are paysite owners not worried about 1%?
 

Oct 1st looms about, and the fines are about to start for paysite owners.. account cancellations, and the like. This seems to be a very passive subject on GFY. Perhaps it's because this site is mostly a plethora of web designers and gallery submitters who aren't really too concerned, though it affects them greatly.

I am still quite convinced that no large program with uncontrollable affiliates can stay under 1%. 1000 paid sales and only 10 chargebacks? not very likely at all..

I know all of you people say things like "My ratio is .04%", but I have yet to see proof of this.

So.. hm.. what is everyone going to do? I am personally seriously considering stopping per sign up pay to affiliates all together, and just cash out.

I know this doesn't apply directly to accounts with less than 100 chargebacks per month, although the aggregator/IPSP has to maintain an average of less than 1% for their whole portfolio, do they not?

I just know personally that there is no chance for me to go below 1% with a standard recurring model....

So, what are people doing? Is no one worried?

no, they're not

You can do it, you just have to look at alot of things very differently, including your affiliate program. :)

basicly it means no more fucking around and start working for your cash.

It'll be a blast.. i think the shit will hit the fan dec/jan/feb..

Shock and awe!!!


We'll have 4 paysite owners left by next year.

well, maybe they are? any opinonssssssss

will the real slim shady please stand up

unlike donny i think a lot of people think it's just a matter of 'a little fine tuning and well be ok'..

good times

My total Visa chargebacks since we opened almost two eyars about is .37% If we get 2 or 3 a month it rare. I upsell and crosssell and still have kept our charge backs way down.

It can be done without a problem.

I wish I had a way of showing you proof at this point. I bet in the near future... that information is going to be available from all sponsors for everyone to view.

Why can't you keep them under 1%? Are you doing some sort of aggressive/deceptive billing or have a large amount of affiliate fraud?

Obviously the big programs out there are staying in business and some have changed their cross-sales and monthly charges to adapt to the 1% but the idea is that they are able to react to the market changes.

WG

A large portion of my members are AOL members, and they are too stupid to figure out how to cancel. I think this is why my CB is high, if everyone really says that they are below 1% easily. I am not. I just do a normal trial that converts to $39.95/mo. Unchecked cross sales, presently.

Everyone can give ambiguous answers, a la Kimmykim in her reply to this, but why does no one say specifics?

because nobody knows. This industry is built on smoke and mirrors.

Only time will tell with this one. Nobody is gonna tell you the truth. Nobody is gonna say they are over 1% and are shitting their pants.

Just sit back and watch the fallout like everyone else. It will quickly become evident who is the bullshitter and who is not.

Do you make it easy for members to cancel? Unchecked x-sales is good and a $40/mn membership is reasonable so you shouldn't have such a large CB ratio. Are you sure it's not certain affiliates that have high CB rates?

WG

Over the past five years, I sent a welcome message to new members. Most webmasters seemed to hope that members forgot that they were rebilled month after month.

Seeing a problem with bounced emails, I canceled the membership.

I showed myself as a webmaster that cared, with high retention rates.

Past year.. zero charge backs.

Am I worried about 1%... nope

I'm at 4% and there's a huge log of stinky shit in my pants. I don't know what to do...

This weekend.. I suggest you work on your customer service. Send an email to all your members... asking them what they like about your site... ask them for suggestions for improvement... get your members involved

I run a couple of small paysites. When I started my first the processor didn't offer recurring billing, so it was just once-off charges for 30 and 90 days access respectively. Still had plenty of guys who pulled out their cards each month to extend their access by 30 days...

Although I am not directly affected by this 1% rule (since I process with Verotel) I plan to set up a corp and move to ccbill or ccbilleu within the next month or two, so the issue will become very real. I'm considering trying the non-recurring method again.

Which programs actually changed a thing? I recall a couple of program owners come onto the boards and whine pathetically how they have to lower their payouts and how evil all those smart surfers have become now that they learned how to cancel and chargeback memberships.

Weeks after those threads these guys still use the same exact Epoch join forms with 1 day free trials prechecked with a total rebilling revenue of 120 USD.

Talk about vapour ware...

It is a lot different when you are a small paysite and you have 50 members or something like that.

