What are the best and worst parts of running your own paysites?

[Marc]

Are the customer service emails overwhelming, or not so bad?
Is it a pain dealing with affiliates or is that easy?
Chargebacks? recurring income? traffic management? hosting?

What are some of the best parts about running your own sites, and what are your least favorites?

[tombarr]

Fighting the religious right and it's parent government administration just to keep one open.....

[basschick]

i don't like doing updates, although with a cms, you only have one day of annoyance periodically instead of being annoyed every update

i like control over the join page best - you can increase your sales 25% or better with the right join page. a lot of sponsors have terrible join pages, or join pages that are not specific to the site you're selling.

we didn't get that many emails, and most were reasonable and easy to deal with. and we only had one chargeback ever. if your content is as described on your tour, and is reasonable quality and amount, you probably won't see that many chargebacks unless you never update.

[Chilihost]

I love knowing 100% for sure that my success is in my hands. Like Patti said, I can change and improve my tours on the fly, plus my recurring billing is totally dependant on how good a job I have done in the members area, not to mention that I am totally sure that I don't lose sales to shaving.

The worst part is billing, I hate having to pay such a hefty fee. I hate not being big enough to pay thousands of dollars for cascading software and also not being big enough to get a proper high risk merchant account. I really hate not having much of a choice of who to use for billing. But at least ccbill is good, attentive and reliable, unlike my first billers (probilling, pswbilling and acpay).

Member support is easy and I get a lot of "love the site" type of emails which are very nice! Affiliate support is pretty easy too. And content updates are fun

cheers,
Luke

[Madame0120]

Best part

Working with Roy 24/7


Hard Part

Working with Roy 24/7

[Bec]

Best part

Working with Roy 24/7


Hard Part

Working with Roy 24/7

Too cute! Fits right in with mine:

Best part
Not owning one

Hard part
Not owning one

[Lee]

Affiliates.

Without a doubt they are the best and the worst part of owning an affiliate program LOL

Some send lots of traffic and expect little in return except on time, honest payouts, others send you the smallest amounts of the shittest traffic know to man and expect the moon on a stick then complain when their skimmed CJ / TGP russian teen traffic doesnt convert :wacko:

The only other thing that is slightly annoying, is the testing apsect of a site, you have a good design all ready to go, have affiliates you know will promote it but cant do shit with it until you have tested for a month first

Regards,

Lee

[James_Hotmovies]

customer service emails are a good indication of how you are doing. So I don't think they are a burden. Fix the problems people are complaining about and the emails go away, retention increases, chargebacks decrease.

I like having a program for the same reasons mentioned above.

One thing I dislike: I never know when I'm done.
I keep building and building, There is no end of the road.
There is always something to improve, tweak, throw in the trash.
Seems like my work day ended earlier when I was only doing traffic.

[basement]

Hey James. I just signed up with hotmovies.com. getting into the vod biz.

[Madame0120]

Seems like my work day ended earlier when I was only doing traffic.

HI James!
Aka
That Hot guy with the movies

How you doin'?

[ponyboy]

The good points

You are your own boss. No one telling you what to do or when to do it and you work at your own speed. Plus the checks at the end of the month and you chose what to do with the money. Also I love to hear from my members, good or bad. Its one of the best ways to keep membership up if people know they can get an answer from the Webmaster.

The bad.

Having to find good gay content at a good price. Most of the great gay content is either to high priced or it is so over used. Then there is the websites that throw out so much free hard core that you wonder why anyone would buy a membership to begin with.

[James_Hotmovies]

Hey James. I just signed up with hotmovies.com. getting into the vod biz.

Thanks for signing up. If there is anything I can do to help let me know.

HI James!
Aka
That Hot guy with the movies
How you doin'?

Hi to you.
Thanks for the kind words. I'm doing great. I'm entirely too busy for my own good. But I'd rather it be too busy then not.

Have a great day, see you in Florida.