ccbill or nats: what do affiliates prefer?

I am looking at billing options for the future of our hunkmoney sites and I need your help. So far we have been using ccbill's affiliate systems. CCBill has been great as its a trusted 3rd party processor, it allows affiliates to amalgamate all ccbill sponsors onto one cheque, and it give affiliates their money fast. NATS, on the other hand, would offer cascading billing and allow us to be more flexible with payment types, both of which would likely result in more money to the affiliates.

I want to know, as affiliates, do you prefer promoting sites using ccbill or nats? Or does it matter? And please feel free to give reasoning either way too.

cheers,
Luke

I like the idea of cascading processors especially when CCbill is in serious scrub mode. But in reality, I don't think it actually works in favor of affiliates. It just gives sponsors more opportunity to shave your sales. For some reason, I get better ratios from CCbill sponsors.

I'm a humongous fan of NATS and really detest CCBill's program even though we have over 50 sites we promote through them.

It is so much harder for me to track how sponsors who use the CCBill program are performing. For one, even big programs don't name their program what they are. You end up with "Affiliate 1" and half a dozen programs called "CCBill Referal Program", which is undoubtedly a default. Beyond that, the ccbill interface is clunky and requires way to many clicks to get to any useful information. So I'm have to sit there and click around back and forth for 5 minutes to get to the data I need, then compare a string of numbers to a "CCBill Referal Program" to see what program I'm really looking at and by the end of it all I'm frustrated and slightly resentful.

Not to mention... I would be lost without Stats Remote. Stats Remote only sees one CCBill Affiliate Program and every program that uses it gets lost in there. I can get a macro view of how the whole CCBill affilaite ball is doing, but no particular affiliates program is going to stand out.

However, when I look at my Stats Remote, I can see in an instant how Pride Bucks, Intense Cash, Helix Cash, etc. are doing. I know how many clicks I sent, how much money I made on them for the day, what the conversion is. Its a very good thing. Plus I can get the money the way I want including epassporte or via EFT like Intense Cash does.

The other thing that really bothers me about sites in CCBill is that they really like the kind of ad tools that allow us to empower ourself. If you go into the ad tools at ccbill, again most webmasters, don't have it setup right and you don't even see any banners. Some have links but you have to sit there and swap in your ID's manually. Hosted galleries? Forget about it. The programs that use NATS allow me to create campaigns get unique tracking numbers, pull down hosted galleries en masse and on-the-fly according to paramaters that I specify. These program empower me. It's no wonder why I love them.

You don't have to be NATS to win my affections. Programs like Top Bucks and Randy Blue also offer these same benefits even though they are custom. But the point is that they do offer them and when I need to grab a banner I'm most likely going to go to these programs first.

Finally, I do find that these program convert better. I find that there is a 15-20% increase on programs that cascade and I certainlly see this on our own affiliate program. Speaking of which, there was a reason when we setup mesmerotic.com that we used NATS. We've never looked back.

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Originally Posted by JustBryce

The other thing that really bothers me about sites in CCBill is that they really like the kind of ad tools that allow us to empower ourself. If you go into the ad tools at ccbill, again most webmasters, don't have it setup right and you don't even see any banners. Some have links but you have to sit there and swap in your ID's manually. Hosted galleries? Forget about it. The programs that use NATS allow me to create campaigns get unique tracking numbers, pull down hosted galleries en masse and on-the-fly according to paramaters that I specify. These program empower me. It's no wonder why I love them.

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In many cases, the reason why CCbill sponsors don't have all of the sales tools is because they are smaller niche sites, which I prefer to promote. Nothing against programs like Helix Cash or Intense Cash but I could never make a sale on one of their sites with my traffic even with all of their great sales tools. I prefer sponsors such as HotOlderMale.com... sure, I might need to make my own FPAs, galleries and even banners but I'm going to convert like crazy.

why not offer both? guys who like ccbill can use one tour and guys who want to use NATS can use the mirror tour? it's easy enough that way and you don't miss anyone - after all, if you're using NATS, you have ccbill implemented anyway ;)

basschick that is a great idea, I never even thought of that. thanks!

