CCbill sales are not good on my end too! Almost cut in half with more traffic pushed than last month and I know I can not do anything about it because It is not fault with my traffic. Something is up there with ccbill and banks making ratios shit by adjusting the scrubs and denying cards way too much. Things are too worse in july with ccbill.

I believe ccbill adjusts the scrub every now and then. Because one day you have 10 sales and second day you've just nothing??? Even with more traffic, you can not get any sales and after a few days everything is back to normal again.

Imagine, If you've a shop in a very good area of your city and customers DO COME in your shop and won't buy anything. Sure, the things won't be same for everyday but It will not be like one day you get 10 customers from 100 visitors and next day you get 0 customers from 200 visitors. It can be like that rarely on special occasions but It is simply not possible.

There are lots of things ccbill need to take good care of like refund, chargebacks etcc... and I'm sure they adjust scrubs on particular accounts. Because If a particular paysite is having too much refunds and chargebacks, ccbill will not higher the scrub for everyone in this case so they will have a feature which allows them to scrub too hard on a particular account.

Things I've always noticed with ccbill

1. If your month start too good and things look great in statsremote, you can be sure that you are going to get fucked very hard in the coming days..

2. If you are using ccbill, forget about the word 'stable'. CCbill sales are never stable and I've never seen a month when CCbill sales were 'stable'. However, there are some non ccbill sponsors where I see this pattern way way less.

I started month with 1:1800 ratio one week and went to 1:11000 next week. It is plain ridiculous. I'm not blaming ccbill or anyone. Not arguing with anyone either because its my opinion. CCbill is very reliable and sends payments like clockwork but If they would have stable sales, It would be alot better for everyone.

Yeah the summer is here but cock erect all the time regardless to summer or winter so the sales should flow. Maybe a bit less in summer but not the ratios like ppl are having.

Every month my ccbill sales take a big swing, up or down. However with non ccbill sponsors, If I compare stats on monthly basis, the swing is way way less......

Just my opinion and I wisht ccbill sales come back again......

For our first 7 yrs never had a summer slow down it was steady and then it went up a notch in the fall and peaked in Jan. The past three yrs there has been a slow down. I have a friend had two yrs of steady growth and last month was the first month it didnt grow.lots of shit is happening out there, you read the papers it scares the shit out of people. Also cc companies are still cutting open credit. Alot of people wont use a debt card to buy porn and I dont blame them. Work hard , grow your reserves(the rainy day fund) and we shall over come. :)

On the one hand I am sorry to hear you going through all these ups and downs. But on the other it makes me feel less insane to be complaining, as I am not alone in all this.

If this is just "the way it is" then I don't know a good solution.



From your lips to God's ears, friend. :)

I think there is a little bit of confusion as to how cascades work with ccbill in this thread.

Anyway, CCBill is obviously putting as many transactions through as they can. I've talked with programs that do several million dollars worth of sales a year and sometimes CC Bill has better throughput, sometimes the others do. But for the most part it balances out.

The reason you don't notice it as much with your NATS sponsors as an affiliate is because they are all running different billers at different times in different places in their cascade, so over a bunch of NATS programs, you won't see the dips, but they are still there. This is what makes people run around talking about how NATS programs are still doing well while CC Bill isn't.

That's pretty much the answer.

Ratios seem to be better today but this is not surprising, but rather a type of confirmation of this thread.

Good thing I like rollercoasters. WHEEEEEE!

THIS is the answer to sales on the Interwebs today:

Great thread, BTW :thumbsup

So let me get this straight, CCBill of course a giant processor of this industry and handles a huge percentage of the transactions compared to other processors. Since they are so large their banks can sometimes not handle the problems side of this mass of transactions (fraud, chargebacks, etc..) and they are forced to shoo away sales whether legit or not for a short period so that everything can get caught up and situated? And this is why some of the lesser processors see better numbers.

Allegedly.