I have over 10,000 members, so I can't really just email them all asking that. They would cancel :) And I can't cater to each member individually. It is simply impractical.

The whole thing is based on the member forgetting, isn't it? Otherwise, you don't make any money.... My sites that have better members area retain worse than the ones that have shitty backends. Pretty sad, but the way it works...

As a webmaster... I beg to differ with you. I have a free website that I offer update notifications to over 6K... and not personally every 2-3 weeks, this opt-in list gets additional pay-site income.

You have 10K? You are losing "personal-touch" emails and up-selling.

They would enjoy "reading" from you, the webmaster.

Silvercash's X-sales have dropped from $40 recurs to under $5.
A few companies yanked their free trials to become $1 trials.
Some sponsors push the chargeback onto the webmaster (Ep*ccash).

WG

You guys give any thought to the fact that just because 1% is the limit, it doesn't mean you can run at .99 and be safe?

The writing is on the wall, plain and simple.

Either alot of stuff changes or there will be some people who can't be billed.

I've seen the numbers, I know how they go, I guess by November 15th we'll see some people in real hot water.

i cant imagine these people actually getting new content for thier members and making updates daily, and running polls to see what makes members happy, etc. etc.

but that would actually make them half to work for thier money, other then bullshitting and running the shave machine all day.

WELL SAID!

Those that really provide a real service... not automated galleries will survive.

In my opinion, you get more chargebacks when you run a trial. This isn't based on anything except our experiences. We haven't had a trial for like 2 years. If I were you, I'd look to see what is being charged back, the initial trial? The first rebill? Being that your members are alot of AOL'ers, they might not yet realize that they will be automatically rebilled. And, make sure you do make it easy to cancel. I'm not one to argue with success, we don't have 10,000 members, so you're doing something better than us, but if it's a matter of keeping your account making less, or relying on the member forgetting their rebills and possibly losing your account....

We only get 1 or 2 chargebacks a month, which still pisses me off, but what can ya do?

BTW, what site do you run? I'm always looking for more sites to promote...

Catalina ; )

Agree with that one - Deliver what your tour says -
0.03% for us.

Interesting accusations Ian, but a marked lack of forethought or understanding regarding the business model and what causes the problems.

No resellers + no chargeback problem in most every case.

And for those of you that think dumping pps will fix it, the cheaters will just figure out ways to nail the revshare types and then those will be out of compliance too.

We have such a low CB ratio, that it is really not worrying us.

The thing is customer support. Period. Informative welcome emails are a BIG step to that as well as easy informative support links for your customers as well.

If a guy is blocked or just needs some help viewing a video, etc... We have 3 guys via email that will answer him within the hour. :)

It is all about good service and good content. No BS period.

Hrm...

So many idiots, so little time. :)

Not that I want to incite anything, but man. I've been planning on launching a small little paysite something like "Phil's picks" or whatever, where I offer a new set/day of some of the hottest girls I can find in content.. It'd be tiny, like 100 active members at best. I know for a FACT that this is NOTHING like running these huge affiliate programs. Period. The huge programs might have great backends and all, but they will will get nailed.

Why? Lets just discount affiliate fraud (which accounts for a lot actually), and the "savvy" porn buyer that charges back everything because they are evil little fuckers.

Think about the way affiliates market shit. "FREE" this and that, etc. Promise nearly anything to get the sale. That's fairly normal, I mean affiliates get paid for sales, not recurring. Even on revshare affiliates don't quite think long-term, although it's not quite as prevailant in my experience.

So you have this huge 500-1k new members a day ball of wax you have to try to maintain, and detect fraud/etc. It just adds up fast. Say you have a cheating affiliate that runs for a month, then you catch him. He has say, 100 sales. All fraud. 50 of those say, will charge back. But, that is NOT only 50 chargebacks. Think about it.. Someone will get their bill a month later, which will have two months (probably) of charges on it. Maybe 3 total charges if theres a 3 day trial or whatever. They might spend some time trying to figure out wtf it is, and now you're up to 3 months, plus the trial. They finally call, and bamf.. 4 chargebacks right there per person. That's 200 chargebacks for one cheating affiliate that you didn't catch for 30 days. (keep in mind, 100 sales/mo is what? less than 1% of your volume by far? And very, very few people will catch that the first month to say the least).

