PayPal fee are not as bad as alertpay fees and with PayPal your fine to leave it there for as long as you want like dmo said its not going anywhere or just spend in online almost every site now uses PayPal apart from amazon which is annoying and strange

 

I dont think the fees are high BUT this is the only clip store site I am on that has double dipping.
35-40% cut here then another 4-7% cut on the payouts. So in the end we make about 50% of our sale price. Doh!
No other store I am on uses processors for payout that charge a fee to the producer to cash out.
I sell 100.00 I take home 100.00
I closed my stores and awaiting response about sending me a check for the pending payments that never made it to AP.
It's been a few days and no response.
When will this be taken care MM?

Hey, the other day I sent out an email to all producers announcing what's going on. We're going with Paypal for payouts, and if you have money "stuck" in Alertpay that you cannot withdraw, then send it back to me to my Alertpay account. I will turn around and re-send the money to you via Paypal. I am doing this as a courtesy to buffer any chances that AlertPay will never resolve their banking situation. If they don't, then I'll be the only one stuck with a balance that I cannot withdraw. And that's alright with me as long as you Producers get paid.

I have already re-sent payouts to everyone who did this and supplied a Paypal payout email address. We're all caught up.

I also should note again that producers outside the USA are not affected. You can withdraw your AlertPay balance at any time via wire or check.

Producers who are within the USA: While you cannot withdraw electronically, you can still withdraw by check. The problem really only affects electronic withdrawals in the US.




Since you signed up to Paypal I think it was yesterday, you've gotten three separate deposits, and now you are current in your payouts. Just putting it out there for clarification, though we did speak on email.

Paypal's charges are as follows: They charge you 2.9% plus a flat $0.30 when I transfer you your weekly payment (Alertpay was 2.5% plus $0.25). Paypal lets you wire the money to your bank account for free, or request a check for $1.50 (AlertPay charged $15.00 for wires although checks were free). Paypal will charge you to convert your payment to non-USD currency. They do this by taking whatever the current exchange rate is, and adding their own 2.5% to it. This is also what AlertPay charged.

You can see AlertPay's fee schedule here: https://www.alertpay.com/en/Fees.aspx
and Paypal's fee schedule here: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/helpscr?cmd=_display-fees

Thanks,
Messmaster

 

Their conversion fees are the same as AlertPay, and the their charge for me actually sending you your money are a little bit higher (although withdrawal is now free). And at least their banks still work.

The bottom line for U.S. customers is you'll get 67.67% of whatever you charge for your downloads: If you charge $10 for a download, you will receive $6.80 into your bank account when all is said and done. Outside the USA, the balance will be converted, and they will use the exchange rate plus 2.5%.

Yes, there are a lot of "fingers in the pie" but there are a lot of people and services working together to make this whole thing work. If you know this going in, and adjust your download store prices accordingly, then there will be no surprises. If you want to actually receive $10 for a download, then charge like $14.50 for it. The info on the How It Works section of your Add New Scene page reflects all the charges up-front.

By the way, you are our #1 top seller right now. Congrats!

Thanks!
Messmaster

 

Actually, it's percentage-based, so the amount converted at a time doesn't really matter. The only time it's an advantage to wait and do it all at the same time, is when there is some sort of flat fee which becomes more insignificant as the volume gets larger.

 

UMD takes 30%, Paypal takes 2.9% for the money transfer, and it's free to withdraw the money to your own bank. Bottom line is that you get 67.67%, not 50%.

I am always interested to lower fees, so can you please tell me what adult download store service you use that does not charge you ANY fees whatsoever, and allows you to "sell $100 and take home $100?" Also, do they charge any hosting or storage or setup fees?

Also, I did get your email two days ago. Please forgive my delay as I'm handling hundreds of responses and requests, and I'm trying to keep the books straight. You'll get your payment and a response as soon as I humanly can.

Thanks for giving the UMD stores a try. Hopefully you'll be back.

MM

 

I mean my take home is 100 and i get 100.
Its a check or direct deposit bypassing all third party fees.

Ahh okay. You get paid by check, and they don't charge you any fees for that. I get it. (I wonder what their commission is in the first place though?) On Paypal you can also withdraw electronically for free, or pay $1.50 if you want a check, but the transfer from me to you is where they charge. I chose an electronic payment service for reasons of convenience for everyone, plus automation, speed, and accuracy. It does come with a price and I am looking at snailmail check delivery options in the future.

