Are These New Piece Of Shit Options Now Standard In NATS? [Archive]

Greenguy

2006-12-01, 12:23 AM

As everyone knows, I'm doing another stats run. So far, I've seen a couple of sponsors - Dee Cash, Jason and Alex & Jugg Cash stick in my head - that shows the stats in a different manner.

The 1st thing is that they have 2 separate tables - one has the each sites hits & signups, the table under that has each sites sign-ups & money. Since when is it a good idea to confuse the affiliate by putting these 2 totals in different areas?

The 2nd thing is really fucking stupid & I think it's just an option to make you think that you're making more money - which genius decided to show the affiliate the total dollar amount of the transaction & not just the affiliate cut?

Looking at it real quick, I see that Jugfuckers.com had 3 total sales for $77.85. But that's not correct, because on the very bottom of the page, there's totals for Gross Income, processing/Credits/Chargebacks and Your Split. So that $77.85 is really $40 or so ($26/sale down to $14/sale)

Stop with the fucking useless updates just to release a new version of the product!

You want to improve things? Tell me which sign-ups recurred how many times & give me a per-member dollar amount for each member - that'd fucking impress me.

The more I look at NATS, the more I like CCBill.

Greenguy

2006-12-01, 12:34 AM

SheepGuy

2006-12-01, 12:38 AM

Newbie question but. Where can you find stats for all of your NATS sponsors? I am sort of new to dealing with them.
Piece of cake with CCBill

Toby

2006-12-01, 12:55 AM

Toby

2006-12-01, 12:56 AM

Newbie question but. Where can you find stats for all of your NATS sponsors? I am sort of new to dealing with them.
Piece of cake with CCBillThere is no centralized site where you can check all of your NATS sponsors in one place. You have to log in to each sponsors affiliate admin. That's the main reason I use StatsRemote. It retrieves my basic sales stats automatically for all my sponsors.

Chop Smith

2006-12-01, 03:28 AM

..and while I'm at it, Jugg Cash - 24% for processing? (not credits & not chargebacks, because I've only had 1 & I took that dollar amount out before I did the math)

You should tell people that the 60% is really 46% |thumb

As I said, someone has to pay for a script to provide you with that valuable information.

From a statement of 60% down to an actual 46%, should be a crime.

Lets see, a program that pays you $14.97 on $29.95 (50%) is actually paying you 58.45% after a 14.5% CCbill cut? Yep you must be paying 9.5% on each sale for that valuable information. Try taking that information to the bank or better yet try to pay your barber for a shave with your valuable info.

Don't you just hate that .39 stamp charge from CCBill?

virgohippy

2006-12-01, 04:17 AM

You want to improve things? Tell me which sign-ups recurred how many times & give me a per-member dollar amount for each member - that'd fucking impress me.

Yeah!!! |angry|

I don't bother with most NATS programs... focusing on CCBill sites makes my life so much easier. :D

Fonz

2006-12-01, 04:41 AM

DangerDave

2006-12-01, 06:38 AM

DangerDave said:-

09/03/2005 - "Everyone hates NATS! cause it sucks!"
14/08/2005 - "I fukin hate NATS!"
01/12/2005 - "NATS = the natural enemy of the hard-working webmaster"
26/05/2006 - "NATS is a gimic/toy for program owners"
09/07/2006 - "NATS sucks!"
26/11/2006 - "That piece of shit that is Nats.. wont dump the free sites.."

.. and don't even talk to me about the fucking stupid timeouts everyone sets!! Sheesh!

DD

Linkster

2006-12-01, 08:16 AM

More importantly - that listing of fees also includes the built in error that NATs has where in the site by site listing you show a rebill at full price - but when the surfer cancels but decides to take the lower offer (which some sponsors do) it still gets added in the top list as a full price rebill - but then gets subtracted out as part of the "processing fees". Thats why places like Deecash will show sometimes a 50% proc fee for a period - all the rebills are cancelling but then taking their "second chance offer"
Greenie - that would probably explain that change in percentage youre seeing on that one company as it wouldnt be a chargeback - and NAts just always shows it as the full month rebill price even though it really wasnt

This is just another reason Ive often considered just pulling all sponsors that use Nats - too easy to play with the numbers

nibbler

2006-12-01, 10:36 AM

..and while I'm at it, Jugg Cash - 24% for processing? (not credits & not chargebacks, because I've only had 1 & I took that dollar amount out before I did the math)

You should tell people that the 60% is really 46% |thumb

I had a similiar incident I got a recur at $24.95 but in the Processing/Credits/Chargebacks section, it showed $16.95. So I got a 60% split of $8.00. Of course, it peaked my interest since it couldn't been a chargeback and processing fees are much lower. So I hit up support and was told that the member was about to cancel and they enticed him to stay with a discounted rate.

Jeez, talk about a Walmart sized discount |huh

jonnydoe

2006-12-01, 10:46 AM

Juggcash is now off my sponsor list...Thanks Greenie. Too bad those girls have nice titties ;-)

Greenguy

2006-12-01, 10:55 AM

Juggcash is now off my sponsor list...I pulled them as well, but that was based on the per click & per member totals (which you'll see in the next stats run)

The 24% thing was just a big WTF, but I doubt that extra money would have made a difference in my decision to pull them.

Linkster

2006-12-01, 11:08 AM

emmanuelle

2006-12-01, 11:27 AM

blah blah blah valuable information blah blah blah blah crime blah blah blah blah blah blah shave

Something you're trying to say there Chop? :D

Don't you just hate that .39 stamp charge from CCBill?

Even the $2 check writing fee from Epoch looks good!

plateman

2006-12-01, 11:44 AM

for a long time now, my thinking of having sponsors on my LL to give more and new choices for the surfers, is over, now my new model is to have sponsors who have good surport for me and will bend over backwards to help me and offer a good product for the surfers

sponsors that show only 2nd and 3rd uniques, have shit promo tools, or a attuide of they are better at what they think we should have from them, is a crap way of thinking, or programs that show a sale then wait days for the money to show in your stats after fraud checks

lets face it there are way to many good programs out there that always have new sites and promo tools coming out and seem to track uniques decent, plus have nice bonus days....

some of these older or fucked way of doing stuff programs out there, I am just gonna delete them from my sites, even if I been wating for that 1 more sale to get a check

also programs who had mpa stats and went to nats, I've made less in sales after the switch

nibbler

2006-12-01, 01:52 PM

nibbler - thats the problem is that Nats doesnt allow showing that discounted rate - so your stats show a full membership bought for 29.95 or whatever - and they really only paid 4.95 and that difference is the variation in the processing fee percentages
Of course that said - that also makes you rely on the sponsor to be open about really happening (your trust of them) and that they dont use that as a method of "keeping a little extra for themselves" - its a big hole in the reporting in Nats as far as Im concerned

Linkster - I misspoke in my previous post. I said I had a recur at $24.95. I meant I had a rebill at $24.95, but I definitely hear what you're saying :D

Senator_x

2006-12-01, 02:40 PM

Lots of NATS hater in here.

I gonna go through my sponsor list to check out these NATS stats since most of my stats come from StatsRemote.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 06:50 PM

Hi everyone.

John from NATS here.

To address Greenie's points first.

1) the way in which NATS client display stats to their affiliates is up to them. I agree some programs do it in ways that I never would but everyone has different ideas. As long as the programs are showing the correct data and not misleading or lying their affiliates we have no problem with how they show it.

2) The Juggcash problem is a problem with our integration of Paycom's lower subscription price offer on cancel. This is a known problem and we should have it fixed soon. You're right, its a bad problem to have and we should have a fix to it in a few days.

I'm sorry you feel our updates "fucking useless" but we try to release updates to the software on a regular basis rather than one huge release over a longer period of time.

We are ALWAYS open to feedback from our clients as well as their affiliates. We value it and do our best to make sure everyone enjoys their experience with our software. You (and anyone) are always welcome to contact us with questions or to offer suggestions or feedback whether it is positive or negative.

It just seems some people don't wish to do that. They would rather curse, scream, complain, and insult on message boards than be constructive and work with us to improve their experience. I know you've been in this industry a long time and I'm sure you have the experience to offer valuable input. I would hope that you could work with us rather than just get on a soap box and throw insults and "fuck this" "fuck that" type complaints.

DangerDave, the same thing applies to you. Perhaps you would have better results contacting us and telling us what you dislike rather than posting that "Everyone hates NATS!" or that "its a gimmick/toy" every few months.

