Verotel or Ccbill ?

[SET]

Verotel or Ccbill ?
Which one is better ? Which one do you choose if sponsor gives you a choice ?

[Cleo]

I prefer CCBill

[Tito_Ortiz]

Verotel isn't bad, but CCbill has a stronger affiliate program which is vital.

[MadMax]

Speaking as an affiliate I absolutely hate Verotel's affiliate interface. Plus, they have no ability to merge existing accounts like CCBill does. Not that I'm in love with the CCBill interface, but it's much better than Verotel.

[Cleo]

CCBill's is pretty decent if you low rez without java interface. Butt ass ugly but fast and shows you what you need to know without too much clicking. I do wish it didn't log you out after awhile.

[Optic]

CCBill is better because of its DataLink system.

[tortus32]

I went with Verotel mainly because I didn't know anything about this business when I started, and I didn't know about this board yet -lol!

The one thing I link about them is that they seem to take every form of cash from all over the world, but I'm guessing that CCBill does the same.

I should switch over to CCBill, but I'm just so friggin lazy!

Bill

[Rocco]

I prefer CCbill

[tortus32]

Holy crap!

I just went to register with CCBill and I got half way through the registration and read this:

...........
US-Based VISA High Risk Sponsored Merchant Registration Requirements:

In order for CCBill.com to register you as one of our VISA Sponsored Merchants, we must:

1. Collect pertinent information regarding your business; and
2. Make payment arrangements with you for the Initial Sponsored Merchant Registration Fee ($750.00 per company, not URL).


Upon receipt and review of the above, CCBill will submit your application for registration to VISA. Upon submission of your application to VISA it could take from 7 to 10 business days to process your registration information and begin your VISA processing.

An ongoing annual registration fee of $375.00 is required to maintain your VISA sponsored merchant status. You will be notified by CCBill 90-days prior to the anniversary date of your sponsored merchant registration date, at which time we will make payment arrangements for your annual fee payment.

If you choose to terminate your VISA Sponsored Merchant application after CCBill has submitted your registration and payment to VISA, you will not receive a refund of your registration fee.
........

So it would cost me $1125 to register with CCBill, and then $375 per year? !!!

Verotel was free!

Oh well.

Bill

[Cleo]

How is Verotel free when it is Visa that wants the $750 or do you not accept Visa with your Verotel account?

[tortus32]

I accept Visa and every other major cc through Verotel, and it didn't cost me anything.

Bill

[cd34]

Verotel's ticket club allows processing up to $1000/week (I think) without a Visa fee. There are some strange ways that they use to get around Visa's IPSP rules.

Once you get beyond $1000/week, you pay the Visa high risk fee.

And Tortus32, its $750 the first year, $375 the year after -- you don't pay both fees the first year as the $375 is a 'renewal' fee.

[Toby]

Bill, this is just my opinion, but if you were using CCbill on ShoeKittens Cash instead of Verotel I think you'd have more affiliates signing up and sending traffic. I think you'd earn back that $750 and then some. I will not sign up for a Verotel affiliate program. I don't like the whole "TicketsClub" concept, and I don't think I'm alone on that.

And one other comment, ShoeKittens sure has alot of traffic leaks.

[tortus32]

Well, if the time comes that I'm making 1,000 a week, I would be glad to pay the $750 and then $375 a year for CCBill.

I wish I could afford the $750 as I would sign up today, but I really can't do it.

What if I sign up with CCBill and just choose not to accept Visa?

What are traffic leaks? You mean links to other sites on my site?

Bill

[Toby]

What if I sign up with CCBill and just choose not to accept Visa? Not a good idea if you're running an affiliate program through CCbill. You'd still need an alternate processor for those that want to join using Visa, which is the majority of sign-ups. How would your affiliates get credit?

What are traffic leaks? You mean links to other sites on my site?
Yes, traffic leaks are links to other sites. As an affiliate I want the maximum chance for my traffic to view your tour and get to your join page. Traffic leaks give surfers someplace else to go that I get no credit for. I realize that some links are necessary recips for traffic etc. but on some of your pages I can't tell if you are selling your own site or promoting sponsors. The best solution is an alternate leak free tour for all affiliate traffic. Unless you're making some major $$$ from those sponsor links I'd be wondering if maybe they are costing you more in lost traffic.

[tortus32]

Thanks for the great advice, I cleaned up the tour and the fhg's - maybe that will help me some.

I guess I'm stuck with Verotel :o)

Bill

[Cleo]

You can also get a Paycom, no Visa account, without money up front.

I haven't looked at your tour but it is usually best to make a super clean one for your affiliates and then have another one linked to your domain root for your own traffic.

[tortus32]

CCBill is also free, if you don't want to accept Visa.

I guess I'll have to stick with Verotel for now.

Thanks,

Bill

[Rui]

CCbill by far...