Now couple that w/ normal chargebacks of idiots forgetting they had the membership (hey, I've done it.. I didn't CB, but I know most people will. You have fun finally looking at your CC statement after using auto bill pay, and seeing 4 months of charges you forgot about. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck, and that $160 or whatever is a LOT to them, and DEFINITELY worth charging back over). Plus the normal affiliate "over promise, under deliver", and you're pretty screwed.

Every larger (over 100 joins/day) program owner says the same thing to me. If they cut off new joins right now, they would be totally fucked. Those new transactions account for an offset for all the people charging back 3-4 months down the road all at once. If they were single month chargebacks, it wouldn't be as much of a big deal because catching fraud would be that much easier.

Also remember this whole business is built on emotional/instant gratification. Some guy with his pants around his ankles isn't thinking as clearly as he will be in 45 days when his wife gets the credit card statement, or his rent is due, or whatever. I'm willing to bet there is TONS of "buyers regret" in this businesss. "Why the fuck did I pay $40 for this! shit! I can't afford to pay rent even this month!" after their 5 minutes of fun. Porn addicts don't account for a statisically significant percentage of the population when you compare it to adult revenues.

Oh well, I have a mirade of opinions on this. Just sick of the little tiny program/site owners thinking it's all in what you have to market. Yes, when you're small it won't be an issue. You can focus on little things that much easier, and someone making 50 sales/mo as an affiliate is probably going to be a damned heavy hitter for you, and you'd be combing though his shit with a fine comb. Plus I'm willing to bet that the amateur or "stalker" niche as I like to call it, doesn't have the same amount of CB problems, as you get the insane guys hanging around wanting to chat with the girl, or whatever. :)

I think you'll see a huge change in the business. Watch a few VERY large programs falter, and either fail or drastically change their business model. The good news is I think this will spawn a new rebirth of small amateur sites, that market to a VERY specific niche, and provide a 1 on 1 experience for customers. Unfortunately, this doesn't scale, and unless some large programs can adapt fast, there may be a whole lot fewer people coming to internext in two years. :) It's going to raise the bar of entry some, while lowering it to be considered "successful" I think. No longer will you have to make $1mil/mo to be considered a "baller" in the business, since so few people will be doing that type of volume.

Watch a lot of large programs start moving traffic aquisistion in house too, so they can better control their exposure. The big boys will stay big, but just different than they are now. Less pie to go around to all the TGP submitters, or whatever.

Man.. this got long. Oh well. I'm sure everyone will pick it to death, I don't care. I've thought about it a lot, and have actually seen real hard numbers, unlike a lot of folks here save some notable exceptions in this thread.

-Phil

Personally... Visa can KISS MY ASS.... I am not going to use those fuckers...

I am sure the adult webmasters porvide pleanty of income to those bastards.... If we all stuck together and dropped Visa... they may have a change of heart...

Just like their commercials... Visa, because (someplace) does not take MC or AMEX...

We could have... MC and AMEX ONLY accepted ... because Visa are just plain fuckers.

These people know that you will not do this and are fucking you all... Don't let them get away with this... Boycott the fuckers!!!:2 cents:

Everything Phil said is absolutely true...... smart kid..

Only thing I might disagree with is his comment about a lot of small amateurish sites. The reason being is that I believe the card associations will ban aggregators/IPSPs at least within a year or so. And if Verified by Visa is universally required in a year or two, there will be no more recurring billing anyway..

So.. I have a secret solution I guess...

But oh well.. we'll see what happens.....

Boycott? Wtf.

Do you REALLY think visa gives two and a half fucks about the adult revenue? Sure, it's nice, but not at the expense of any bad PR.

Think about it. Mastercard "is" basically Visa when you get down to it, in that they'll both follow roughly the same rules.

Now think about how much cash flow EACH DAY goes through that.

Just think. Gas stations, stores, retail, etc. Billions a day.

Now think how much they skim off the top. What is Visa's cut? .05%? Less? More? Hell, it doesn't matter at those daily volumes. These are the TRUE players here man. These guys are a privately (unless I'm mistaken) corporate that could fill up swimming pools full of hundreds each day, and not even try. They could heat their corporate HQ's by burning hundred dollar bills.

