IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Netbilling.com
This week we have Mitch Farber, President of Netbilling Services In The Spotlight! Aside from being a great guy, a friend of YNOT, and a regular on our boards and at our social functions, Mitch knows how to mix business and pleasure and runs a tight operation over there at Netbilling…
YNOT: Hey Mitch! This interview is long overdue! For the benefit of those who have not had the pleasure of meeting you or doing business with you, please give everyone a proper introduction of yourself and your company…
Mitch: Thanks Jay! I’m Mitch Farber, President of Netbilling Services, and I helped to create and have been with Netbilling since it’s inception in 1998.IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Netbilling.com
This week we have Mitch Farber, President of Netbilling Services In The Spotlight! Aside from being a great guy, a friend of YNOT, and a regular on our boards and at our social functions, Mitch knows how to mix business and pleasure and runs a tight operation over there at Netbilling…
YNOT: Hey Mitch! This interview is long overdue! For the benefit of those who have not had the pleasure of meeting you or doing business with you, please give everyone a proper introduction of yourself and your company…
Mitch: Thanks Jay! I’m Mitch Farber, President of Netbilling Services, and I helped to create and have been with Netbilling since it’s inception in 1998. Our mission is to provide an easy to implement, reliable, full-featured, real-time credit card and check processing system in a secure environment, while providing superior assistance and response for all of our merchants’ needs. My general duties for the most part include the marketing of the Netbilling gateway, although I always have time to chat with buddies on ICQ, lighten up the office teasing with employees, and of course, revel in all the joy of owning Apple computers.
YNOT: There are some great billing companies out there. Can you tell us what makes Netbilling and your business model different?
Mitch: The difference is tremendous. Our assistance to our merchants is one point that Netbilling prides itself on. Our staff always puts 110% toward assisting our merchants, and would never provide less than excellent service. They are just as proud to work for Netbilling as we are to have them, and that carries over to their interaction with our customers. We have so many satisfied merchants that are not only pleased with how smoothly our gateway operates, but are ecstatic with the level of support they receive along with it.
Our business model has always been to not offer 3rd party processing services, but to set up each merchant individually. This practice releases Netbilling of any liability and the possibility of us losing our merchant account and taking the merchants down with us, as many other companies have done in the past. We competitively charge our merchants about 50% less for processing than most other processing companies and allow our merchants full control over reporting, fraud scrubbing, email receipt and join page customization and so much more.
YNOT: Any special services offered?
Mitch: Netbilling offers a complete array of supplementary features, including our advanced real-time reporting, aggressive fraud scrubbing, and fully customizable fraud controls. Our solution is designed to facilitate so many different aspects of e-commerce. For product sales we offer our free web-based shopping carts, including its hosting, to all of our merchants, and easily integrate with most other commercial shopping cart systems as well. We offer recurring billing, user name and password management, and our optional customer service option for membership sites. The list goes on and on…
YNOT: With the new Visa regulations being put into place, how will that affect you and your merchants?
Mitch: We are not an IPSP, and do not process “sponsored merchants”, so they actually do not affect Netbilling or our merchants. A lot of the new regulations the card associations are imposing on third party processors have already long been in place for Webmasters with their own merchant accounts. The gap is no longer as wide it used to be and the control and processing fee savings can be substantial for merchants using their own merchant account.
YNOT: Very interesting… have you expanded upon what you originally envisioned?
Mitch: I always pictured Netbilling as being a thriving company, but it never does stop blossoming. From the previous expansion of our 24/7/365 customer service call center, to our recent addition of our merchant acquisitions department, we have been and will continue to grow. When we started Netbilling, we did not know what to expect for the growth of Internet commerce. We have been extremely pleased as you can imagine.
YNOT: Where do you see Netbilling going a few years down the road? How do you plan on helping it get there?
Mitch: I honestly believe Netbilling will only continue to grow. We have prospered so much in the last four years that it’s astonishing. It still never seems to amaze me though, because I am confident in our system and our ability to meet the ever-changing needs of Webmasters. As credit cards continue to remain the primary payment method for Internet transactions, we are glad to finally see the credit card associations taking the Internet seriously and realizing that they must help battle fraud from both the customers’ and merchants’ points of view.
YNOT: What were you doing before Netbilling, and how did you get involved in the biz?
Mitch: I was doing Macintosh tech support at a small ISP, as well as some outside Macintosh consulting. Several of us were laid off two weeks before Christmas and my wife Sarah was seven months pregnant. I needed to find something to earn money and someone I worked with who was also laid off at the same time, started an adult site which became very popular, very quickly…
My wife and I, although hesitant, originally started with a few small adult sites with my ex-coworker to supplement our income. By being Webmasters ourselves we found that no one offered the processing services we wanted. We never had the desire to use third-party processing for our sites. So, we found a company that would process for us with our own merchant account. We used a company called Creditnet for our processing and eventually wound up buying their merchants and developing our own gateway.
This was the foundation of Netbilling. We wanted to provide a full service processing system that could still be fully tailored to each particular merchant’s needs.
YNOT: Now, I know personally that you are a very nice guy who is always smiling. Can you tell me anything you dislike about the biz?
Mitch: I dislike a lot of the dishonesty that I see. Dishonesty practiced by a few affect our entire industry, and can in turn cause added scrutiny by credit card and banking associations. Many are seeing the ramifications now with the ongoing changes and requirements from the card associations.
On the flip side, I am also disappointed that the Internet merchants are still solely responsible for fraud and left powerless by the card associations that refuse to accept any of the risk or blame. I am confident this will change soon with the new programs begin developed by Visa and Mastercard.
YNOT: How about a positive thought about the biz…
Mitch: I love what a strong community it has become. Although there is always a sense of competition, so many Webmasters are willing to share experiences and information, and are sincerely eager to help someone just starting out. I have become close friends with so many people in the industry and look forward to the Webmaster events that take place throughout the year.
YNOT: If you had one bit of advice to offer a new Webmaster, what would it be?
Mitch: Maintain your business responsibly but never forget to have fun with it either. If you can be successful while enjoying it, there is not really much else you could ask for. If you are going to get into this business, you must treat it as such. There is rarely success for part-timers these days. A must do is for Webmasters to be involved in the online communities, especially YNOTMasters.
YNOT: Couldn’t have said it better myself Mitch! Thanks for being our guest this week, and I’m SURE I can count on you making it out to our next YNOTMasters sponsored event!!
Be sure to check out Mitch’s YNOTMasters Webmaster profile and visit his site at http://www.netbilling.com!
Do you know a Webmaster with a great story to tell? Someone innovative, unique or perhaps even entertaining? Tell us about this person for future consideration to be “In The Spotlight” here at YNOTNews!
