One of the biggest problems that I've witnessed in 10+ years in the biz is that you always have a couple of rotten apples that ruin the bunch. For example, you'll have Company X doing $150+ in hidden bogus cross-sales and doing massive payouts. Then Company Y looks at them and says 'shit, i can't compete so I have to go to that level in order to do so' or 'hmm..thats a great way for me to make more money' and it dominos from there. I personally know of 2-3 programs following that sad, unfortunate route as we speak, much to my dismay...
My biggest complaint with the biz is that we are all in this together. For example, I cringe at those webmasters or programs who simply say they could care less what a particular company does because it does not affect them. That is the biggest fallacy in our biz. What one company does has a huge rippling affect on the entire industry.
Let's take Visa for an example. Visa is Visa, it does not matter how you process with them or what platform/backend/processor you use. If Visa ends up getting pissed and implements something radical like no more auto-rebills (one bank already initiated this for their cardholders in Europe), no more xsales or something more extreme like 'fuck the adult biz' like Amex did, we are ALL fucked, not just that one particular company. Let's face it, the next time Visa gets pissed (like they did when they lowered the cb ratio and started scrubbing sites harder), they're not gonna come in and say 'you company X are the bad guys, you go to the corner but you company Y are running a clean adult business so you get a star'. No, they're gonna come in and systematically carpet bomb the entire industry because frankly, adult dollars are not THAT important to them and they dont have time to police us if we can't police ourselves. But I can hear the pundits already saying 'that'll never happen and if it did, we'll always find another way'. But I tend to think you only get so many warnings and chances..
And for every pissed off, disgruntled and unsatisfied surfer/member out there that's been scammed or ripped off by someone in our biz, that's just one less person in our collective customer pool, which again, affects everyone of us.
And what's the saddest part of all this? You don't need to rip people off, charge $150-$200 in xsales and run scams to make good money in this biz. It's just pure greed..