With all due respect what we have here is no different than a married couple where one has all indication that the other is cheating(gut feeling,abnormal erratic behavior, insists everything is fine, outside parties(hundreds other webmasters) observing same odd behavior,etc..

then you have the suspect mate who may be cheating having friends cosign and say all is well ( multiple gfy ghost accounts and ccbill schills try to divert focus and make you question yourself...oh its your mind playing tricks on you...why would ccbill do such a thing,etc....

bottom line... a multi-million dollar company moving millions of dollars a day, without independent oversight or audit from its massive collective of clients(salary payers...us webmasters)

we will only continue to add these suspect ccbill threads ad infinitem .

Trust that they have the resources, and where with all to confuse, divert, and placate the 1 in ten of us who smell a fat rat!

You guys are not insane, not paranoid, just out numbered by those in the biz who cannot think critically about this

it may not be today, or tomorrow but to think that we will never find out the truth is foolish. It will come out whether we are all paranoid or whether our concerns have merit.

just a question like you hear so often when your civil liberties are being eviscerated... ccbill if you have nothing to hide would you mind opening up the books for those that have questions....

Don't u love it when people say if you have nothing to hide... LOL of course, I don't really want to see your books...

if you don't like ccbill use someone else.

You're leaving a fortune on the table by running your business through a processor provided back end. You NEED to control your business, you NEED to own your data, you NEED to maximize your opportunities.

CCBill's system allowing the limited use of a couple other processors is a great move, but it's 10% of the picture. If you want to succeed in this industry you need the proper tools to allow you to do so. If you're not running on a 3rd party backend you're simply leaving money on the table and putting all of your eggs in one basket. Both of these are very bad ideas.

This industry is no where near ending. Most of those screaming that it is day in & day out are simply looking for something to blame their failures on. There are plenty of people succeeding in this industry. These days most of them just don't bother to visit this board.

Don't limit yourself, control your business.

You make absolutely excellent points here! This may be the direction I, personally, am going in. My company has grown and grown, and as it has I've taken over and exerted more 'control' over the billing process, as much as I can. Perhaps moving to a system like NATS while integrating it with a number of processers may be the solution here.

Thing is, for a growing business, and still a medium-sized one, each new "leap" brings risks and sometimes even emotional/psychological barriers that need busting through. So going from a single processer to a cascade to total control over the billing process mirrors, in a way, the growth of the individual business owner.

So as these progressions occur it's natural, I think, to try and make a current situation "work". of course, again, what you say has great merit because there comes a point where the sane individual says "enough" and finally makes that last leap to billing independence.

It's also a great way to learn nats, get it fully tweaked out, understand it, books/payments worked out... then release when you know it's pimp!

Changing to a standalone backend doesn't mean more sales though, for sure not simply because of additional processors or cascades, but it does mean a larger potential for being able to generate more sales because some limits are lifted that can be taken advantage of.

The extra potential, over time... normally years, is a program taking advantage of those lifted limits and breaking outside the 'normal' setup. Nice thing is, the advantage starts the moment you take the first step to do something you haven't done before. So it really comes down to, what you're going to do once you have nats.

Could the difference in ratios between ccbill and others be something as simple as the checkout pages? Doesn't ccbill identify the customers ip and give them the checkout page from the server closest to them?

If this is the case, and some of the servers are slow, the prospective customer may just give up.

I have no idea if any of this is accurate but we also have had dramatic ups and downs, and it seems that everyone with ccbill has these up and downs on the exact same days.

To be fair, we have briefly experimented with other processors and didn't find any improvement. Never tried Epoch though.

Cheers for the great advice, and this is something I'm considering. The thing is, for a medium-sized biz like mine, where I do 99% of the work involved, switching to a new billing system, even on the backend, is kind of like switching engines in the car while driving down the freeway. LOL Sure, it can be done, and in the way you suggested, but it all takes time. Frustrating.


I would definitely recommend giving Epoch a shot, as this thread has mentioned the comparison between the two companies a lot. I have not tried Zambaio or Verotel or other processers so i cannot say about their ratios.

