recurring vs non-recurring

**webnet** · 12-10-2005, 02:00 AM

I take a look in my stats, and I make more sales with non-recurring memberships, the members prefer to pay 5 dolars more for a non-recurring membership.

my stats for the last 40 days.

Site -------------- Non-recurring ---- Recurring
Jakecruise.com -------- 26 ------------- 12
corbinfisher.com ------- 17 ------------- 6
nextdoormale.com ------ 23 ------------ 13

this is not very good, because when expire the non-recurring membership and the member like the site a join again I don't get commission.
I know this for my paysite stats, a lot of members with non-recurring memberships join again but this time with a rebill option more cheap.

I think in the future only promote sites with only recurring membership option.

what do you think about this?

**basschick** · 12-10-2005, 03:18 AM

promote the sites where you make the most money - regardless of how many sales or whether they recur.

**Matt 26z** · 12-10-2005, 02:55 PM

This is a fairly new method of what I'd group into open sponsor shaving (meaning, fucking around that they don't try and hide) that is catching on more and more with sponsors. Like you said, if the surfer likes the site they'll sign right back up and the affiliate doesn't see any credit for that.

Do you think a surfer will sign up for $35 non-recurring, but not $30 recurring? A few may be that way, but for the most part it's just a way for sites with good members areas to bring back surfers without having to pay affiliates.

I generally do not promote sites that offer a non-recurring option unless it's for multiple months. You can't have revshare on one month. It's basically $15 PPS or whatever. If they are going to offer that billing option, then the affiliate payout for it needs to go way up. Either that or don't offer it to affiliate traffic at all.

Another thing.... I believe it is Lightspeed Cash on the straight side who issues credit when a referral signs up again at a later date. You sure as hell don't see other sponsors rushing to copy that model.

**Lee** · 12-10-2005, 02:59 PM

Originally Posted by basschick

promote the sites where you make the most money - regardless of how many sales or whether they recur.

Indeed.

Regards,

Lee

**basschick** · 12-10-2005, 04:55 PM

matt 26z, a surfer is more likely to sign up for a $2.95 trial than a $30 anything. a lot of sites that pay per sale have great front ends and terrible member areas so if you promoted those sites with a recurring option you wouldn't do very well.

but a lot of sites with really REALLY good member areas have really terrible tours. i see it all the time doing reviews. so you would be a lot less likely to make an intial sale with those sites even though they rebill like crazy.

and i know for a fact that a LOT of surfers would rather sign up for a higher-priced NON-rebilling membership. we were selling our non-recurring 1-month membership for $10 more than the rebilling membership and half our sales were non-recurring. on the other hand, if they don't want to rebill that much, they're going to cancel before they enter your site - so might as well take the extra $10 since you were very unlikely to see a rebill from those guys anyway. i've seen this on several sites - not all my own. the members cancel BEFORE they see the content. the ones i emailed said they wanted to be sure they weren't rebilled. and they'd apparently rather spend more so they won't have to worry.

Originally Posted by Matt 26z

This is a fairly new method of what I'd group into open sponsor shaving (meaning, fucking around that they don't try and hide) that is catching on more and more with sponsors. Like you said, if the surfer likes the site they'll sign right back up and the affiliate doesn't see any credit for that.

Do you think a surfer will sign up for $35 non-recurring, but not $30 recurring? A few may be that way, but for the most part it's just a way for sites with good members areas to bring back surfers without having to pay affiliates.

I generally do not promote sites that offer a non-recurring option unless it's for multiple months. You can't have revshare on one month. It's basically $15 PPS or whatever. If they are going to offer that billing option, then the affiliate payout for it needs to go way up. Either that or don't offer it to affiliate traffic at all.

Another thing.... I believe it is Lightspeed Cash on the straight side who issues credit when a referral signs up again at a later date. You sure as hell don't see other sponsors rushing to copy that model.

**Matt 26z** · 12-10-2005, 06:13 PM

Originally Posted by basschick

matt 26z, a surfer is more likely to sign up for a $2.95 trial than a $30 anything.

I don't think anyone has a problem with the affiliate payments on trials. The model has it's flaws and some affiliates won't promote trials, but overall I think it's fair for everyone involved if the members area is good.

Originally Posted by basschick

a LOT of surfers would rather sign up for a higher-priced NON-rebilling membership.

... which is a problem for affiliates if that member comes back and does the non-recurring again or even goes recurring. No affiliate credit is given. That's my beef in this thread.

There isn't anything to support the idea that full membership non-recurring billing options increase overall revenue for affiliates. While a lot of members may have chosen non-recurring, that doesn't mean they wouldn't have otherwise signed up under recurring.

I fail to see any advantage for affiliates on this one. There clearly is one for paysites with good members areas though. They get the member right back and don't have to pay the affiliate.

**basschick** · 12-10-2005, 07:19 PM

why not simply mirror the tour and have different pricing options on each tour? that way, the affiliates can decide what they prefer to market and link to the appropriate tour?

personally if the surfer is gonna cancel immediately anyway, i'd rather have the few extra bucks. also some sites only offer non-recurring in a 3 month version, so if the guy is willing to pay that much not to rebill, i'm still doing okay.

