Saturday, March 03, 2007

DesertSky Marketing - Closing and Refund

Just received an email from Dustin. It's kinda shocking that such a successful program like DSM would have to close. If you take a look at the final program statistics, I don't understand how DSM would need to close. If you minus the Total Ad Pack Purchases and Total Request Cashouts Paid, you still get $3,507,857.07. That's about $3 million dollars. I'm not sure why is Dustin not able to sustain the program for a while until the percentages stabilized. That way, I think those who got panic and stop re-investing will come back. The drop from 10% to 9.43% to 6.39% to 3.88% to 2% (min) was just too drastic.

Total Ad Pack Purchases: $ 4375615.00
Average Daily Ad Pack Purchase: $ 87512.30
Total Requested Cashouts Paid: $ 867757.93

I think the way to be successful is to understand the mentality of most of your members. I have lost much faith in surfing programs now after the failure of 12DP, 12by12Daily, and now DSM. These are the programs I had held in high regard but have all failed. I hope Dustin honors his word and refunds. If I do see that happening, I'll be the 1st one inside the private program that he will start.

xrevenue

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Dear xxxx,

As you know, I'm always open with my members about the status of DesertSky Marketing. There has been a mass exodus from DesertSky Marketing ever since the daily percentage dropped from 10% to 9.43%. You can see from the statistics page the daily advertising sales have plummeted. The figures for today are on track to be less than half of what it was yesterday. Obviously, the majority of the members do not want DSM to continue. This really is such a shame. DSM created a program that would have been able to sustain 5-6%, but the majority of the members did not want to support it when the percentage started to drop.

DSM does have real outside income and a sufficient reserve fund. We are going to continue with our master plan and move forward with a private, invitation only program. The members who are invited and choose to participate will enjoy the benefits of DSM's master plan.

Since it is apparent that the majority of the members do not want to participate in DSM as we know it today, I have decided to close DSM. I'm disheartened and disappointed that it has come to this. We do have an exit strategy where no member will lose money! Over the next week, we will have our programmer create an audit script to figure the amount due for each member.

DSM will compute refunds in the following way:
- Total real cash upgrades (upgrades from AlertPay, Egold, or CEPtrust) minus total paid cashouts = refund amount due
- If you are already in profit, you will not receive any more funds from DSM
- Members who continued to support DSM by upgrading after the percentage dropped will receive a 10% bonus along with their refund
- Members who continued to support DSM by upgrading after the percentage dropped will receive their refunds first
- All other refunds will be paid in member ID order, from lowest member ID number to highest member ID number

I've turned upgrades off as well as disabled the cashout button. I've also stopped processing cashout requests until we complete the account audits. As soon as the audit is completed, we will post a page on our site that shows the member number, and the refund amount you will be receiving. The list will be in the order in which the members will be paid. DSM will then immediately begin making payments. Payments will be made each business day until all members are refunded.

--- How did we get to this point? Several factors came into play that brought us to this point: ---

- Referral commissions was one. A good handful of members upgraded with minimum upgrades and built a huge downline. They didn't support the program they were recommending to their downline. Most not even surfing, but managed to login every day to withdraw their referral commissions. We have new code that will correct this referral commission issue. This new code will be passed to the companies that lease the DSM script.

- Once we reduced the referral commissions to correct the abuse, these same members who gained so much, started moving their downline to other programs. Not because DSM was a bad program, but because they could no longer milk the system and fill their own pockets.

- Once the daily percentage fell below the max of 10% (which we all knew it would eventually do), the majority of the members bailed. This is evident by looking at the program statistics. This is an unfortunate event because of so many programs burning members in the past. The community, as a whole, is not willing to stand by an honest program. Because of so many past programs that have scammed and/or failed, members jump at the slightest challenge. This is not so much a member problem, but it is an industry problem.


--- What can you do in the future? ---

- Support programs that are run by honest admins. Not just when the daily percentage is high.
- Pull your profit out along the way. This way when the daily percentage drops a bit, you will not be in a panic and withdraw all your funds, thus making the percentage drop even more.
- Sign up under the program link, not some referral whore. This benefits the majority more than a select few. Does your upline recommend a program because it is a good program, or do they recommend the program to make a killing off of your work? Do they upgrade as much as they encourage you to?
- Realize what a good percentage is; 2% per day is an awesome return, even 1% per day is better than you can find in any bank.


Please understand the business model did NOT fail. The business model is a solid one, especially with real outside income. However, a key component is sales. If sales drop to near nothing, then there will be near nothing to "share" with the members. This is what happened with DSM, and rather than let it die a slow, long death, we are going to stop the bleeding and make everyone whole.

I encourage you to support 4newbiesMarketing, Lucreshares, and a couple more that will be coming online very soon. These programs do have real outside income. If their daily percentage drops from the max, don't bail on them. Realize what a realistic daily percentage is and continue to work the program to make a reasonable monthly profit.

I am attending classes this weekend (Thursday - Sunday), so will not be online that much. This is the reason this email is coming so late. I hate to ask you for patience, but please be patient and we will post on the site next week the refund amounts so you will know the amount you are going to receive. We will also leave the support ticket system open so if you disagree with the amount you can submit a ticket and we will double-check our records and make any necessary adjustments to your refund amount.


I thank you for participating in DSM and wish you the best in your online endeavors.

Happy Surfing,

Dustin
DesertSky Marketing

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