SicCash???
 

OK, so I get this email today saying that my account is "unprofitable" for SicCash. Granted I dont send a ton of users but I think I have sent about 5 or so this month and 5 or so last month (when I added them to my link list).

Granted my volume is not that big, but my traffic is all clicked traffic and the garbage factor should be at a minmum.

They told me they are kicking my payouts down to $20 per signup because my users are not "profitable" for them.

Has this happened to you? Did you stop promoting them? Just curious as I dont see this as my problem. I got the user there, the user signed up. I cannot help that their retention isnt where it should be.

Just curious on your thoughts.

Andy

Same thing happened to me with Guerilla Traffic - I just pulled all the links & moved on.

I see $20 for a $1 signup in my stats, but still $30 for a regular join with consoles.

Here is the email

---------------------------------------
During the process of this week's webmaster payouts review, your account was reviewed by your account rep/Director of Operations Greg Anders. Your account is currently very unprofitable for SIC CASH. We understand that you run a good clean website, and SIC CASH appreciates your doing business with us. But at this time, SIC CASH can only afford to pay $20 per signup on this account since the trial to one full month membership retention is far below the company average. As of June 28, 2004 the payouts on this account will be adjusted to a flat $20 per signup. We are enclosing a copy of this email with your check in the amount of **** for 6/7-6/13 signups. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact your account rep Danny at danny@shawinternet.
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As you can see it doesnt specify but I'm betting its the other payouts. I was only making $25 per signup by the looks of my stats remote, but thats not the point. I just dont think its my fault they cannot retain a member. I think I might have to yank some links.

Before you go pulling links, since your situation is different than mine (they moved me from PPS to RevShare) take a look at your money per click totals (or what they would be under the new $20 payout)

If it's $0.04 or more, leave the links in there :)

.0495 raw
.0618 unique

That is if I take the total amount I have been paid out so far but knocking the signups down to $20 and dividing by my raw/uniques.

So I guess I will keep them for now and see if they drop.

I ran across this with a different sponsor last year...though they comletely closed my account =/

After talking with them about the issue, they re-opened it and I haven't heard from them since. Although, my ratios with them rose dramatically thereafter =/

GG is absolutely right...if it's more than .04/click...it's probably worth keeping in todays market. Which is exactly why I still send traffic to the sponsor I mentioned...I still make over .04/click with them...even with the higher ratios :)

I got the same email a couple of weeks ago. :( I was upset because they were doing well. Perhaps its their responsibility to keep the surfers I get to trials, I can't do much more than get them there. All my traffic was link list and se too.
Anyway I didnt take the hundreds of links down but I am not doing anymore unless I see that it is still profitable. (ie I will wait and watch for a few months)



PS In hindsight I shouldn't write anything till I have had my second morning coffee |badidea|

Acid Max and Natalie...

Let me ask you a question... as webmasters.. if you are not converting your traffic with a sponsor.. do you leave it there??? or do you move it around to manipulate and maximize your dollar?

we at SICCash are here to be profitable.. when we go through accounts.. we go through them once.. then we revisit them weeks later to see if they have improved. if an account is not profitable... we used to just close the account. WE instead recently offered the webmaster a lower payout to remain an active account.

I understand that its easy to throw the blame at the sponsor and say.. "isn't it their responsibility to keep the member"... yes it is... but when an account is 20% below our company average.. there is a problem.. it may be that the traffic/surfer has become more educated and savy.. knows the game of bookmark.. join, jerk and cancel.. thus the traffic is not as profitable to us...