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Originally Posted by basschick

why not offer both? guys who like ccbill can use one tour and guys who want to use NATS can use the mirror tour? it's easy enough that way and you don't miss anyone - after all, if you're using NATS, you have ccbill implemented anyway ;)

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Good idea, and yes, with NATS, you will have CCBill integrated. As an affiliate, CCBill admin interface drives me nuts. It's the most non-intuitive structure I have ever seen. The first nav is on the lower right of the screen, and when you click on an option, another list opens at the top left of the screen, and when you click on an option there, another list opens on the lower left side of the screen. It's gotta be the most messed up corporate UI out there. They must be too busy spending money on yachts to find good Webmasters :)

its intersting how the poll results are almost tied, I really did think that one would pull far ahead of the others. I will keep checking back to see if these results change. Thanks to all that have voted so far.

a lot of people prefer nats stats. understandably. but a lot of euro webmasters like to get their payouts all in one check becasuse they pay so much to deposit in most places in eu. and some prefer the security of knowing they'll be paid by ccbill where others prefer the 11% more sales they'll see through cascasding.

i didn't vote, btw.

If you fully utilize it, go for NATS.

Let me ask you this, if you have NATS running on your site, and you also sell on your site some retail items... like DVDs. Can you integrate payments from your membership site, PLUS commissions from seperate retail sales into the cash payout program?

I have always wondered. I wish I knew more about how these affiliate systems worked. It would be useful to suggest the full uses of these software systems, and I have found companies who just turnit on out of the box, and really do nothing with it.

Steve

It is definitely possible to integrate physical product sales into NATS, but NATS only supports a small number of shopping carts at present, one of which is X-Cart.

We probably won't integrate our physical product sales into NATS because the DVD sales will soon be an entirely separate company, but for those who do both under one "roof", NATS should be able to handle it -- and X-Cart is an excellent shopping cart.

I sure would like to spend less time per day promoting web stuff... and more time shooting new models here in Hollywood, and editing/authoring the content into DVDs and VOD.

It's tought being both a web traffic master AND a shooter.

Someone cute and smart should have an answer...

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Originally Posted by basschick

why not offer both? guys who like ccbill can use one tour and guys who want to use NATS can use the mirror tour? it's easy enough that way and you don't miss anyone - after all, if you're using NATS, you have ccbill implemented anyway ;)

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I was just going to say the same thing, glad to see there are two spart cookies on this board. :D

they both have their advantages and disadvantages, i like them both though.

poll results to date are exactly tied.

i finally voted, and i went for ccbill. yes, nats offers better stats and some other handy features, but when it comes to new and flaky programs, i like getting paid by ccbill and i like having lots of sponsor payments all in one weekly check.

NATS is great, and I love its features, but in the current conditions, I would have to say I am looking for CCbill programs more and more. I have noticed that some affiliate programs are getting slower and slower with their payouts, and it worries me a bit.

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Originally Posted by JustBryce

Stats Remote only sees one CCBill Affiliate Program and every program that uses it gets lost in there. I can get a macro view of how the whole CCBill affilaite ball is doing, but no particular affiliates program is going to stand out.

However, when I look at my Stats Remote, I can see in an instant how Pride Bucks, Intense Cash, Helix Cash, etc. are doing. I know how many clicks I sent, how much money I made on them for the day, what the conversion is.

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You know that you can kind of do this for CCBill in StatsRemote. Its a few extra steps, but a lot of the data is there. Right click on the CCBill summary, select "Show Breakdown", then right click again on the program and select "Show Details" to view data by day/month, etc.

This is an interesting question. I gotta say I was torn. GayGeek currently deals with, give or take, about 55-60 different payment processors (some being like CCBill/Verotel/Epoch/ePassporte, but most being affiliate programs that make their own payments by check).

I have grown to like CCBill a great deal. In four years of them working as an affiliate and two more years as a membership site, I have never had a single payment issue. Not even AEBN can say that (one of their checks failed to show up, and they refused to reissue it until the next payment period).

Nats, on the other hand, has stats software miles beyond CCBill. Why CCBill won't put in even a small amount of work into enhancing their stats area is beyond me. I first worked with them in 2002 or so, and I can't recall a single improvement being added since that time. Not to mention it's so slow that often my clicks reports just error out.

Why CCBill doesn't improve its stats area is beyond me. It's already the dominant payment processor, and with a powerful stats program it could increase its already significant income. My only conclusion is that they just don't care enough to bother, and that doesn't sync with the fact that their payments are always on time. Perhaps their tech department has just enough budget to keep their servers going but nothing for developing their software.

Even with the technical issues facing CCBill, I prefer their reliability. An affiliate program using NATS is only as good as the payments that are made, and when it comes to making payments no one beats CCBill.

