NATS CCBill Paid Too Confusing - Apparently
 

So last autumn I decided to take the plunge and take advantage of the new great feature offered in NATS 4.1 - CCBill Paid Program. I'd been waiting for something like this for a long time, then boom, the chance to offer myself and affiliates the powers of NATS within a CCBill Paid program seemed like a no brainer.
People like CCBill programs because of the convenience and guaranteed payouts, etc..but I have longed for an interface like NATS to control everything from.
However, my investment is having a negative effect and it seems that too many webmasters are not grasping the concept!
I have recently requested feedback from all affiliates regarding their opinions on CCBill Paid Program within NATS, and while there are one or two affiliates who love it, there is still a very large number of sceptical affiliates who I feel just don't get it!

Has anyone else taken advantage of CCBill Paid Program with NATS and if so what are your experiences?
I confess to not being the most productive sponsor in terms of providing tons of promo updates every week, but plenty of new tools have been added every month and two thirds of our affiliates haven't even logged into NATS since being imported!

If any of our affiliates are reading this right now I strongly suggest 'use it or lose it!'
I'll be happy to save the NATS bills if I don't need it!

Bumping in case anyone missed this over the weekend.

Just curious whats makes you think that "However, my investment is having a negative effect and it seems that too many webmasters are not grasping the concept!"

Did they tell you that?

Well I sent out an affiliate newsletter a few days ago asking for their views on NATS. Still only one has come forward and said that they like / value it.
Several affiliates have simply said that they do not like NATS and one has suggested that they are unsure of a third party (NATS) controlling their CCBill links.
Still a ton of affiliates just haven't logged in.

Affiliates are converting sales via our program. Some are via FHG's pre NATS and some are on the new system. The 'negative effect' as I put it is simply me suggesting that the $150+ p/m for NATS may be better elsewhere if my CCBill affiliates do not want to use it.

What you need to do is get the options of as many of your affiliates as possible, and then weigh their opinions against their value. What your best affiliates have to say is worth more than your worst affiliates.

which people? hearing this never ceases to amaze me, in that people state their personal opinions as if its a majority opinion. No one can tell who these people are, aside from one or two other vocal parties.

for every webmaster that "only" promotes CCBill, there is one that wont touch CCBill with a ten foot pole. some wont touch MPA, some wont touch NATS, the list goes on and on.

/rant

:2 cents:

My advice is get your own Merch account and use the profit margin that you gain not paying CCbill's high rates to pay affiliates better and use NATS as it was meant to be used rather than as a marketing gimmick to get people using a CCbill/NATS hybrid.

The folks that are committed to only using CCbill like it not just because it is supposedly "shave free" (which btw is a myth) they like it because they are familiar with it and don't want to have to figure out a new system. That is most likely the reason why you aren't getting any response from your webmasters, trust me. The majority do not like change, even if it was going to make them more more just because they weigh it against the learning curve and deem it unworthy. Might be folly but it is definitely human nature.

fetish webmasters love and trust ccbill, verotel and the like.

OK, understood. However, my problem is that I'm still a CCBill program, just using NATS on the front and back end. So you would think that this would please the people who only want to promote CCBill sites and maybe a few others as well. The CCBill affiliates are my target audience but it seems that the NATS front end is scaring some away!

I hear what you are saying. A merchant account would be great. However, I'm not sure that I'm ready to start handling affiliate payout checks myself yet.
This is one of the appeals of the CCBill Program for me.
Input appreciated though.

I have the same set up at richcash.com it is a ccbill paid program.. we worked with nats to help develop out 4.1 with the ccbill paid option..

i agree there needs to be some better education on my part about it..

I know my affiliate love it because if they make a sale they will get paid.. there is no 100 or 200 dollar min to make to get a check.. they only have to update there address if they move from one place ( ccbill) not a million places.. ccbill only charges .40 to mail a check.. not the 2.50 to 5.00 a lot of other places charge..

I love the ccbill paid option and so do a lot of my affiliates.. however since it is not the normal.. i have to better educate affiliates ( which honestly I am sucking at right now) but Im planning to have some how to videos up online soon..

very true, I promote a lot of fetish sites who use CCBill and I love it...sure sometimes the ratios can be whack (I guess when CCBill turns on their SALES OFF button) but I never have to worry about getting paid or dealing with bullshit.

Thanks Rich, good to know someone is on board with the same setup.
Yes I think that maybe I need to also work harder on educating my affiliates and showing the sceptical ones the potential of the CCBill / NATS combination.

I didn't realize you were a ccbill paid program. Probably should change the default nats layout and put that on the main page so people realize it quickly. Honestly for a niche program like yours when I saw the default nats i just closed the window.

