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.

1. From 1 January 2010, membership of BBC will be by subscription only.

2. Subscription rates will be $6.00 per month, $30.00 six-monthly or $60.00 per year.

3. Payment processor fees will take out +/- $0.48 and we will retain $0.52 to cover admin costs (approx. 8.8%). An amount of $5.00 will be credited to your account. A similar deduction will be made from six-monthly and annual payments.

4. Birthday donations will be made on your behalf automatically from your account balance. Even if your account goes “into the red”, donations will still be made provided that your subscriptions are up to date.

I believe that this arrangement benefits everyone for the following reasons :

• Payments are regular rather than being faced with multiple requests in one month and none in others.

• Everyone pays the same amount each year regardless of their position in the network.

• On your Birthday, you will receive a single payment into your account rather than multiple payments to your Alertpay account. You will be able to request a withdrawal for any part of your balance by various payment methods (including Paypal, Western Union, etc). Withdrawals to Alertpay or Moneybookers will be handled Monday to Friday and are immediate. Payments by other means may take longer.

• Confirmations (of all types) will become a thing of the past - you will be able to check your account at any time.

• You will never have the situation where “..I paid all my donations and no-one paid me!”. If you have 100 people in your network and you are due $5.00 – you will be paid $500!

• Hopefully, you will only subscribe from your own funds in the first year. If you receive enough cash on your Birthday, it is worthwhile to make a single, annual payment for the next year

• There are no network size restrictions – if you have no network of your own, you will still be paid by your sponsor.

• Existing members with less than a Green Rating will be set to Green on setting up their subscription. The only way of improving Ratings will be by Referrals – hopefully, this will encourage members to find their three Referrals.

I fully expect to lose many members as a result of these changes – after all, if members are not paying donations now, why should they sign up to pay regularly?

The loss of these members does not bother me – we are probably better off without them and the Club can continue to thrive with as little as 10% of its current membership.

The Premium Fund

Anyone who joined BBC early is considered a “Premium Member” because they donate to less than twelve Birthdays each year. As of 2010, they will pay exactly the same as all other members. The difference between what they pay and what is paid out in donations will go to the Premium Fund. This Fund will be used to “top up” any shortfalls in donations and to introduce additional benefits – a weekly, random Birthday Bonus, for instance.

The Schedule

1. Gift Vouchers will be available from October 2009 in denominations of $30.00 (6 months) and $60.00 (12 months). We have had many requests to set up memberships for kids and grand-kids which we could not do because of the age restrictions imposed by payment processors. If the member does not need to make any financial transactions, there is no reason to prohibit membership!

2. 6-month and 12-month Memberships will be available from November 2009. During November and December 2009, the two systems will run side by side ie. Birthday Requests will still be sent by email but donations from paid-up Members will be paid automatically. By end-November 2009, all outstanding Rating adjustments should be cleared.

3. Monthly subscription will be available from December 2009. At the same time, new members will be given 30 days to set up their subscriptions.

4. Birthday Requests will cease from 1 January 2010. At the same time, existing members will be given 30 days to set up their subscriptions.

5. The website will be closed for maintenance on Monday 1 February from 06:00 GMT for approximately four hours. During this time, the entire matrix will be rebuilt to get rid of members who have failed to set up subscriptions.

The Guardians

As a result of these changes, donations which would have gone directly to Members will go to a central pool – and that could be quite a lot of money! To keep us honest, I would like the Members to appoint a number of “Guardians” (no more than five). These people will be supplied with copies of our accounts – income and expenditure - each month. Their job will simply be to check that we are being honest and to raise an alarm if they find that we are not! I would like you to make nominations for these positions and I will set up a Poll for their election. Please send nominations to guardian@birthdaybonusclub.com. Thank you.

Once again, I look forward to your comments on these plans.

]]> http://birthdaybonusclub.com/a-new-model/feed http://birthdaybonusclub.com/bbc-stage-2 http://birthdaybonusclub.com/bbc-stage-2#comments Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:17:48 +0000 admin http://birthdaybonusclub.com/?p=602 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

Next, thank you to everyone who placed bids for shares. Unfortunately, the total amount bid - less than $7,000 - was less than I need to justify going that route.

May I also thank everyone who posted comments - many of which were well thought out and which were very helpful to me in making a decision - or decisions.

