ccbill scrub up?
 

Damn, just logged into my ccbill admin and see I'm 0:7,311 since May 2. That's over all programs. One is 0:3,787 and another is 0:1559 and another is 0:1,793 but made 3 sales on May 1 going 1:310.3

Sometimes I hate ccbill and their scrub (if it's not a myth). Every once in a while sales take a shit with them. :(

Same here, but my sales with them this last week have been very good.

Ditto, was 1:246 overall on May 1 with 7 sales. Since then I'm 1:1820 with just 4 sales.

Grrr - I was always confident 3rd-party-billers wouldn't scrub, but I sorta have to confirm these figures, too! Specially my Met-Art sales are well below average... Grrr!

Can I please go and scrub my hosting bill and my rent? Let's say I only pay 50% to reflect my lower income...

It's the CC companies that are doing the scrubbing. CCBill is at the mercy of Visa.

I actually got to talk to the CCbill guys at the Phoenix Forum. They mentioned that they tweak the scrub very infrequently.

-A

Last month I was 1:4000 with CCBill sponsors. This month 1:1800 so far. May 1st was a relatively good day though at 1:1000 with 7 sales.

Whoa - something isn't right here, you guys. I'm at 1:816 on CCBill for uniques for this year, and 1:626 for this month. That's fairly close to my overall ratio. Could there maybe be a site or two in the mix that's throwing things off? (I'm assuming you've got lots of accounts merged under one account, as I do.)

I have a couple of CCBill sites that do very well and a couple that suck eggs, and all manner in between. If I saw ratios like ya'll are reporting I would be extremely concerned.

Hiya Mishi,
Don't know if it's the case with the sponsors you promote, but some count hits to FHGs too, which can throw the ratios right off.
I show 1:1169 overall this year, but this week fucking sucks big time, at 1:2050 :(

Just about the only CCBill sponsor that works for me is Purple Dollars. Well done Debs :)

They do? Wow; that would probably toss my ratios right in the toilet. Off the top of my head I don't think I'm using any FHGs for CCBill sponsors, so I don't think I have that issue.

Sales went down alot here also with ccbill over the past few days

1:1325.0 the past couple of days with 4 sales so maybe back to normal or all just a myth. :D

Same here, yesterday was back to normal and had 3 sales waiting to greet me when I got up this AM, so perhaps the gates are fully open again.

no good news here - sales peaked at a all time high two weeks back, this weds they just stopped, check with a few other guys in the UK they have the same issues too :-(

same here... this week ccbill stats are garbage... please dont tell my wife. she'll make me get a real job.

I am seeing about 1 in 2500 overall for stuff I promote through ccbill, and one major program I use that handles stats themselves but processes with ccbill has been in the shit for about 2-3 weeks for me now. Other stuff is doing okay, but this stuff is weird.

CCBill has always been some of the poorest sales for me, but once they get a sale, they a pretty good retention, which averages it all out fine.

Alex

Ok....educate me. I have CCBill for my site and have no problems at all that I know of. Of course, I have no idea what the heck "scrub" means. Thanks!

Scrub is the term that people use with credit card processors and their fraud/risk detection systems.

When a processor is said to be 'scrubbing hard', that means that they have tightened their rules and are accepting fewer cards based on their risk rules. When they are scrubbing less, it is generally easier for sales to get through.

They look at things like Time of Day for the purchase, country issuing the purchase request, compare card details, past history, credit card authorization data, bank, etc. There are many other things that they look at. Then, their risk management software returns a score -- and that score is compared against the threshhold for that merchant, and if the score is low enough, they take the sale.

Probably a good one for:
http://www.fetishphiles.net/adult-we...glossary.shtml

Scrub refers to the credit card people declining sales by people trying to buy something. At times they may decline cards that at other times they may have approved. Say if they see a CC that has never been used online and is only used to by feminine hygiene products at the drug store that is located one block from the 40 year old lady who's card it is and suddenly they see eight memberships being bought at gay guy pay sites within one hour. Despite the fact that the card is good and not reported stolen the CC says something in up and declines it. During heavy scrubbing they may have declined the CC the first time it was used to buy porn but during light scrubbing they may have been able to buy all eight memberships.

cd34 types much faster than I do, not fair.

The alledged CCbill scrub problem is something I strongly believed in up untill about 18 months ago. For my first 18 months in the biz I could not convert a single ccbill sale no matter how much traffic I sent to quite a few sponsors.

Well I have since discovered there seems to be a problem .

But I do not think it is so much CCBILL but how Sponsors add in and track the affiliate codes in FHG's and Free Sites.

I stopped using all hosted galleries and started using my own hosted stuff and used direct sponsor links with my codes in them.

The result was stunning to say the least.

As for the last week my sales have improved overall conversion ratio $0.04 per click 1:224.4

If I break this down to sponsor ratios for the week .

