The recent Phoenix Forum hosted a seminar titled “Managing your Billing Solutions.” The biggest topic of conversation was, not surprisingly, the new Visa regulations which are forcing sometimes unwelcome changes in the industry.The recent Phoenix Forum hosted a seminar titled “Managing your Billing Solutions.” The biggest topic of conversation was, not surprisingly, the new Visa regulations which are forcing sometimes unwelcome changes in the industry. While you may think it would be nice to be able to dismiss these regulations, the reality of the situation is that Visa makes up 60% of all credit card volume. Until there is another viable billing option to replace Visa, you must make your business model work with the new regulations.
Above all else, you must do everything in your power to keep yourself under the 1% chargeback threshold. Although Visa may change their regulations as fast as they make them, there are still things that are under your control. So what things should you be doing with your site to help stay below 1%?
An important point is to not over-promise on your tours. If a surfer is expecting to see something, and they don’t, they will be displeased and chances are they will charge back the sale. Porn surfers have been educated on how to get free porn, and doing anything that might give them overly high expectations is simply shooting yourself in the foot.
Second, effective and simple to use customer service will also help keep chargebacks down. Always take care of any customer-related issue and respond immediately. Generally, if it seems a customer is set on obtaining a refund, it’s in your best interest to issue one. Many more than 1% of surfers understand that they can simply have a chargeback issued by their bank if they are denied a refund. While it’s not necessary to advertise it, don’t hide your cancellation link or overcomplicate the process. It will only lead to angry customers who will get re-billed, only to charge it back again.
If you are a site owner handling your own customer service, ensure that all customer service requests are handled as quickly as possible. The Internet lifestyle has instilled the desire for instant gratification. You would not expect to make your customers wait 48 hours to get access to your site, so don’t make the mistake of thinking they will wait that long for customer service requests. If possible, it is best to run 24 hour customer service, but if it is not, make sure that you respond in no more than a day. Remember, for every 100 new customers you receive, it only takes one to chargeback before you are staring at potential Visa fines or, eventually, termination.
One of the most common errors made in this industry is that many perceive processor scrubbing as the enemy, and that perception needs to be changed. Understandably, Webmasters who only send traffic to affiliates cringe when they hear the term. However, once you are on the other end of the spectrum, and you are either running as an affiliate program, or simply running your own site, you start to understand. You may see less initial signups, but scrubbing is a proven method of weeding out many potential chargebacks. If the processors were not doing this, chances are you wouldn’t have anywhere to process credit card orders. The negative database of customers that processors maintain and use as a part of their “scrubbing” procedures is a crucial feature these days.
Visa was not the only topic of discussion during the seminar, and many other valuable topics were discussed. A topic that may be considered obvious is that of having multiple billing solutions, as well as redundant solutions. You would be surprised if you took a look around at just how many people are only accepting one or two types of payment, with no backups. It’s simple to set up a secondary credit card processor, and beyond the ability it gives you to switch if your primary processor goes down, it also lets you send your declines to a secondary processor in an attempt to monetize a larger portion of your traffic.
Dialers were also discussed. It seems this is a topic of much discussion and disagreement in the adult Internet. But the simple fact is: there is no other proven billing method that results in more money from “foreign” traffic. Many credit card processors limit what countries they accept customers from, and the simple fact is that Visa and MasterCard do not have the market penetration in many countries in Europe that they do in North America. While several years back you would undoubtedly find many more dishonest practices in the dialer word, most of the major dialer companies today are also under strict regulations, and it is now one of the preferred billing methods for turning “foreign” traffic into revenue.
At the end of the day we are all working towards improving the adult industry and keeping it alive regardless of what Visa may hit us with. The Visa regulations change so much that we are all trying to keep up and stay in business at the same time.
Jennifer M. Van Avery is Advertising Account Manager for Traffic Dude, a division of Innovative Ideas International, Ltd. Traffic Dude offers consistent and stable methods for handling advertising transactions on behalf of adult site owners with stable traffic for sale. To find out more about Traffic Dude, visit TrafficDude.com today.
