CCBillTools or NATS for a new paysite?
 

I've made up my mind to go NATS, just looking for more feedback from people that know better.

Should the newb start on CCBillTools first or just go full balls with NATS?

comments & heckling are welcome.

Full balls with NATS.

ccbilltools cause I have no idea who you are and I would not trust anyone i don't know to promote them on Nats.. CCBill is the most trusted billing out there.

I feel the real issue is how you feel about cutting your own checks and doing the accounting that you may have to do with NATS.

My sites are CCBill because I feel using NATS would seriously affect my ability to waste all my time on a beach in Thailand. If I ever move back to the world I would consider NATS tho..

interesting...but if i decide to start off CCBill, im worried graduating to NATS would be a huge pain in the ass. all my affiliates would have to change their codes right?

im most concerned about helping my affiliates sell my content. I expect to cut large checks when the time comes. This is one of the most important decisions i will make with my business. it needs to be right the 1st time.

No, old codes can still work after you switch to NATS if done correctly. I know several programs that have done this.

Well in that case I might consider NATS for the multiprocessor cascading if for no other reason. You then have the potential to use your own merchant account or a processor with lower fees and it can save you a lot of money in the long run. This is the main attraction of NATS to me, you have a lot of flexibility in this area.

As with others in this thread I have issues with sponsors running backends and I almost never touch them unless someone I know is vouching for them. So maybe running with CCBill at first is a good move to build awareness and trust.

All of your answers can be found here...

http://www.slidism.org

NATS Is nats :)

God do i hate Sarah Palin. A really deep hatred. Dowd has an excellent op ed. "narcissistic personality disorder." She seriously thinks quitting her job will position her for a POTUS run. Shes batshit crazy.

ccbill would be better

because?

You almost made me look up POTUS. Heh. And I agree with all your points. :2 cents:

Actually the best would be CCBill cascading with epoch. That way you still have the cascading that you would get with NATS but you don't have to cut checks and the affiliates would trust ccbill more hence a lot more affiliates from the start.

Some people say ccbill has a high transaction fee starting out at 14.5% but if you expect to be BIG then you should expect to get the 13.5, 12.5%, or lower as your weekly volume goes up

nats:
- unstable payouts (especially newbie programs fail on that);
- bigger shave possibilities;
- mess with hidden x-sells and other shady tactics (major x-sells players and other scam are nats based);
so if you'd like to run any of these you can use nats for sure.

i can state that there're too many scamming programs on nats, that's why i really don't like it. the idea was great, but the matter of fact is that it's screwed

ccbill is the thing many webmasters rely on and it'll be much more easy for you to get <real ones> affiliates for your ccbill program rather than nats

ccbill is solid, that's why there's no matter who runs a program if it's ccbill based.

just start with ccbill and you'll see how it works for you. i bet you'll spend much less time on that and your total spendings will be much lower and profit most likely even bigger

In your first post you say Nats or CCBtools. I think you mean Nats or CCBill.
CCBtools is an affiliate back end to host tools,like banners, tgp and mgp's they do not take care of billing issues at all.
That said the choice is yours.
Nats and CCbill are completly different animals and it will come down to your abilities, programing, technical and ability to secure a merchant account to use with NATS.
As a new pr0gram I would go the easy route with CCbill get set up run it for a bit and see if you need a seperate tour for NATS down the road.

nats, or even custom

nats, i think

thank you to those that are giving good feedback.

at this point, i have no reputation. so i can understand how CCBill gives affiliates assurance they will get their cut. But credibility is something i need to build in any event. I'd prefer using a program upfront that best services my affiliate network, & is able to grow with my business. I have heard feedback that NATS is the best & CCBill is not suited for big programs. Is it true CCBill is not suited for big business? My goal is to succeed not to fail so i dont want an affiliate backend thats limited to newbs.

my consigliere says i should do CCBill because its cheaper, simpler & affiliates trust them. But NATS seems to provide more flexibility & stats. I would strongly prefer learning & mastering 1 program & grow with it as opposed to one day finding I am outgrowing CCBill & then i have endure a conversion that im certain will not be seamless.

Please give me more food for thought! Thank you.

my program puts most so called big programs to shame volume wise and I have been using ccbill epoch for almost a decade without nats

there is no doubt that without nats you will be missing out on many affiliates and you wont have proper control over billing, but everyone needs to start somewhere, so my advice is (as many people here already said) start with ccbill or epoch or both tweak your program get some affiliates and then decide.

I am starting a new program within 2 weeks that will use nats but its much of my same content but simply separate so old affiliates dont have to change anything and I can run those sites separate.

As far as cutting checks, nats now has webmasterchecks.com built in meaning you just export it all to them and let them do the work, so far I only read positive about them.

CCBtools is your ad management system for a CCBill driven program. It completes CCBill truly making it so you don't really need NATS.

No worries though, you can't out grow CCBill. More than enough CCBill only sites that dwarf 99% of the NATS driven sites. FTVCash is bigger than 99% of the NATS programs and is ran on CCBill.

With CCBill, the 'hard work and extra b.s.' is taken care of for you. You have more time to spend making your members happy and more time to learn more skills.