Without mentioning names :)

Sponsor 1 $0.05 per click 1:123.2
Sponsor 2 $0.05 per click 1:398.0
Sponsor 3 $0.55 per click 1:18.0

Sponsor 3 converted 1:1 yesterday and was sitting on $9.97 for that click :)

And the rest are 1:200-1:600 overall

Scrubbing may be a problem, but I think affiliate code tracking and click tracking is a far greater problem.

When Joining any ccbill Sponsor these days I always ride the tours to the join page then search for my affiliate code in the source.

In every case the sponsors links that are supplied by ccbill track and many times the hosted ones do not carry your affiliate code and as a result you do not get paid :(

I'm not calling the majority of sponsors or CCBILL cheats here just pointing out that when you take a close look at what you are linking too your chances of making any $$$ are made even slimmer by affiliate code problems.



Regards,

Wicked1

Mornin' everyone,

I noticed this thread because I've seen scrubbing become a real problem at times too, although I'd say that in general we don't have as much trouble with CCBill scrubs compared to some others we've used.

But we do use CCBill in our webmaster program, and one thing I really want to comment on here is about the affiliate code not being carried all the way to the join page at times. This was a personal peeve of mine for a long time, and it was one thing we wanted to see if we could improve on a little with our own webmaster affiliate program and with our (soon to come) Hosted Free Sites.

We think we're doing it a good way now on our tours, where the initial link to us begins by setting a CCBill cookie before the surfer even sees the warn page (or whatever tour page the webmaster wishes to target). We do that in the background with php, and you often won't even see anything happen. But if you check that you don't have a cookie from CCBill named 925611 (our account) before you enter our tour, you'll definitely have one as soon as you do.

From that point on there's no need to carry the code forward to our join page since the cookie already exists long before that.

Yes, if a surfer has a 'no-cookie' browser, or surfs with cookies disabled, they're not going to get tagged, but surfers who disable cookies (and/or Javascript) in their browser aren't usually our best candidates for membership -- particularly since CCBill (and others) require those capabilities to even process a signup.*

In our HFS, we'll be using another method to "bury" the webmaster's affiliate code in the URL (a big thank you to swedguy for help with that one!), because we don't want to see the code easily snipped off the end like happens a lot. With this method we're really hoping to see lots of our HFS appear in search engine listings eventually with the webmaster's code right where it should be. :D

I didn't mean to help hijack this thread to talk about webmaster affiliate code tracking instead of shaving, but the mention of CCBill and hosted promotions not tracking just kind of pulled my trigger this morning. ::grin::

Simon


* Note: I wonder if it would be worth it to identify the no-cookie/no-javascript surfers, and send them someplace other than tours where the join pages require those functions?

Simon,

You elaborate on a very valid point. I always check the links on new FHG's to make sure the affiliate codes are being inserted properly. I do find a link, or sometimes a whole gallery, that isn't coded properly.

Checking for cookies being enabled is something I hadn't considered. Most of my sponsors are CCbill programs. Why burn the bandwidth on someone that can't even sign-up? I'll have to think on where else to send this traffic.

Actually Cleo thats not the case. Each 3rd party biller has a custom scrub on top of the Bank's normal approval/deny process.

Thanks for following up with your experience Simon.

I'd actually been waiting for a few Sponsors to to attack my findings on my previous post . I do have examples and evidence of there problems and have mentioned it to many sponsors too many times in the past. Most have either denied it happens or we have a disagreement and I no longer send traffic |angry|

We are all in the business to make $$$ so I'm tired of sitting on this and keeping it to myself. I personally have "Unknowingly Donated" quite a bit of quality traffic over the years to sponsors with faulty codes.

The problem needs to be brought to the attention of webmasters so they can make up thier own minds why thier traffic either is not converting or is erratic at best.

NOW THIS BEING SAID, The ratios you saw in my previous post are from highly targetted se traffic using lots of pre selling. No TGP or FREE SITE traffic there.

The reason I detected this is I know how much traffic goes to each page and then to each sponsor. I can see if the hosting stats are not registering when compared to my ccbill stats.

Regards,

Wicked1

Wicked - thats a good start at the tracking and I am glad some WMs are starting to do this type of tracking.
Its very important to realize that while there is a small minority of non-cookie traffic out there, that wont bring you a sale, there is also a large majority of traffic that has been cookied without their knowledge by some rather dubious site owners that set cookies on free sites, galleries and other SE listed "doorway pages" that although the LL owner or TGP may have sent the surfer, will never see that sale. Recent sites we have detected have little 1x1 pixel inserts in their galleries and free sites that are setting all types of cookies for different sponsors (not just ccbill) and atleast in my opinion, stealing sales from the WM that should be getting credit for it

Here is an interesting little story:

I started with a new sponsor recently. I didn't really do much with them, but by chance my link code ended up as the #1 search term for their main site's name. It stayed like that for 2 weeks or so, and generated about 500 hits per day... averaging about 1 signup per day (I love free money like this).

About a week ago, this finally dropped off as google shook things up, I guess.

