This still doesn't explain why you feel the need to charge a fee for premium access on Bitcoin. Or are you saying that your bitcoin processor charges you 30% processing fees too?
And your calculations make no sense. Your bank charges you 30% of the transaction, for instance. So take this into consideration:
A client pays you $15.60 for a month's subscription. You're left with $10.92 after the bank's charge. You pay your affiliates 70% of the price displayed on the page (I'm assuming this is the case); so 70% of $12 is $8.40.
Of the $10.92 you're left with, you pay out $8.40 to an affiliate. On referred sales, you therefore make $2.52 for a month's purchase. Essentially, your affiliates result in you making a loss.
Obviously, this makes no business sense, so filehosts employ practices to subvert the system by shaving sales, statistics, faking chargebacks, et al. I'm not going to blame them for doing that, the entire system of paying uploaders 99% per sale (pun intended) is flawed.
And who gets punished for this inherently faulty business design? Yep, the customers. With time, you just keep tacking on more fees, taking away privileges, and in general inconveniencing your clients as a result of the actions of a select few. The uploaders, on the other hand, are unscathed.
There is literally no outcome of this decision that is 'good' in the long term. I cannot imagine any customer of yours emailing you after this change applauding you and saying 'thanks for reducing the b/w while still charging me obscene prices for premium membership'. You may not notice the fall out from this decision immediately, but I guarantee you the fact that this decision will cut into your long term revenue.
Torrents are risky as all hell, despite using VPNs. Torrents are still not popular enough to replace filehosts. The filehost industry has slowed down, but it has not been on a decline. If anything, it's relatively stable now more than ever. It's resilient. Forgive me for being apprehensive, but I don't believe most of what you wrote. It sounds far too much like regular corporate speak that representatives cook up after a decision that shafts their entire client base.
As I mentioned earlier, there's literally no explanation for tacking on fees on payment methods that dont charge you fees (Bitcoin, for example). If you're so dedicated to survival and care so much about your customers, how about you remove fees from that method for a start?
And if you really wanted to simply fight off leech services, there are FAR more effective methods than simply reducing bandwidth by half for everyone.
For all intents and purposes, this doesn't seem to be a decision motivated by the need to prevent leechers, but rather the need to force your users to pay more for the same level of service. I cannot imagine why, but if I had to fathom a guess, I would put my finger on the recent events that transpired at a blog/portal that heavily favors you and lost a lot of its traffic. Not surprised tbh.
In any event, you'll do what you want to do. This industry has seen its fair share of greedy hosts. They all eventually die and are replaced. The cycle continues, it's vicious. There's no shortage of filehosts in the industry, and uploaders/affiliates are not the world's most loyal bunch. Or smart, for that matter. They'll run over to the next host that promises them the same rates as you, and then the next, and the next. So on and so forth.
I wish you good luck in your endevaors and I hope that you realize that you took a step backwards, not forward.
