Cross sales, Shady dealings or just a site which plain sucks?
 

I have a sponsor under CCBill which has a 10% initial rebill rate for recurring transactions (for all transactions it's about 6%) for the last year. Of those rebills they tend to only rebill only once. I notice most people immediately cancel the next day after joining this particular site almost like clockwork. The site does have pre checked cross sales.

My question is whether or not this is normal for others. It's not normal me. With other sites recurring memberships on average rebill twice so for example 100 recurring sales means I will get about 200 rebills. Also is there any way for a sponsor to do some shady shit in ccbill where they are able to drop the affiliate from getting credit for rebills or otherwise assign credit to a different affiliate? I've heard vague talk of things like this before and I am curious as to what is actually true. I did check to make sure I am getting credit according to the program details and it seems to check out.

Or do you think it's the pre checked cross sales which are making all these surfers paranoid? My personal gut feeling is that something is up with this because I'm sending him very good traffic but I want to hear what others have to say.

go get em sherlock.

if you are promoting a site that has pre checked cross sales (from your plural use, I will assume two cross sales) and you are promoting rev share, and you only get credit on the initial sale (no % payout on the cross sales) then you have been duped. If this is how the program is run, then the big question is where are the cross sales going to, if they are going to a different programs sites, then it is pretty easy for them to get you. They take the join that you send, cross sell the guy to two other sites, they get paid PPS on the two cross sales, then they auto cancel the majority of their members, so 1 they never have to pay you much, and 2, they don't have to deal with the chargebacks. If the cross sales are internal, then they are cancelling the memberships that you get credit for, but keeping the customer as a member of their other sites.

if you are going to promote rev share on a site with cross sales, they should be sharing the revenue from those as well, or it is not really a rev share, it is a "we'll share part of the revenue from one of our revenue streams and keep the rest"

What would be the point of that? So that they don't have to pay the webmaster for the initial sale?

Slight correction: Now I notice that the cross sales are no longer pre-checked. They were in the past.

I agree with you entirely and believe that sometimes this happens. On CCBill I don't think there is a way to credit an affiliate for cross sales though, which is very convenient for some. I notice now that the cross sale is for one of this guy's other sites. In the past (when they were also prechecked) he used to have cross sales for another webmaster's site.

What I'm wondering is whether there is some way for this guy to do something like any of the following on CCBill without my being able to notice it:

1. Cancel the members sent from my affiliate account and then issue them a new membership without being attached to my affilaite account.

2. Somehow keep the account active but assign credit to himself or another affiliate so that I get no credit for rebills.

It's just very strange to me that like clockwork almost every day the surfer cancels each and every time. I'm questioning whether there is some way to do the above without my knowing under the CCBill sponsor interface. The numbers point to something strange going on as does my gut but from looking at the affiliate admin I see no evidence of it other than the shitty percentages.

That's the average surfer for you nowadays. Fuckers are smart.

In my own experience, most of them go and cancel their trial membership right after they signup, even before they log into the members area.

So they dont have to pay the recurrings after the initial. Essentially they're paying you the initial and you're giving them 1 or 2 PPS or recurrings to other sites they dont have to split.

That's not possible under CCbill system.

in the time you took to write this thread you could have pulled links and replaced with a sponsor you trust. the end.

Possibly if they were to want to present it as a refund or chargeback but also for the rebills. If they cancelled the sale the affiliate sent but set the surfer up with another account on one of their own sites they now get the full cut of any rebills rather than having to share them with the affiliate who sent the sale.

I wish. There aren't many good sponsors in that niche. Otherwise with the 10% initial rebill rate I would ahv ebeen gone long ago.

Sounds pretty bad. What niche is that?

Even if people don't like the site, the rebills should be higher than that and people should not be cancelling that quickly unless someone is more or less asking them to.

Most likely the rebill amount is high for it to fail that often, and the initial join must be higher than 24.95 in order to create a sense of urgency about cancelling. (this would include any pre-checked crosses)

One thing comes to mind:

In order to have pre-checked crosses on a CCbill form, you must have an excellent chargeback ratio.

It is possible that in order to keep the CB ratios down the sponsor is actively contacting members with cancellation instructions in order to give them a warm fuzzy and keep them from disputing charges with their banks.

This kind of pro-active customer service does work for keeping ratios low, but there is a huge tradeoff in cancellation rates and low rebills. You make a lot less money but enjoy good standing with your billers.

Of course, the site may be simply nothing like it is described in the tours and if something specific and unique is being offered and not delivered, (fake dating sites where female "members" go the extra mile to encourage signups) well that'll do it too.

I suggest you do a test signup from a new email with no spam filter and see what happens subsequently. Check your bank statement, your inbox and the members area carefully and find out how members are being treated.

That's what I always thought too. But I remember reading here someone talking of one of their partners in a ccbill affiliate program they both owned taking their sales and assigning them to themselves somehow. That made me think.

My gut tells me that something fishy is going on but I'm not sure how. The numbers just do not make sense. It can't be a shitty site because I know for a fact this sponsor has a lot of exclusive content. I guess I'll need to do a test signup or something and see what is inside and what actually happens if anything.

well i hope you did the obvious - a test join yourself? and see why people are cancelling?

There is no way to do that with CCBill without getting the surfer to sign up again. It could be done but the effort and failure rate would almost certainly make it less profitable than leaving the damn surfer alone.

Porn purchases are impulse purchases, and I think when analyzed would prove to be unwise purchases when looked at from a "post-fap" mindset.

Reminding the surfer of his purchase by asking him to repeat it even at a lower cost would most likely result in a significant amount of cancellations and/or refunds.

I would drop that shady sponsor and move on. Those are lousy ratios anyway.

smile and look over your shoulder, because you are being ass fucked!!