To the contrary, most affiliates I speak with like and enjoy the program. It is very difficult to please everyone all of the time but we try our best. It is up to the unhappy people to put forth some effort and contact us (we are VERY reachable) to offer some suggestions and explain their problems rather than take the angle of posting a thread here or on another board screaming about issues that they have never tried to contact us about.

On a lighter note (thanks to feedback from affiliates) we are developing a standard NATS affiliate template set which will be included as a skin in all NATS programs. This will both provide NATS clients a very clean and well put together stats template to start with (or use forever) and a way for affiliates to get a familiar view of their stats that will not be confusing to them. Due to the amount of flexibility and options NATS offers this can be quite difficult but we are working on it. When its done I'm sure it won't be 100% perfect but feedback from people will help us get it there a lot faster than just saying "it sucks" because you're frustrated by something.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 06:58 PM

Also,

In repsonse to the post about being able to see all of your NATS stats in one place like CCBill.

CCBill is a processor. They process the transactions and offer an affiliate solution to their clients.

NATS is a software product. It is a backend affiliate programs run regardless of the processor they are using.

This is the reason why CCBill can show you all of your stats together and NATS can not. NATS programs are fully independent of each other where as with CCBill they are all really reselling "CCBill" transactions. It is also the reason why checks for NATS programs can not be combined like CCBill programs can.

I understand a lot of people don't fully understand what NATS is or how it works. We are always happy to answer anyone's questions or concenrs, you just need to contact us.

We post a lot over at "that other big board" (and you can't imagine the headaches that come from some of the people on there, lol). I will try to be around here more often to answer people's questions here also should they come up.

We are also always reachable by email, icq, or by calling our office. Full contact info can be found at http://www.toomuchmedia.com/corporate/contact.html

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 06:59 PM

nibbler - thats the problem is that Nats doesnt allow showing that discounted rate - so your stats show a full membership bought for 29.95 or whatever - and they really only paid 4.95 and that difference is the variation in the processing fee percentages
Of course that said - that also makes you rely on the sponsor to be open about really happening (your trust of them) and that they dont use that as a method of "keeping a little extra for themselves" - its a big hole in the reporting in Nats as far as Im concerned

It is not as much as a hole as one might assume (and rightfully so) because the problem is limited to the stats display. Payouts are still built correctly. You are right tho in that it is a stupid problem to have and it will be fixed soon.

[BV]

2006-12-01, 07:14 PM

The more I look at NATS, the more I like CCBill.

I'm going to have to agree with you on that. I've never used NATS as a sponsor but I have used it as an affiliate and sometimes it can be a bit confusing.

On my BVCash program I have a custom coded affiliate script that we mainly implemented for cascade billing purposes, BUT on my new program (BME) I decided to just use CCBill's affiliate script because based on my data cascade billing is just over rated.

Plus CCBill now counts uniques visitors (if the sponsor activates it) and not just raw clicks plus they are coming out with a new version soon that will have campaign tracking amongst other things. The merge feature is also a big plus that attracts affiliates to push CCBill sites! No way to take advantage of that with NATS.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 07:29 PM

;316561']I'm going to have to agree with you on that. I've never used NATS as a sponsor but I have used it as an affiliate and sometimes it can be a bit confusing.

On my BVCash program I have a custom coded affiliate script that we mainly implemented for cascade billing purposes, BUT on my new program (BME) I decided to just use CCBill's affiliate script because based on my data cascade billing is just over rated.

Plus CCBill now counts uniques visitors (if the sponsor activates it) and not just raw clicks plus they are coming out with a new version soon that will have campaign tracking amongst other things. The merge feature is also a big plus that attracts affiliates to push CCBill sites! No way to take advantage of that with NATS.

The problem with cascading with a simple script rather than a full affiliate package such as NATS or MPA and having the processors do the payouts is that you will not be paying your affiliates what they see in stats all of the time. Say an affiliate makes 20 sales on CCBill and 1 on Paycom as your secondary. They will receive a check from CCBill for the 20 and no check from paycom as they did not meet the minimum. Their checks will not match their stats and will cause confusion. There are other problems also but this is the most obvious.

As far as the benefits of cascading I typically see gains of 10% to 20% on our clients. With very few if any not seeing 10% of their sales coming from their secondary processor. If you didn't see a gain like that then I would assume that something was not working quite as it should.

The benefits of NATS go well beyond cascading. Because of Mansion's hyping of their product as a "cascading system" when they launched many people began to confuse 3rd party affiliate systems with a "cascading script". NATS (and other products) go well beyond cascading. Simple cascading can be achieved by simply pointing your processors denial URL at the second processor. This is not even a script (and not recommended also of course).

The point is NATS is a very advanced system which goes well beyond cascading. It is not a "script". It is an entire affiliate backend with numerous features and benefits. Can you run a successful program without something like NATS? Of course, many people have and many people will. That doesn't mean there are many benefits from doing so. If there weren't, hundreds of people would not be using our product.

The combination of checks issue was address above. And yes, some affiliates do prefer it. However, I fear for those affiliates (and those affiliate programs) should CCBill ever go out of business. I don't see any reason why that would happen but it has to other processors before. With a product like NATS or MPA you can spread your eggs around and quickly have another processor in place. When you are 100% dependent upon a processor for your program to exist you are putting an awful lot of faith in them and assuming an awful lot of risk.

Linkster

2006-12-01, 07:34 PM

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 07:37 PM

I guess I have a big misunderstanding here - I have quite a few programs that I promote that use ccbill and paycomm at the same time as a backup - I dont get seperate checks from them - thats handled by the sponsor - its the sponsors minimum I have to meet not ccbills or paycoms
So using that example of 20 sales and 1 sale gives me an uneasy feeling of your understanding of sponsor programs???

I said when the processors handle the payouts. Someone who has a full custom backend and does their own payouts is the same as someone running NATS. There are people who will buy $50 scripts that will send someone to processor B when processor A denies the customer and they have both processors issue checks. That is the situation I was referring to.

I have been in this industry since 1996. My understanding of affiliate programs is just fine, no need to feel uneasy about it.

Linkster

2006-12-01, 07:44 PM

It is not as much as a hole as one might assume (and rightfully so) because the problem is limited to the stats display. Payouts are still built correctly. You are right tho in that it is a stupid problem to have and it will be fixed soon.

I guess Im an old-fashioned guy that just likes to see accurate numbers then - although I do have a hard time with the fixing soon part as I first reported this to Deecash a year ago and they said they were working with you to fix it - then I reported it again through them in Aug this year and again their response was that they were working with you on it

Linkster

2006-12-01, 07:48 PM

In answer to your statement about someone using the two processors with separate checks - I can only think of one program that does that - and have for at least 6 or 7 years - and I think I use a little over 300 sponsors but I suppose someone out there could be doing their own cascading
So again - Im still a little uneasy since you seem to use that as a major selling point and really emphasize the issue - when it doesnt seem to be an issue?

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 07:50 PM

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 07:51 PM

I guess Im an old-fashioned guy that just likes to see accurate numbers then - although I do have a hard time with the fixing soon part as I first reported this to Deecash a year ago and they said they were working with you to fix it - then I reported it again through them in Aug this year and again their response was that they were working with you on it

Again, as I said in my first post. You can contact us directly with any concerns you have.

Linkster

2006-12-01, 08:06 PM

Not being a hater here - but yes you did bring it up :)

The problem with cascading with a simple script rather than a full affiliate package such as NATS or MPA and having the processors do the payouts is that you will not be paying your affiliates what they see in stats all of the time. Say an affiliate makes 20 sales on CCBill and 1 on Paycom as your secondary. They will receive a check from CCBill for the 20 and no check from paycom as they did not meet the minimum. Their checks will not match their stats and will cause confusion. There are other problems also but this is the most obvious.

As far as the benefits of cascading I typically see gains of 10% to 20% on our clients. With very few if any not seeing 10% of their sales coming from their secondary processor. If you didn't see a gain like that then I would assume that something was not working quite as it should.

The benefits of NATS go well beyond cascading. Because of Mansion's hyping of their product as a "cascading system" when they launched many people began to confuse 3rd party affiliate systems with a "cascading script". NATS (and other products) go well beyond cascading. Simple cascading can be achieved by simply pointing your processors denial URL at the second processor. This is not even a script (and not recommended also of course).

The point is NATS is a very advanced system which goes well beyond cascading. It is not a "script". It is an entire affiliate backend with numerous features and benefits. Can you run a successful program without something like NATS? Of course, many people have and many people will. That doesn't mean there are many benefits from doing so. If there weren't, hundreds of people would not be using our product.

