Very interesting discussion..

well, you have to understand the reason why it may be happening (not that i think you dont).

programs feel they need to at least maintain or increase the amount they can pay their affiliates, and maintaining is tough when its summer, a recession and conversions are crappy, on top of the tube sites funneling traffic away. its harder to pull $$$ away from consumers when there isnt as much around and reducing payouts, (or pulling the difference out of their own pockets) isnt an option.

good quote from the posted article "They are masters. They are very, very smart people who spend their every waking moment trying to figure out how to beat the system".

this has not changed

i appreciate you reply but it's still a huge jump in logic.

the qualifications for a loan today are more rigorous than 3 months ago but that is completely separate from running a legitimate business; and your cb ratio does not raise a flag, the bank simply won't have a reason or inclination to "blow up your merch acct" as the thread title suggests.

also, most of the profit that has been "lost" by lending institutions have been loan loss provisions set aside to offset deteriorating real estate portfolios.


there's simply no logic in a business cutting 1 HUGE profit center due to another's issues. if anyone has their own merch accts "blow-up" it would be due to something else- cb ratio, fraud, etc. all the usual high risks involved in adult.

which has always been the case regardless.

Thank you for being with us so long.

With cbs comes risk. With merchant accounts it makes sense not put all of your eggs in one basket. The company I work for specializes in high risk accounts. You can contact me if you are interested in diversification, or you want to start a something new.

I dont understand why everyone thinks that getting a merchant account is so difficult. I have ok credit not great but certainly not bad. My bank manager OFFERED me a merchant account. Its with one of the largest banks in the country and it cost me 85 bucks. I have quietly been using it for 3 years, small amount of transactions, no problems. I recently started to up that making it a primary processor, again no issues.

Yes my bank manager knows exactly what I do, they reviewed and approved the sites. So I dont get why it's so difficult to get a MID. Am I missing something?

i guess its not a logic issue as much as a psychological one, and its based on perceived risk by the institutions, and its a theory :)

if banks think they can regain lost profits through high risk merchant accounts, i hope they don?t get skittish when they see what some of us are capable of.

I was not talking about surfers

you are putting words in my mouth. i never said banks look to adult merch accts to offset real estate losses, or any losses for that matter. i said the opposite.

in fact, your theory is the one that proposes that banks are going to *blow up* merch accts due to losses in other areas/ something to that effect.

and if you don't think merch acct providers know what people's greed makes them capable of, well.
:Oh crap

maybe your right

It is harder for some depending on location and volume.

Many of us take care of our merchant acconts, do not have prechecked cross sells and maintain a very low chargeback level. I have had mine for years running through netbilling

Z

Thanks for your biz all of these years!

so what are your opinions?

im sure it will last for many years more, when you run your biz like that :)

We were involved in the iBill fiasco and lost over $20,000 per month in recurring membership, when iBill went to Gcard and then that other ofshore company ( we cannot remember the name of hand, I still have the log-in on my links!!!) it even went further down hill....fuck it costed us all of our monthly income, we were in deep shit......we got a mercahnt account at Humbold, but that took a couple of months, on the close up of Fucking iBill we told members taht they would have FREE access to the members area till we got a new processor, we still updated 2 or 3 times each week, when the merchant account came through we transferred a lot of members over, a big % still process through them, a majority of our members are still the ones from years gone bye, we even have the very first member that signed up, and he claims he will never leave the site....maybe members were more loyal then....who knows....but our merchant account still does more recurring members than what we can sign up in todays market.

We then we aproached paycom/epoch expecting to use them as a second processor and our representitive Frank Gannon advised us on issues we did not know about, we now process all new members through Epoch and it is going great, Epoch Rock, we still add to our own mercahnt account with DVD and other product sales as Epoch does not process them, but would not use our own merchant account for memberships as Epoch does definitely seive through the trash and eliminate most chargebacks etc......
Don't get us wrong we do still do very well, but have to work 3 times as hard to make the same amount, and to be honest we are now working to building new sites to increase income, yes we still do increase every year BUT the amount we increase in is getting smaller and smaller, every day we are getting more and more " Bank Denials" this has to account for 85% of our non recurring members, yes the economy has something to do with it, and hopefully it will get better and getting back to the original post here we feel having an account with Epoch is far better value than using our own merchant account for all sales - bottom line it is up to us to offer members content that they want to watch and encourage new members, maybe we are too honest in stating the % of "Bank Denials"

As of now we have not offered an affiliate programme, we do have a programme set up as parlourcash.com, but have not released it yet, not sure if we will due to what we hear with other solo gorl site programmes....lol.....the programme has been in place since 2006....maybe you guys cn give us incentive to launch!!! We are a site that has been round for a number of years since 2003....we do run 100% on our own income and have a high sign up rartio...and most important We are not going to Bail......this is our sole income.......and it pays pretty darn well.......Feedback on launching an affiliate programme would be greatly appreciated........and our affiliate programme would be run 100% by Epoch, so you know you will get paid.....

I know one program that has people on staff to do just that