As for load times: I've done some speed tests, and have hired a firm to do so for my company back in May, and we both found that CCBill form load times can be anywhere from 1.1 second to 4.5+ seconds. When the cascade is switched to Epoch as primary, however, since I'm using the CCBill cascade system (not the Epoch cascade system, which is differant) there's a little "hop, skip & jump" when the surfer clicks a Join option as it cascades over to Epoch. So the overall load time is about equivalent. I've brought this up with CCBill and they say it's not a load issue. So there ya go. LOL

If (and i do say if) CCBill was turning away all these transactions and not reporting any declines, as has been suggested over and over again,

Don't you think there would be a fair amount of customers emailing in complaining why they can't sign up to the site?

I mean if it's as bad as some of you suggest there would be hundreds of thousands of customers that can't sign up with CCBill.

Does anyone have any emails directly from these people CCBill is (allegedly) blocking out?

Of course no one does. I know I don't.

There should be thousands of complaints/emails every day if only 1% sent an email! (if this was true)

Running a standalone program, mostly by yourself is a serious task... it's not greatly different than what you're doing, but it is more to do either way, before learning it.

You could save yourself some time, staff time and you money and headaches by just hiring someone that knows nats/ccbill to come through and setup the entire thing up for you quickly, then show you how to manage it as well. Then again, nothing wrong with learning it all from the ground up.

I thought about this as well, and you are right no one is emailing in claiming they cant purchase a membership.

In four years with ccbill, we have probably had 5-10 people email about not being able to sign up and almost every one of them was foreign. This is out of thousands of transactions..

Well-l-l BV I think it's a wee more complicated than that.

1. If i get a "pre-auth" decline from CCBill that means (I believe) that CCBill itself rejected the potential member - based on fraud detection, scrub, whatever reason - and sends ME a decline. But that 'decline' did not cascade over to Epoch otherwise I would see the corresponding form hit on the Epoch side, right? But I don't under this scenario.

Now if the BANK rejects the surfer THEN it cascades over to Epoch (again, I believe). This means CCBill put the attempted transaction through to one of (or all of) their merchant banks and the bank rejected the sale. So then it goes to Epoch and Epoch gives the sale a shot with one of their merchant banks (which may or may not reject the sale).

So why doesn't CCBill cascade the "pre-auth" decline as well? If they don't want the sale and reject it out of hand because of whatever internal reason, why not let Epoch give it a shot?

2. Who is a potential (rejected) customer going to email? They're going to email CCBill first and go 'WTF?' Now you know many, many porn surfers are impulse buyers, so if they get rejected they go "FUCK!" and beat off to a tube in frustration.

Again, most people won't contact a site - ANY site - and go "WTF I can't join your site/buy from you". IMHO most people will assume it's THEM - their credit, their bank, their checking account. Then maybe they try again in a few days or a week or two and by then CCBill has taken its' foot off the brakes and everything goes through. "Ah see? It WAS me (my card, bank, etc)!" So no emails to the site.

PS: And I bet if a surfer checks his card after he's been denied, finds there's enough on it to join, calls CCBill and says this, CCBill will let that person through. What'cha wanna bet? :)

What about people that just back out and don't signup for whatever reason? If they aren't reporting a decline, it would tell me they aren't filling out the form.

It could be mass consumer behavior adjusting to layout standards for credit card forms.

I could be way off... but that's why I feel the real amateur, real amateur design, the underground/bondage connection, etc... did so well with them because the style of join forms they have fit the 'amateur/underground' look. :2 cents:

A clean, simple, easy to follow, least amount of text, least amount of scripts and b.s. as possible, white bg/black text, blue links on a cc form creates the most trust, it matches the standard used across the Internet now, and it's stupid easy to use for everyone.

Agreed.... Recurring customers that cards get declined don't email in asking what's up, they know what's up. Just like the person that didn't really have the money in the first place.

