lavish_

I offer a free trial on my website. I'm getting decent traffic and sign-ups, but when the trial is over and my gateway goes to charge the customer, 90% of the time, the transaction gets declined due to issuer declined, insufficient funds, AVS issue, etc.

I'm guessing it's users abusing the system. Is there any way to avoid this? Has anyone else experienced this? I'm in a conundrum because for each transaction, even if it's declined, I have to pay the transaction fee. So I'm essentially funding these declined transactions and it sucks. Would love to hear your thoughts.

fuzebox

A lot of banks decline known high risk acquirers.

Miguel

Does your free trial provide limited or full access to content?

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JesseQuinn

never experienced your situ personally as I don't offer free anything but I do know tweaking my fraud scrub to prevent card thieves while letting the good peeps get through is constant adjustment

remember client side card-issuing banks have their own scrubs as well that can change from time to time that you have zero control over, so you gotta adjust to that too, often

also pay attention to major card info breaches, for example a while back Cali payments were like toxic waste to me so many were carders after a big biz got hacked, it was very annoying while it lasted trying to block them without affecting real clients

do you have a MID or do you use an IPSP? if the latter, not much control you have over this stuff, if your own MID just keep tweaking. pay attention to trends and look at payment details for both approvals and declines to see if any patterns emerge that you can tweak to facilitate legit client payment

and fuck that 05, opaque as fuck even with your own MID

not sure this is helpful, hope so and good luck

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lavish_

I utilize the gateway API, so I think I have a MID? Also, that was helpful. Thank you!

How do we make money as adult websites then, if so many users have these banks that deny the adult transactions? I'm new to the industry

Full access with the free trial

JesseQuinn

I've found French banks are the worst for this. so many legit clients declined for absolutely no reason at a very disproportionate rate. I'm US-based with my MID tho, may be diff in Europe

two experiences personally with my own clients as well where French dudes who spent a ton had their banks cb the payments without even contacting them. I'm talking 1000's over months and in one case over years, not usual carder behavior

in both cases the clients were so upset and apologetic and sent me letters to provide for the disputes proving they wanted to pay me and nope, their banks ended up overruling my initial cb dispute wins

one sent me a site payment using a different bank account, the other actually personally wired me the cash to get the debt resolved

so much fun for them, let alone me

but yeah, something about France

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JesseQuinn

most welcome

to tell whether you are with an MID or an IPSP the definitions:

MID: Your own merchant account with a bank that processes your payments and you use your own gateway (Orbital, Payze, Mobius etc) to set your own fraud scrub

IPSP: CCBill, Verotel, Epoch who process your payments for you and they set your scrub for fraud so you lack control. I make far more money with a MID than I ever did with an IPSP although they can be a total asset if you have an affiliate system for your site, so you gotta weigh all of your individual needs

IPSPs are great to a point even without an aff program. I started out with one myself as I had no processing history (lol Zombaio's cheap azzes ripping me off for a $150 reserve cuz I stopped using them when they stopped paying people-a gfyer here got me paid the rest of what I was owed -xxxx- though) but as you grow consider getting your own MID if you aren't going down the sponsor program route. all the co's I mentioned above in the MID section can help you with that

and if you are with Zombaio move now, even back in the day when they paid and I was happy with them their decline rate was unusually high. and they do not pay

wish you luck

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Sly

Are you doing an authorization to confirm their card will work at the end of the trial? It will create a little friction and potentially lower conversions but if you're not happy it's worth a try.

So if your membership is $30, you authorize for $30.

Send me a PM if you need more details.

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ZENRA

Wait, 90% of all your trial subscriptions that don't cancel get bank declines (DNH, NSF, etc)? That seems inhumanly high.

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lavish_

Yes, so far that's what's been happening. I agree it's insanely high. It's honestly perplexing to me

lavish_

The user inputs their personal information and billing information at the beginning of the free trial. It's not until the end of the trial that my gateway pushes the transaction officially. So no, I'm not currently doing an auth in the beginning. Is that what you're referring to? Doing an auth at the beginning of the free trial?

ike tronix

Offering $0-auth free trials certainly means much lower conversion rates. You will have tons of people tryING to get the free trial with fucked up CCs, no fund prepaids etc. And if you do not put any auth, then you have no idea what is going on with their cards until you try to charge them.