NOW with that said.. we can either close an account, or we can offer a new pay structure, so that we too can try and gain some of the monies back that we have already paid out in normal payouts, without doing some shady shaving trick... (sorry we are straight shooters... and havn't been in biz this long b/c of cheating our affiliates..) we chose to offer you something that may prove a win/win for both you and us..

thank you Greenguy for the suggestion of the $.04 rule... as I see AcidMax seams to be still doing ok ;)

times get tougher for everyone everyday... and if we are not being business savy and maximizing our traffic daily.. we won't be in business to pay you for your traffic in the future...

and trust me.. we want to be here for you...

peace

ps.. if you had a question.. its easy to contact me.. as stated in the email ;)

I didn't have a question... like I said I havent closed it or removed links, I am just sitting on my hands waiting and reviewing as well. Its not like I am not making anything :P

My account was closed a few weeks ago by guess who. Let's just say Greg closes more accounts than any other rep. at SICCash so if he is your rep, I'd be very careful how much time you put into promoting SICCash. Reducing the payout on an account that only sends 5 signups/month is pathetic. SICCash is no longer a PPS sponsor. It may be for a week or a month or if you're lucky a year, but in reality, it's a revshare program. Greg just admitted that in his post.

Greg I understand you are in business just as well all are to make a profit. I look at it like this. I didnt signup to SicCash for $20 payouts. Granted I am still doing OK, however, my job is to drive the surfer to your site. Most of my traffic is SE traffic or link trades with other sites liek Greenguys that also have good SE traffic. There is nothing blind, nothing shady, etc.

The point of the matter is that you are paying me per click (essentially) in hopes to drive more traffic to your sites where you guys make the recurring monies. If you were not making money off (hypothetically I dont know if you guys do this or not) cross sells, upsells etc., then you wouldn't be offering a higher payout amount. I look at it like this is the way for you to put a little bit more into your pocket without consulting the person sending you traffic.

I equate it to this...If I was to go out and by traffic for 5 cents a click then said, "You know what, your traffic doesnt convert for me so I'm only going to pay you 3 cents!" The traffic guy would tell me to get bent, yet you guys just did this to me.

Granted I am still making 4 cents a click, on raws, but we will see how it pans out. I am not trying to be an asshole I just think its kinda shitty that you guys just lower the payout like that. I typically look at my stats and see who is converting descent and use them for my free sites, right now it doesn't look like I will be sending any of my freesite traffic to SicCash even though my conversions were descent.

Andy

Damn! I'm officially torn on this one - I can see both sides & actually agree with both of them - LOL

If the place that changed me from PPS to RevShare had offered a lower PPS payout instead, I might still be sending traffic there, but probably following AcidMax's thinking of not really promoting them outside of the link list.

Damn good debate :)

I have to agree with Greg and SICCash with this. I have seen this before on the other side of the fence. Back then, we would either send an email saying "Thank You for the business but we need to switch you to revshare" Or, before revshare, "Thank You for the business but we need to say goodbye". You have to applaud a program that does neither. They seem to be taking the time to work with less than profitable accounts.

While it is a program's responsibility to keep members, no matter what you do, certain accounts will send people that sign up but just don't stay. I have seen this with certain types of sites. It isn't anyone's fault...you just have to live with it.

So AcidMaX, you do have a choice. You can still do well at $20/sign-up or move on. I would think about what they could have done other than trying to continue making money for both you and them.

And, welcome to GreenguyandJim, Greg :)

I understand they are there to make a profit as well. Maybe I need to look at their TOS and see if it says they can drop my payouts at anytime.

However I disagree with you. If you are going to start a program then it needs to RETAIN! I look at what I do as SicCash buying traffic from me. Granted as I said I am still making .04 per raw and will continue to keep them on my link list, if I did this to a traffic compnay they wouldn't allow it. To me it just seems like a ploy to make a little more money to be honest. If they take $5 from quite a few webmasters it adds up. I don't know if the users are actually being retained, they very well might be, this could just be a way for them to make another buck or two. Now before someone thinks I am accusing them of that, I am not, just a point.

I also look at it like this. What about the other hundreds/thousands of clicks I have sent to SicCash?? Who says they didnt make a cross sale to another program with one of my clicks that they made $35 or something off of and I didn't see a dime. So even though I sent them signups that maybe didnt retain on their members areas they very well could have made money off the cross sales/up sells they have on the other sites.

Now upon checking the signups on SicCash this is what I found when visiting one of their mature sites. This is on the epoch join page.