I have had to give the situation some more thought and this is what I have come up with :

1. The website is being re-developed as a social network using ELGG. This package has a wealth of features and plugins and, hopefully, the social nature of the site will help to improve its ratings and the interaction between Members.
2. I looked at the idea of charging an annual “membership fee” but I’m not sure that’s the way to go. We have many members who never build a network and who do not benefit from BBC as they should. So - I have come up with an alternative. In future, all Birthday Donations will be paid directly to BBC rather than the birthday boy/girl. We will deduct 10% from donations and the balance may be “withdrawn” or left in your account to fund your own donations or advertisiing. I will go into this more below.
3. I will continue with paid advertising but with a much simpler interface. For those of you who really don’t like the ads, you will have the opportunity to “turn them off” for a payment of $5.00 per year.
4. I will introduce Gift Vouchers in $10.00 increments. Gift vouchers may be donated to friends or family or you may use them yourself. When a gift voucher is in place, your donations will be made for you automatically. Gift vouchers will carry a handling charge of 10%.
5. I will be contacting a number of potential advertisers who have some association with Birthdays in general. These will include astrology and numerology sites, birthday planners, birthday suppliers, etc.
6. I will look at the possibility of setting up a “store” - probably using Cafepress - to sell coffee and beer mugs, tees, hoodies, etc with a BBC branding.

The biggest change here will be the method for making birthday donations. By making them directly to BBC - rather than the eventual recipient directly - we create the situation that you only pay towards the operation of the website when you have received donations. If no-one ever pays you - then you will never pay anything!

The biggest benefit of going this route is that confirmations - of all kinds - become a thing of the past since payments via Alertpay or Moneybookers will be confirmed immediately. It also allows me to look at additional payment processors and to (possibly) introduce a Payoneer service in which your Birthday Bonus can be paid directly into a pre-paid debit card for use just about anywhere.

Once again, I would appreciate your comments on these plans. Thanks.

As you know, BBC is a free service and it can only remain so by the sale of advertising and we are simply not selling sufficient advertising to cover our costs. However, before I put the website up for sale, I would like to offer its members the opportunity to “buy in” and participate in the administration of the site.

This will work like this …

1. I will offer 40,000 shares at $1.00 per share - two independent sources - Website Outlook and Cubestat indicate a value in excess of this figure.
2. I will retain 5,000 shares for myself and staff.
3. You may bid for any number of shares by logging on and clicking on Share Bid - you will not be charged any money until a decision has been made as to the viability of this approach.
4. The bidding period will run until Midnight (GMT) on Friday 7th August and a decision will be made over the weekend of August 8/9.
5. Bids will be evaluated on a first come, first served basis depending on volume. If the plan goes ahead, successful bidders will be informed by email on Monday 10th August by email with a request for payment.

The money raised through this offer will be used to redevelop BBC as a social network and to completely review the our advertising offerings. I am currently experimenting with Elgg and results are very encouraging. It will also be used to cover costs for the next twelve months after which, costs will be covered from advertising revenue. I am also quite happy to offer my service for the same period at no cost to shareholders.

What do you get out of this ?

• The opportunity to participate in the running of BBC and in determining its future direction.
• The BBC website currently has an advertising revenue potential of $90.00 per day. If this can be achieved - and maintained - then your $1.00 share would return a half-yearly dividend of 27 cents and a growth of 9%
• You will have the chance to trade your shares at any time.

Personally, I believe that BBC can go a long way but, unfortunately, I can no longer afford to keep it running on my own resources. So - if you like the idea, please bid for your shares before Friday 7th August.

Facts and Figures

• Currently, we average 9,000 unique visitors per day with 22,500 pageviews.
• We have over 15,000 members and, on average, we sign up 30 new members daily
• Our Alexa ranking is 50,682 (35,382 in USA) with a Page Rank of 3.

Your comments on this plan would be much appreciated.

Tom

Secondly, many thanks to everyone who voted in the Newsletter Poll. Over 1,100 people voted and more than half of you asked for a weekly newsletter. Newsletters will start in the next two weeks and, initially, you will receive an email from news@mailfwd.net which will give you options for the BBC Newsletter

• To NOT receive the newsletter at all; and
• To receive the newsletter without adverts

We will allows one week for replies before sending out the first newsletter. The newsletter may carry a maximum of three text adverts per issue at rates from $3.50 per thousand.

