International traffic sent to dialer purgatory
 

I thought I'd publically register my frustration with sites that automatically send international traffic into popup hell and diallers that say "You must hit YES to continue"

In the last few weeks I've signed up with two separate sponsors because I liked the look of their sites. But when I clicked on my own link to see what happened, both times I encountered multiple popups and diallers and eventually the sites crashed my browser. At no time did I actually get a chance to glimpse the site I'd originally clicked on. I was redirected to sites in other niches that weren't necessarily of interest to my potential surfer. This is because I'm unfortunate enough to be Australian.

I can understand the push to make money from international traffic that may not have access to a credit card.

What I can't understand is why these sponsors don't at least give international surfers a chance to look properly at the site and a chance to pay via various methods. Is there something about diallers that means you can't include them as a payment method on the join page?

Am I just being ignorant about this?

Or perhaps I'm being sentimental in wanting to send my surfer to the site I've actually advertised??

Yesterday I sent an email asking if there was any way to stop my links from redirecting the international traffic. I haven't had a reply yet.

Am I alone in this frustration?

Foreigners, we don't need no stinken foreigners!!!



Yeah I agree with you. Show them the tour and then send them to a dialer when they go to join, but not before you first try to sell them something.

I agree as well - a lot of sponsors dump everyone that's not US or Canadian to a dialer for some reason :(

I got it today while checking sponsor links too..:(

Bye bye sponsor.. |waves|

|angry|

DD

I'm using one sponsor that allows you to set that as an option for each paysite or leave it clean - after testing the sponsor with a good amount of clicks - the biz side of me keeps it pointing to a dialer for international traffic - my sales tripled when I added that to a banner - the test was run with 15k hits to sponsor using both ways over a two week period. Believe it or not, the 1st highest converting dialer was the UK, the second was Australia, even thought the traffic wasnt the highest from those countries.

CCBill has a dialer that appears to allow me to use it as a payment option for access to MY paysites and not some pop-up farm. I'm still investigating but so far it looks promising.
|ufo|

The sponsor I emailed, XPays, has not replied. I won't be using them now.

The other problem I see with these kind of redirects is that they induce surfer mistrust which spills over onto other honest sites. The more porn surfers I communicate with, the more I find them angry, resentful, nervous, and fully expecting to be ripped off. I don't think this makes them eager to get out the CC.

So dialler schemes like this may produce short-term higher profits, but I think they make it harder for the industry overall.

For all those people who used the sneaky dialler, how many more are lost because they actually wanted to join the site, and may have stayed on for months?

I know there are plenty of webmasters who like diallers and I'm not saying they shouldn't be used, but just that they should be offered as a choice rather than used as a way to squeeze money out of people (and the parents of the kids who find them easy to use!).

OK... getting off my soapbox now. I guess I just don't like wasting time joining sponsors who do this kind of thing. :(

It's a pity - In theory, the dialer was a great way of converting international surfers.

In practice, the dialer has died due to the short-sightedness and greed of crooks who devised variants with malicious code resulting in horrendous phone bills for the scammed surfer.

The result? Surfers are simply too frightened to download 3rd party software.

Increasing broadband penetration has rendered the old-style dialer obsolete anyway.

Our solution employs the same underlying billing mechanism as a dialer, but with none of the headaches associated with them.

Surfers worldwide "buy time" at your/our sites using their phone or cell - hold time is fixed - once they enjoy the content, the billing clock is no longer ticking.

Hit me up with any questions|headbang|

Wow...this may well be an 'oldest bounced thread' record...

Greenie, do you have stats on this?!?!? |jester|

No stats, but I think this is a record: 3 years, 4 months & 1 day later, the thread is brought back to life.

Way to be timely, emjay |thumb