MarkB

Thanks for elaborating on your installation and customization services. Btw I had intended on ordering both. (the customization service w/b for setting up a header/footer extracted from a Joomla template) As for the quickie 5 minute phone consult, in a previous support ticket you mentioned that any call would cost a premium price, regardless of length of the call--and I understand totally why you do that, you're ultra busy and can't be bothered with accepting phone calls (neither can I!) so you charge a premium price to ward off most people and make it worth your while for those that accept paying that price. Mark

Thanks for that explanation, I was kinda scratching my head as to what happened there.

Bear, With all due respect you have no experience in this area. Go visit the Warriors forum and you'll see a bazillion marketers backing up what I said: Jealousy is indeed the motivator for website sabotage. Yes what you are saying is indeed true, you do get more bang-for-your-hack by hacking larger websites. But that's not the real motivator for website sabotage. Also you mentioned bragging rights, and I agree that is a motivator, but more for large public websites, rather than for the small hosting site of the original poster. The well-known marketing gurus do a new "launch" about once per month, and weekly there are launches from other well-known significant marketers. Every one of those launches has attempts at sabotage, from folks who are angry/frustrated/pissed because they've been doing IM (internet marketing) for years with near zero success, then when they see people successful at it, making money hand over fist, they act out of pure jealousy. John Reese is famous for being the first guy to do a million dollars in one day, and since that time many other IMers (Frank Kern, Mike Filsaime, etc) have made multi millions during their one day launches. And many average marketers can do 5 or 6 figures in a week, during product launch. Trust me, this gets the losers all rawled up. Bear, the jealousy concept may seem a little difficult to grasp the first time you hear it, but it is well known in marketing circles. (Just as it is well known that for single product sales, long salescopy outpulls short copy. That one is always difficult for marketing newbies to grasp--they don't want to believe it because, hey, sites with long copy are not as sexy as a nice tight website) My suggestion is to visit the utlra busy marketing forums like the one I mentioned above, and you will see that jealousy is indeed the motivator for website sabotage. Mark

Matt, I'm wanting to use WMCS (2 licenses) however I'm more of a business person than a techie. That is why I hire techies. Last night I posted to this forum, offering to pay someone twenty bucks as a consulting fee, if they answer my pre-purchase questions by phone. Your moderator deleted the post, saying that I was advertising. It seems that "advertising" in the forum rules was meant for advertising of a website, or a product or service being sold for money, or solicitations for joining mailing lists or free websites, all that sort of thing. On the contrary, this forum should actually assist non-techie folks by offering a sub-forum where people could post and consultants can be hired. A business person keeps his focus on running the business, on marketing, business development/partnering, and so forth. (Matt, you should be catering to this type of customer!) If I were running an automotive repair shop, I would hire mechanics. My focus would be on advertising and marketing, making appearances on Car Talk (the radio show here in town) and attending Chamber of Commerce and networking group meetings. But what I would NOT be doing is working on the cars. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the one-man business, in fact I encourage business startups and small businesses, and I volunteer my time to the U.S. Government SBA (Small Business Administration) SCORE program, teaching classes geared towards startups/newbies. So Matt a question for you: In order to purchase and use your product, do you expect your customer to be a techie, to hang out on the forums, to have a moderate technical knowledge, and like everyone else here to always be attempting to expand their low-level knowledge of your product? (analogy: In the old days, one had to be a techie in order to setup and use a PC; but nowadays any lay person can do that) Second question, would you consider catering to the higher level business person, who desires to not become a self-taught expert in WHMCS including the inner workings, tricks, how-to's and intricicies of the software..... but instead would like to just hire someone thru this forum to accomplish a quick task? (e.g. an install, a customization, a debug, a configuration or integration, etc) What I intended to do is purchase 2 whmcs licenses (to start with) and hire technical talent, so I kinda figured that this forum would be the ideal place to find them. Mark

TheHostHouse, I can't tell you the "how" but I can tell you the "why". People are jealous of successful sites. It's that simple. The more successful you get, the more hack attempts you'll be getting. IM'ers have always known this, but recently at an IM (Internet marketing) conference, one night at the conference hotel bar, there was a discussion about this very topic. The jealousy theory was confirmed by several IM gurus; one well-known guy had to hire someone in-house full time just to deal with the constant problem of losers who attempt to hack him because he is so successful. <<removed>> Mark