Next - the sticky subject of payment processors …

In your back office, you will find links for two confirmation routines - one for AlertPay and one for Moneybookers - both are simple to use and FREE! All that they do is to confirm that you actually have either an AlertPay Personal Pro account and/or a Moneybookers account - and that we can communicate with them. What these routines do for us is to make the need for confirmation emails a thing of the past!

From July 1 2009, when you go to the Birthday Request page to make a birthday donation, you will see an AlertPay button - if the member has confirmed his/her account - and a Moneybookers button if the account has been confirmed. You will also see a third buttom - Other - which is simply a link to the member’s email address. If you want to make the donation using PayPal, Safepay, Fedex or clamshells, please feel free to do so. But - and it’s a big BUT - you will rely on the member to confirm your payment! (There will be a Thank You page in the back office to do this).

What this means is very simple.

From July 1 2009, confirmations will be automatic - if you have confirmed your AlertPay and/or Moneybookers accounts; otherwise, you will rely on the Birthday Boy or Girl to confirm your Birthday Bonus payment.

Finally, as you all know, Birthday Bonus Club is FREE! To achieve that, we have to sell advertising and we need your support in that. So - we are starting a Summer Ad Sale today which we expect to run throughout the Summer months. $5,000 of advertising is available at discounts up to 60%!

We have been testing a new ad delivery system and the new service - EASyadz.net - will launch in the next two weeks. Setting up your ads will be much more user-friendly and full stats will be available.

’til next time

Tom

1. If you take the time to read PayPal’s Terms of Service, you will find that Birthday Bonus Club is definitely not one of PayPal’s acceptable websites. We use a forced matrix which is strictly against their Terms.
2. We are a South African based company and - according to PayPal - we cannot be trusted with money. Whilst PayPal will happily accept our money, it is not prepared to accept credit card transactions on our behalf.
3. Setting up any Payment Processor is an enormous amount of work - scripting and testing. With both AlertPay and MoneyBookers, the respective API’s make it possible to track payments and execute the local processing very easily. With PayPal, we would have to make every member a Paypal Merchant to get the same results. The unfortunate part about this is that, since I cannot set up a PayPal account capable of receiving funds, I would never be able to test the scripts needed.
4. PayPal has an unenviable reputation for withholding funds - you can read some of the horror stories at www.aboutpaypal.org - bearing in mind the nature of Birthday Bonus Club, this is a distinct possibility.
5. Finally, I am not alone - approximately 20% of our membership would not be able to use PayPal

So - there you have it - sorry folks - but No PayPal!

Our AlertPay “verification” has nothing whatsoever to do with AlertPay’s need for verification of your identity and address!

The problem that we have - time after time - is that we really have no idea whether or not individual member actually has an AlertPay account. When a member’s Birthday comes around, we send out Birthday requests for him/her - only to be flooded with emails saying :

• there is no AlertPay member with this email address
• this member has not confirmed his email address
• this member must upgrade

Now, rather than worry about the people who don’t pay - we have to chase after the Birthday Boy/Girl and ask them to open or fix their account so that others can pay them! Weird!

Hence the need for “verification” - but let’s rather call it “linking”

The process of linking is very simple and takes about five minutes

1. We ask you to make sure that you have a confirmed Personal Pro AlertPay Account
2. We will then ask you to make a small change to your AlertPay account settings and to turn your Test Mode ON
3. Once you have done that, we’ll ask you to make a $1.00 payment to yourself! It costs you nothing since you are in Test mode
4. (Hopefully) all works well and we can tell you that your AlertPay account is “linked” - and we will ask yoiu to turn Test Mode OFF!

What this process does is to create a “callback” to BBC so that when you make a payment from your AlertPay account a “status report” is sent back to us. From that, we can see that your donation has been paid and your Rating and Ad Credits will be updated immediately!

The process does NOT

• give us any access to you account
• give us any information about your identity in any form
• affect you security in any way.

I will complete the AlertPay Linkage script over the weekend and it will be available on Monday.

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!

What that process does is to create a “callback” between AlertPay and ourselves so that, when you make a payment, we are informed immediately and we can update your Rating and Ad Credits there and then. There is no need for confirmation emails.

According to the AlertPay blog, they expect to be in a position to make an announcement next week - I will not do anything more about this until I have seen the announcement.

