Originally Posted by movieguy

This can be a long discussion, but a CMS is content management, so it handles what type of content the user has access to, eg. gold, silver, trial, pay per view.
NATS would handle HOW the user is billed and how much money you make (what each member is worth, which countries perform the best, etc).

For example, user is from Germany:
NATS gives him euro price, and sends him to correct biller. Tells the CMS - hey, this guy bought this certain access level and paid.
CMS then knows what to show him. Doesn't have to worry about tracking where he is from or the money.

Additionally, the majority of your sales will be type-ins/direct, BUT that traffic is generated by promoting your content on sites like tubes, which will only promote your content, if they can get a small chance of earning a sale. They require affiliate sales tracking and NATS is the best game in town.

You don't need NATS. If you use a biller like CCbill and Verotel.com, they come with affiliate tracking. But their systems are very basic, and you'll want to be able to use other IPSPs such as Epoch, which offer paypal subscriptions and granular control of the billing.