Generally speaking, check with your gateway & PSP. Make sure all configured well (Some providers even rejects $0-auths directly). Make sure scrubbing is not fucking you over and over, and also make sure the traffic quality is clean. An affiliate could be flooding you with no honor cards.

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Sly

That's what I was referring to, yes.

What you can do is really going to depend on what kind of data you have. You want to see what these people are doing through each step of the process. They may not even be giving you good cards, and if that's the case, that would explain some of the problems. Or you may have a high amount of transactions from a "bad" country, that would explain some of the problems.

What gateway are you using?

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The Porn Nerd

Quick fix: do away with the Trials for a week, see if you get signups.

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NYRangers

This. There are other things to try but start with this and weed out the garbage.

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EddyTheDog

I would say pre-pay cards could be part of the issue - I use one with a few dollars on it for free trials - If I want to use the service after the trial I change to my 'real card' - I have been stung a few times - Once for nearly $500 when they have billed even though I cancelled - Trying get a charge-back is a nightmare...

I doubt I am the only one doing this.....

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movieguy

It should always be limited, such as they only get to watch one video.

If you don't provide a limited trial, what stops a user from rejoining every once in a while and scraping your content? What would stop a pirate from scraping all your content? Now imagine this as free.

Most websites use IPSPs instead of gateway billing like what you have. That means your transactions are more likely to succeed, as you don't have a shared blacklist and can customize your scrubbing/fraud parameters.

As stated by others, the reason so many of your attempts are declining, is because seeing "free", you attract low-caliber users signing up with prepaid and near-zero cards. In places like the US, prepaid card use is on the rise, especially for online purchases.

Very simple solutions:

1. Don't provide full access. Provide limited access
2. If you wish, set the parameter in your billing to deny prepaids and force users to use a normal CC. That will drop your signup rate, but you'll get better-quality cards (although this is a very strict solution). Alternatively, do $1 trials
3. Work with a cross-sale partner such as bang.com or mindgeek, who are willing to buy your cross-sales, and probably give you tips on how to best manage these transactions, as it is their interest to get high-quality, chargeable cards as well.

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fuzebox

Ooooof I hope you're not paying anyone PPS on those signups!

Preauth that money.

2MuchMark

GREAT advice from JesseQuinn in this thread.

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venus

we id the same not long ago and same thing happened to us. what they do is use a card that has no money on it, its accepted because it s a real card, just no money on it. you can fix the problem by charging 1$ ..that got rid of the free loaders.

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lavish_

Did your conversion rate decline after implementing the $1 trial? Do you find that your real customers don't mind a $1 trial vs free?

lavish_

Thanks everyone for the great advice on this thread.

The general consensus I'm understanding (for my situation) is that I should change the free trial to a $1.00 trial, that way I can weed out the declined transactions upfront.

If anyone else has any other advice / experience regarding this, please let me know!

venus

conversion was 100% after changing from free trial...people who are into your site dont mind...the only people sending hate mail will be those that want a free ride

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fuzebox

People who will join for $0 but not $1 will not make you any money in the long run

thommy

yes prepaid cards is one part - the other part are stolen credit cards.
those card credentials are sold in the darknet and they are "tested" with trials to prove that they are working.

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movieguy

Limited trials are your priority. Even with $1 trials, you'll still get hammered by bad cards and people leeching your content. I have tested on my site many times with limited vs unlimited trials. Unlimited trials fail to convert. Do not offer trials until you can limit access.

You get penalized heavily for chargebacks. The $1 trials help mitigate the stolen card issue that you get with free trials, but if your site is small and your traffic isn't dirty (from back offers or popups), most of your users are not arriving with stolen cards, ready to bang you. There's no real penalty for decline transactions except for the nominal gateway fee of a few cents.

Even big websites working with IPSPs - for example, BLACKED.com and EPOCH - try $4.95 trials and build up a good transaction history before attempting $1 trials.

In summary:
1. in your member management and CMS, create a class of users for trials who have limited/restricted content
2. Try $4.95 trials first
3. Then try $1 trials


my experience: netvideogirls, femjoy, joymii, badoink, wellhello

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movieguy

also should add that you can't do free -> auto rebill anymore. It's opt-in only

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lavish_

This is great advice. I will try your solutions out - thank you so much!