Direct Response

Great News For Advertisers!  LimeLight CRM Just Finished Integrating With ccBill

For the past 6 months I’ve pushed hard, really hard for LimeLight to integrate with ccBill.  Rick Del Rio, owner of LL, is probably laughing his ass off as he reads this.  I was a thorn in his side – until he integrated I wasn’t leaving.

For those of you who don’t know, ccBill is the largest processor in the world for continuity billing.  One of their boarding agents, Dustin Sparman, is the sole sponsor of this blog.  Dustin and I have worked very hard this year to board high volume merchants on ccBill.    Why?

Well, for 2 reason.  1.  We’re making lots of money doing it.  2.  We have both believed for a long time now that ccBill is the only viable solution for online advertisers in the free trial/continuity space.  Unless you have millions of dollars to sink into a vertically integrated operation, chances are you will lose your MIDs if you process trials.

Why’s that?

Well, for starters, there are a myriad of pitfalls to continuity processing.  Most notably:

Chargebacks!  Even if  you run a 100% compliant operation, trial customers that forget to cancel are going to complain.  These complaints come in via refund requests and chargebacks.   If you hit over 100 chargebacks and 1% of total volume, your merchant bank will likely shut you down.  Hence you can’t process credit card transations.  Game over.

Some advertisers have answered these regulations by processing offshore.  Offshore there’s higher chargeback thresholds.

Processing offshore is something that I’m totally against.  If you need to go down that route, then there’s something wrong with your operation.  As a personal choice, I will not work with advertisers that process offshore.  Although there’s zero risk for me as a consultant, I just cannot in good faith advise an advertiser going down that path.

Unless you plan to sink millions of dollars into a vertically integrated operation, there’s only 1 way to successfully run free trial offers:

ccBill

Here’s why.  ccBill is one of the only processors on the planet that’s seasoned in running trial offers.  Heck, for over a decade now, ccBill has been the largest processor for free trials in the adult industry.  Which is interesting.  For some reason ccBill only processed digital products, they did not touch tangible items.

Then came along free content.  Year after year, ccBill has seen its margins shrink.  Porn sites started giving all of their content away for free.  To monetize their traffic, many of these sites now sell ad space to places like Traffic Junky vs. memberships via ccBill.

Sometime last year someone at ccBill had an epiphany: “What if we started processing for online merchants in high risk categories such as health and beauty.  Hmmm, I bet our model would work perfectly for them.”

Duhh.  I still remember researching new merchant processors last year for our rolodex.  Kirsten at Media Whiz noted that our clients should setup a ccBill account.  I told Kirsten that I wished ccBill would process for tangible products, but they stick to digital based products only.  Then Kirsten showed me the backend of a muscle offer she had running on Media Whiz.

NO FUCKING WAY!!  I couldn’t believe my eyes – the checkout page was redirecting to ccBill.

I got psyched up!  My partners couldn’t figure out what I got so excited about.   I explained to them that I had reached out to ccBill multiple times in the past requesting that they process for tangible products.  The benefits they have to offer online merchant are plentiful.  To name a few:

1.  Automatic Unlimited Visa/MC/JCB/Discover Processing For Free Trials.

2.  Advanced Fraud Prevention Software.

3.  ccBill score declines consumers who have a proclivity to charging back.

4.  24/7 Online and Offline Customer Support

5.  Compliance Controls such as required checkout page hosting (rogue advertisers have to properly disclose all terms).

I contacted the main boarding agent for ccBill, Dustin Sparman.  Dustin and I started requesting ccBill to make changes to their program to become more competitive in the space.   To name a few, we’ve installed a chargeback representment process, downsell scripts, and have customized the email receipts and confirmation pages.

Going back to LimeLight, every week Dustin and I would call Rick up, asking him to allow ccBill to integrate with LL.  At the time, I think Rick didn’t believe ccBill was a viable solution for continuity billing.  This makes sense as ccBill had just entered the tangible product vertical.

I kept pushing and pushing and pushing.

Finally it happened.

ccBill recognized the value of integrating with ccBill, and subsequently PAID LimeLight CRM to integrate.  WOW!  They actually paid LimeLight to integrate, not the other way around.

Talk about a power move for ccBill. – they’re definitely astute.  Now ccBill has access to the largest merchants out there.  These merchants are 100% devoted to LimeLight.  i.e. Peter Nguyen is a high volume advertiser in the space. We boarded him on ccBill a few months ago.  The only reason why he isn’t running with them: they didn’t integrate with LimeLight.

Starting this week, Peter can enjoy processing thousands of transactions daily on ccBill – without all the hassle that comes with standards MIDs.

If you’d like to get an account setup on ccBill, reach out to me.  Our team had direct access to ccBill management.  We guarantee your account will get approved within 24 hours.  Additionally our merchants enjoy faster turnaround times on setup and access to things that most merchants don’t.

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