Firstly, if you are waiting on a reply to an email, apologies but our local telco (Telkom) lost our landline connection three weeks ago and is making no attempt to repair it! I am working through my Internet Cafe at present but will have a new connection within the next few days.
In the mean time, I have just spent a week in the bush and the fresh air and long walks seems to provoke new thoughts and I believe that I have the bones of a new model for 2010 that will benefit everyone. (more…)
Firstly, may I apologise for the recent downtime. There was a problem with our database server and - on investigation - it was found to be self-inflicted. I have slapped myself on the wrist, fixed the problem and, hopefully, it will not happen again
Sorry if I haven’t answered emails, etc but I have been off sick for two days and come back to a national network problem. These things happen.
I have received some emails and comments have been posted both here and in the Forum regarding verification for AlertPay. Even if you have used AlertPay successfully to make donations, we will still ask you to go through the Verification process. It takes five minutes out of you life and it’s free!
As most of you will be aware, AlertPay is currently unable to process credit cards and this is affecting the whole Birthday Bonus Club operation. So - I have had to look for an alternative.
We have reached a stage where something has to be done about the “sleepers” who join Birthday Bonus Club hoping to get “something for nothing” - so – June 1 2009 has been declared V-Day.
What is “V-Day” - it’s Verify Day – the day by which you must have verified your membership of either MoneyBookers or AlertPay and – preferably – both. If you have not verified your membership of one or both payment processors – your membership will be dropped.
February was a short month - but a good one!
Our stats show that we had 270,000 unique visitors, 700,000 visits and over 2 million pageviews. Our membership also increased to 10,500.
During the month, we sent out over 12,000 Birthday Requests for 270 Birthdays.
Our January Birthday Stats read like this :
Birthdays : 133 Requests : 6,694 Total request Amount $29,411
| Confirmed | Paid | Pass | No-Show | Fail* | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Members | 573 | 1,267 | 208 | 4,636 | 10 |
| Amount | $2,652 | $5,412 | $918 | $20,383 | $46 |
| * Email failure | |||||
These figures are disappointing !
They show that 69% of our Members simply ignore Birthday Requests - and that is over $20,000 that should have been donated and wasn’t! They also show that only 25% of Members who take the trouble to Pay the Birthday Boy/Girl fail to forward the AlertPay confirmation email, and, unfortunately, we have no other way of confirming your payment and updating your Rating. For January only, requests that are shown as Paid will not incur any penalty but they also will not increase your Rating.
As for the No-Shows, the rules will be applied very strictly so, if you ignored a Birthday Request - expect your Rating to drop!
Within the next few days, expect to see the following
Looking forward to a Great Month in March - thanks to everyone for your support ![]()
We have had received various comments about our use of AlertPay rather than some other payment gateway - most commonly suggested is PayPal.
Firstly let me state quite categorically that we will never consider using PayPal. (more…)
I really never believed I would say this …
Every day, we have signup emails rejected for various reasons - mostly because our mail server’s IP address has been “blocked for abuse”.
Please note that we do not send any form of SPAM and we do not have the time to chase up every spam-list to clear the IP address. With most of them, it takes just one complaint to get an entire IP block listed - and it can take days to get it unlisted.
Just a quick word about Cookies
Birthday Bonus Club creates two cookies :
When you visit the Signup page, the two cookies are processed in the order bbcmem, bbcsponsor with the result that - if you are already a Member - you will appear as the sponsor on the signup.
Very occasionally, a visitor will arrive without a sponsor and then clicks on “Welcome” or “Signup” - in this case, a random member will be used.
Every care has been taken to ensure that you don’t lose referrals.