If the pre-auth is based on money (from what I know), no reason to send them to anyone, unless it's based on the scrub factors, like address/zip/card issue match being off. I think the pre-auth is to see if the account has the funds though...

I have to look into the "pre-auth" decline issue a bit more, honestly. All I know is when I get one of those emails from CCBill, and then I check the Epoch stats, I do not usually see a form hit, which indicates to me the attempted sale has cascaded.

As for forms: I went back-and-forth with CCBill to get a custom form created for months. We finally settled on one that I think is awesome, and has increased sales overall by upwards of 30%. I tried using the "standard" form you described, as close as I could, but sales were not as good as the forms I have now. But basically yes, how a form looks/feels is really crucial. :)

And i suggest that anyone using CCBill look into how their forms are converting for them, A/B test them as best you can, and try and streamline/simplify the forms as much as possible. I can attest that CCBill is really helpful when it comes to forms and designs and will totally work with you to improve things.

Customers that want to join your site and can't will contact YOU. (the site owner)
Not all, but some will. I know for a fact because I get them every so often.

Most are either "i don't have a credit card" or "i don't want to use my credit card" or something of that nature. Hell some even email asking what the charges will show up as on their statement.

So the fact that they wont email you is NOT TRUE.

If the problem is as prevalent as some of you suggest, for as long of time period that has been suggested, there would be a plethora of these emails surfaced by now.

Mr. Peabody,

Here is a little tip if you want to make better sense of your stats.

I assume that you pay close attention to your join form loads.

I'll also assume that you have an unusually high amount of join form loads to actual joins.

This is because your prices are not disclosed and your surfers have to load your join form in order to see the price.

My advice to you is to disclose your price beforehand and then analyze your stats again after a few weeks.

This will give you a little bit better of an idea on what's going on because then only people that are truly interested in joining will be loading the join page.

I think my explanation of people's buying patterns and reactions to declines is more accurate. yes, I do get emails from people asking if they can Join by PayPal, etc. But if a guy tried to Join MILF Mia, say, he wouldn't be able to email the site. Her personal addy is in the Member's Area. It's one of the perks/enticements for Joining.

So a surfer MAY, once denied, go back to MILF Mia, find no email link, then go to Mister Peabody World and find the contact email - to ME, not Mia - and write me. But that's a REAL fucking motivated buyer, now isn't it? The overwhelming majority are going to assume the denial was because of THEM, not the site, or contact the biller. IMHO, of course.

But to say "If this were the case there'd be thousands of emails" is just plain wrong, sorry. CCBill and other billers are smart at this "game" and are not going to do anything that would send up "red flags". Only the interested and canny observer can detect these patterns, if at all. So again, someone gets declined, tries again a few days later, get approved. Where's the complaint email? There is none. It's in this way, I suspect, that billers "hide" such things as scrubs, declines, throughputs, etc etc. In fact, I would say the billers COUNT ON the kind of reaction/explanation BV provides, as further cover for these type of (understanble) "adjustments".

The problem, as has been stated over and over, is that we, the business owners, are left with this guessing game/Sherlock Holmes nonsense.

I already A/B tested showing the price vs. NOT showing the price, and have taken into consideration the fact that form hits will be higher when price is not disclosed. For me, for my sites, not displaying the price showed 80% more Joins this way. The philosophy, as you well know, is to get the guy to the join form at all costs.

Maybe you would get more emails if your email support link didn't 404
http://www.misterpeabodyworld.com/support.htm

Technically you are not in compliance by not having an email address on your join pages.

Also, your affiliates might see a better ROI if you didn't have a shitload of traffic leaks on your tour. (i count 8 at the bottom of the 1st page of your tour) going thru an affiliate link none the less.

You say you got 80% more joins by not disclosing the price?

hahahaha
lol

Dude, this aint my first rodeo!

carry on

I'm going to bow out of this thread now.