The combination of checks issue was address above. And yes, some affiliates do prefer it. However, I fear for those affiliates (and those affiliate programs) should CCBill ever go out of business. I don't see any reason why that would happen but it has to other processors before. With a product like NATS or MPA you can spread your eggs around and quickly have another processor in place. When you are 100% dependent upon a processor for your program to exist you are putting an awful lot of faith in them and assuming an awful lot of risk.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 08:12 PM

Not being a hater here - but yes you did bring it up :)

BV brought it up when mentioning he put in a script to do cascading. My post you quoted was in response to his. My apologies if my trying to provide a detailed explanation to him came off to you as me touting it as a "major feature"

I wouldn't doubt your "being a hater" has something to do with the fact that you use our competitors product. But don't worry, I don't expect you to actually have a constructive conversation with me. I expect you to just keep spitting things back at me and twisting it as you have been.

Linkster

2006-12-01, 08:24 PM

Preacher

2006-12-01, 08:24 PM

Man did you ever pick the wrong month to pop-up. You'll have to excuse my tone, I'm normally not so confrontational, but see my income has been affected so I'm a tad on edge.

I understand a lot of people don't fully understand what NATS is or how it works. We are always happy to answer anyone's questions or concenrs, you just need to contact us.

We post a lot over at "that other big board" (and you can't imagine the headaches that come from some of the people on there, lol). I will try to be around here more often to answer people's questions here also should they come up.

We are also always reachable by email, icq, or by calling our office. Full contact info can be found at http://www.toomuchmedia.com/corporate/contact.html
So I'm assuming being as you have posted here you don't mind explaining to someone like me -- a vanilla flavored affiliate -- exactly how things work then. See, I'm really confused by all these fancy stats and whatchamacallits, because I thought having features for me the affiliate would equate to me making more money, but turns out -- silly me -- I was wrong. |huh

Can you please explain to me why when I'm sending the same traffic to the same sponsor from the same sources conversions suddenly nosedive when your cascade has been installed? Now I'm not one who "would rather curse, scream, complain, and insult on message boards..." without some proof for the pudding.

90 days prior to NATS
Total Raw-24154 unique-18406 sales-11 1:1673
45 days since the NATS conversion
Total Raw-21695 unique-10933 sales-1 1:10933

"As far as the benefits of cascading I typically see gains of 10% to 20% on our clients." No shit? What kinds of losses do the affiliates for those sponsors see? Now where would the extra income come from if they are paying you for the cascade? See I'm just an affiliate so maybe I'm missing something, I would think that might increase their expenses rather then raising their income.

You'll obviously know what sponsor I'm talking about, feel free to mention my issue to Arthur, he's already heard about it though.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 08:33 PM

Man did you ever pick the wrong month to pop-up. You'll have to excuse my tone, I'm normally not so confrontational, but see my income has been affected so I'm a tad on edge.

So I'm assuming being as you have posted here you don't mind explaining to someone like me -- a vanilla flavored affiliate -- exactly how things work then. See, I'm really confused by all these fancy stats and whatchamacallits, because I thought having features for me the affiliate would equate to me making more money, but turns out -- silly me -- I was wrong. |huh

Can you please explain to me why when I'm sending the same traffic to the same sponsor from the same sources conversions suddenly nosedive when your cascade has been installed? Now I'm not one who "would rather curse, scream, complain, and insult on message boards..." without some proof for the pudding.

90 days prior to NATS
Total Raw-24154 unique-18406 sales-11 1:1673
45 days since the NATS conversion
Total Raw-21695 unique-10933 sales-1 1:10933

"As far as the benefits of cascading I typically see gains of 10% to 20% on our clients." No shit? What kinds of losses do the affiliates for those sponsors see? Now where would the extra income come from if they are paying you for the cascade? See I'm just an affiliate so maybe I'm missing something, I would think that might increase their expenses rather then raising their income.

You'll obviously know what sponsor I'm talking about, feel free to mention my issue to Arthur, he's already heard about it though.

If you'd like to contact me privately please feel free to do, ICQ 5596373. Just know that I am in the Northeast and we are having really bad winds and my connection is in & out every 5 minutes.

NATS hands the customer to the biller. It does not do billing. Ratios should not be greatly effected by simply plugging NATS in. Affiliate programs often change the join process when they move to NATS (adding a pre-join form, changing the pre-join form, alterting tours, etc.) which can cause ratios to change (for better or worse) but certainly not to the extent you mentioned. Although the 11 joins in 4.5 months is a bit low to get a full grasp on how the traffic is doing. There are fluctuation and it could be just a bad dip. I have no problem taking a look at your account on that sponsor program to make sure nothing is wrong. I believe overall tho that their affiliate ratios are up. I will speak with Arthur about this on Monday. Please contact me Monday or Tuesday (if not earlier) to discuss it.

As far as the benefits of cascading...

The gains I mentioned were gross revenue gains. An extra 10% to 20% in joins which means 10% to 20% more for affiliates also. I don't quite get your point on this, but I think you misunderstood what I meant. I meant an overall 10-20% increase, not a 10-20% increase in margin for the program.

Your post didn't come off as rude or anything. People often have concerns, especially as you said when it comes to their income. I can understand being a little heated. Its when people don't provide any info and just want to say "abc sucks" or "xyz is stupid" that no one gets any help.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 08:34 PM

Well - since I dont use any scripts from either you or anyone else - dont think Im being jaded here :) Im not employed by the people in my sig :)
And as far as being confrontational and twisting things - I just want the ability as an affiliate to see my real stats - not to have to depend on a sponsor to email me my correct stats or explain why the stats dont add up - that was the only point I think most of us were trying to make

And I agreed with you and said it was a very bad problem to have and you threw it back at me twice :(

My apologies for assuming that since there was no ref code in your sig you were the owner of or related to the company.

Linkster

2006-12-01, 08:37 PM

you were the owner of the company.

I wish |jester|

Useless

2006-12-01, 08:38 PM

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 08:39 PM

I wish |jester|

Don't wish, work towards it :) (not that program specifically but one in general) One great thing about this biz is that anyone can achieve success :)

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 08:41 PM

Boy, I wish I had something truly constructive to say about NATS, but I don't think I that I do. Is it OK for us to voice that we, as affiliates, simply don't like NATS and that we don't trust NATS - without the fear of being sued by Too Much Media? If someone did want to speak frankly to its developers, would that require the signing of a non-disclosure agreement?

Where there's smoke, there's fire.

We all whisper to each other about the mysterious powers which NATS gives a sponsor; and the rumors of the possible 11-some ways an unethical sponsor could choose to screw its affiliates with its sparkling new 3rd-party toy. And many of us have seen conversions falter and fade into the abyss when a formerly solid program switches to NATS while promising us improved ratios. Woe is we.

When have we ever done anything to anyone for saying they have a problem with our products?

If you have something to say, please do so. Don't speak in riddles. This is exactly what I mean when I mention people complaining just to complain. If you have a problem with something or a suggestion let us know. If you're right, we'll work to fix the situation. Saying things with no substance doesn't help us or you.

Preacher

2006-12-01, 08:44 PM

Although the 11 joins in 4.5 months is a bit low to get a full grasp on how the traffic is doing. There are fluctuation and it could be just a bad dip. I have no problem taking a look at your account on that sponsor program to make sure nothing is wrong. I believe overall tho that their affiliate ratios are up. I will speak with Arthur about this on Monday. Please contact me Monday or Tuesday (if not earlier) to discuss it.
I will contact you early next week then. And while my traffic may not be the Hun's I said 11 joins in 90 days, that's 3 months.

The gains I mentioned were gross revenue gains. An extra 10% to 20% in joins which means 10% to 20% more for affiliates also. I don't quite get your point on this, but I think you misunderstood what I meant. I meant an overall 10-20% increase, not a 10-20% increase in margin for the program.Where the Hell is Useless when you need him.

Someone else will jump on this point I'm almost sure, I'd rather be vague then to speak about the sponsor side of things which I've had no experience with.

Whoops, apparently Useless posted while I was typing! |bananna|

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 08:56 PM

When have we ever done anything to anyone for saying they have a problem with our products?

If you have something to say, please do so. Don't speak in riddles. This is exactly what I mean when I mention people complaining just to complain. If you have a problem with something or a suggestion let us know. If you're right, we'll work to fix the situation. Saying things with no substance doesn't help us or you.

To add to this. I just did a search here. You seem to have something personal against us. I don't know what it is. But I don't really care after reading all of your comments either.

DangerDave

2006-12-01, 09:05 PM

John,
DangerDave, the same thing applies to you. Perhaps you would have better results contacting us and telling us what you dislike rather than posting that "Everyone hates NATS!" or that "its a gimmick/toy" every few months.

I see two problems..

