yes ;)

I'm a firm believer in always having a backup plan for worst case scenarios. Although I think its more likely for the banks to pull out of 3rd party processing, there have been occurances where they also pulled the plug on basic merchant accounts. If it were my business i'd have both options setup to reduce my chances ... hedging the bet if you will.

And again, I'd have check, sms and any other kind of processing available also. I'd feel much better knowing I have other options available to my client base that I could switch to in the off chance I lost one.

We are having Executive Stats installed rock on!! Is brad about by any chance?

Thanks :)

aaron I think brad is in cancun until monday

mike, np :)

Having read both yours and KK's response, yes, I can see now that running the soft in this way makes a lot of sense - I shall certainly be looking into this, now.

While I understand the logic in this, I'm not sure how realistic it is:

Firstly, while it's "safe", it probably isn't "optimal". I can't imagine that the biggest reason for having your own merchant account isn't to set the scrubbing parameters at what you see as optimal as opposed to what the 3rd party processors see as optimal. Using this modality flips that on it's head.

Secondly, I'm not absolutely certain that those who believe that they don't know enough about scrubbung to set the parameters optimally should be having their own merchant accounts, as opposed to using 3rd party processing (I mean, anyone using this solution de facto believes that those 3rd party processors know better than they do what to scrub than they do).

What am I missing?

Your second statement is somewhat misleading. What many don't understand is that ALL transactions go through a basic scrub by the downstream processing, whether it be vital or anyone else.

Secondly the gateways have their own fraud detection scrubbing... it doesn't matter if its a 3rd party or a merchant account .. its there.
Some gateways allow for client based customization of those settings and others have them set as default - but either way there is always some type involved.

Its a common misconception to believe if you have a merchant account that there is NO scrubbing unless you set it, there is - and always will be.

Well, if that's the argument, isn't the case for having your own merchant account because you get to set the scrub as espoused in this thread supra vastly exaggerated? Because either you get to set it and get the advantages of doing so, or you don't and can't claim a huge advantage from it, but it can't be both?

You are right, my sample might not be the perfect solution, but everyone will have to find his own perfect solution anyway depending on his traffic, type of sites, and other factors playing into it. The question is how secure you feel with pushing your merchant account to the limit without getting it closed to maximize your sale potential.

Like vicki said, not all gateways let you completely control your scrubbing. Some let you do more, some let you do less. Setting low scrubbing is not the only reason you get a merchant account. One main reason is the lower fees you will have with it. Many will also say they have it because they want to be sure they do not lose their ability to process. More scrubbing control is just one of the many reasons...

I guess the problem i have with some of the advice here is that - to some extent - there seems to be the assumption of "unlimitted resources". While this probably works for th larger programs, I think for the majority (i.e. small programs, paysits, etc.) and certainly the majority who would be looking fo guidance from a thread here, resources are far from infinite. And when I say resources, I'm not just talking about $, I'm talking about time and expertise. For small shops (and especially 1 person shops), even if you can save a certain percentage from using certain things - whether they be custom programs or your own merchant accounts, or a lot of time spent tweaking scrubbing algorithms - there's different trade-offs if these things take away too many resources that you need to do what your main business is. And that's not to say that these solutions are 'wrong' globally, but there's to many "absolutes" offered . instead, it would be more helpfull to get advice on how to judge which options are right, and when to use one vs. another (like a ROT on the revenue point at which someone should pay $X for cascading billing software, or their own merch account, or, or, or).

Exactly that is one of the reasons why many people that right now only use something like CCBill should look into cascading. Most cascading software offers many other great features which help you streamline your bussiness in every sense. And not only for BIG programs or medium programs. We have programs which have just started a few months ago and are growing steady with the help of our software at their fingertips.

See, Nathan, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm sure you've got a great product (and I hear great things about it). but rather than give concrete numbers, or even round numbers, all I get is "vote for us! we're the best!". And I'm sure lots of other small guys feel the same. See, what I'm saying is that when small operators hear stuf lik that, most often we can't sit down and mak a long evaluation of every new product, so we just pass over anything which we don't get some upfront idea of exactly what it takes for it to be worthwhile.

I'm sure you guys have actually worked out wher the breakeven points are in usuing your sysem (if you haven't, you're not doing your job in selling the stuff). i realize hat folks are afraid to lose sales because if you give out numbers before making a slaes coptact, you may scare people off. But instead you lose sales because people assume that it's not right for them.

Why not just say something along the lines of "From our research, we find that on average our cascading billing software alone improves sign-ups by 11%. So, for a site with a $35 per month charge, the $2,500 for the software gets paid for in only 5 months for any site doing only 150 joins a month on average." (or whatever the real numbers are)

(note: I do sales training, and one of the most pervasive reasons for not closing sales is worrying so much about losing the sale that you don't take the risks which are needed to actually close the sale. Very frequently, this is from being shy about throwing out numbers to the client for fear the won't like the numbers they hear. some of this comes from not understanding the product/not having enough confidence in the product you are selling).