Cheers,
BV

PS: You talk a good game at first, but you have a long way to go. :2 cents:

Well BV, if you're gonna turn like that on me then you better back up what you're saying right here and now otherwise I lose respect for you.

1. Where did you see that link? So I can FIX IT.
2. "Not being in compliance by not having an email link on my Join page." Say WHAT? Neither CCBill nor Epoch, both of whom go over every site I submit, has EVER required that. I call bullshit on that one. If I was "not in complaince" how could I get approved?
3. I made pains to point out that by not displaying pricing it helped MY sites by 80%. There was a 5-1 differance between joins when I displayed the pricing vs. when i did not. I do not care if you believe this or not.
4. "Traffic leaks" and ROI? You know nothing about my affiliates 'ROI'. Traffic leaks where? To other sites that require a recip link to post pics/videos there? Technically true, but you know damn well that's the price you pay to get traffic from some websites. Finally, those "traffic leaks" are on the Splash page, and most of my (smart) affiliates send their traffic to the 2nd (main) tour page, by-passing said "leaks".

This ain't MY first yada yada either bud. Now I did not ask for advice on how to improve overall sales. This thread is about CCBILL and other billers. If you would like, I can certainly give YOU a detailed overview of your ugly-ass looking piece of shit sites, too, and how to "improve" them. Take shots out of nowhere and you get 'em back.

No harm intended.

I was just pointing out a few observations trying to help.

I was following links from the review sites Porn Inspector and Rabbits Reviews and saw the leaks. But they aren't your smart affiliates so my bad. :Oh crap

An easy fix (like most of us do) is to set up a leak free tour page for your default link. And keep your root for your own typeins and put your leaks there. It's not good to trade off affiliates traffic.

You billing support link on sexy brandon and the Milf site were 2 that I noticed, looks like they are *.htm & should be *.html

But don't mind what I say, I don't know anything.

PS: I still don't believe you can have an 80% increase in sales by not disclosing the price before the join page.

Actualy, I got upset (apologies, and thank you for explaining) precisely because you DO know so much. I've learned, thru trial and error and FAILING over and over what works - for ME. For my world, as it were. LOL I've actually tried the things you suggested over the years and guess I got upset that you would think me so foolish as to NOT try those suggestions.

"Hey! Why don't I try putting the prices on the join page! DUH!" :D

Review sites are, well, fuck 'em. Sorry reviewers who give my best sites scores of under 70, your recip links go where few will see them, since you send shitty traffic and don't make me any sales anyway. Oh, don't get me started on review sites.....

The main issue here, tho, remains this: Even WITH "leaks" (and I do offer 'leak-free tours' without those recip links to any aff who wants them) and this shitty design element or that odd pricing option, the fact remains that a mysterious "faucet" seems to turn on-and-off without rhyme or reason. And the only "explanation" is the biller. The biller is the weak link in the chain, which is fine if they would only:

A. Let me know some things
B. Leave ME alone and fuck with all of you fuckers instead
:)

I've noticed a decrease in sales thru ccbill when showing pricing. But, there was likely a reason for that, ie programming may have passed info and caused slow page loading.

That being said, there are always reasons for lower sales and includes everything up to surfer completing payment.

I do think ur ccbill custom form is good but needs work. Your price should be up top, only price. Then put recurring in text below form but not immediately above submit.

U will see a 50 percent increase in sales if u can get that approved. Ask lloyd though from ccbill.

That's some great advice there! Thanks so much! I will look into that today. Perhaps Epoch can do the same with their forms.

I believe I've seen a form or two with CCBill where the recurring pricing IS on the bottom so perhaps they can do this. :)

another observation noted repeatedly is when you express your feelings about ccbill sales on gfy, sales simultaneously evaporate into nothing for a few days.

can almost hear them saying..."want to run your mouth about us.... try no sales for a few days...heheheh..that will teach ya"

If you are not getting denials, that would signal you are not getting attempts. How could that be CCBill's fault?

Unless there was a bug in the join page (happens sometimes if you setup a new custom one that wasn't properly tested) - that's all on you.