1. You are not going to change NATS to how "I" would like it.. so that defeats the purpose of contacting you.

2. I am going to assume every program is making more cash post-NATS than they were before.. so they aren't going to change anything either.

While I don't have the concrete figures, to hand, to back the argument up, I would agree with Preacher's posted ratios. Almost evey single program that has gone from CCBill to NATS has gone to shit for the affiliate.

For me(like Preacher) as the "affiliate" that makes NATS the problem.. and I am really getting sick of good programs going bad...

I realise it is not "your" fault.. but the use of your product, leads to decreased income to me... that means I aint going to love it..

I now cringe everytime another email comes in from a program saying they are changing to NATS.

If you want to fix one thing... Turn the fucking session/admin timeout off! It is the most annoying thing about NATS admins, and its serves absolutely no purpose at all..
If some fool is accessing their sponsor admins on a public computer and they forget to log out.. they deserve to get screwed..
For the rest of us it is just a useless annoyance!

DD

Useless

2006-12-01, 09:09 PM

To add to this. I just did a search here. You seem to have something personal against us. I don't know what it is. But I don't really care after reading all of your comments either.You know, John, it's the not caring that hurts. ;)

Personal? If you consider watching one's income drop repeatedly when sponsor after sponsor decides to use your product as personal - well then, yes, maybe it is personal. I suppose one would find it really mysterious as to why one would actually earn less with cascading billing.

Just tired of the empty promises and bullshit - that's all.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 09:14 PM

John,

I see two problems..

1. You are not going to change NATS to how "I" would like it.. so that defeats the purpose of contacting you.

2. I am going to assume every program is making more cash post-NATS than they were before.. so they aren't going to change anything either.

While I don't have the concrete figures, to hand, to back the argument up, I would agree with Preacher's posted ratios. Almost evey single program that has gone from CCBill to NATS has gone to shit for the affiliate.

For me(like Preacher) as the "affiliate" that makes NATS the problem.. and I am really getting sick of good programs going bad...

I realise it is not "your" fault.. but the use of your product, leads to decreased income to me... that means I aint going to love it..

I now cringe everytime another email comes in from a program saying they are changing to NATS.

If you want to fix one thing... Turn the fucking session/admin timeout off! It is the most annoying thing about NATS admins, and its serves absolutely no purpose at all..
If some fool is accessing their sponsor admins on a public computer and they forget to log out.. they deserve to get screwed..
For the rest of us it is just a useless annoyance!

DD

Thank you for getting more constructive :)

1. How do you know that? If it makes sense of course we will. You're right. I might not agree with everything you have to say but that doesn't mean I won't agree with some of it.

2. I would hope they do overall. However I would never hope that they do at the expense of the affiliate. I know some affiliates dislike NATS but the vast majority that I speak with love it. If affiliates did not like NATS as a whole we would have no where near the market share we have and our business would die. We (Too Much Media) need to do our best to please the affiliate as well as the program owner.

Saying that all programs that move to NATS have gone to shit for affiliates is an assumption and wrong. We get complaints from affiliates that a program moved to NATS and their ratios went to shit. We investigate it. Sometimes it is a tiny change in an affiliate with very little traffic which is a normal fluctuation. Sometimes it is a configuration problem. Sometimes its a bug in the NATS software that the affiliates help us find and we fix. Nothing is ever perfect and if people don't let us know when they're having a problem we can't fix it. When we do these investigations we also look at affilaites as a whole (excluding type-ins, internal traffic, etc.) and as a whole affiliate ratios are almost always better. In some cases they are worse overall and we work with the affiliate program to improve them, most of the time with great success. This doesn't mean some affiliates don't see a decline. But overall affiliates see ratios go up. If all affiliates saw them go down we would have been out of business a long time ago.

I'm sorry you've had a bad experience with the product and I'd love to take a closer look at some examples where you've had a decline in ratios. Maybe there is a problem we are missing. Like I said we're not perfect :) But we can't look into it if people just post "NATS sucks". Contact me, I'll get in touch with the program owner(s) and we'll take a look if you'd like.

As far as the timeout of the affiliate area sessions I understand it being a problem. I will speak with our developers on Monday. Perhaps we could make the setting login specific. So you for instance could set your time out for your accounts to a week or whatever you would like but those who would like it shorter can have their way also. Its very hard to please everyone, but we try our best.

Thanks for being a little more specific with me, I appreciate it. If you'd like to get even more specific and work with us to improve things for everyone I would appreciate it even more.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 09:14 PM

You know, John, it's the not caring that hurts. ;)

Personal? If you consider watching one's income drop repeatedly when sponsor after sponsor decides to use your product as personal - well then, yes, maybe it is personal. I suppose one would find it really mysterious as to why one would actually earn less with cascading billing.

Just tired of the empty promises and bullshit - that's all.

So don't use the product. Like I said, I read your posts. I really have no desire to even try to work with you on it.

Useless

2006-12-01, 09:26 PM

So don't use the product. I don't USE your product - your clients do. I, as an affiliate, haven't much choice in the matter. I have as of yet never seen a program ask for its affialiates' opinions on whether or not it should use NATS.

So now your sitting there all smug - just waiting to reply with "I meant don't promote our client's programs!" Well, when you've already built sites and galleries and SEOd pages promoting your clients BEFORE they switched to NATS, what are you supposed to do - just pull those pages? Get banned everywhere for yanking pages? Lose SE traffic? Yeah, okay - I'll get to work on that.

Like I said, I read your posts. I really have no desire to even try to work with you on it.|shocking| I warned you that I didn't have anything constructive to say. It's all opinion, if you don't mind.

PBucksJohn

2006-12-01, 09:34 PM

I don't USE your product - your clients do. I, as an affiliate, haven't much choice in the matter. I have as of yet never seen a program ask for its affialiates' opinions on whether or not it should use NATS.

So now your sitting there all smug - just waiting to reply with "I meant don't promote our client's programs!" Well, when you've already built sites and galleries and SEOd pages promoting your clients BEFORE they switched to NATS, what are you supposed to do - just pull those pages? Get banned everywhere for yanking pages? Lose SE traffic? Yeah, okay - I'll get to work on that.

|shocking| I warned you that I didn't have anything constructive to say. It's all opinion, if you don't mind.

You do use it via the programs. I didn't say don't purchase it.

A few (but a vast minority of) programs offer both a CCBill program and a NATS based program but you do a have a point there as far as programs you already use moving to the NATS backend.

As far as programs asking their affiliates if they should move to NATS, not all do but I have seen some do so. I think the problem you're running into is not the affiliate programs not caring, but the vast majority of affiliates wanting NATS.

Too bad you don't have anything constructive to say. Maybe then something would actually be accomplished.

Useless

2006-12-01, 09:37 PM

I think the problem you're running into is not the affiliate programs not caring, but the vast majority of affiliates wanting NATS.If so, those same affiliates wear bells on their shoes and are awe-struck by blinking lights.

EDIT: Hey John, it was good arguing with you - and you are definitely damn good at it |thumb , but I need to drop out of this thread. I become irrational and somewhat uncivilized (or so I'm told) after awhile and I don't want to destroy the focus of this thread with my idle hostility. Thanks. ;)

Chop Smith

2006-12-01, 10:11 PM

John, it is good to see you addressing some concerns about NATS on a board that is all about business. The bottom line is there are no haters here just people that don't want to get screwed and most members here do not mind speaking frankly in public. One would expect you to point back to your users and that is who our beef is with, not the script developers.

Your problem starts with the announcement "XXXXX Sponsor switches To NATS, you need to sign up again..."

Then there is the inability to easily get linking codes for hfs' from sponsors. As an example, a board member recently released 18 hfs'. Site A and site B had five new ones each. C, D, E, and F had two each. A fellow has to repeat the same process 6 times to get 18 links. Seems to me if a not so bright guy could come up with something like HFSLinks then a man that knows the ends and outs of the business since 1996 could make that interface user friendly. (Yep, I know about the add-on that most don't offer or they hide it)

And then, I still don't understand the purpose of encoded/unencoded affiliate codes. Really it is not important for me to understand but there has to be a reason for a sponsor not to offer your option or to hide it so when confronted they can point you to it.

IMO, it is not Danger Dave's, Greenguy's, Linkster's or any other affiliate's responsibility to directly communicate their concerns with NATS to you. I doubt that Danger Dave was being hostile but I am sure he meant every word he wrote and folks around here tend to value his opinion. If the three link list owners I mentioned decided not to promote NATS sponsors, a few hundred others would follow their lead.

This reply is meant to be contructive but I had much rather curse, scream, complain, and insult especially when sponsors get a powerful tool and then treat affiliates like bastard stepchildren. But I don't fault you for selling them the tool.