I thought that it was clear enough at http://www.cash4kicks.net/ but realize there isn't much mentioned of a CCBill program at http://nats.cash4kicks.net so I will make a point of addressing that.
Thanks.

can't you set it up to auto do ccbill payouts for all affiliats?

I like the idea of NATS with CCBill payments but I think you should be careful to allow both the use of the NATS links as well as the the refer.ccbill.com links as well. You see there are just so many things that can go wrong with a CCbill link that a lot of webmasters are suspicious when you add NATS to the mix. For instance from what I understand depending on the configuration if the sub-account or other ID is wrong CCBill will silently accept the hit from the affiliate but without giving the affiliate credit. An unscrupulous sponsor can potentially use that to their advantage. It's also probably happened by accident too because someone made a mistake. So these changes can make affiliates nervous. Many of us have seen a lot of bullshit over the years and we grow jaded!

Another thing to consider is cookies. Some tgp webmasters like to link directly to the refer.ccbill.com link to the gallery. This sets their cookie. But from what I understand nats can work differently where the cookie is not set in this way but instead upon an actual first click. At least it isn't clear to me. If it's not clear to me then it's probably not clear to some other webmasters too and it might make them think the switch will result in reduced earnings. Rightly or wrongly. So if you want to keep everyone happy make sure to allow both types of links and make sure to provide both type of links in all promo material so the webmaster can choose on their own. Then no one has an excuse to get nervous.

About your program I signed up a long time ago. You have some interesting content. I never promoted you much because I thought something was wrong. I forget what it was. Maybe only being 40% or something with the rebills not showing as giving credit. Or maybe it was just a lack of usable galleries. It was a long time ago and I forget what it was exactly (so no one go by what I am saying here because I may be confused). But I'll definitely take another look. Do you have lots of movie galleries both flash and wmv? I think maybe that was the problem at the time?

yeah Baz, Like I've told you in feedback email. Many webmasters don't want NATS programs. especially small ones.They don't want having money on dozen programs waiting minimum payout compared to ccbill way of payment.So when they see NATS , they simply go away. Maybe even if they know that you have ccbill , htey are afraid that at one moment, you will completely drop ccbill.

Personaly, last year, I ve spent months of work deleting programs using nats,mpa3 or anything else except ccbill and verotel. I just have one program promoting with nATS and because he is old friend. And it was definitely smart move for me. I am getting my money more easily. I can't fuck around with dozen programs, their rules often changed, some vxsbills or programs that I don't know will they exist next month.

Also, If you go with your own merchant account, I think it would completely drive away almost all affiliates.

That's true too. It's important to keep in mind many in these fetish niches are't active anymore with their sites. If they perceive that they have to switch links or see earnings go to nothing once switched they are likely to just disable all the galleries or blog links entirely. Especially in these times many might not think it's worth the hassle of switching links unless you are a great converter. It's important to keep ccbill in some capacity with the same working links if you want to keep all of your existing affiliates. Whenever I have to switch links it's a black mark to me against that sponsor. I don't like it and I remember it for a long time.

@Ed Hammer. We already have CCBill handling all payouts. That sort of question if one of the reasons I've started this thread!

Regarding changing links, etc..The program will generate sales for affiliates using old / traditional CCBill links as well as NATS style links. Normal CCBill links will simply just not be tracked in NATS.
I don't see any way in the CCBill / NATS setup that error could occur resulting in non credit of sales, unless the affiliate entered their affiliate ID wrong.
The NATS referral links must go through a redirect script which has the CCBill link codes with account ID etc..and then spits them out in the traditional NATS format. This script is setup and tested by Too Much Media.
All affiliates should then see the hits registering in their admin. If you don't see the hits registering then you can question the setup of the re-direct script or whether you are actually sending any traffic!

Regarding the content I'm offering. Its predominantly mixed FHG's with a selection of hosted flv's and movie embeds. I always ask affiliates what they want in news letters and try to accommodate if I can. If you requested hosted wmv's then you'v got it.
The only thing I'm not prepared to offer is movies without watermarks which femdomdestiny asked me for this week.

Femdomdestiny you keep going on about affiliates not wanting NATS programs, which again is proving my point on here. I'm not a NATS program. I'm a CCBill program using NATS as a tool to simply use for stats and tools. I think this has been clearly explained in my mail blasts more than once.

I will re-iterate to all affiliates that if I do stay using NATS it will always be using CCBill paid program for the foreseeable future. Getting a merchant account is just too much hassle for me right now.

Thanks again for any constructive feedback.