything himself. Found talent himself. Paid for everything. Edited himself. Designed and updated the site himself. Rendered all the video for hours. Uploaded each scene (a few hours everytime) and takes ALL the legal risk and social risks for his family.

And in the end...as an affiliate if I send a sign up to a site that costs $34.99 I just made $17.49! End of story.

As a paysite owner...if an affiliate sends me a sale....I pay him 17.49, I then pay $6.12 for the biller. And then I make $11.38 off of that sale. And oh, by the way...I host everything and pay for that on TOP of my production costs, time spent, 2257 costs, and legal costs.

And that doesn't take into account the fact that if there is a chargeback....I get nailed an ADDITIONAL $55 by the bank. Oh, and all the surfers that get declined? Guess what? I get charged a fee for THAT as well.

Many of you on here are only seeing things from an affiliates view. That's understandable. I did too from 1998 to 2007.

But now that I'm on the other side of it as well and working 100 X harder than I ever did when I was Ampland...I understand a lot more things. Yes, my affiliate work with my tgps still takes 4 to 5 hard hours of very efficient work on my part. But the paysite? It's damn near a 24 hour job.

And knowing that, gives me a different perspective on pre-checked x-sells.

Also keep in mind, that they have been around for a long time. And quite frankly it wasn't until Mitch from Netbilling came on GFY and made a big post touting them about 6 months ago that it even became an issue.

At that point, a lot of affiliates who are relatively new (weren't around in the 1990's) started screaming that it was somehow "cheating" and "shady" and destroying the so-called "industry".

But it's been there all along. You just didn't know about it. Just like you didn't know that you didn't really need that $1,500 worth of extra warranty you bought with your new car. Or that flight insurance that you paid extra for on your airline ticket. Or those little extra things on your phone bill that you don't really have to have, but unless you call them and opt out you get charged for...and I could go on and on and on. It's how business is and always has been done...long before the internet even existed.