[BV]

2006-12-02, 01:37 AM

I said when the processors handle the payouts. Someone who has a full custom back end and does their own payouts is the same as someone running NATS. There are people who will buy $50 scripts that will send someone to processor B when processor A denies the customer and they have both processors issue checks. That is the situation I was referring to.

That's how BVCash is set up, affiliates can choose who they want as primary and it cascades from there. Checks are issued by CCBill and Paycom. The merge CCBill account feature is just too much for me to pass up. I get too many small TGP affiliates signing up every day to go away from 3rd party billing. I don't care if they only do 1 sale a week or even every 2 weeks. I am close to 2000 affiliates now and most of them fit that category. You've seen the "Spam me with CCBill sponsors" threads before.

Our script is far from a $50 script though. It has alot of the same bells and whistles NATS has. Some even before NATS had them. In fact we probably would have bought NATS but it wasn't available in 2001 was it?

Greenguy

2006-12-02, 01:53 AM

This is way too much to absorb at 1 AM Friday night/Saturday morning :D

John - Let me 1st say thank you for coming by the board - regardless of anything good or bad said in this thread, it's good to finally speak to someone from NATS here on this board *because |buddy| knows we've spoke about NATS a lot - lol)

1st thing is that I do actually like a lot of things that NATS has - when the program is not using this silly option that I mentioned in my 1st post, the stats are easy to read & interrupt.

There are, however, a lot of things that I do not like.

1 - What's with the link codes? I think I'm safe in saying that no one here understands the need to have MTUxOjU6MTU be the link code for one site & MTUxOjU6Mw be the link code for another in the same program. Yes, I know there are unencoded links available, but why are those not the default? What is the purpose of the seemingly random letters & numbers?
(edit to add...) and what's with that update that added 0,0,0, to the end of the link codes? What do they do? If they are options where you change the 0's to a different number/letter, can you give me an example of a program that is using it, as I have not seen any that have something different than 0,0,0,

2 - You mentioned that CCBill is a processor, but I think to correctly describe them, they are a processor with an affiliate admin. Paycom is a processor & they're POS affiliate admin shows you nothing but signups & money. CCBill does track clicks & set up banners & a lot of affiliate admin stuff. To be honest, they'd be perfect if they forced the program to use sub accounts for all their tours & then posted the total clicks for individual sub accounts. But, to get to the point, what I really love in their admin is that I can see each individual member that I referred, what they were charged, what I made, how long they stayed & if they were still active. CCBill assigns the member a number & I assume that pretty much all other processors do the same thing. I would really like to see NATS implement this into their stats because the way it is now with NATS (and every other revshare affiliate admin) you have no idea how many recurred, which is a really valuable tool when deciding if a sponsor is worth it or not. If I sent 10 signups to a NATS program & looked a couple months later & saw 5 rebills, is that 5 individual rebills (5 members recurred once & then cancelled) or is that 1 member that recurred for 5 months where 9 cancelled after the trial. That info is critical for anyone promoting revshare programs

3 -
...1) the way in which NATS client display stats to their affiliates is up to them. I agree some programs do it in ways that I never would but everyone has different ideas. As long as the programs are showing the correct data and not misleading or lying their affiliates we have no problem with how they show it....
You have to admit, while it may not be lying, it certainly is misleading for a recurring program to show you that you have 9 signups & a total of $362.10 & not point out on the same line that the total is before processing & their cut when every other program out there shows the affiliate they money they made. I understand that the sponsor has the option to show it the normal way or this screwed up way, but NATS gave them that option.

PS - where in the Northeast are you located?

Greenguy

2006-12-02, 01:55 AM

;316647']...You've seen the "Spam me with CCBill sponsors" threads before...Side Note: Be VERY CAREFUL with anyone you see starting one of those threads - there's a lot of scumbag webamsters using Zango to con signups away from webmasters promoting CCBill sponsors.

[BV]

2006-12-02, 03:30 AM

Side Note: Be VERY CAREFUL with anyone you see starting one of those threads - there's a lot of scumbag webamsters using Zango to con signups away from webmasters promoting CCBill sponsors.

true, I'm sure it happens, maybe we need a zango blacklist of known webmasters that buy traffic from Zango

like those tgp submitter blacklists i've heard about

Based on my experiences most of these posts are from people starting what I call a "Fake TGP" (One that's all FHG's and no submissions), or other similar business models that require a lot of sponsors.

I have even seen posts of people wishing they could merge their NATS checks. Obviously they are clueless and that is impossible, they are just frustrated.

It's a big thing, the merge feature. Are all or most of your CCBill sponsors merged under your main ccbill acct for link o rama?

Oh and I agree with you about the ccbill sub account thing. The problem there is in order to do it that way you the affiliate would have to sign up for each new sites sub account. Not too big a deal but most sponsors think that's a bad idea, especially if they have 20 sites. So they usually have "Account Grouping" & "Multiple Redirects" enabled so you can send traffic to any of their sites and only sign up once.

But from what I've heard that will be addressed also in CCBills next version. |headbang|

Greenguy

2006-12-02, 09:53 AM

;316665']...It's a big thing, the merge feature. Are all or most of your CCBill sponsors merged under your main ccbill acct for link o rama?

Oh and I agree with you about the ccbill sub account thing. The problem there is in order to do it that way you the affiliate would have to sign up for each new sites sub account. Not too big a deal but most sponsors think that's a bad idea, especially if they have 20 sites. So they usually have "Account Grouping" & "Multiple Redirects" enabled so you can send traffic to any of their sites and only sign up once....
1 - yes, I did finally merge most if not all of them under 1 account (I find one I missed every few weeks)

2 - I've only signed up to you one time, but CCBill shows stats for 0000, 0002 & 0003 |huh

shunga

2006-12-02, 12:13 PM

I promoted a Latina site a long time ago - I won't name the sponsor - which was a very steady seller with a predictable ratio over a fair period of time. And then it stopped selling. It wasn't a steady decline, it just stopped. Perhaps if I was in that situation now and that sponsor had recently switched to NATS I might well blame that.

It's human nature to want a perfect explanation for something that doesn't make sense, when usually the explanation is rather imperfect: a change in traffic; surfers becoming bored with the same ads; a small tour change; a change to the join page; a pricing change.

I dropped that site and tried it with another, but I never achieved similar results with another Latina site. In hindsight, what I should have done was contact the sponsor and made an attempt to resolve the problem.

And on the original topic, NATS is quite adaptable, depending on how you want to present the data. The NATS people are pretty responsive, too. I'd put them up there with CCBill in that regard, which is high praise.

DangerDave

2006-12-02, 04:36 PM

Shunga,

I am sorry.. but you are unlikely to find a "program owner" that dislikes NATS.. just as you have said.. it's great for you!

The problem is that the experience is not so great for the affiliate..

Eg: I had just started promoting your program.. and then you changed to NATS.

Now I have three NATS accounts with you and get three newsletters etc etc... but the fact is I stopped promoting you as soon as you changed.

---------------------------------------------------------
Another Example of Post NATS changes - Unamed CCBill Program

Pre NATS - 85000 - 68 - 1:1200
Post NATS - 20000 - 5 - 1:4700(and getting worse by the day)
----------------------------------------------------------

John, despite what you might see as negative views in regards to NATS, I think this episode/thread might just offer you a unique opportunity.

As Linkster has said, there are many webmasters here that promote 100s of programs/sponsors and have done so for many years. If you sought the advice of these webmasters on the functionality and workings of the affiliate side of NATS I think you could make some great improvements.

1. As GG said.. the "random" type code at the end of links is a huge pain is the ass
2. For me.. The timeout, and the multiple clicking just to recieve one link code is hugely annoying.
3. I am sure other "working" webmasters can give you some imput on possible improvements.

DD

shunga

2006-12-02, 05:11 PM

DD, on the contrary, if it's not good for affiliates it's not good for me as a program owner. The top ten affiliates dating from the summer changeover to NATS are doing good numbers, which doesn't point to it being a NATS issue per se. What I'd like to do, if you're willing to contact me privately, is go over this in detail with all the techs involved to see what's happening. Believe me, I value affiliates and view this as a team effort.

Greenguy

2006-12-02, 05:38 PM

Just an odd thing that I came across going thru my stats today: Reality Sites uses NATS. There is no cascade billing, as they only use CCBill. And, they still have CCBill send the money to affiliates.

I really hope they are eating the cost of NATS instead of passing it along to us, as they don't seem to really need it.

