| More sponsor programs running only on CCBill are turning to NATS. Why? Is it good or bad? Who is it good for? Affiliates, sponsors or both? I mean, it must be better than using only CCBill for at least the sponsors, to have them migrating enmasse to NATS. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of both.
First of all, it would be fair to explain that NATS provides cascading billing to sponsors, which includes CCBill, Epoch, IBill and many other billing providers.Which means that surfers have the option of signing up using CCBill or any of the others, wheras if you're using only CCbill, that leaves out a hole in your billing options. Plus it makes you totally dependant on CCBill, which in these uncertain times, is really not advisable. Let's take a look at setting up the affiliate program. Can't say I've done it for NATS, but I have done it for CCBill, so I know exactly what it means. It's easy as cake, so long as you don't screw up while providing them with the necessary data. You don't have to buy anything, you don't pay for software, etc. The only thing you do pay for is VISA approval. Which you would have to do with any billing provider. So it's not really a negative. Wheras with NATS, first you have to buy the frigging software and their services or lease it. The rest, ease of use, installation, support, etc. comes after that.
Next up, let's look at what it means to the affiliates. Personally speaking, there's no way any other system comes close to beating CCBill. There's a couple like Verotel which provide unified stats for all your sponsors, like CCBill. There's NATS which provides ease of use and management of the promo section. But at the end of the day, CCBill beats all of them hands down. There's nothing remotely satisfying as the CCBill checks that land up in the mail. But leaving aside all this, the ace in the pack, which is owned by CCBill, is the fact that you can decide your own URL's. Meaning that with CCBill, an affiliate can decide, based on his own judgement, which page of a sponsors's site he should direct his surfers to.
Here's a couple of examples where this is supremely important:
- You have a great new site from a sponsor. The promo content is good. You make a gallery. You link the banner directly to the join page, instead of to the tour or home page. I cannot stress the huge difference in conversion rates this makes, because the site is good, and by linking directly to the join page, you reduce one or more clicks needed to get the surfer to join.
- Sometimes sponsors wait until a site is VISA approved before making an official launch on the boards. But if you happen to find out about the site, you can start promoting it, since you have the URL already. That's not possible with NATS. I've found that this really places you ahead of the pack, because by the time the site is officialy released, your galleries for the site are well indexed and sitting at the top in the search engines.
So, back to the question. Which one is better? Far as affiliates are concerned, I think there is really no question that CCBill wins. Far as sponsors go, it's a bit of a gray area kinda thing. You give up the high conversions which CCBill URL's seem to have, in exchange for more control over the whole program. With CCbill, sponsors really have no control over anything, other than updating, promoting and launching new sites. Good or bad? Time will tell, but as of now, the NATS are winning the game.
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