So, since I can’t afford a new artist yet for Ship, and I need to draw attention to my works, I am probably going to start updating Peppermint Saga again. I haven’t figured out when, because I am trying to get a groove going for Dillon MacKenzie over at Frilly Pink, but I can assure you, it will be soon. That’s all I can say for now.
On the Mastercard front: after much deliberation, we opted **NOT** to take Mastercard this time around. There is a good reason, though. As I mentioned in the comments to a user that asked, they now charge a massive fee for the privilege of being able to cater to roughly 1 in 10 potential members. I should explain further: basically, in May of 2013, the boys in red and gold decided that they would charge a gateway-to-entry fee for “high risk” sites such as ours, much in the same way Visa did. That fee is now $500 per year. This is in addition to Visa’s fee of roughly $500 per year. So just to get started, we’re talking about $1000 per year in fees so we can process your credit cards. This, over and above the percentage our processor takes from us to process your payments and cut us a check. With the fees being so high, and the relative percentages of market share we were facing, we elected **NOT** to take Mastercard because it was too cost prohibitive, and we were concerned that it might be months or even YEARS before we recouped the fees at the current rate (especially since we get banged with them each year, without fail). So if you are going to our paysite and are dismayed that we now take Visa, but you have Mastercard, that is the reason. It was not an easy decision to exclude that portion of the market, but it was, unfortunately, necessary from an economic one. As always, if we can start making some of our coin back, there is always the option to re-examine that decision at a future date. And there’s always the e-check option, which many of you have already opted to do. (I think 80% of our clients at the old site chose that option as they did not have Mastercard at that time…)
So anyway, that’s what’s going on. Thanks for your patronage and your patience.
~Mace
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