Hard Profits: Interview with Daniel Hicks
Interview by Kath Blackwell
Today's webmaster is given many options when it comes to choosing a sponsor or affiliate program to promote on his sites.
Many of these programs offer multiple options, tools and opportunities - everything the webmaster needs to make the most out of the program. What could still be out there for today's webmaster to desire?
Enter HardProfits.com - a brand new affiliate program that packs a unique punch with a "no shave policy," multiple currency/language options, and its OWN proprietary processing system! Klixxx Magazine caught up to the man behind this innovative and exciting new program, HardProfits.com President, Daniel Hicks.
KLIXXX: Daniel, can you give our readers a little background information on your company? What is HardProfits.com and what does it do?
DANIEL: Hard Profits is a kick-ass sponsor program that has taken about two years to build, and includes over 60 sites, with a $105 Active member program. It uses three currencies, five languages for its join pages, and offers optimized processing over three Credit card processors - and a "NO-SHAVE" guarantee. Pretty cool, eh?
KLIXXX: Very cool! So how did you get into the adult industry? What was your career background before you found your way to the 'Net?
DANIEL: A great friend of mine and I decided to work together on a non-adult Web business based in our hometown of Brisbane, Australia, back in 1999. At the time I didn't know that he was a successful "porner" with a very substantial adult operation, which is how he had made so much of his wealth. So when he and I decided to part company, as friends - my path was already decided. It is a decision I have never regretted, as the folks in this industry are just so fantastic to work with. And hell, the parties... ahem... I mean the conferences are such a blast to attend.
KLIXXX: Tell us about MultiBill.com - why did you feel it was important to have your own proprietary system for HardProfits.com?
DANIEL: Well Kath, this is probably the most important question you could ask me, and this answer is so very important to all the affiliates out there who are considering which sponsor is right for their traffic.
As we were just starting to build Hard Profits, I had the opportunity to meet with several webmasters at AdultDex in Las Vegas (November 2001). At this meeting, where CCBill was the primary sponsor, the topic of billing quickly became the focus of our group. At that stage I was only using one credit card processor (now referred to as IPSPs) and I was about to add a second IPSP to my sites as well. Several questions quickly dawned on me:
With all my income primarily with one processor, what would happen if that processor:
- Went broke?
- Couldn't display a join page for a period of time due to technical difficulties.
- Experienced merchant account problems.
- Started scrubbing my initial sales harder.
- Started scrubbing my re-bills harder.
- Scrubbed all transactions from certain countries.
I also must admit that at that point my join pages sucked, as they were just like everyone else's join pages, and they sucked too. On my join page I said "pay this amount by credit card," or "this amount by check," or "this amount by web900," or "click here for a dialer."
But if you think about it, how does this help a surfer in France? That surfer can't use the US Checks or the US Web900, so why even bother having them there in the first place? And, what about those surfers from the countries that the IPSPs won't accept transactions from at all? What's the point of asking the surfer to enter their credit card number, when you can already find out from the IPSPs that they will be rejected?
Recently, I was amazed to learn that a major IPSP wasn't accepting credit card transactions from Australia, for goodness sake! There are plenty webmasters in the world who are using that IPSP, and putting up Credit cards, Checks and Web900 transactions to Australian surfers, with none of them having any chance of actually paying one cent. As an affiliate, wouldn't the design of your sponsors join system come into your decision process? So they get $40 bucks per sign-up - but how many sign-ups are they missing out on with lazy join form systems?
So I set about answering all these issues with one system - MultiBill.com.
With MultiBill.com, I can:
- Spread my level of sales across multiple IPSPs.
- Poll and monitor the join pages of all my IPSPs from around the globe.
- Use IPSPs that have different upstream relationships.
- Monitor the performance of initial sale scrubbing of each IPSP, and give the better performing processor preference on my join pages.
- Detect which country my surfer comes from, and give them the "Best Billing Option" for their country.
KLIXXX: How does this benefit the affiliates that use HardProfits.com in the long run?
DANIEL: Our billing system gets more sales per piece of traffic, which in turn will return more revenue.
KLIXXX: What different types of processing options do you offer to your customers - and why is it important to offer solutions outside of the credit card model?
DANIEL: We currently offer Visa, MasterCard, JCB, Discover, five Korean Credit Cards, US and Canadian checks, EuroDebit in three countries, plus two dialers (where we get the best rate per country from each), and we are expanding to even more processing options this year.
I think you can say there are three major reasons to offer credit card alternatives:
- Comfort - Many surfers may not like to use a credit card for privacy reasons.
- Capacity - Many surfers don't have a credit card.
- Profitability - We need to extract every cent from every hit, so why the hell not?
Part 2: Interview Continues...
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