Greenguy

2006-12-02, 06:18 PM

Another very confusing option that is being used by Teen Dolls (AlyssaDoll & EmilyDoll) I go in to grab my all time stats & see that I'm averaging a whopping $2.01/member with the trial option. Then I look below:
Rebill & Credit counts will be shown soon. Your payout currently reflects all rebills & credits

I'm not sure if I'm mad at NATS for putting this option in there or at TeenDolls for confusing the fuck out of me :(

PBucksJohn

2006-12-02, 06:49 PM

Greenguy

2006-12-02, 07:15 PM

Just wanted to let everyone know I haven't disappeared. I had plans last night and again tonight. I will be answering everyone in detail tomorrow as I will not be back until late tonight....That's good, because as soon as I saw you had posted in here tonight, I was worried about the mental health of someone that spends Friday & Saturday nights replying to message board threads :D

That being said, I'm off to watch the Sabres game..........

shunga

2006-12-03, 01:56 PM

Eg: I had just started promoting your program.. and then you changed to NATS.

The awful cold I have made me think the stats you posted referred to me. But to take something from this thread, if you're interested if you can put up a link for, say, a week, we can track your links specifically and see if there is a problem.

Your point about easy to find links is noted, and I'm going to add those to the welcome page.

dareutwo

2006-12-03, 02:28 PM

Amazing what happens when a big fish makes a complaint publicly.
You get a 3 page thread, how fortunate... not.

NATS - nothing against you personally, but I have my stats too.
Every program that has "switched" has cost me money. Which leads me to believe that there's more options for program owners, all things being equal.

2006-12-03, 10:53 PM

Useless

2006-12-04, 08:01 AM

Having used Nats as an affiliate and a program owner I absolutely love nats. I have also had the opportunity to run nats (using mostly epoch and vxsbill) and ccbill side to side as an affiliate and every time the nats solution gave me significantly better ratios. Also never had an issue as an affiliate since if I don't like how a sponsor implemented nats and don't like their setup, then I don't use them. Same goes for mpa and the others.

Must just be a case of preference, because unlike many of you I cant stand using ccbill as an affiliate. Its clumsy, slow, and I know sales aren't being tracked well.So I assume that TitanBucks doesn't use CCBill as one of their processors...

I can log into any program which uses NATS right now, pull up the stats for this period and click on the last number shown under Unq, which is Total, and recieve an incomplete list of referring URLs. Why is that? Right this moment at TitanBucks, my total of Uniques this period is (woohoo) 13. When I click on 13, I get this:
http://fhg.planetpreggo.com/pp/pregnant-models-x... 2 0 0:2
http://fhg.planetpreggo.com/pp/pregnant-models-x... 1 0 0:1
http://fhg.planetpreggo.com/pp/pregnant-slut-fuc... 1 0 0:1
http://fhg.planetpreggo.com/pp/pregnant-models-x... 1 0 0:1
http://www.whoringwives.com/tgp/pantyhose/ 1 0 0:1
Total 6

Where are the rest, LB? If NATS is so damn good - where are the rest?

And why not display the number of visits to the tour AND to the join page? Is it because NATS allows you to set the cookie expiration so short, that by the time a surfer hits the join page, the cookie is dead and that affiliate tracking has ended?

I can't defend the pregnant yak-like speed of CCBill's affiliate admin, but I never heard anyone say that they don't trust their ability to track joins.

urb

2006-12-04, 08:47 AM

CCBill have been paying me like clockwork for 6 years as an affiliate. I measure results by the number of checks I get through the door and not by affiliate admin detail.

I swear by CCBill because I think they are the best billing company on earth. :)

digifan

2006-12-04, 09:35 AM

Greenguy

2006-12-04, 04:53 PM

DDave (and anyone else) - can you post (or PM) a lost of sponsors that you know have switched from CCBill (or anything else) to NATS?

The stats geek in me thinks it might be interesting for me to pull numbers from my old stats runs & compare them to this next one.

Toby

2006-12-04, 06:13 PM

Switched from CCBill to NATS
Twisted Cash
413 Dollars / Kelly Cash
$ammy $mack
Reality Wife / Amateur Porn Dollars
IA Cash

Greenguy

2006-12-04, 06:21 PM

Switched from CCBill to NATS
...$ammy $mack...
They were using something else (I think the one that Lotza Dollars still uses)

But, needless to say, the list has started :)

I'm going to go thru the Webmaster News (http://www.greenguysboard.com/news.html) archives later today & see what else I can find, because I know I always post the newsletter when a company switches to a new affiliate admin.

Greenguy

2006-12-04, 06:23 PM

...The stats geek in me thinks it might be interesting for me to pull numbers from my old stats runs & compare them to this next one.I'd also like to ask a couple of the regulars around here to think about posting their stats as well (in the same manner that I do - and we can put them on here with mine if you wish so that it's easier for people to see them)

If you want to try this & I know you (physically shook your hand or spoke to you on the phone) them PM me.

emmanuelle

2006-12-04, 07:02 PM

Sammy was using the thing from taboo revenue before nats
naughty bank was using ccbill before moving to mpa3
lisa sparxxx (adult stars pass) moved from ccbill to nats then back to ccbill after an issue concerning rebills
jovicash recently switched
4realcash

Linkster

2006-12-04, 07:11 PM

Im pretty sure Skincash (Mr Skin) did that change a while back - although they were using ibill as well as ccbill - I dont think that would skew it too much :)

Flashcash changed over a while back - although they were using their own backend if memory serves

Phatchecks - converted about 2 years ago

Realitycash (adult.com) changed from something else to nats

OcCash swapped from ccbill a while ago

pornstardollars swapped over although they didnt use the ccbill affiliate backend

jaymans program swapped over ravenriley if I remember correctly?

and of course it would be hard to check anything with this one - stiffycash over to mayors money with the implementation of nats

Linkster

2006-12-04, 07:12 PM

Oh and Greenie - since I think I shook your hand once I sent you a PM |jester|

2006-12-04, 07:41 PM

So I assume that TitanBucks doesn't use CCBill as one of their processors...

I can log into any program which uses NATS right now, pull up the stats for this period and click on the last number shown under Unq, which is Total, and recieve an incomplete list of referring URLs. Why is that? Right this moment at TitanBucks, my total of Uniques this period is (woohoo) 13. When I click on 13, I get this:
http://fhg.planetpreggo.com/pp/pregnant-models-x... 2 0 0:2
http://fhg.planetpreggo.com/pp/pregnant-models-x... 1 0 0:1
http://fhg.planetpreggo.com/pp/pregnant-slut-fuc... 1 0 0:1
http://fhg.planetpreggo.com/pp/pregnant-models-x... 1 0 0:1
http://www.whoringwives.com/tgp/pantyhose/ 1 0 0:1
Total 6

Where are the rest, LB? If NATS is so damn good - where are the rest?

And why not display the number of visits to the tour AND to the join page? Is it because NATS allows you to set the cookie expiration so short, that by the time a surfer hits the join page, the cookie is dead and that affiliate tracking has ended?

I can't defend the pregnant yak-like speed of CCBill's affiliate admin, but I never heard anyone say that they don't trust their ability to track joins.

I'm assuming NATS doesn't display the clicks that couldn't be tracked to a ref url?? Though I admit I will have to check that. There is also a similar glitch in the site admin modules where some stats for affiliates aren't displayed ... similar to what you have but with nothing shown. Still waiting for a fix on that, but overall I'm still pretty happy with nats.

Back a while when I worked with another proggy with ccbill, we constantly saw sales not being tracked to the affiliate. The way we were set up these sales shouldn't have been lost, but I put it at around 10-20% of sales not being tracked correctly. I'm not sure whether ccbill just uses cookies, and if so that would be the reason right there. Running ccbill through cascading software (be it custom built, mpa, nats etc) would be the best bet.

Special "Ed"

2006-12-04, 07:51 PM

[QUOTE=Greenie;317062]They were using something else (I think the one that Lotza Dollars still uses)

GG, yes we're still using TabooTracking Software Company. Very simple and easy to deal with, but I would like to find/write a new software program that would display some more "in-depth" stats.

[QUOTE=Useless Warrior;316606]I don't USE your product - your clients do. I, as an affiliate, haven't much choice in the matter. I have as of yet never seen a program ask for its affialiates' opinions on whether or not it should use NATS.

Useless Warrior...should I switch to NATS? Geez by the looks of this thread it maybe a bad decision ya think?

This is a really good thread ...very interesting

Linkster

2006-12-04, 08:30 PM

I'm assuming NATS doesn't display the clicks that couldn't be tracked to a ref url?? Though I admit I will have to check that. .

