ccbill or nats: what do affiliates prefer?

[Chilihost]

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

[Xstr8guy]

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.

[JustBryce]

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.

[Xstr8guy]

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.

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.

[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

[Chilihost]

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

[stickyd]

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

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

[Chilihost]

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.

[basschick]

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.

[desslock]

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

[gaybucks_chip]

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.

[nickbaer]

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...

[Greg Gaskell]

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

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

[zentz]

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

[Chilihost]

poll results to date are exactly tied.