Tried Offline Payment/billing At Your Paysites?

[Rolo]

Have you tried to offer one or more of offline payment/billing options:

Western Union - http://www.westernunion.com/
Invoicing
Bank Checks
Cash
Coupons
others?

Did some of them work - was/is it worth the extra work involved?

[Mike AI]

We used to take checks, money orders and such for our amateur sites. There were a lot of issues and not enough orders to make it worth while. We have stopped it. Thuogh we still get some e-mail from potential members who still want to mail things in.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally posted by Mike AI@Feb 4 2003, 11:57 PM
We used to take checks, money orders and such for our amateur sites. There were a lot of issues and not enough orders to make it worth while. We have stopped it. Thuogh we still get some e-mail from potential members who still want to mail things in.

Paper is a pain in the ass.

As Mike said, it still works especially for amateur type sites. But paper doesn't rebill. And by the time you've had someone open the envelope, figure out what is inside, hand it to someone else who can manually enter a membership, and then properly log it into accounting and deposit it....well, your margins are for shit on a one month membership. Might work for small true amateur sites where there's not a lot of accounting overhead, but if you're a corporation running several sites, it's just a pain in the ass.

We still take them on some sites, *if* the user wants to subscribe for 6 months to a year at the time. Percentage is small, but some do....and at that point it's found money. Basically a 6 month recurring user pre-paid.

[Dravyk]

Western Union is an interesting method I've found for paying Eastern European and Asian companies. The talented Russian fellow who redesigned ContentGod.com I paid him through WU. I can even see selling limited intangibles and services, especailly a B2B product, that way (but haven't decided totally yet in its favor).

However anything beyond a handful of items here or there it won't cut it. Too much of a hassle, too limiting, very bureucratic. Certainly won't work for paysite memberships as it *seems* it would require the paysite owner to leave the house, go to a WU office and pick up the money in most cases. They are using the web as a world wide "telephone in" initialize-the-payment system, but then the money delivery side seems to be still caught up in the old cash-only-in-first-person method, not credit card or wire transfer deposits. That is, at least that I could see. Their site is also very confusing in terms of finding accurate or useful information. Think they must have paid Microsoft to design their site, it's that bad.

... And, anyhow, with that, I'm off to Negril. See everyone next week!

[Rolo]

I found that Western Union QuickPay sounds interesting. Its an offline payment option, however you receive the infomation online within minutes after the payment have been made (payment willl be added to your bank account 48 hours later).. or so it says on http://www.payment-solutions.com/quickpay.html (have never tried it).

This is the "how to" for the person sending the money http://www.payment-solutions.com/quickpay_form.html

Sounds pretty easy, and it could work with paysites (since the payment confirmation is received online, then it should be very easy doing some coding automating the new member getting added to the paysite).

Would probably not be worth for every paysite to setup with western union direct, so I see a new 3rd processor setting this up... 3rd party western union quick pay (anyone want to exploit this idea is welcome - just give me free processing for the idea



Last edited by Rolo at Feb 4 2003, 10:52 PM

Western Union is a pain, you have to deal with verifying it, then adding the person and noting when to delete them, unless it's a long-term membership, it doesn't seem to be worth the trouble. Besides, you have to provide the user with your real name, I wouldn't like that.

I used to take mail in payments on my website. I got about 5-6 a year that way. Haven't had one in quite some time, frankly don't even know if Trevor has the link up anymore, but it is a hassle for very little return.

Porn is an impusle buy. Anything that doesn't give them instant access isn't going to generate much income. After years of running a phone sex service, I found the same was true with that. Payment in advance just didn't happen. I would think that dialers would work much better, as long as you have a dialer that pays out, )unlike Dial2cash, which utterly ripped me and I'm sure many other webmasters.:angry: )

I developed an honor system for the service that worked very well, I was paid 99% or more of the time, but I got so much information on them and verified it before giving them a call (including work telephone #'s, etc.) that it was easy to track them down. I doubt anyone these days wanting to view a porn site would want to give out that kind of information.

People are paranoid. I even had one long-time member who just switched to PayPal write me today to say that he thought that PayPal was sending him mail from Hustler and other adult companies. I seriously doubt that PayPal is selling people's home addresses to porn snail-mail spammers.

All in all, over 4 years with my site, I perhaps made about 1500 dollars in offline payments. Not worth the hassle, in my opinion.

[Rolo]

Heather - good info... Porn is an impusle buy, but its also a product where people will do alot of things to get their hands on it

Offering offline payment option should be seen as a last billing option, when credit cards, dialers etc. doesn´t work. I know we are getting contacted by surfers in some Arabic countries wanting to buy access, but do not have credit cards, and dialers are blocked by their country... theres not much we can do, but tell them to get a credit card - this would be different with ex. western union because they are already widely spread in most countries (we do not accept western union payments - yet).

Western Union QuickPay sounds like a good idea. Surfers only need to know 3 things to send you a payment, company name, company code, and their reference (temp memberID or their e-mail address). A few mins after they send the money, then you (or a automated system) will know, and can activate his account (the whole process on the paysite could be automated - no need for anyone to manual check or enter any infomation).
The money are settle into your bank account 2 days after.

I would think this is the best offline payment option, because it can be automated on the paysites. The payment option is world wide. Accept different currency - settle in US dollars. Money are somewhat secure since they use the Western Union network. Only drawback is that surfers need to go to a western union agent, but if there are no other choice, then some will go that "extra mile" for porn