With NATS, if you don't know it or already have some very serious webmaster skills, you will spend 6 months to a year (at least) learning the system. Once you reach the PPS status of $30+ per signup, it's time to move onto an advanced system that can geo-auto-cascade, xsales, manage exits, better aff management, etc. OR if you run multi-products and want it all under one roof.


I will always recommend newer paysite owners start on CCBill and "add in" NATS at a later date, you can run them both together.

Once you have CCBTools with it, you pretty much have all the goodies you need. Giving you more time to focus on your members...

spend some more time on your research
you got some things wrong

i do feel like the info i am working off to decide this is sketchy. I have not used either program. hence i started this thread. great feedback so far & thank you for your thoughts as well. the CCBill camp is persuasive. I like the idea of starting CCBill & using Epoch as a cascade.

Shap did a thread in 2006 where he said you have to go with the specialty program.

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=558484

"We paid a few thousand dollars and bought an affiliate software program called Partnersoft. That small investment was key. I’m shocked when I see large sites like Ftv Girls using Ccbill affiliate program. The tracking is NO WHERE near the same. Affiliate software is designed to track sales. Ccbill affiliate program is just something they offer for companies to get started that don't have the money to spend on affiliate software. It is not designed for huge programs. The same with Paycom. They specialize in PROCESSING! Let them process and use a software that specializes in TRACKING! This single piece of advice could be the most valuable advice any paysite owner will ever read. TRUST ME! The investment is between 5k and 20k and I guarantee it will pay itself off within a few months. I am absolutely positive that if you use an affiliate software YOUR AFFILIATES will see more sales than they would with Ccbill or Paycom."

i know its not 2006 anymore & CCBill is better since then. But he is persuasive as well. after all he is where i want to be.

Just to note... Shap doesn't use Partnersoft anymore and he would be a program owner trying to move trust onto his backend. You can find posts with me doing the same thing.

And ccbill, epoch, nats, mpa, and many other standalone backends have all been cross tested to death and back. Not a single one of them stand out strong. Some webmasters like A, other like B, and some like Z and will never touch A. That loop never stops.

Don't get caught up in marketing hype..

Nats for sure. You can not even compare the two

NATS is a LOT of work and a lot of things can go wrong very easy. It's a powerful system but if I had to do it all over again, I would probably go with CCbill only and use Epoch in the new ccbill cascade option. I say this because my time is better spent shooting content and not worrying about the endless little problems that can go wrong with something as complex as NATS. It's EASY to screw something up or mess your numbers up if you forgot to input data into just one place.

With that said, if you have someone who has the time and know how to deal with NATS, go for it. But if you are a one man show or small company just getting started, you may get in over your head.

Start with CCBill. Once you earn eveyrone's trust, you can switch to NATS.

you people in the GFY community really kick some ass. its just fucking GOLD, getting all your insights. Thank you again. Feedback here has persuaded me away from NATS & to CCBill with Epoch as a backup biller. If the NATS backers want to tell me why this is wrong please reply.

Going with CCBill and Epoch as backup processor is a good decision. At least if you are starting a program and especially if your financial resources are restricted.

CCBill is a well known and honorable company. Nobody has to worry about payments, neither you nor your affiliates. CCBill service is free of charge, well it´s included in their commission. But you needn´t invest in an additional affiliate software.

While NATS as well as MPA3 are great products for sure, an investment in those software solutions only makes sence if you really need what the software provides and - of course - your investment has to redeem. So using the software has to increase sales and I can´t find verifiable reasons so far.

There will always be affiliates who won´t use your program going with CCBill wihtout NATS or MPA3 and the other way round. So this shouldn´t bother you.

So in my opinion using CCBill is the way to go, at least for beginners. Much more important than a third party affiliate software is a well done members area which will keep the customers. Both - NATS and MPA3 - do not offer a CMS in their affiliate software. So there is no advantage using them so far.

If your site will run smoothly and sales run in, you can always decide to use an affiliate software later.

All this has pointed out above and I only want to support your decision.:2 cents:

You forgot something or its only me? People like epass and its not possible to pay via epassporte with ccbill.

This is true. And there are other advantages NATS - and MPA3 - provide, of course. But being a program owner you have to handle the affiliate payments and affiliates have to trust in you. Once you have earned their trust, using an affiliate software might be OK. An epassporte payout option doesn´t compensate it.

What about Zombaio? We're moving all our business over to them this week. We are small, and are really tired of paying out 14.5% and 5% for a 6 month retainer. Those charges really add up. Zombaio charges only 4.9% and no hold back. Plus no visa start up fees, and no visa annual fees. It's really quite amazing. Again, we are small and don't add up to much, but in this economy and massive shrinking sales in online porn, it doesn't make sense shelling out 19.5% a month for sales. Plus our affiliates will make more with Zombaio, so they should be happier also.

In my opinion, if you have many sites. It is much easier for me as an affiliate using nats. especially the campaign management piece.

You can move to NATS at any time, so if you start slow with CCbtools or something like them, it will be no hassle to move over to the big leagues.

Doh!

