opinion

Maintain that Growth Curve [!]

It was cool to meet with so many people at WebmasterAccessLA. We are just now beginning to catch up, following additional days in Phoenix visiting CCBill and others, and then the Thanksgiving festivities.

As you are preparing 2008 budgets looking forward, and predicting revenue forecasts, it is evident to every multinational contender that with the Euro predicted to remain at a +45% premium to the dollar for the next two years, forward thinking professionals will be seeking ways to convert, retain, and recur users where Euro Billing is possible.

This is acutely important for companies based in Canada and other outsourced locations around the world where there has for so long been the historical advantage - the premium provided by the ability to bill in US dollars, but where these companies now find themselves with personnel and fixed expense outlays increased over the last five years in many cases over 60% due to the erosion of the USD in world markets. The decline of the USD versus the CAD presents a perfect illustration: USD CAD Comparison Source: Yahoo! Finance http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=USD&to=CAD&amt=1&t=5y

I was recently struggling through a thread on GWW discussing a ‘direct pay’ configuration for the European market and realized how confusing the non-standard billing sector terminology can be for interested readers attempting to make informed choices.

‘Direct pay’ is a push technology where the user must wire the membership fee to the processor, requiring more steps and providing infinitely more opportunities to lose the conversion, and in almost all cases providing none of the additional options and tools listed below. This is a fine compliment to any cascade of billing options as it works for many countries. But refining your options further will reap multiple increases. Webbilling.com, for example, has a customized platform for real EU direct debit in continuous operation for many years with a 10+ year negative database available for Spain, Netherlands, Germany and Austria currently, with UK and Belgium set up, and pending respective final national banking system approvals. This is real pull direct debit which almost no one in the industry appears to truly understand, but webbilling also provides the many advantages merchant clients associate with credit card billing - which they DO understand and embrace, including instant access, recurring, free trials, cross sales, up sells, pay-per-anything, pin call security, plus the optional Secure Pin mainly for high cost content cam sites and hard goods sales - billing in Euros irrespective of ones dollar price without direct conversion – and a comprehensive collections department designed specifically for the adult market but also operating in mainstream e-commerce. Which is better for your program? Or should you implement both?

I will continue to profile more global options for 2008 growth curve maintenance [!] – I saw that NoCreditCard has an interesting new offering as the mobile and telecom options continue to break out all over. More on that one soon...

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