Sorry, adult is so completely small fry when it comes to this I just can't lend any credence to the "boycott them and they'll beg!" theory. This DOES have an effect on merchant BANKS. Visa was/may listen to them just because these banks also control quite a lot of non adult stuff. But when push comes to shove, Visa would have to be ran by complete and utter morons to think that if they tell a bank "Drop all adult or we drop everything you have", that the bank would actually call their bluff.

Basically, I think the only hope is some form of antitrust legislation, but even that really isn't a true solution. I mean really, will anyone give a shit that some two bit porn peddlers are getting it in the ass because some other lesser two bit porn peddlers had/have shady billing practices? I don't know, I just highly doubt it.

So.. I agree with the principle of a boycott, don't get me wrong. But the practicality of it just doesn't quite add up in my book.

Would YOU care about %.0001 of your revenues if YOU were visa? Especially something as easily justified to investors/stock holders/whatever as "shutting down those porn fraudsters"?


-Phil

why can's sponsors sue cheating affiliates if they're from Canada or the US or at least share their databsase...?

tgp owners share cheater list and althoguh that doesn't solve the problems, it some way it works...

My charge back ratio is 0.0%. Why would I need to prove it to you?

I do have check returns, but luckily they don't count.

because you have less than 100 sales? :)

just joking, my brother

no resellers = no chargeback problem

i am sure KK is right but i think there's more to it than that.

Companies/individuals who don't rely on resellers usually run very few sites and put all their energy, lots of resources and yes even passion into that one or small group of sites. When was the last time you saw a Karups, ATK, ALSCANS, SuzeRandall, DDGirls, UltraWiredSex, Netvideogirls etc with a banner on GFY or any other board? None of those sites put much effort into their affiliate programs, they're not interested in it - what they're interested in is running great websites and making friends with their members.

It's more than just no resellers i think, if quiet ran some bullshit site where he had the exact same tour he has now but inside he had a bunch of plugins and the site just didn't live up to the tour, even though he doesn't have resellers, my guess is he would have a chargeback rate closer to the big 50 site affiliate programs.

By the way I run a pretty large mainstrem business and my chargebacks are more then 1%. A close friend in Long Island owns one of the largest mail order electronic companies in the US and his chargebacks are over 1%.

If you do any serious volume that will happen especially in a recurring business model.

correct

well if that is true then nothing can be done, companies above a certain volume are doomed. to get around it they will split their companies into several smaller ones where less than 1% is possible......if VISA sees 5 companies owned by the same entity as 1 company then they'll have to go further and conceal ownership by various methods that people use to hide that kind of information.

good question.. most companies haven't changed and it's already to late.. the charge backs would still kill them a few months later.. this is the most important thing that has happened to adult in years and no body seems to be spending much time on it..

not true.. at least not for me.. and i have a pretty good members area.. and don't use "aggressive" marketing .. i have a free 2 day trial to 39.95 and my charge back ratio is still a little under 3%.. i have done nothing wrong .. that is just how it is.. adult is 3% for free trials.. with paid trials i think 2% might be possible.. but 1% would take serious work and you can loose all your hard work from 1 fuck up. (ex: sites go down, members database offline)

if your a huge site you will have alot of affiliates trying to scam your system for money.. and not be able to spend as much attention on your members.. if you are a smaller site 1 or 2 affiliates could break you and shoot you way over 1%. there's no way to stop somebody for using stolen credit cards to sign up to your sites.. they could care less.. they will just try to sign up as many times as they can and get paid.. and visa isn't going to penatlize them for it.. they will penatlize you

Nope! Not even close to 1%

:thumbsup

From your Epoch form:



Today's Charge is : $0.00 for a 2 day trial period.
Membership Renews automatically at $39.95 every 1 month(s) Until Cancelled.

Crosssells:
[prechecked] Click here to signup for a 3 day No Charge Membership to Eighteenies - Three Day Trial Membership. After 3 days, Membership renews automatically at $39.95 every 1 month.

[prechecked] Click here to signup for a 1 day No Charge Membership to Cum Smothered - One Day Trial Membership. After 1 day, Membership renews automatically at $39.95 every 1 month.