Anyway, I decided that any sponsor that converts at 1 in 500 these days is worth a little shot of other traffic, so I put up some banners, text links, and partial page ads in some pretty good place. Please understand, I use a banner rotator for all of my stuff, and I track the clickouts pretty closely (I track views / clicks on a per banner location per site for all my sites owned). I tossed about 5000 views at a mix of their partial page ads (rotated 3 of them) and let it run for a couple of days.

I had a click out rate aa bit over 5% or about 250-280 clicks. The sponsor counted exactly 11 clicks.

I checked the link codes twice, three times... they are correct. They are exactly the same. The link code tracks all the way to the end of the process (right to the signup page) - but they don't count that many clicks.

Now I am starting to wonder: How many hits was google really generated? Based on this, it must have been generating closer to 10k hits per day.

Needless to say, this sponsor is going to have a VERY short lifespan on my rotation (it's almost over already).

Alex

Alex - thats a very good point - During my recent "downtime" Ive had the opportunity to do some testing of some sponsors click tracking and their reporting schemes. I have been very dissapointed by some of the major names in the biz, while some others are amazingly accurate - Ill let you guess where my SE traffic is going to start going.
I was amazed at the difference of what I had sent out as tracked clicks (I do similar tracking as you Alex) and what the sponsors reported recieving.
Im not gonna bad-mouth anyone here (yet) but if I were a WM that hadnt installed some sort of out-click tracking, I would definitley implement it as soon as possible as you will see in some cases an 80% drop in what you thought you were sending to what a sponsor will report.

LInkster, I accept that some sponsors only count second page hits, only count uniques, whatever... but I have a very hard time accounting for a 90+% haircut. Either their system is not tracking well, or there is some sort of coding issue. I looked at it, it seems to track, but damn, those numbers SUCK.

Interestingly I rarely have seen a sponsor overcount clicks.

Alex

Alex, could the sponsor be re-directing or blocking country codes? im sure that wouldnt be enough to make up for your loss, just a noobs thought.

Hi Linkster :)

Alex, what you posted sounds very familiar to me.

Can you recommend an out-click script?

Things are about the same with me. I was checking stats with CCBill this morning before reading this thread, goose eggs everywhere for this month. Ratios are exceedingly bad.



I mentioned this on another board recently and didnt get much feedback. Not a single person asked, "How do you do that?" I think every webmaster should be checking everything about their surfer.

I'm checking country, proxies, cookies, third-party cookies, been here before, niche and using a out click script. This is all done server side. When I get the coding done, I'll be doing a double check with java and checking against Norton, Mcafee, and sp2.

I check all the tours for every site with every sponsor for my affiliate code. But, I never thought to check the FHG's and FHS or check by processor. That will keep me busy for a while! |dizzy|

BTW, for those that are using out click scripts, there is a major sponsor that is checking for it. When out click scripts are detected, they will track the hit(I think), but then they turn the traffic and change the affiliate code. I discovered it completely by accident. I sent an email asking what was up, but got no response.

-

Barron, any sponsor declining or re-routing clickout counted hits rates high on the scumbag factor, and would be someone I wouldn't want to do business with. I am starting to wonder if this isn't what I am getting.

Anyway, that sponsor is on the DROP list as soon as the two decent size checks for the SE traffic makes it here.

Alex

My ccbill sponsors have also gone to crap. Funny thing one sponsor I promote has nats with ccbill and epoch which I'm doing 1:300 this month. Same sponsor, same tour, same traffic source 1:1754 through my ccbill account. That blows.

Some people seem to be confusing scrubbing with shaving.

Shaving is when a sponsor doesn't give you credit for all of the sales you've sent to them.

Scrubbing is what the credit card processors do to control fraud. The harder they scrub, the more legitimate sales get declined.

This is necessary to keep all the sites under the 1% chargeback ratio allowed by visa.

I see the same thing with epoch. I'll maintain a consistent ratio for awhile and then for no reason at all my ratio will triple for a few days, and then go back to normal.

Other than getting your own merchant account for your sites there's nothing you can do about it.
(Except bang your head against the wall, which I frequently do)

I'm beginning to get calluses on my forehead. |dizzy|

I was just looking at my sales for the month by date. 1st, 5th and 6th were good days, a bit better than average. However, I made a total of 3 new sales during the other 5 days. Makes no sense to me.

How about overall sales? most sponsors do not count all hits or only count second page hits. although they are not shaving they leave you with an impression of a better join ratio. i became aware of it when i had very bad ratios with ars and emx compared to all other sponsors and then i started to count outlinks and found out that most sponsors try to hide the real ratio.

dont get fooled by ratios!!

That's why I track two ratios on my galleries. I track page views per click through (sponsor hits), and sponsor hits per sign-up.

I know from past experience what the normal range should be for page views per click through. When I start getting numbers that are way too high I double check my galleries to make sure all the links are correct, then start investigating why hits aren't getting counted.

Since CCbill's program counts clicks before the surfer gets redirected to the sponsor tour, I've never had a case where clicks to a CCBill program were outside the normal range, unless I'd mucked up the links in the gallery myself.