GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - IBILL UPDATE....Not in a position to Pay?

will76 · 02-02-2005, 01:00 AM

I have about 50K tied up with ibill from a membership site i owned a few years ago. The rebills are nice but they are gone now. Oh well wasn't the first time a 3rd party company went belly up and it wont be the last. however I wont be able to say that for long there aren't many left as is...

I came to the conclusion a while back that the whole membership model isn't worth it. I love rebills, but... it doesn't do any good when you can't collect them.

Running your own membership is more work then its worth. Besides the billing issues, which are enough of a reason by themselves. You also have to provide customer service, " I lost my password " " the video doesn't work for me". You have to take care of billing questions, " why was i charged, I cancelled ?" " it wont take my credit card". You have to make a lot of updates to your site or people will cancel quick. You have to either spend hours producing your own content or managing people who provide the content, or you have to spend a good bit of money to buy content feeds. How much time does that leave for advertising ???? All of this so you can generate a what $19.95 sale $34.95 sale? By the time Ibill takes their 15% +(10% hold) and then deducts the chargebacks,credits, and refunds, what are you left with? 70% maybe >? Now deduct the cost you have for content whether you produce it or buy it. Throw in a few extra bucks for bandwidth for a member's area if you stream it. And what do you have left ? $20 ? at best (if you charge $34.95 membership). Lets say your rentention rate is 2 months hell say 3 months, so you make $60.... building that big rebill list, and now it was all for nothing.
I prefer option B. Advertise a company like clickcash, make $40+ a FREE signup which from my experience converts 4x better then a membership site with the same exact traffic. SO you make $60 , I make $160+ from the same traffic. But now I am generating 5x more traffic then you because you are wasting all your time with customer complaints/service, doing updates, producing the content,etc... been there done that, it's not worth it.

02-02-2005, 01:00 AM
will76 Making $$$$ w/ ClickCash Industry Role: Join Date: May 2003 Location: USA Posts: 18,037	I have about 50K tied up with ibill from a membership site i owned a few years ago. The rebills are nice but they are gone now. Oh well wasn't the first time a 3rd party company went belly up and it wont be the last. however I wont be able to say that for long there aren't many left as is... I came to the conclusion a while back that the whole membership model isn't worth it. I love rebills, but... it doesn't do any good when you can't collect them. Running your own membership is more work then its worth. Besides the billing issues, which are enough of a reason by themselves. You also have to provide customer service, " I lost my password " " the video doesn't work for me". You have to take care of billing questions, " why was i charged, I cancelled ?" " it wont take my credit card". You have to make a lot of updates to your site or people will cancel quick. You have to either spend hours producing your own content or managing people who provide the content, or you have to spend a good bit of money to buy content feeds. How much time does that leave for advertising ???? All of this so you can generate a what $19.95 sale $34.95 sale? By the time Ibill takes their 15% +(10% hold) and then deducts the chargebacks,credits, and refunds, what are you left with? 70% maybe >? Now deduct the cost you have for content whether you produce it or buy it. Throw in a few extra bucks for bandwidth for a member's area if you stream it. And what do you have left ? $20 ? at best (if you charge $34.95 membership). Lets say your rentention rate is 2 months hell say 3 months, so you make $60.... building that big rebill list, and now it was all for nothing. I prefer option B. Advertise a company like clickcash, make $40+ a FREE signup which from my experience converts 4x better then a membership site with the same exact traffic. SO you make $60 , I make $160+ from the same traffic. But now I am generating 5x more traffic then you because you are wasting all your time with customer complaints/service, doing updates, producing the content,etc... been there done that, it's not worth it. __________________ ICQ: 86364801 Email: will [at] innovativeassets [dot] com PROGRAM SHIT LIST - DO NOT PROMOTE (click link for gfy thread) FNCash \| Media Revenue