If experience is any indication every program that I have that uses Nats has this tracking problem - the stats on the main page of the affiliate stats will show a number of 1st page hits and join page hits if they configure it that way - but if you go into the specific site you are sending to - the stats dont match - they are usually 20% less for referring urls although they do show the blank referrals and bookmark refs(which is where I would have assumed the discrepancy was) - so Im not sure where the rest go????

Tvduijn

2006-12-05, 07:02 AM

I always wonder that aswell, today its even worse then normal at one of my sponsors, I try to track 670 uniques and I get refferals for.....75 uniques :D

|thumb

lassiter

2006-12-05, 07:45 PM

If experience is any indication every program that I have that uses Nats has this tracking problem - the stats on the main page of the affiliate stats will show a number of 1st page hits and join page hits if they configure it that way - but if you go into the specific site you are sending to - the stats dont match - they are usually 20% less for referring urls although they do show the blank referrals and bookmark refs(which is where I would have assumed the discrepancy was) - so Im not sure where the rest go????

I think my favorite (not) is PanchoDog. Their NATS stats page will show I have 65-75 uniques on a given day, and when I check the referring URLs it only shows one or two.

tickler

2006-12-06, 12:52 PM

My little 2¢ on this stuff.

So one of my sponsors that I have quite a few referrals on under ccBill. switched to NATs. Although they are maintaining all the old linking for ccBill(for now). All WMs need to signup again under NATs for access to promo, and linking codes.

From what I have been able to determine so far, my WMs referrals will no longer be tracked under the new system.

Great way to gain an extra 10% income for the sponsor by screwing the WMs out of their referrals commision.

Greenguy

2006-12-06, 01:10 PM

...Great way to gain an extra 10% income for the sponsor by screwing the WMs out of their referrals commision.That's why I try to ask if anyone has signed up to the new program so that I can use their referral code :D

Mr. Blue

2006-12-06, 04:41 PM

Very interesting thread indeed.

I don't really have a problem with Nats itself, more or less it's just another bit of software. What I do have a problem with is the hype that surrounded it when it got released and how many sponsors jumped on the nats bandwagon and used that as some sort of "cheat-proof" inducement to get affiliates to pump traffic to them.

Now that the hype period has ended, look through your stats, are you doing better with ratio wise with sponsors that use Nats? Or have you found the opposite to be true? Personally, I found the opposite to be true...right now the top 10 sponsors I use none of them are on Nats.

Doesn't mean I won't try sponsors using nats...it just means they better perform up to my other sponsors or they're getting dropped quick.

rollergirl

2006-12-07, 02:33 PM

This is a very interesting thread. I have been thinking something was wrong for a long time. I have noticed a drop from my sponsors who switched to NATS. I'll have to get in an go over my stats from the long term to get some solid details.

Question.. I had great ratios with a sponsor when they were with ccbill. They switched to NATS but and my sales started slowing up immediately. I still see them in my CCbill list of sponsors and the linking code for this program still sends to their site. What is happening to traffic I send to them via the old CCbill link if the still process with ccbill. I don't know how the NATS software works enough to say it would or wouldn't interfere with my affiliate codes. I actually just went through my entire list of CCbill affiliates and found some that had moved to NATS and I didn't know. :(

I don't want to make this hard to undertand, so I'm asking what if you went back to promoting them via CCbill. I know a few programs that allow you to do both. (Which I appreciate).
Is that an option in the NATS program that the owner has to turn on or off? If not, couldn't a person go back and get the linking codes from CCbill and get paid from CCbill if the program owner still processes with CCbill? I know.. yada, yada cascading... but this specific processor only processes with ccbill that I can see thus far.

Also.. in NATS.. I also hate the 42 clicks it takes me to get to links.

Toby

2006-12-07, 03:08 PM

...so I'm asking what if you went back to promoting them via CCbill. I know a few programs that allow you to do both. (Which I appreciate).
Is that an option in the NATS program that the owner has to turn on or off?...Hey Katie, LTNS. |waves|

Keeping the CCBill program live is simply a matter of maintaining a separate tour that leads to a CCBill join page. The NATS program would run independently of the CCBill program, but on the same domain.

I've had a couple of programs that switched to NATS from CCBill that were somehow able to track the CCBill ref code and convert it to a NATS ref code on the fly so that you still rec'd credit for traffic sent from old link codes. I'm not sure why all don't do that, but it sure makes me feel much better about those programs that did.

docholly

2006-12-07, 03:18 PM

I will be answering everyone in detail tomorrow as I will not be back until late tonight.

Greenie; We're based in NJ, not too far from you :)

Hmmm maybe in very North Jersey near the artic circle where the nights are VERY long this time of year.

|huh

BadWolf

2006-12-07, 05:25 PM

I've seen more than one thread before bashing both NATS and CCBill. When it comes to trust I accept that there are issues with both. Personally, I prefer NATS and I also find many sponsors that use CCbill to be inferior especially regarding promotional material but that's life.

Greenguy

2006-12-07, 05:32 PM

... and I also find many sponsors that use CCbill to be inferior especially regarding promotional material but that's life.Believe me when I say that there is nothing in NATS as far as promotional material that you can't do with CCBill or any other admin.

And, there's a lot of programs that use NATS that have fuck all for promo material.

Promo material has everything to do with the program owner & nothing to do with the affiliate software.

Preacher

2006-12-07, 05:50 PM

Hmmm maybe in very North Jersey near the artic circle where the nights are VERY long this time of year.

|huh
I spoke to him on ICQ on Tuesday night. He said he's been buried by GFY threads and reported problems at their board and that he had every intention of coming back here to answer the questions posed to him.

BadWolf

2006-12-07, 06:07 PM

Believe me when I say that there is nothing in NATS as far as promotional material that you can't do with CCBill or any other admin.

And, there's a lot of programs that use NATS that have fuck all for promo material.

Promo material has everything to do with the program owner & nothing to do with the affiliate software.

I understand that. I just have seen so many small amateur sites that use CCBill that do not bother to put together any promotional materials that I almost literally groan when I see them asking for my CCBill affilate code when I click on the 'webmasters' link. That's not CCBills' fault in any way but it definitely creates a Pavlovian response in me.

It's not the end of the world, it's just more work for me if I choose to promote that sponsor. I guess it's more of an issue for me as I'm ending up promoting more and more small niche sponsors.

My point, which I should have made more clear, was that I deal with both CCBill and NATS whether I or not a get a warm glow from the experience. :)

DangerDave

2006-12-10, 05:59 PM

I will be answering everyone in detail tomorrow as I will not be back until late tonight.

Tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick..

Linkster

2006-12-12, 05:33 PM

DangerDave

2006-12-12, 05:37 PM

I heard that shit too... but with no one from NATS coming back to this thread... maybe we will never know....

.... and NATS will remains the shitbox that it is..

DD

nekrom

2006-12-12, 07:07 PM

Go Dave, go Dave. :D

-N

plateman

2006-12-12, 07:20 PM

I guess I will bring this one back to the top with a question:
Ive heard a lot of talk lately about a certain company removing a module that is part of Nats? possibly and that module having to do with scrubbing of joins - with a corresponding increase in that programs sales that was amazing
Am I just hearing rumours or does anyone have the real scoop on this
Flashcash? possibly?
you know thats funny you say that now, I have flash cash on my LL and no other pages sites and once in awhile I'd get a sale with there old stats, and since they went to nats(what about a year ago?) I had 1 sale since they went to nats...

and some months ago there program emailed me to ask why my traffic converted before and not for a long time now, needless to say I never replyed back and they are on my get rid of sponsor list for 07...

then the other day I read a thread on the zoo about fleshlight horrible ratios after they went to nats....

I really dont know whats up with nats but if I were them or a sponsor with nats I would dam try and find out what the fuck...

maybe thats why so many sponsors all want to go with them, switch to nats and put more cash in your pockets, and hide behind statements like nats is unshaveable..

I would say in the comming months, years as its gets harder and harder to make sales that nats and the nats sponsors are gonna find themselfs alone and all the other webmasters will be with other sponsors that have a better stats program...

look at the zango thing, what is next the nats thing heheh

DangerDave

2006-12-14, 09:36 PM

Fuckin' NATS!

.. and lose the fucking visual confirmation login shit.. who the fuck is trying to login apart from the owner of the account:(

DD

Useless

2006-12-14, 09:50 PM

I was peeking at GG's stats today and noticed one of those 0:10000 type ratios for a program I haven't made a sale on since they went NATS this past year, and it dawned on me that there is one solid reason to actually like NATS - you can see when you're getting fucked off the planet. You can probably get much of the same info via CCBill, but who has the time to wait for CCBill's stats to load? :D Sponsors who use NATS do us a favor by being on a server fast enough for us to see how shitty our ratios are.