Both of those are checked by default. So not only would the user I sent (if he doesnt uncheck those) get charged $39 or so for the MILF site I was at , but also $39.95 to Sloppy Fuck Flixxx and $34.72 for All Nudes. This means the user would wind up spending $100 a month on porn with SicCash..and they cannot afford to pay me the proper amount for signups?

To me when looking at the cross sales, upsells on their sites they should definitely not be taking anyones payouts down.

Now again, please no one think I am sitting here bashing SicCash or anything else I am just trying to promote discussion & issues that I see with what happened. I have not dropped SicCash from my list so I am still promoting them, i just think some issues need to be addressed.

That being said. On their signup page they have a checkbox that says you must agree to the terms and conditions which leads to this information:

Unless I missed it I dont see anywhere on there that they can drop payouts at anytime for non-converting. I look at that as a breach of the terms and conditions I signed up under when I joined SicCash. Greg maybe that needs to be added to your Terms?

I just dont see where if the webmaster is sending the traffic and the joins are not sticking how can it be there fault ? Sounds like members area issue to me

AcidMaX
There is such a fine line between an account being profitable or not profitable. You have to have the cross sales just to help supplement the program. There are just so many people out there cheating different programs, the line just keeps getting more and more narrow.

To me, SICCash hasn't done anything wrong. And like I said, if you don't like what they did, just stop sending traffic.

Well we will agree to disagree. They just dynamically change how much they want to pay for their traffic without any negotiation or notice. Its just "Your are now being paid $20..." and thats it.

I sent the traffic, I sent the user, I did my job. It is their retention that needs to keep the user, I have no control over that yet I am being penalized for their inability to keep a member. When the webmasters have control over what is in the members area and what they have to retain members then I would think they can drop the payouts. Until then I have no control over it so I dont see how I should be penalized.

" We reserve the right to change these terms and conditions at any notice, and you understand that it is your responsibility to check these rules often" - and they did |sad|

I checked the rules this morning when I copied those terms. There is nothing on THOSE terms that state that the payouts can be dropped. They can change the "TERMS" at any notice, not the payouts. The TERMS were not changed as of 09:30 AM EST this morning.

By giving you the information via email they met their responsibility.

How can SIC make a judgement on a wm after only 10 sales? If an account becomes profitable in due course does SIC return that account to the original payout figure?

I disagree, their Terms & Conditions state...

". We reserve the right to change these terms and conditions at any notice, and you understand that it is your responsibility to check these rules often. "

It is my responsibility to check these rules often. That is not a rule. Their terms do not state that they can email you a new term as they see fit. It says to check "these rules often".

I think an attorney legally could argue either way although I really think their terms are pretty vague and could get them into trouble. I think they should enhance their terms to state that the terms could be modified in electronic mail format etc etc in order to cover their bases.

Fact of the matter is they do whatever the hell they feel like doing regardless of Terms & Conditions, etc. My point still stands I will promote them until I either dont receive a check from them, until my account gets removed for whatever reason or until they fall below .04 per click. I just think their reasoning is quite frankly bullshit. They make more money on the backend that us webmasters dont see from our traffic. I mean jesus I think I was only getting $25 a signup as opposed to $35-40 they pimp for high traffic webmasters.

I am more upset that they can just change what they want to pay. What stops them from saying, we will drop it down to $15 next or cancel my account all together. I could understand if I was frauding their program with self signups, proxy signups, etc etc, but these are legitimate users coming to their site. It's not my responsibility to keep them there. It is SicCash's responsibility and I should not get reduced in pay because their retention is low.

AcidMaX
I suspect that if they did just change the rule page and not send you an email you would be bitching even more. You, like anyone else, probably don't check the rule pages daily. If that was the case, they would have sent you a check for much less than you thought your were getting. Probably then, you would have checked the rule page and would have said, "they could have at least sent me an email". That would be a normal reaction for anyone.