Bro I was with ccbill only and switched over to nats a little over 2 weeks ago and sales have been rocking... I am seeing many sales get declined and aproved by secondary... with nats and I am sure the other one to you can set your cascade on a daily, weekly, or even hourly basis for whats doing better for you... meaning go from ccbill to epoch or visa versa... the scripting is amazing our affiliates now have the means to track traffic... I (you) as the program can track campaigns so I know which bit of my traffic is converting best... lets just say it like this bro... NATS has already paid for itself.. and I the sales I thought I would be doing I am doing more.. fact is I need to boost up to a different "higher payment" with nats on my monthly.. which is good... I don't reccomend it for you or any other affiliate programs owners because then affiliates will push you and not me because there getting sales everywhere :thumbsup bro nats was the best investment I have made for my affiliate program and it works.. and it works very well... like anyone else said... why put all your eggs in one basket.. and even if you do use the ccbill denial URL then the affiliates are not getting credit for it... I have EPOCH,CCBILL,WTS,CCBILLACH,CCBILL900,NOCREDITCARD ALL IN MY CASCADES SO THE AFFILIATE WILL GET CREDIT AND TAKE IT... NO USE LETTING TRAFFIC GO TO WASTE.. and as a program owner without traffic we sink.. traffic is like our air and water.....

$x = cost of cascading software
z = ~5% benefit of using cascading software
y = optionally number of months to become profitable

$x <= z% (* y)


so if you make 25k sales a month, it would be profitable after 2 months:

$2500 = 5% * 2 months

hmm... what happens if NATS or MPA for whatever reason would suddenly disappear one day like so many processors have? what data would their clients lose? what would be the downtime scenario? Which is better, NATS or MPA? is MPA only cascading billing or tracking and extra features also like NATS?

Although I can't chime in and help on the price of NATS or Brads cascade programs I can give you one concrete number to ponder.

If you get a US based merchant account through us your processing rates will drop from 11-14% or whatever you are paying ...
down to 4% and that includes the gateway fee.

that 10% in profit hikes could easily cover the cost of a cascading system I would think?? Correct me if I'm wrong Nathan

any large adult companies getting a merchant account through you guys?

sure
I think it helps that we've had so many of these clients under the other corp (domain name systems - domain registrar) so yes, and considering we just opened to public processing 3 months ago (have been doing it privately since 98) we've been VERY busy getting them handled. lol

I would add that we're doing alot of smaller owners too.
I think its because we have a good solid bank that doesn't require a miminum volume or perfect credit. Plus we're waiving visa fees and setup fees for another month so that helps a bit too lol

and no, I do not work for domainnamesystems, I only work for the ECS portion. I don't know anything at all about domains except that I own wayyyyy to many lol

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showpo...73&postcount=1 :thumbsup

100 cascades

I can definitely say Venus is not a newbie and certainly has a clue on running a business and I agree with much of what he is saying regarding owning your own merch account vs. using third party billing.

No offense, Venus was making money as a savvy marketer in this biz long before Kimmy and SleazyDream.

On a side note, there are plenty of reasons some of the big companies HAVE to use third party processors even though they could afford to do otherwise by owning their own merch account.

There are pros and cons to each. Any business owner should weigh both before making a decision.

:2 cents:

On average, depending on how you cascade, what billers you use, how extensive you set it all up, you can get 10-15% increase in sales just by good cascading alone.

Lets say you have 100 joins a MONTH thats around 10 extra joins just by cascading. Lets pretend you only make $15 PROFIT per join (you most likely do more than that), thats $150 a month more. NATSlite, which is for anyone with up to 150 joins a month, costs $150 a month, so you cover the extra cost of NATSlite's monthly price.

Like I said many times cascading is not the only thing you will be doing with NATS. Its most likely the thing that is going to gain you the least amount of money in the end. Managing your programs more efficiently, giving your affilaites more control over what they promote, and many other things that will make you more and more money. There are many more things that make you more money, but I can not list everything here.

Like charlie already posted with a link to another post, when NATS for whatever reason suddenly disappears, you get the NATS source code via our lawyers. There is 0 loss of data. There is 0 downtime (you host the system).

Which is better NATS or MPA? Get demos of both (and possably the others out there), talk to all the companies, talk to their clients and draw your own picture of which one you think is best for you. Just make sure you really talk to the companies and hear what they have to say.

MPA also has extra features over cascading billing, yes.

they have one or the other, not both, and we settle for whatever they have, usually

IMO having your own merchant account is the best situation for most. We run exclusively through Netbilling and have very low chargebacks. We use CCbill as a cascading backup.

Z

MPA3 resides completely on your servers in your datacenter. You are protected contractually if something was to happen to us.

Here are some of the extra features in addition to the cascading billing feature (which is really a minor feature in the big picture):

Geo tracking - opportunity to redirect the surfers from certain countries to special tour pages (a dialer page or other alternative payment methods ? see list of new payment platforms)

Administrator can choose which countries are trusted and not trusted for members.

