Monday, August 25, 2014

The Bad News and the Good(-ish) News



Right, so the bad news first. For the past couple years I've been using a company called Zombaio for my websites subscription services. They handle the passwords, security, and (relevant in this case) the money collection. And for a good long time they were absolutely fantastic... until they weren't. Few months ago payments started to slow down. (Guess where this is going yet?) They explained it as changing banks for payouts and they'd get back on track (yeah, yeah, hindsight is 20/20). And they have to change to a monthly payment schedule instead of weekly (yeah, I know). So old weekly payments are slowly trickling in until we get to last week. We're approaching September, and still haven't gotten the payout for the month of June. Yeaahhhh.... Don't know about you, but getting paid 2-3 months late (if at all) is not exactly kosher. And it's not just me. Tons of other Zombaio clients are also experiencing the same problem. (How do you spell "ponzi scheme"?) So obviously this shit is not going to work anymore.

Unfortunate solution is that I'm going to have to change the subscription model. I'm basically phasing it out. The next two sets are going to be free for members, and then that's it. No more freebies. Also, around the same time the member super discount on sets is going to be removed. Everyone is going to be buying sets at the same price. Basically the only thing that membership will get you at that point is access to the galleries. So subscription membership will no longer be the ideal choice and best deal. Why not just ditch it altogether? Because cutting off all ties with Zombaio means the odds of me getting any of my money is severely reduced. In any case, it sucks. But it is what it is. Can't exactly work for free, and that's pretty much what I've been doing for the past 3 months. Fortunately, I am rather frugal so I can whether this crisis fairly easily.

So now the good-ish news. Or at least the slightly less bad news. The prices for sets will be reduced. With new price probably somewhere around $7-8. Need to try and figure out what will work best. Reckon former members will buy 2 out of 3 or 4 sets a month, which minus processing costs should put me around the same income level as before. Maybe. Hopefully. Who knows. Anyway, price change is fantastic if were never a member before. Not so great if you were a member, or if you bought a whole bunch of sets before at the old price. Again, sucks, but it is what it is.

Needless to say I'm not particularly happy about this. So as upset as some of you might be, it's a mere candle against the firestorm of rage and hatred that I'm feeling right now. And please, save your legal advice. I know you mean well, but that's not really going to help just yet. Right now it's just minimizing loss, regrouping, and finding a way to continue to provide you the semi-consensual hentai-esque 3d monster pr0n that you love, while still putting food on the table. Cheers.

16 comments:

Darkkon said...

ugh....

MongoBongo said...

Darkkon, that's a pretty eloquent description of my entire summer.

Trond said...

Are there no other subscription services you are considering?

MongoBongo said...

Trond - Not without drastically changing my content, no. And if I were going to do that and just be a vanilla artist, I'd just dump my site all together and sell over at Affect3d. Not that there is anything wrong with vanilla mind you, it's just not the niche I'm working in. If direct sales completely flop, I very well might consider going that route.

Anonymous said...

sorry to hear that :( ever thought about patreon? could be generally used in the same way i guess, whoever pays the 12 bucks can view the patron content... but hey, that firestorm of rage thingie made me laugh :D

VenusKnows said...

To be honest I'm happy with this approach. I think the previous monthly subscription put far to much expectation and stress on the rate you were bringing out work. So what if you get all excited and spend a week perfecting water reflections. The churn X number per month thing, I feel is a hamper. I'm happy to pay a bit more and get this thing I want... granted I'll prob get them all anyway as I love your semiconsensualhentaiesque3dmonsterpr0n. Yes its a word, leave it alone!

Looking forward to the next set :)
Venus

Unknown said...

You might check out Patreon. Our Stone Sorceress project is still early enough in the game to not be sure Patreon works as well as we _think_ it does, but we're already building up a nice subscriber base and a decent monthly income. (And there's one monster breeding game that's pulling in over 20k per month, it appears!) The big trick for us, so far, has been figuring out how to reliably deliver the content -- as you can't do that directly with Patreon on adult material. (And the first thing we tried as a delivery system got fried from traffic load.)

But, whatever you do, we'll be rooting for you! Good luck and keep the Fiends Flying!

-- Didi from Stone Sorceress and NakedElfGirls.com

Illutian Kade said...

Watch this'll be a double post...

Try Coinbase, they support subscriptions. And allow for instant conversion of Bitcoin to Us Dollars.

Illutian Kade said...

Oh, and is our information at risk?

MongoBongo said...

@Didi - While Patreon sounds interesting, the "no adult material" kinda kills it dead. Have had more than enough of trying to skirt the edge with payment processors.

@Illutian - Have absolutely zero indication that any information is at risk. The folks that run Zombaio have been around in the business for a good long time, so while I can see them closing down and running off with my money, risking people's info just seems to far beyond the realm of stupid. That's the sort of thing that gets governments pissed at you.

And Bitcoin was a great concept, but it's still internet monopoly money.

Illutian Kade said...

Monopoly money accepted by major online retailers :P

...but that's why I also mentioned that Coinbase does instant conversions, at the time of transaction. And you can choose to either have customers pay in BTC or a variable amount of BTC based on a fixed USD amount.

...granted I have no idea how you would integrate it into the whole "Member's Login" portion of the site.

---

I'm surprised you couldn't use PayPal directly. I'm pretty sure their ToS doesn't forbid nudity unless it's portrayed with children or child-looking characters.

Again, though, there's the whole integration with the MB site.

Isn't finding a new payment processing service fun! :D

MongoBongo said...

I can assure you (from unpleasant personal experience) that Paypal takes a very dim view of anything that involves pornography.

Illutian Kade said...

Well, that's unfortunate :(

Darkkon said...

how should we go about our membership? will we no longer be charged a monthly fee or should we cancel now? or later, what is our next approach exactly?

MongoBongo said...

My recommendation would be to cancel membership. Handy little "cancel" button at the bottom of the page on the website. But it's entirely up to you.

Illutian Kade said...

"Could not find any subscriptions or transaction matching the information provided. Try to add or remove data from one field, or try to enter other fields.\n\nWe strongly recommend you to enter your credit card number and Account Statement Tag."

So...ya. Time to start watching our credit card statements.

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