The point is not wether I would bitch or not. The point is at least in my mind I would not have a leg to stand on. Their terms page was not updated. They didn't live up to the terms that webmasters are signing up under. Sure it was ok to send me an email that was a good step but I dont feel that is appropriate and should be taken as for updating their terms as it is a per webmaster basis. To me this is just simply "profiling" their webmasters and for those of us who are honest webmasters I am just tired of getting fucked over for something out of my control.

You and I will obviously disagree on this matter, I think I have stated my point enough times, I see other webmasters agree with me except for a couple. I agree with Greenguy I can see both sides, but unfortuntely I am the one who got my payouts reduced this time so maybe I am bitter. Obviously I am not the only webmaster they have done this too either, so I will leave it at that. If my payouts get less than .04 I may drop them, then again I may just drop them for the principle of the whole thing as well. There are a ton of sponsors out there, I am sure they wont miss my signups coming in so I'm sure they could care less.

But im tired of discussing this situation, thankfully the information is out there and if people want to promote SicCash they can, they just need to know that their payouts could be knocked down or their account just simply cancelled.

Andy

Bingo, and I thought it was bad closing my account after 40 sales. What SICCash is doing is in fact worse than ANY revshare program. They are essentially saying , you will only get paid if we make a certain percentage off of your account. If it goes lower, your payout is reduced but if it goes higher, you don't receive any bonuses. It only works one way whereas a revshare program works both ways. Plus, you get hit with a whole bunch of cross sales, upsales, traffic leaks, consoles, etc. that you don't get with a revshare program. I'm sorry but what is happening borders on an outright scam.

Jim, you worked with CECash and Flashcash and have seen things from the sponsor's perspective but defending the sponsor in this situation I don't think is justified. CECash and Flashcash have always 2 of the most honest straightforward sponsors and have never pulled anything even close to resembling what has been going at SICCash for the last little while.

The saddest part is Brad Shaw has never valued the small time webmaster and it wouldn't surprise me if he is rewarding his reps for getting rid of smaller accounts and quick-trigger Greg has no problem taking advantage of this.

Thats what I am going to ask my rep Danny about as well HOW do I get back to $30 per sign up. I need to know if it will ever change back before I can decide whether to change all the links and banners over.

That royally sucks, but I've observed that it's a fact of life when dealing with a sponsor, a 3rd-party billing company, the phone company, a landlord, a bank, an employer...in short, with any "contractual agreement" where one side is free to alter the terms at will and the other side has no option but to agree or cancel.

The ideal or principle of contractual agreements under law is that both sides are equals, but in dealing with corporations in actual practice, there is usually one party that gets to dictate the terms, and the other party simply gets to obey those terms or walk.

Like I said, it sucks, and I'd rather it was not that way, but sometimes ya gotta just play the hand yer dealt. |violin|

As for the "join, jerk , cancel" problem...why sponsors minimize the amount of content member can see with a trial membership ?
I mean some pics is ok but lets cut the movies etc. etc.

Then he'd join, convert and maybe cancel after a month...

Exactly...

Sounds more like a badly managed program reacting and "cleaning house" suddenly to me...

I hope every webmaster that sees this pulls SicCash before they pull you!



Btw... Anyone know if SicCash stats have ever been fixed that people have been complaining are broken regularly since before New Year?

http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000623.html
http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000671.html
http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000002.html
http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000666.html
http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000664.html
http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000654.html
http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000653.html
http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000650.html
http://shawinternet.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000649.html

I don't believe SicCash has the right to point fingers at anyone apart from themselves until they get their finger out and fix the obvious problems that they regularly have with their stats, Which Lose Sales! I guess they think that's the affiliates fault too.

Also, 4 cents per click is exactly what the average shaver aims to pay you GG... any program that sits steady at that level week after week needs to be looked at extra closely imho.

When Greg closed my account he even didn`t take the time to email me :( And this is what sucks, the attention to small webmasters.
So I just removed the links from my SE pages and moved on. SicCash is the only sponsor I ever had a problem with. But still, they seem to be a sponsor with good sites and features.
They should be thinking of new ways of collecting payment from all those spoiled surfers who were taught through the years not to pay and get advantage of Free trials leaching site content and so on ...