Business would be terrific if ........
 

Don't know about anyone else but 2013 is throwing up a major issue.

Sign ups are great! Better conversion etc than for a few years but "revenues" are struggling.

Why?

Simples, failed rebills and refunds/chargebacks.

Our "failed rebill" rate is currently running at 36%!! And that is from a good level of rebills. Members want to stick around for a month or so longer - but CCBill/Visa/Mastercard are kicking them out.

Refunds/Chargebacks are way up on previous years as a % of sales. And it is so annoying when you can clearly see it's fraud. I.e. a members signs up for a month, rebills for two months, then claims the whole three months back.

When folks talk about free sites/tubes killing our business then I agree, it's a challenge but giving someone "3 months free membership" really pisses me off!

The business is still potentially great - it's the systems that are letting us down!

I totally agree man.

I was discussing with a certain sponsor, and with ccbill a few days ago about why I could not reach any join pages on any ccbill sites.

I was given quite a few different error messages.

Plus many of my affiliate codes were not carried to the join pages too. So even if a person joined, it wouldn't have registered under my affiliate account.

The systems are surely fail a lot of the time, more than I ever remembered before, EVER. :(

I think today you need to produce, market and sell your own content. If you want to be an affiliate as well, then that is a bonus.
I support my affiliates and update regularly with quality content and I appreciate all the hard work that they do to market and convert their traffic. But I think in today's business, you need to have your fingers and thumbs in a few pies.

I agree totally and the main gist of my first post was relating to my pay sites. As an affiliate I have no idea about failed rebills on my sponsors sites. I only see that they are not growing significantly like they used to. I can only guess that failed rebills etc are playing a major role in this.

CCBill clearly have issues. I guess they are aware of them all, but the big question is what are they doing about them? Getting info etc out of CCBill, especially useful info, is like pulling teeth.

I also firmly believe (call me a cynic) that some webmasters now have the ability to manipulate the affiliate systems to suit their own needs and "rob" the affiliate of commission. Why do I say that? Well what else would cause a radical drop off in conversion from, say, 1:500 to 1:15,000 virtually overnight?

I have sponsors whose conversion rates have hardly varied in over 7 years and others, like the one I mentioned, that just changed literally overnight. No one will convince me that they have not changed things to avoid paying affiliates!

I don't think it's anything new, but it's most definitely possible to manipulate things to avoid paying an affiliate commission. BUT, it's all but impossible to do so with CCBill without it being detectible on the site(s) if someone checks things closely.

anybody have any experience with alternatives to ccbill both as affiliates and producers?
Any examples of pros and cons?

On the affiliate side of things nothing touches CCBill. Easy to add and consolidate sponsors into one singe account/payment (a real bonus), clockwork payments (a REAL bonus), and reasonable stats.

Epoch is ok but very cumbersome and their support makes CCBill look like gods.

Nats is ok but it can take a long time to raise enough revenue to make a payment economical - and you can wait even longer for some of the sponsors to actually pay - even though payments are due (or way over due)

From what I can see Epoch is the favourite biller for direct traffic with CCBill used to provide affiliate programme services.

does epoch also do the single account/payment thing and clockwork payments? I am just thinking of shooting some content that cc bill is not always happy with, but if epoch is a pain in the ass, scrub harder or anything other issues, then it is not worth it. Any feed back would be appreciated. Especially would affiliates be happy enough with epoch.

I can't speak to the other questions, but Epoch's affliate admin is pretty bare bones. There are also very few fetish niche sites/programs using Epoch, can't say for sure why.

over 200 signups this year and no chargebacks for me yet ...crosses fingers.

I only work with Epoch's affiliate programme if I really love a sponsor's site and have no other option.

I have never earned enough revenue to be paid. I have set my minimum payment high enough to offset processing costs (inc cheques) and that limit hasn't been reached. I cannot find enough Epoch affiliate programmes to generate sufficient revenue.

BTW does anyone know where to find Epoch affiliate programmes worth signing up for?

Can't say whether or not any are worth signing up for, but here's a fairly extensive list of Epoch programs.
http://www.signbucks.com/sites/list/popt/36-epochstats

Cheers Toby

2013 Etc...
 

Not been on here in quite a while but just thought I'd add my 2 cents worth as i was forwarded to this thread just today.

We use Netbilling and CC Bill. Netbilling for direct sales and CCBill for affiliate traffic and people not liking Netbilling.

Both have suffered lower sales last two months, more attempted fraud transactions and more charge backs that stink of fraud especially on long term signups.

Notable is the use of (stolen?) female name credit cards originating from the US. These run once or twice then charge back if not picked up on. I always check email and IP associated with these 'female' sales and refund, cancel and block all criteria used immediately when spotted if any weirdness.

I just think less money out there and many more crooks active. I'm seeing spam purportedly selling valid credit card number lists- never seen these before!

Plus, governments worldwide attempting to squash and over regulate our business to get brownie points with the 'tut tut' public - making it even harder. It will NOT get easier IMHO.

Summery - It means as usual trying much harder to get the same dollar.

I do not blame CCBill et al for all the woes. As for sponsor skimming just check your CCBill referer ID is in the CC Bill hosted signup page, look in page source code?

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