John makes a valid point. Some guys like epass. A lot of foreign webmasters need epass. NATS can make that happen, CCbill can not.

Though, CCbill needs to get with the times and integrate with epass if it's possible. It's 2009 bitches!!!!

I'm obviously extremely biased, but I wanted to throw a small comment in.

You should really take a very close look at the differences between reselling your sites thru a processor's backend, or running your own affiliate program. There are a lot of advantages to using a full affiliate software. You don't have to use all of the features off the start and you can keep it simple at the beginning and expand it as you see fit. "Do it once, do it right" applies here.

I'm not simply saying NATS, but any dedicated back end that allows you to run your program, own your data, use the processors you want, configure things how you see fit, move to something else at your will, and control your own business has clear advantages over being a part of a limited, controlled system. These systems would include NATS, MPA3, Executive Stats, and many other systems.

The features of these systems also go well beyond the advantage of simply using a processor's reseller system and I highly recommend you take a very close look at what these systems do before committing yourself. We would of course be more than happy to show you NATS close up as I'm sure the makers of the other systems would be for theirs.

I wish my other network of sites wasnt running windows, after going thru the nats system at least part of it ill def down the road do that for my other network too.

Props to your team for doing the install on time and the detailed walk thru, looking forward using it for my new network

I recently launched a paysite network of (3) exclusive sites... so, I may be able to save you some time and effort with a quick bit about my experiences using CCBill and NATS so far.

I started out using CCBill straight up. No problems at all. They are easy people to work with, completely trustworthy and have a helpful support team. However, you will quickly find that the back-end of CCBill is cumbersome and inexplicably poorly designed (I have no idea why they have not updated it from a usability standpoint). If you have ever used the affiliate side of the CCBill back-end you know what to expect as a client. Links that are far less than intuitive, millions of 'extra clicks' that should not be needed, slow lackluster and overly complicated software overall. That being said, many webmasters are used to CCBill and trust CCBill - as do many surfers. There are many webmasters who have told me point blank that they will not promote a program unless they know you personally or know they are being paid by a trusted third party like CCBill. So unless you have affiliates already sending you traffic without CCBill... plan on using CCBill to start no matter what.

On the other hand, you will also find that many other affiliates won't promote a CCBill program and demand NATS or MPA or their favorite flavor of the month stats system because NATS has far superior stats and tracking capabilities for program owners and affiliates alike. The software is infinitely better and things that take 10 minutes to do in CCBill take 10 clicks to do in NATS. That being said, the support from NATS is far weaker than the support from CCBill. One answers your calls on the third ring 24/7 and walks you through whatever you need... the other expects emailed trouble tickets and they get back to you when they get back to you. Most webmasters who like NATS have told me they prefer NATS 3.0 not NATS 4.0 because while 4.0 added a ton of new tools it also became far less simple to use. NATS 3 has a simple, elegantly designed report page that NATS 4 inexplicably fails to offer. I have been told by the owner of NATS that they will soon be releasing a 'simple theme' for NATS 4 that will emulate the simplicity of NATS 3, but I have not been given any ETA on when that will be released.

Right now I am planning on either running NATS 4 with the payments being generated directly by CCBill as a hybrid of the best of both, or planning to run both side by side with my affiliates able to choose one or the other depending on which they prefer. Keep in mind, this doesn't even begin to take into account cascading billing or alternate payment processors.

As an overhead cost, the smallest program package offered by NATS runs $150 a month, and CCBill charges 14.5% to the smallest programs it handles. So running NATS through CCBill or side by side will cost you $150 + 14.5% of each sale per month to start out. That means if you charge $20-30 per month for each sale and don't offer trials, you would need about 6-8 sales/rebills a month just to cover the cost of your stats and processing. That doesn't include the $750 fee to accept visa, the few hundred bucks a month you can expect for hosting, the cost of content and updates, the payouts to any affiliates who do send you traffic and so on.... Plan on spending thousands not hundreds if you decide to launch some sites. The people who plan on spending hundreds are out of business before they even get a chance to be in business.

Feel free to contact me on ICQ# 266942896 if you do launch some sites, there are several ways I can help you, including sending high quality affiliate traffic and helping you to use the review site submitter on webmasterscore.com to send your sites out for review by 60+ review sites. :2 cents:

hey alphasky, hope you are getting some success with your network. I like the Zombaio rate as well. i had a thought of using a NATS backend with zombaio as the primary biller, CCBill on down as a cascade. I haven't read any good feedback on this board regarding their affiliate, so i would only use them with NATS.

But even then, as a porn consumer, knowing CCBill is processing my payment gives me comfort that my card is not going to get banged. i have declined to subscribe to sites where the biller has no reputation. although 14% is not a cheap billing rate vs a merchant account or zombaio, CCBill does have the trust of both consumers & affiliates. that is critical in a business full of slim shadys.

Relentless...thank you for your time in giving me detailed feedback. i was hoping someone who worked with both would describe exactly what you did. The issue of the support between the programs has not been brought up & this is also a critical part of a decision. I bookmarked your sites & ICQ for future discussion when my site is in the final days to launch, looks to be August.