Great people behind it, run a thight operation and have a never let down their users :)

[tortus32]

Ok, I'm in the process of switching over to CCBill.
I only have 2 or 3 affiliates/resellers, and I can just email them about the change. I don't think any of them are doing anything as far as promoting anyway.

As far as existing paying members, can't I just assign them new usernames and passwords, or just enter their info in my CCBill account once it takes over?

I'm not going to be able to swing the $750 for Visa, but I figure the affilate program with CCBill is so much stronger that I should do better anyway and will eventually be able to add on the Visa option.

What do you think?

Bill

[Cleo]

You can have more then one processor, just make more then one tour with each tour leading to the proper join page.

Just leave your members and affiliates as is, no need to tell them to change anything but you can tell them that you now have a CCBill tour for them to promote instead of the Verotel tour.

You need to tell each processor where your password file is so that they can all write to the same password file.

Create a tour for your own use and you can put both processors on the join page and give the surfers a choice since this is your own traffic and not affiliate traffic.

Check out FoxyAngel's site in my tag to see how I did it.

[tortus32]

Cool!

Thanks,

Bill :D :D :D :D

[Toby]

Be sure you make it clear that the CCbill affiliate option does not accept Visa payment at this time. If you don't, you'll get some very nasty email from affiliates when they discover that on their own, after signing up and sending traffic.

[Trev]

To add to what Toby said, I don't think that you're going to get a lot of webmasters to sign up to the ccbill program without visa. Maybe if they have a lot of euro traffic, which seems to use MC much more than North America, surfers.

Choices are always a good thing, but I wouldn't get my hopes up to high until you can swing Visa.

[tortus32]

Oh well. It's just the $750 charge that's holding me back. If I was already doing well I would gladly pay it. Maybe sometime in the future.

Thanks,

Bill

[cd34]

Tortus32,

Are you a gambling man? How long will it take you at your current rate to earn $750?

I would bet that if you paid the $750, got ccbill up and running with visa/mc, did a blitz to get a bunch of webmasters to sign up (many won't signup because of verotel), you would probably earn that back in short order. Maybe put out a request and see how many people would promote you if you got the tour leaks fixed and were using CCBill. Make the judgement at that point to figure out your return on investment.

Personally, if you are going for affiliate traffic to bring in sales, you're going to have a much harder time if you use Verotel. Make the leap. You'll thank everyone that has suggested it later. :)

[tortus32]

If I could I would. I usually have about $1000 in the bank at any given point. Money comes in and goes right out to bills - lol!

Oh well, such is life.

Are you a gambling man? If yes, send me the $750 - LOL!

Bill :D

[spookyx]

I like CCbill, I deal with them 4-5 times a week on the phone and ICQ and i have always found them to be responsive and most helpful.
|pink

[mariah]

I had to have someone do my billing at first so i didnt miss the sales, and they took 15% which sucks, but is well worth it.
ask someone who runs a site and has a visa account already to setup a subaccount for you, and make your join buttons.
if you get an honest person it is great!

good luck...and ccbill has converted for me 100 to 1 over verotel for over a year. i have used them for 5 years and they are hands down the best. the $$ is worth it
xoxoxo
Mariah

[tortus32]

Ok, I broke down and borrowed the cash - LOL!

I hope this is worth it!

Thanks,

Bill

[tortus32]

Hopefuly I'll be accepted by Visa (takes up to 30 days) otherwise I guess I'm truly stuck with Verotel.

Bill

[Toby]

Please post back here when you get approved and have your CCBill affiliate program fully operational. While you're waiting you might want to build your leak free affiliate tour.

One thing I have noticed, and maybe I'm not seeing enough to really get a true feel. The site is named ShoeKittens but your content seems to me to be more foot fetish than shoe/heel fetish?

[Cleo]

Just wondering way you didn't also take a look at Epoch? Not that I think they are better or anything.

[tortus32]

Toby:

Thanks, I already got rid of the traffic leaks.
As far as content, I do have equal amounts of shoe and foot fetish, maybe a bit more foot than shoe, but as I add more I will be doing more shoe stuff. All the content is original (I shoot it myself). I was also thinking of "Shoe Kittens" like "Sweater Puppies" - what's in the shoes.

Cleo:
Didn't know about Epoch. Do allot of webmasters use them?

Thanks,

Bill

[Cleo]

Cleo:
Didn't know about Epoch. Do allot of webmasters use them?
l
We added them to FoxyAngel, see my sig, not sure how many places use them. I don't really care for their admin, but I'm a picky bitch, so I haven't really sent any traffic to her Epoch tour. I did just last week make up a special tour just for my own use with them as a secondary process by hard coding my Epoch ID into the join button, thus it is only for my own use, so I may know better how well they are in a month or so.

I do gets checks from Epoch each month from other sites that use them. :)

[Toby]

I'm not crazy about Epoch's affiliate admin either, although I'll still join a sponsor program that uses Epoch if I really like the looks of the program.