Whilst on the subject of confirmations, every Birthday Request goes out with the request that you “forward the AlertPay confirmation email to bdconfirm@birthdaybonusclub.com” - a fairly simple request which requires clicking one button and entering the email address. However, it creates our single largest workload - here’s what we get :

• “I’ve Paid” - (no confirmation) - this has to be the dumbest of confirmations! It gets ignored!
• “join my super duper make a million MLM scheme” - bdconfirm is a script! It runs every 30 minutes, I don’t pay it anything and it it is not in a position to sign up - you are wasting your time and mine!
• Cut ‘n Paste part of the email - AlertPay send two forms of confirmation - one for transfers and one for card payments. The script is capable of “recognising” both and will extract the information it needs - which 90% of the time are not in the cut ‘n paste version.
• Word documents and Excel spreadsheets - bdconfirm is a Linux script and does not recognise either!

As you can see, the whole confirmation process is loaded with problems! So - a small effort on your part will do two things :

1. You benefit as you get your Rating updates an Ad Credits immediately
2. I benefit as I don’t have to spend half my time going through “confirmation” emails manually

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.

After a fairly intensive investigation into available options, I have decided to use MoneyBookers as an alternative payment processor. (Please don’t ask for PayPay - it’s not gonna happen!).

MoneyBookers is based in London, is available internationally, offers 32 different currency options and has very reasonable rates. From my point of view, their integration procedures are excellent and - from yours - there will be no need for confirmations! Your ratings and ad credits will be updated immediately a birthday donation has been made.

Over the past two weeks, I have :

• Verified my address - MoneyBookers airmailed a verification code to me which I simply entered into my profile - turnaround time - five days
• Verified a credit card - MoneyBookers charge a random amount between €1.01 and €2.99 to the card and I simply enter the exact amount into the verify box and my card is verified - and my account is credited with the amount! Turnaround time - three days.
• Tested the routines needed to make payments using MoneyBookers - they work beautifully and Ratings and Ad Credits are updated instantly!

Because of the ongoing problems with AlertPay, MoneyBookers is likely to become our preferred payment processor. We will continue to use AlertPay but that situation will be reviewed once they make some announcement regarding credit cards.

We do not intend to make the same mistake with MoneyBookers that we made with AlertPay - assuming that all members have an account! So, from today, we will insist that you verify your MoneyBookers account by making a small purchase - of Ad Credits. Today, we will launch a 50% Off Sale with rates as low as $0.50. But, for potential advertisers, it’s your chance to buy advertising at HALF PRICE!

You can find out more at MoneyBookers Ad Sale

Hopefully, with the addition of Moneybookers as a payment processor, we can get Birthday Bonus Club back on track!

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.

The schedule is as follows :

• Immediate – all current Birthday Requests – from February 1 2009 will have their expiry extended to 90 days – so, if you still have outstanding Birthday Requests, you have until end-May to make your donation.
• Immediate – we will launch our 50% Off Ad Sale for the next two weeks. You will be able to verify your MoneyBookers account for any amount between $0.50 and $50.00 and we will double that amount in Ad Credits. A fifty cent payment satisfies the verification requirement – a fifty dollar amount gets you One Hundred Dollars in advertising that you can use any time in the future. There’s also a bonus - every member who joins MoneyBookers during the Sale will improve their Personal Rating.
• April 11 2009 - the sale ends and verification of your MoneyBookers account will cost you $1.00 - which will be added to your Ad Credits account.
• May 2 2009 - Birthday Request expiry will revert to 30 days.
• June 1 2009 - V-Day - if you have not verified your MoneyBookers and/or AlertPay account - your membership will be dropped!

There is no fixed date for the AlertPay verification procedure to be available. This is because we are waiting to see just what AlertPay will do about their current Credit Card situation. Once they have something in place, we will introduce a procedure similar to that used for MoneyBookers

Sorry guys - it doesn’t work that way - so - here’s a special message to you all

Happy Birthday !

..Oh - and a special gift to you all - BYE BYE! (you have been deleted!)

Those concerned :

Bajiao, yyongtao, yujiu, jiba, liye, liya, lei, linya, xusan, aibazu, yuan, bayu, jibazi, mei, hui, woma, wbenlai, deren, shiba, luckuio, wode, kaizi, nan, ming, tian, yue, zhang, tuibu, aishi, zhenhao, jiayu, gege, woshi, zhi, zhaofeng, dashi, shuohua, yezhi, shiduo, bale, shunft

Have a Great Day!