Dammit, dammit, dammit.

[redneckgaijin]

The credit card merchant account I opened has been closed before I could process a single purchase through it- for, you guessed it, adult material policy. Card Services International has a no-porn policy, too- not merely no-porn-for-sale, but no-porn-involved-in-any-way-at-all.

I was -really- counting on that account, too. Looks like I'll have to put the begging bowl back out.

In the meantime: superhappy, what service do you use for Slipshine? Do they do anything besides subscription-service transactions?

Comments

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

What about Paypal? Do/can you use that?

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

I (and thereby WLP) have been blacklisted from PayPal since August 2004.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

Och.

What about something like CCbill?

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

CCbill, I'm pretty sure, also has a no-porn policy, as does StormPay, Amazon Dollars, and pretty much every single other donation-pay or micropayments service online.

And as Josh points out, the services that help adult sites don't work either- they are ONLY for processing subscriptions to adult pay sites, and don't handle merchandise sales.

Never heard of BeeTokens.

[superhappy.livejournal.com]

I think you guys are confused. I use CCBill for Slipshine. =P Unless ther's another CCBill I don't know about.
But yeah, like I said, subscriptions only blah blah blah...

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

Oh! Sorry. I am confused. I was assuming this was for his web comics venture, not just general purchases. Sorry about that.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

For some reason I thought you used something else. Oh well.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure CCbill is okay with porn.

Unless pictures of topless women tied up doesn't count as porn these days.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

...or BeeTokens.

[superhappy.livejournal.com]

No.. No they don't. =/ Non-taxable intangible goods only, I'm afraid, and you can't even set up anything with them without a site that has an htpassword file on it somewhere.
I tried looking into the whole credit card thing myself and concluded that if you do only $1000 of business a month it ain't worth it. It really sucks. I dont know why after all this time, Paypal is STILL the only easy way to do these things.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

There's a book on my Amazon wish list about it; I really ought to look it up.

Short version: PayPal went through regulation and lawsuit hell because megabanks have had the laws written by them to prevent competition. Very few other startups are willing to try it again- especially now that PayPal has essentially joined the ranks of the megabanks.

[jinwicked.livejournal.com]

There has to be some way to accept credit cards.

How do those little mom and pop adult "24 hour newsstands" stay in business? Are they usually cash or cheque only? I've never been in one.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

I don't know for certain about other places, but very few of those small mom&pop adult newsstands in Houston are small mom&pops. In fact, they tend to be chain stores owned by a single corporation, either city based or national. One of my wholesale accounts is a five-store chain in Austin, "AAA News."

Not that it matters: the issue here is -online- adult material, I suspect. If I had a physical storefront there wouldn't be a problem, but I don't.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Get lost, spam.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Just tossing it out, in case there isn't already an established, "No, we won't allow that either" response from CCBill:

Would it be possible to set up a subscription service to get access to PDFs of the hardcopy comics at some reasonable timescale (i.e. a page a day of Bootleg for $3/month or something) and also provide physical "freebies" to those who subscribe to X number of titles? Kinda how subscribing to City of Heroes/Villains gets you the comic sent to you for free. The technical aspects may be more than you're set up to handle, but it's a thought.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

I'm reluctant to set up any form of pay site for the following reasons:

(1) They're never worth the money. Sorry, Josh, but even Slipshine didn't have enough content I -liked- for me to stay subscribed past a few months, back when I was a member. That was probably my -best- experience with a pay site.

(2) Sell one e-copy, give away a thousand, thank you very much pirates. It's bad enough I have to watch the binaries groups and do semi-regular Googling of WLP and its products to hunt for existing pirates. The reason WLP's webcomics are free, above all else, is that you cannot control anything you post to the Internet.

(3) WLP doesn't have the readership to sustain it. At a rough guess, WLP has about three thousand regular readers of its webcomics... but only about a hundred who actually step forward to be identified as such. Making the comics subscribe-only would cost the comics about 90% of their readership... and with as few pages coming out per month as we have, the subscription rate would have to be EXTORTIONATE.

(4) Don't own Adobe Acrobat, nor a computer powerful enough to run the current commercially available version. WLP's current computer is a 2001 model.

(5) Not at all certain that the print comic version can survive competing with an electronic version.

(6) Print quality = MASSIVE bandwidth. Would also mean a page per day is about all I could -upload- out here on slow dialup.

and finally

(7) I swore WLP's webcomics would NEVER be made pay-per-view only. I'm reluctant to go back on that pledge.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

Have you talked to Sean Rabbit over at Rabbit Valley to see what he does? I can not remember what service he uses but I do remember that I can pay for my orders from him online. However, Rabbit Valley is not strictly porn, so that may be how he gets aroudn whatever road block you smashed up against.

[suzilem.livejournal.com]

Kris -- check your email. It looks like my contact might be able to be of some assistance. :-)