The one thing I wish Epoch would do is make it possible for affiliates to merge all of their Epoch sponsors under one master account like CCbill does and send just one check. They'll need to make serious improvements to their online stats before that can happen.

[Trev]

Toby:

Thanks, I already got rid of the traffic leaks.


Not sure if this is what you did or I'm misunderstanding what you said. Don't get rid of the traffic leaks from your tour if they're productive for you. Or, if you want them and are generating/driving your own traffic to it.

Just make a copy of your tour (without leaks) for affiliates to use. Name the pages differently.

[tortus32]

Thanks Trev,

I made two separate tours, one set for Verotel affiliates, and one for CCBill affiliates.

Bill

[tortus32]

Ok, I'm approved for Visa through CCBill :D

Do they allow you to customize the index.htm page that they send you?

This is the page I mean:
http://www.shoekittens.com/ccbill/index.htm

I'm in the process of asking them through their support ticket system, but I was hoping I could get a faster answer here.

Thanks,

Bill

[LB]

Verotel with an affiliate management solution. However thats not cheap :)

CCbill has a good affiliate management solution built in, but you will make at least 20-30% more signups with verotel.

But if a $750 visa fee scares you away then for the sake of your future affiliates please don't start a paysite.

[LB]

For gods sake am I the only one who is seeing major problems with this thread? Here we have someone who admits to having only $1000 in his bank at the best of times, and you are all encouraging him to start a paysite and even possibly a webmaster program!!!?

I mean nothing against tortus32, he is only as good as the advice he is given, but some of you should have realised he wasn't ready for a paysite as his posts here reflect that!


Tortus, seems you have already signed up for ccbill and verotel. Good luck mate, and since its now too late for me to suggest you hold off heres a short list i will copy and paste that I have given others. You might want to look at getting strongbox installed on your paysite aswell, as I am assuming you are not on hosting that could handle a 60mbs surge from eventual password leaks.

I snipped a few things since I know you already have them covered. Sorry for the roughness of this list.

- You need password and paysite security programs (eg strongbox)
- You need a content management script or at the very least an automated gallery generator
- You need a fast server on tier 1 BW
- You need scripted email responses for member requests (eg password etc).
- You need to design a tour that can convert (or pay to get it done and risk it not working)
- You need to design a members area (or pay to get it done)
- You need upsells / plugins / free plugins or at least some value added extras

If you are hoping to get affiliates:

- You need a wide range of banners that are tested and get results.
- You need a few gallery templates at least

- IF you are using a 3rd part processor like CCBill
: You need a program front end that you can plug the tracking into

- You need funds for advertising on boards, or at least a respected board presence
- You need to have the time to deal with affiliates 1 on 1
- You need to have content that can be given out AND the licence must allow it.


But ... i will save the best for last .... all the above aren't as important as this one.....

You NEED traffic. Without traffic your paysite is as good as a Tax Writeoff

[tortus32]

Thanks,

I started this site back in October of last year. So far it's only cost me the $750 for the Visa thing plus hosting and I did pay a few of the models, but most of them are models that I do free portfolio work for, so they did the content for free. I get about 3 or 4 sign ups a week through Verotel, and I got 2 sign ups the first day I signed up with CCBill, even though they had to pay with MC instead of Visa at the time.

I'm home all day, so I have the time to do all the deisgn work and gallery building. If things start to improve, I will be able to pay for better hosting and such.

Bill :D

[LB]

Thanks,

I started this site back in October of last year. So far it's only cost me the $750 for the Visa thing plus hosting and I did pay a few of the models, but most of them are models that I do free portfolio work for, so they did the content for free. I get about 3 or 4 sign ups a week through Verotel, and I got 2 sign ups the first day I signed up with CCBill, even though they had to pay with MC instead of Visa at the time.

I'm home all day, so I have the time to do all the deisgn work and gallery building. If things start to improve, I will be able to pay for better hosting and such.

Bill :D

Not a bad start. You need to try to get at least a few sales a day to cover costs and development of the site, so keep working your traffic up. As i said before a paysite without traffic is merely a tax writeoff.

Having your own content and the ability to design yourself is a major bonus. Sorry for my skepticism, but i have seen so so many people start their own paysites with no clue as to what they are getting themselves into.

Try to use a combination of CPC and selective paid advertising to get yourself to 5 inhouse sales a day, then you will have a worthwhile venture. You might need a few $k to invest though.

[tortus32]

Thanks, I'll keep pluggin away at this!
It helps that I'm home all day to work on it.

Bill

[Sarah_Jayne]

CCbill for me too..I like being able to combine my checks for smaller sponsors.

I am about to start my first paysite too in the next few months and I have been kicking around the same questions you are but decided that if I don't have the $750 to spend on it then I am not ready to open the paysite.