**webnet** · 12-11-2005, 02:57 AM

yesterday 5 sales, and all non-recurring :-(

spam me with affiliates programs with only recurring memberships.
I search Straight muscular amateur studs sites, similar to seancody or jakecruise with only recurring memberships.

**gaybucks_chip** · 12-11-2005, 05:58 AM

We just adjusted the pricing for Boyfunk to push recurring memberships even more than we already were doing.

Our old default join was a 39.95 one-time for 75 days. We had a lot of people converting at that rate. The new default join is a $39.95 recurring. What we're seeing is a lot of people are opting instead either for the $39.95 one-time 60 day join, or $29.95 for the one-time 30 day join. (And we also offer a $24.95/21.95 recurring).

It seems that, as others have said, a *lot* of people would rather pay more to be assured they won't be rebilled.

It seems a lot of people don't know how to cancel, or don't understand they can cancel immediately and still have the full time they paid for, or are afraid it will be difficult to cancel, and so choose the nonrecurring.

From our perspective, we'd much rather that Gaybucks affiliates sell recurring memberships, since both we and the affilate benefit from it, but we've been afraid to take the non-recurring memberships off the tour. But we have some clever ideas up our sleeve to solve that problem

**CorbinFisher_BD** · 12-11-2005, 11:00 AM

It's one of those areas that is always going to be difficult to keep everyone happy in. As someone who is very involved in both ends of the affiliate/sponsor relationship - I run big free site that promote lots of affiliates, along with a number of paysites - I can see both sides of the issue. For example, that many people choose non-recurring memberships shows that customers like them, are comfortable with them, and demand them. Logically it is therefore fair to customers to have that option there. Paysites should be obliged to their customers and surfers just as much as they would be to anyone else, if not more so. But then of course there are the obligations to the affiliates sending the traffic, without whom it could reasonably be argued some particular surfers/customers wouldn't even be there in the first place.

When faced with such a decision, who do you go with? The surfers, or the affiliates?

At CorbinFisher.com we've attempted to address the issue with more prominently placed recurring options on the join page, as well as offering up a preview area that mirrors the members area.

And this has worked for us.

Not only are the secure majority of all joins to our site recurring joins, but almost half of all non-recurring joins are at the multiple-month level ($64.95 for 90 days).

Let's also not forget how the type of referring site can play in to how things convert. For example, we see more recurring joins come from websites that have written reviews and include some images from our site along with the reviews. Same goes for the multiple-month, higher dollar joins. We'll see a greater number of non-recurring, 1-month joins from affiliates who only use buttons with no accompanying text, or that are TGP sites and such. Just as an affiliate might not have bear or jock or ethnic or twink traffic, an affiliate might not have recurring-committal traffic.

So, webnet, maybe we can both figure out a way to show off CorbinFisher.com on your site that'll make more people comfortable joining it at a recurring level. Do you write up site reviews? Have room for a few free photos? Hit me up at affiliates >>at<< corbinfisher.com if you want to give that a shot.

**webnet** · 12-11-2005, 11:31 AM

maybe a good solution is active the CCBILL cookies to about 40 days, so, when a non-recurring membership is expired (30 days) and the member join again, refer the sale to the affiliate ;-)

**CorbinFisher_BD** · 12-11-2005, 12:38 PM

Originally Posted by webnet

maybe a good solution is active the CCBILL cookies to about 40 days, so, when a non-recurring membership is expired (30 days) and the member join again, refer the sale to the affiliate ;-)

Actually that is definitely something we've considered. Upping the cookie duration to beyond the 30-day non-recurring period so that if the person joined again after, say, a week or so of their initial join expiring the original referring affiliate would get credit.

We were in the process of clarifying with CCBill what would happen if someone were to visit the site, get a 40 day or 2 month cookie, but not join (or join and then expire) but then get referred by another affiliate in the interim and join that same session. Which of the referring affiliates would get the sale? I'm not sure of the answer we got but will have to check in to it again.

As we expand upon our affiliate program and prepare to launch our new sponsor site, another thing we're looking in to is whether it's possible to incorporate bouncebacks or something that remembers the information someone used to join and then ties it to an original referring affiliate, if any (such as email address or even CC#, though the latter of those two probably won't be an option since that's not information we ever get or that the processors are too willing to fiddle around with). So if someone joins using the same email address, it'll give credit to whatever affiliate was associated with that email address the first time around.

In the next month or so, as a part of some other stuff we have planned, we will be permanently upping our cookie duration. So I'll keep folks posted on when that happens. Can't really go in to detail on why or how right now, though, but it will certainly be happening.

**CorbinFisher_BD** · 12-11-2005, 12:44 PM

Well it didn't let me edit my post so I'll add this to the last:

However, we've found that the period in between the expiration of the first non-recurring join and the second either recurring or non-recurring join by that same user is usually quite a long period of time. Over a month, more often than not. For example, a surfer disinclined to use a recurring option will join for one month, let it expire, and then come back to the site on their own 30 to 60 days later if and when they ever rejoin. Those are the behaviors we witness among the anti-recurring types. And so now we're talking 60 to 120 day cookie periods. A lot of other affiliates can get ahold of surfer in that time frame.

As I see the majority of all our joins being recurring and comparing what you've experienced with the overall patterns in our joins, I can't help but think there's some room for us to fiddle with the manner in which you're sending the traffic to get you some recurring members out of the gate. So we can certainly give that a shot in the meantime.