Well, that is what happens when you have a business that is so heavily saturated with idiots, and I am NOT talking about the surfers.

Perhaps 2003/2004 will be the period when honesty and integrity finally has its payday in our industry.

Anyone that does NOT understand that the "business" brought this upon themselves is blinded by all the cocaine/booze/x, etc that the scumbags have been feeding you for years. Of course, they were brilliant...they knew that by feeding you as much as they did, you would never have the clear mind to see how bad they were fucking you, and the industry.

I wouldn't call this a shakeout, I would call it a hangover.

I'm assuming free trials will be replaced with $1 trials or something similar?

paid trials like $2.95 will still be around...as they have been for a very long time.

the free trial is not so much about the lack of money being charged as it was about how a lot of WM's were advertaising it and the wording used.

Yep. :) Great post.

I no longer offer free trials.

This will make our payouts seem more reasonable. Most webmasters dont try us because $20 a sale looks low, but the 50% recurring really works well for a lot of people. We also are doing everything we can to raise payouts in the future :)

And I'm sure the $39.99 rebill had no impact on the situation.

With payouts from PPS programs shrinking it makes more sense than ever to just use partnership programs with 3rd party billing. :2 cents:

Wow. Mike, you have out done yourself. This is one of the ballsiest and most stand up things I've seen to date in this business. I bow to you. Even though you just chopped my revenue by 25% I stand in your shadow.

Words of wisdom.

50?

Who has the balls to do a $75 per trial day tomorrow, just for the hell of it?:BangBang:

you'll be seeing payout changes with TCG as well soon :helpme

Pretty soon the big promotion will be:

$40 per no-trial signup, one day only!

ok, per signup programs will be lower in next few weeks, cross sales will be removed and memberships lowered also within few weeks or this will wait util October ?
:321GFY

Nice... good news

very good question!

All this has got me a very good idea :thumbsup

Will wait untill MasterCard shows the new policy and some time to see how the things are going.
This sounds like a gold mine to me :)

Hope MasterCard will put some kind of policy similar to the Visa one.

It's not about the chargebacks and other stuff like free trials. In my opinion it's the entire business model itself.

Most of the chargebacks come from fraudulant webmasters.
screwing programs.

the surfers know what to expect our chargebacks are way under 1% because we keep a close Eye on our fraudulant affiliates

October is when all companies need to be in compliance with Visa 1% charge back rule.

These new payout changes will start taking affect across many companies starting tomorrow and over the next few weeks months.

Each company is different

"Each company is different"

of course, but I'm asking companies that are announcing lower payouts within next few weeks ;)

This definitely evens the playing field.

I smell opportunity for a lot of people.

"It ain't over til it's over."...

-Lenny Kravitz

shit if it gets everyone to try out our Porn4aBuck program I will.

This hasn't effected us much at all. other then removing our free trial programs which we just launced not to long ago. so they will probably be removed this week.

so heads up to all our webmasters switch your links to our Porn4aBuck,paid trial or SunnyMoney I will be sending out a news letter shortly before it happens

Now you see why we have a $1 trial for a month:winkwink:

Did anybody here that there is a new form of billing out there recurring phone billing.....Charge backs are not regulated by visa or master card

Give me a call if you?re interested
954 263 4026 DJP
:)

I would like to commend Mike and Marc for standing up and telling webmasters about the changes that will be happening. We definitely appreciate the heads-up notice given the time constraints you guys have to become compliant.

Obviously these matters are to be taken quite seriously and everyone from the sponsors to webmasters will definitely feel the changes in the upcoming weeks.

I for one will be severly effected on the media buys we do with the search engines so I sincerely hope for the best with the changes to come to this industry.

WG

LAMike - This took BALLS to come out and post first .

The same with Epoch. This has been a long time coming, and while it will effect many webmasters initial income, It will help us in the long run.

Rick 25% loss is a big one, especially for the amount of $$ you are referring to.

We will be seeing more Partnership progies come out, I'm sure. However, be cautious on who you use... If the paysite owner isn't on top of things.. their chargeback ratio could get out of hand, and take all your recurring with it.

I do not think partner programs are an answer for most webmasters. I could give a lenghty explanation but I have to head to dinner.

can you suggest a cheap and effective method to prove that the guy who signed up for the website is the same guy who owns the credit card used?

Weren't you a big advocate of free trials?

Post your opinion on why partnerships aren't going to take over after you're done eating.

maybe it would be a good idea for the sponsers to show in our stats when we get chargebacks and possibly the refffering url of the chargeback. then we could find out what exactly we are doing that is or is not causing them. in turn our payouts could go back up :x

Mike, great job of stating the case for what has to happen in response to the new visa regs - hats off for stepping up and being the first to take the plunge.

TopBucks will also be reducing payouts, for all the same reasons already listed. We haven't decided on a precise time table yet, but we will be announcing the exact date and new payout rates in the very near future.

- Q.

This has been mentioned before and it is a great idea.

Many affiliates who have a lot of traffic get it from 1000 different places and knowing which places are causing problems could be an important tool in fighting chargebacks.

Some sponsors still don't even show signup referring URL's, though, so what are the odds they'll be able to get up to speed on something like this?

i can see sponsors cancelling accounts of those affilates who bring them chargebacks.

I agree, very curious

Just want to add my voice to the chorus:

Well done, Mike and Marc as being the first to say the difficult words and make the tough decisions!!

Should be a couple of very interesting months ahead. :)

Mike, you da man. I thaughtmy boss was the only one with Brass Balls buy suing the city of Vancouver but then again looks like you have as well... Cheers bro.

As per Everyone changing there business model well I beleive that a good pr\ortion will have to do but not all.

Brad come on and shove that lobster down I really want to ear what you gotta say about rev share as well.

We been doing rev share since 1997 and per sign up since January. Most of our bigger affiliates have been sending to rev share, some of them for over 5 years without even considering going on a Sign up deal, guess they must be real confortable with the money they are making ... Eh? ( that's my canadian accent )

Pleasy hurry back and explain why you don't believe in partner programs...

With the Sweets - revshares where its at!"
-smoo gregpix.com.smootopia.com

Exactly. I'm having second thoughts about my retirement :Graucho