Thanks,
MM

 

For those that use our gunge, you can of course pay for the gunge via your Paypal funds as well. You can either order directly from us or via ebay,

www.thegungeshop.com

 

Yup, me too. After reading this I attempted to send the money to my bank account, and it tells me that my "transfer PIN" is incorrect. (Having never moved the Alertpay money before, I never actually had set one up, so why is it asking for this at all?).

Anyway, I went through the secret question routine to the dialog box to reset this and at the exact point where I choose a new PIN and say "submit", it suddenly and tells me that it can't do this and to try again later.

I am apparently not going to be allowed to withdraw any money in any manner at all tonight!

There is a phone number and I'm wondering what will happen when I try to call this to complain.

I'm going to attempt it from a different computer first, for this sucker is old and cranky, but it could just be that I will have to take you up on this offer if the other computer gets the same response.

I am on PayPal, although I don't use the account much any more!

Note: I can't get them to send me a check either since it is erroring at the level where I am trying to create a PIN number. It won't do anything at all for me.

Nessie

 

No. No you don't.

I would be interested to know of service selling videos on peoples behalf that doesn't profit the service though.

Do name name names.


I think I have yet seen one that doesn't lose under 30% of each sale.

 

Correct. Although I think he kinda retracted that. He meant that, after his payment processor takes their cut (which may well be 40% itself for all I know), the withdrawal of the money doesn't cost him anything. Users of UMD stores, being paid through Paypal, have to accept that Paypal charges 2.9% for the transfer from me to them, and that's a good point. It's a trade off for being able to do everything quickly and electronically.

 

See what I mean? It seems like they their problems are growing over there. If at all possible, please go ahead and transfer your balance over to my AlertPay. I will then forward your balance via Paypal instead. If you can't even do that, then please hit me on email.

Thanks,
Messmaster

 

I appreciate the good, honorable business dealings on your part but there is a principle at stake now.

They're screwing up and they mustn't be allowed to get away with it without feeling the pain.

What they need, for their own good, is to hear customers complaining.

There is a phone number on their contact page and I called it. I went through the voice mail system and pressed the numbers for "password assistance" since it was the PIN that wouldn't go through (which is different from the password, but hey, same concept).

She says that the bank transfer system over there is down. I asked about a check. She said that they can mail me my check, no problem.

Then she told me to do the same thing I've been doing, which doesn't work, so I got "assertive" (I guess we'll call it that). I said we HAVE TO RESOLVE THIS HERE AND NOW, that I wanted my money -- and she was not to just send me online.

So she stayed on the phone to walk me through the process.

She re-set my PIN on her end, and it asked me to create a new one. I did that. That was successful.

So I requested a check.

The system told me that this request had gone through.

She told me that the check should arrive late next week. I'll let y'all know if it really does.

The Alertpay customer service line is:

1-514-748-5774

Have at it!

Nessie

 

Its been pretty obvious for the last 6mnths or so that Alertpay were heading for this and so made sure there was never much in the account to lose. I am sure I was not the only one who took this precaution. That said I should add that the last withdrawal went through last week with no problem.

I understand why MM is looking at paypal as an intermediary arrangement. Unfortunately I have to add my voice to those who will not be taking him up on this offer and would urge him not to use this as a permanent solution.

I will pm/mail some thoughts MM

 

I'll look forward to your input. I'm all ears.

 

I am cautiously betting that I will in fact receive a check. I didn't get the feeling over the phone that there was an attempt to avoid paying me. It took a bit of pressure but after she got the message that I had to have this thing resolved NOW, she was polite and helpful, really.

However, no matter what...it's still mighty lame that they can't send the money to my bank. They have sent money to it in the past, so what exactly broke?

That glitch I experienced on their site about the PIN number is pretty bad too. That should not be allowed to continue.

So they're incompetent if nothing else.

Nessie

 

Heads up. I don't know if this was explained here or in an email blast, but you must go to your account and put your paypal email address in on your store page. I sent it to MM in an email, didn't know there was a special field set up for this. FYI

I could have done a better job at explaining this. Every producer was indeed sent an email blast, plus every producer has a big red message on their Bin page saying that they need to enter their Paypal email, if they haven't already. It's the same email field that's been there for 2 years, and all producers already filled it out before with their AlertPay payment email address, so it's nothing new. But now that we're on Paypal, it's been reset (emptied) and now needs your Paypal address so I can pay you. Again, it was explained in email and it's there now in the red notice, but I need to set up an actual blog page or something highly visible on the site itself that explains these steps more clearly. I'll get on that tonight.

MM