Opportunity for the webmasters to choose if they want to get paid by check, direct deposit or wire

Opportunity to offer several tour options

MPA3 is totally customizable to have YOUR look and feel. No one will ever know what backend you are using for your affiliate program

Programs - Per Unique, Per Signup, Partnership, Per Active Member

Offer free trial membership where the webmaster will get paid X amount of $ or % only after he have recurred over to a monthly membership

Stats - per program (includes uniques, free trials, paid trials, conversions, rebilling, chargeback's, payout), fully customizable by the administrator for look and feel

Profit stats

Different price and payout options for each site in the program, fully customizable to fit both the site and the program in question


Country restrictions for webmasters - give the admin the opportunity to add or delete countries to limit webmaster fraud

Approve webmasters before activation. This is chosen whether or not to by the administrator

Campaign tracking

Activate and deactivate certain pricing options instead of just deleting them, and making new ones.

Opportunity to link directly to the signup pages

Opportunity for the administrator to choose if he/she wants to give REBILLED customers access to all sites participating in the webmaster affiliate script. Their username and password must be added to all sites. Increase member retention.

Opportunity to offer a member that is about to cancel membership access to all or some extra sites in the program for free if they chooses to stay

Program keeps full history of all active, cancelled or declined members

Opportunity to add ClickTruth as a third party auditing service to ease affiliates minds to the solidity and honesty of the webmaster running the program.

MPA3 allows 100% of the administration to be performed via the web browser.

MPA3 allows the administrator to choose to cascade between the 3 billing processors, and in what order.

MPA3 stats have an intuitive, point-and-click interface.

Ability to view the number of joins by day or by period.

Unlimited commission configurations - formula, flat rate (per sign up or per unique) or percentages.

The admin area has an easy to read overview over each accounts current earnings, as well as past pay periods.

Flexible payout able to conform to any pay schedule - set to bi-monthly as default.

Real-time member statistics for each site in the program.

MPA3 has built in anti-cheating feature.
The admin can:
? search for webmasters with a better signup ration then ....
? search for webmasters with a higher charge back ratio then ...
? The admin will get a warning if traffic is coming from the same anonymous proxy server
? The admin will get a warning if signups coming from the same IP
? MPA3 will report all unsuccessful signups per webmaster that are more than % that the admin set
? Admin can set for every site an alternate URL for not trusted countries

Ability to generate text files for QuickBooks.

Backup and Restore Database Ability hourly.

Allows revoking of commissions in the event of fraud or chargebacks.

It shows the referrals that the partners are sending their traffic from, with the URL and amount by day, month and year.

It shows the sign-ups, the sign-up ratio and what processor it used for the transaction.

It ranks them by the amount of traffic they are sending.

The program gives the admin the opportunity to add and delete passwords to all sites in the program.


Reward Program - Now you can give your webmasters points for each signups they are sending you and let them choose different prizes in return for their points.

Live stats. Both admin and webmasters will be able to see their stats constantly with a little browser window while they surf the internet.

Advanced SMS and WAP features. Both admin and webmasters can get messages when signups are done and read stats with their Cell phone.

Gallery of the day. Offer your webmasters a new gallery each day with their own referral url.

Picture of the day. Offer your webmaster a new picture each day with their own referral url.

Sub admin. Now you can have other peoples sites in your program and let the site owner get access to his own admin stats but only for the sites you allow him to see.

Integrated ad tracking for in-house campaigns.

Subscriptions can be cancelled from the admin panel without having to go to each billing processor.

Customer lookup through, subscription id, email, username, first and last name, and the ability to change members info.

Tools for a webmaster data searching by partner ID, and ability to update his info, deactivation or canceling.

The program automatically deactivate a webmaster if they send no traffic throughout a period of one month (deactivation, not canceling)

Customized outbound emails to webmasters & surfer signs-ups/cancellations.

Mass Email for admin use. Select by active/inactive webmasters, and by active/expired members for each site.

Message of the day displays for all webmasters when they logs in.

Use any html page as a template to generate both the webmasters sign up form and the program sign up form.

Instant account activation for affiliates.

Allows both text and banner (image) links.

Allow affiliates to modify their account information.

Detailed breakdowns by day, week, pay period.

Realtime statistics for each of the sites they are sending traffic to. It will show uniques by counting IP's sent to the sites.

Statistics broken down to uniques, signups, sign up ratio per site, and which processor it used for the transaction.


URL code generation for affiliates so they cannot make mistakes.

It shows them referral (where the traffic is coming from) and how many sign ups that source has generated.

The statistics page also shows the earnings for this pay period by "a per sign up" or percent deal.

Webmaster statistics from current pay period & up to a year history.

AND MUCH MUCH MORE

You can also read about the features here: http://www.mansionproductions.com/mpa3/features.html

:thumbsup

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

It's as simple as ABC.....

ALWAYS BE CLOSING!!

And a few more :thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup for the :thumbsup

When are you guys going to drop .com's to below $15?

nevermind.

You win the set of steak knives.

OK.... admit it.... wasn't that a better answer? (thx).

Far-L, what could some of those reasons be?

No doubt Kimmy! :thumbsup
It amazes me how many paysite owners there are that don't offer multiple billing options. :helpme
It's silly to leave money on the table like that.