I agree with others, your sample size here was incredibly small, but the thing you need to be checking from the sounds of it, are your form hits and form submission %s.

CCBill cannot try to charge a card that hasn't been submitted...

What I'm saying is, CCBill may have their own internal calculations as to why they don't submit a Join form to a BANK. If this is the case then the sale does not cascade. IF it goes to the BANK, then gets rejected, THEN it cascades. So CCBill (or any biller) can block Join attempts BEFORE they ever get to the BANK. It does not mean CCBill is trying to CHARGE a card before it goes to a BANK - perhaps, because of fraud detection, or past abuses, or IP issues, or whatever, CCBill blocks them.

Believe me, the custom Join forms have been tested repeatedly.

Form submission percentages, however, and load times, CAN make a big differance and we're looking into those issues more closely. But overall, I would say the odd patterns I see are not related to form load times.

As for sample size: This thread is a result of SIX MONTHS, 500,000+ uniques, and hundreds of thousands in revenue. I didn't go off half-cocked after a week or two, or even after ten thousand visitors. LOL I have rock-solid data that can stand up to any scrutiny. Numbers don't lie.

I say this because you are a friend and I know the workings of CCBill rather well. Any claims that CCBill turns up or down their fraud scrub or "fucks with" your revenues in any way is utterly preposterous. Since they only make money from your completed transaction and in fact loose money on each denial (its still cost them for gateway cost, etc) then is makes no scene for them to refuse qualified transactions.

Did you look at your decline rate or track your bounce rate from your tour/join pages?

If you want some assistance on how to better analyze this, give me a call or email and I'd love to assist but I think there is a probability that a bit more is going on here than just CCBill.

If you still think there are technical issues then Paul K will find it. He knows that system like the back of his hand and is very very capable.

Your load time assessment, may have more merit than you think. As we have discussed in the past, load times over 2 seconds is unacceptable by most users.

:2 cents:

Thank you fine sir! I may take you up on that. I do apologize if I come across like "THEY'RE FUCKING ME!!!" LOL But it's rather obvious that I am not the only one experiencing these perplexing issues. Others have noticed similar patterns on the same exact days as I have, and have recounted their own puzzling patterns. So i don't think it's ME, specifically, but rather a company-wide policy that (eventually) affects everyone.

Still, I want to be totally clear here:

CCBill is a fine comapny. They have been COMPLETELY helpful when these issues arise. I am grateful for their continued attempts to maximize my earnings (and everyone's).

What I'm seeking is an explanation to this:

No sales for X # of hours; switch the cascade (absolutely no other variables change) and WHAM! Sales.

What I seek is an explanation I can live with, to better understand these patterns so that I, the business owner, can make better decisions and take actions based on accurate information. I don't think that makes me nuts, does it? (Should I have asked that? LOL)

:winkwink:

Ah, thanks for explaining it further. From your original comment I took it you were getting no denials, not just denials from the bank. That's why I figured you were getting no attempts.

CCBill does have a HUGE negative database, there is no question; but that's also a major reason why they are still in business, compared to the massive number of companies who have come and gone.

What I would do in your case is analyze your form hits / form submissions with both processors and if the approval rate is that far off, on similar behaviour (hits/submissions), present that to CCBill and try to work out what adjustments can be made to your fraud profile.

That's the advice I was trying to give, but his form hits are going to be way high because there are no prices disclosed on his site until they load the form.

EXCELLENT advice!! Thank you so much for that. :)

This thread has gotten long so it's easy to assume this or that. People are searching for reasons, not just for my situation but for their own, too. So, we search and we question and we try to think maybe it's this or that. ALL very helpful and useful!

Yeah, sorry I was being so thick-headed yesterday BV! :)
I am willing to A/B test the pricing displays again. I did it a while back. The great WOJ has just finished writing me up a brand-new A/B script that's easier (for me) to use so I want to test displaying pricing options again.