--Aaron

PS, That being said, I'm seeing a market out there for someone to found a CCBill-like payment processor with NATS-quality software. I can only say that the sooner it arrives the better off we'll all be.

i prefer ccbill because i can add all the checks together for my sponsors

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Originally Posted by GayGeek

Nats, on the other hand, has stats software miles beyond CCBill. Why CCBill won't put in even a small amount of work into enhancing their stats area is beyond me. I first worked with them in 2002 or so, and I can't recall a single improvement being added since that time. Not to mention it's so slow that often my clicks reports just error out.

Why CCBill doesn't improve its stats area is beyond me. It's already the dominant payment processor, and with a powerful stats program it could increase its already significant income.

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CCBill has, from my understanding, been working on a "next generation" product for over a year. I do know they have an on-staff user interface architect and bunch of programmers working on it... I suspect we'll be seeing something before long, perhaps they're working for a Phoenix Forum announcement or something.

NATS is a nicely featured product, but it is buggy as heck. To their credit, they're responsive in fixing the problems, but for a product that's several years old, you'd expect it to be more stable at this point than we've found it to be. And I know their new 4.0 product is built on an entirely new code base, but that also scares me... essentially it's like buying version 1.0 of a major software.

I suspect that CCBill is waiting until they have something amazing to show and when they do, it will probably be worth waiting for. When ccbill stats came out in 2003, it was a hundredfold improvement over their previous product, and I wouldn't be surprised to see an equal level of change with whatever they come out with next.

i only go for ccbill programs so that i dont end up with one signup here, one signup there etc and get micro checks or nothing since i havent reached minimum payout, also if i decide not to promote them anymore i wouldnt get the cash if i only had a signup or 2. best to have them all under one thrusted company, then it doesnt mather if i only get one signup before i ditch them

I spoke with Gary at CC Bill and he told me they are getting ready for a relaunch. They are going to combine their current service with a NATS type system.

You'll have all kinds of promo opportunities, e.g. banners, galleries, movies clips. The ability to single out certain affiliates for promos, etc...

I talk with him for about 35 to 45 minutes (also with his engineer Paul about using JoomLa CMS for a site(s))

It seems they are getting ready to add some really exciting stuff.

He also mentioned being able to keep track of credit card expiration dates and contacting the subscriber to see about keeping your subscriptions going. Cool!

We have promoted a few NATS sites, and many CCBill sites. Frankly, I think CCBill is much better. CCBill offers a little better tracking.
On a consumer stand point, we've only ever had 1 sale through a NATS site promotion and a hell of that more on a CCBill conversion.
We are strong with CCBill. And we will stick with CCBill. Also, about a year or two ago NATS got broke into and lots of information was stolen.
CCBill on the other hand has a very strong security hold on information and to date I don't think they've ever had data stolen or data intrusions to where data was stolen.

We don't promote anything with NATS nor Epoch. We promote sites that use CCBill preferably.

Im actually seeing a trend with a lot more affiliates posting about CCBill or Epoch based affiliate programs lately, im wondering if this is because those sponsors using NATs have to do their own payouts and if affiliate webmasters are concerned about making sure that they actually do get paid for the sales they generate?

Regards,

Lee

wow, what a totally old thread from 04-11-2006.

FYI, I asked about this when we were first looking at switching our affiliate program from CCBill to NATS (yes this was back in the days before CCBill offered cascades). Its been over 2 years since we have been using NATS instead of CCBill, and I can tell you that there is no bloody way I would ever go back to just a single biller. IMHO anyone that uses just a single biller is wasting traffic and losing money!

But cacading billing and using NATS aren't the same thing.

CCBill and Epoch now offer cascading as part of their standard offerings.

CCBill will handle all affiliate payouts, including sales that cascaded to other billers. (Epoch doesn't offer this service because Rand claims it's impossible.)

As Lee said, I think a lot of affiliates like the idea that with CCBill, you get paid by a third party, with checks sent every week.

And CCBill's software has had nowhere near the bugs and problems that NATS has.

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

But cacading billing and using NATS aren't the same thing.

CCBill and Epoch now offer cascading as part of their standard offerings.

CCBill will handle all affiliate payouts, including sales that cascaded to other billers. (Epoch doesn't offer this service because Rand claims it's impossible.)

As Lee said, I think a lot of affiliates like the idea that with CCBill, you get paid by a third party, with checks sent every week.

And CCBill's software has had nowhere near the bugs and problems that NATS has.

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Chip you are absolutely right, but as I said this was an OLD OLD thread BEFORE ccbill and epoch started offering cascades. Now that they do, this thread is irrelevant as the whole first page of it is outdated.