Update: Last week week, Paypal's financial security/risk V.P. appeared on the Donny Deustch show (on CNN channel?) where Donny asked him flat out whether, due to the current economic crisis, Paypal was getting more returns/chargebacks from people who normally wouldn't have done so. (in other words, someone is strapped for cash, so they log into their Paypal account and with a few mouse-clicks they request refunds for several recent purchases, and wa-la! instant cash in their pocket) Paypal's answer was Yes, they are seeing more returns & chargebacks, most likely due to the fact that folks needed some quick cash. If you're a Paypal merchant who has experienced increased returns/chargebacks apparently due to the economic crisis, please chime in. Mark

Anyone using their own merchant account now, who formerly used Paypal.... or anyone who's running a membership site... PM me if you'd like to form a mastermind group. Mark

thanks man, that's just how I told you to say it. I'll Paypal over your $1 shortly...

Redundant and Baj126, thanks guys for your excellent coments.

lostinpace, With all due respect, your comment is based on ignorance of not being experienced in running a medium or high volume membership site. .. > Happy customers don't tend to want to leave. Happy customers or not, attrition always exists. Member "hold time" can be 2 months, 4 months, one year, whatever. (in our own experience, we have much higher than average hold times) Case in point, CBS Marketwatch. Like other mega membership sites, they bring in hoards of new members. Their advertising and branding crosses over to print and tv (often advertising in their own owned properties) which results in a constant flow of mega signups. Gaining new customers is not the challenge. It's all about attrition reduction. These large membership sites hire the big-gun marketing firms, but not to bring in new customers. They hire them to work on reducing their membership attrition. Mark ps -- lostinspace, predicting that your next posting would be something like "but if you keep your customers happy, there won't be attrition!", I will head that off with a few comments here. First, there will always be attrition, period. There are several ways to reduce attrition, including but not limited to: (1) Advertising "Limited memberships." If they cancel, they may never be able to re-signup. (sorta like limited memberships to an elite country club--with some you must wait for an existing countryclub member to die before you can get in); and (2) Keep adding new content like crazy. And stay in your members' faces, reminding them... Next month, 7 new ebooks on stock trading; Next month exclusive interview with Dr. Phil; next month free weight loss reduction software, that normally sells for $295 here: http://www.blahblah.com. (3) Pain of Disconnect. If they cancel,they lose something. (e.g. their email autoresponder account, their hosted audio, their toll-free testimonial recording line) And there are other methods to reduce attrition / increase hold time.

ps -- So now we're moving from aMember to WHMCS, and am considering using a merchant account (thru CDG Commerce). Hopefully, that will reduce the number of un-subs via Paypal's "Easy Button" ***I welcome your comments ***Especially from anyone experienced with attrition reduction

We've been running paid membership sites (related to business training) since 2001, accepting Visa/MC/Discover/etc via CCBILL. We moved our backend software to aMember, and at the same time changed system to process thru Paypal. (using regular Paypal with IPN; not using Paypal Pro) 1. Used CCBILL (Visa/MC/Discover/etc) for 7 years 2. CCBILL's fraud scrubbing "too tight" therefore many signup non-completions 3. Now using Paypal with IPN, for 3 months now 4. Paypal easier & more flexible for customers 5. More signup completions with Paypal 6. More un-subscribes with Paypal !!! <----- My Issue is this Customer Loyalty Offers CCBILL had some cool features to "save" the member who was thinking of canceling their membership. For example we could setup Customer Loyalty Discounts, which are automatically offered to members after they hit the CANCEL button. It gives them a chance to continue on their subscription at 30% off, or 50% off, or whatever discount we setup. Stats:Almost half of all who attempt to cancel, accept the Customer Loyalty offer. Why More CANCELS with Paypal Now that we're using Paypal, it is extremely easy for our members to cancel--they just log into their Paypal account, go to their Subscriptions list, then click. That's too damn easy! And we don't have the opportunity to present them with a Customer Loyalty offer before we lose them. Another thing (which btw I don't lose sleep over)... Many customers are aware that some membership sites do not use IPN to update the membership site's member "active/non-active" status after the cancel... therefore the member can be not paying, and still have access to the membership site. Customers know they can * many membership sites this way, similar to how they might buy an ebook, then do an immediate refund request,and they still have the ebook on their PC. Mark

Jerel, I was going to sign up with CDG Commerce today. Before I do, I'd love to get your input as to the problems you had with the signup process. Mark