You know, if I owned a program and decided to go NATS due to a want/need for cascading billing and alleged higher sales ratios - and my ratios plummeted - I think I'd be bitching and asking questions. But you never seem to see the program owners complain. Interesting.

nibbler

2006-12-15, 09:31 AM

You know, if I owned a program and decided to go NATS due to a want/need for cascading billing and alleged higher sales ratios - and my ratios plummeted - I think I'd be bitching and asking questions. But you never seem to see the program owners complain. Interesting.

That's so true. Everytime I bitch about horrible ratios, I get the "Everything is fine on my side" answer from the program owner and in my head i'm saying "I'm sure it is, you rat bastard". :D

ronnie

2006-12-15, 09:43 AM

That's so true. Everytime I bitch about horrible ratios, I get the "Everything is fine on my side" answer from the program owner and in my head i'm saying "I'm sure it is, you rat bastard". :D

They always say that, no matter the program software. It's always the webmaster that is doing something wrong or their traffic. Amazing how that can happen when nothing changes on the webmasters side.

ronnie

Greenguy

2006-12-15, 09:53 AM

Fuckin' NATS!

.. and lose the fucking visual confirmation login shit.. who the fuck is trying to login apart from the owner of the account:(

DD

I have a feeling that is an option & thus, it's the program owner's fault that they have the regular login boxes on the front page & after you enter the correct info, you are sent to a new page with more login boxes & the image confirmation text.

nibbler

2006-12-15, 10:02 AM

They always say that, no matter the program software. It's always the webmaster that is doing something wrong or their traffic. Amazing how that can happen when nothing changes on the webmasters side.

ronnie

I'm convinced that the program owner has a big red button (like in those Staples commericals) that says DO NOT CREDIT AFFILIATE SALES that he pushes every once in a while when sales are slow and
occasionally the affiliate manager with the fat ass presses it by accident while leaning on the desk talking to the hot secretary (just kidding of course, or am i?)
:D

Special "Ed"

2006-12-15, 12:21 PM

So...I'm gathering here that it wouldn't be to smart for LotzaDollars to make the choice to switch to Nats? |huh
As a program owner, the only reason why I feel it would be necessary for our business model to choose another software company other than the one we're using (Taboo Tracking) would be for their stats.
Unlike some other sponsers, I wouldn't be switching for the sole reason of cascade billing, as we already have that in place. So the idea that Nats, or any other program would bring me a 20-25% increase in sales is false. We did gain a significant increase in revenue when we implemented cascade billing into my company a couple years ago. I'm only looking at providing affiliates with a better stats solution than the one we currently use. Any suggestions before I make a switch?

Useless

2006-12-15, 12:26 PM

Any suggestions before I make a switch?Tell Taboo that their current stats are insufficient and light a fire under their ass to improve them. |thumb

Preacher

2006-12-15, 01:56 PM

Well I was hoping John would come back to this thread as he promised, but it doesn't look like that is the case so I guess I'll just post my findings.

Keep in mind, this is my theory as to why my personal ratios plummeted after a sponsors switch to NATS. I wish I had done some pre-NATS testing, but as we all know hindsight is 20/20. I have tested the time to live on the cookies that my link codes insert at three seperate times from three different links (both old and new) to three different paysites in their program. Each time my cookie expired within 55 minutes.

Now it's easy to say that if you can't make a sale in 55 minutes, then you're not going to make the sale at all, but apparently according to my pre-NATS stats (with a longer cookie life I would presume) as compared to my post-NATS maybe I was selling after those 55 minutes. A great theory on this is that maybe I was selling on type-ins because my freesites were so fucking awesome as compared to the crappy freesites they saw after mine, that the surfer just had to go back to the site I was selling for and donate my commission to me. |roses|

All joking aside the majority of my inbounds and also my sales to that sponsor were from "no referrer" prior to NATS. Was it type in traffic or did their old stats just suck? You tell me. What I can tell you is that as of right now I am at 1:7241.

And while I love the people at the program and enjoyed working with their sites and their content, I just can't justify continued traffic directed to ratios that bad. All of my scripted links have been deactivated, the hardcoded links are being removed as I update my pages, and I'm no longer building freesites or mini-hubs with their links/content.

In the short term they may have saved on my commssion on a few sales, but in the long term they will be losing a good source of steady targetted traffic. :(

Useless

2006-12-15, 02:10 PM

Well I was hoping John would come back to this thread as he promised, but it doesn't look like that is the case so I guess I'll just post my findings.
Who? (http://www.maladaptedmedia.com/nats-john.jpg)

Greenguy

2006-12-15, 02:24 PM

UW - that's actually good to know |thumb

Preacher

2006-12-15, 02:43 PM

Who? (http://www.maladaptedmedia.com/nats-john.jpg)
|pokefun| Ok, my mistake. Will this work as a retraction?

Well I was hoping John would come back to this thread (and post answers to the questions posed to him) as he promised, but it doesn't look like that is the case so I guess I'll just post my findings...

jonnydoe

2006-12-16, 01:00 AM

I'm still a newb but I see problems with both systems... I look at my NATS sponsors and they have whacked out ratios if they want...I think they count like the third page or something so I've had x number of sponsor hits and I am converting with them at 1:17 (by the time they count it). ccBill takes so fucking long to show you anything and it is mostly pure raw crap... Sometimes you wonder where the better end of this business is. Selling to the customer or the webmaster... |crazy|

Qon

2006-12-18, 07:14 AM

the amount of nats bashing in here is amazing... as an affiliate of many nats programs and as an affiliate program owner, my understanding of both sides is extensive. without running down a list of complaints about ccbill, i'd say i'd definitely prefer any affiliate tracking software to ccbill tracking alone (though i send traffic to both types of programs). why? i noticed john mentioned that ccbill is a processor and not in the business of developing software that benefits BOTH affiliates and site owners. they are in the business of quickly and effectively processing transactions for its clients... which means, who is the higher priority to them? the site owner or you as an affiliate? what makes you think ccbill caters any more to the affiliate with their software than NATs/MPA3/Whatever?

why exactly would any of you believe that a program owner would LIKE for NATs to NOT credit you on signups? hell, i'm more upset on my end as a program owner if my software isn't crediting properly because i know if u are sending traffic but you are not seeing sales, then you probably won't be an affiliate of mine for very long! who stays in business by continually shafting affiliates?

often, changes in sales due to a switch to NATs are caused by configuration problems on the program side. the thing about NATs is that once u have it installed, a lot of technical setup of sites and processing steps are the responsibility of the program owner. if you incorrectly configure something, its really left up to you to figure that out on your own.... you will not be notified by TMM or your processor that something is not setup properly. TMM support is absolutely phenomenal but in order to get help with it, you have to recognize a problem & ask for help fixing it. NATs cannot be blamed for a program owner's lack of understanding when using their software. they also can't handle 100% setup of a program's sites as they have too many clients and your license of the software comes with a walkthru and an understanding that one has to have extensive technical knowledge to utilize the software.

take the time to go step by step thru a signup on the site you are selling if its important to you to insure your sponsor has things setup properly. if they haven't taken the time to do so (which they should), then perhaps there's something happening that they haven't even noticed. when you signup as an affiliate, you are making a partnership agreement so contribute to it by helping them insure everything is set correctly so that both of you make money. the only reason you would LOSE on a program that offers cascading (using any software) is if the cascade is not setup properly... otherwise, i don't understand the complaints about it. of course i'd want 2 or 3 chances to get a sale from 1 customer if i could get that.... why would i PREFER to send my traffic to a program where there is ZERO chance to get a sale from a backup processor? perhaps ccbill will scrub a guy today but paycom won't? this "I ONLY TRUST CCBILL" shit is crazy..... what happens if ccbill isn't around one day? you want your top sponsors dependent on a credit card processor? have all of you forgotten about the IBills & GLOBills of the world? maybe you're all too new.... i dunno.

i have a few more things to go over but i'll let ya marinate on that for now....bbl

lassiter

2006-12-18, 08:25 AM

why exactly would any of you believe that a program owner would LIKE for NATs to NOT credit you on signups?

Huh? How about the sponsor getting to keep 100% of the sale revenue instead of 50%? Multiply by a couple hundred sales a month and it's an irresistable revenue enhancer.

The more pertinent question is "why should we believe for a moment that this doesn't happen?"

Qon

2006-12-18, 08:44 AM

Huh? How about the sponsor getting to keep 100% of the sale revenue instead of 50%? Multiply by a couple hundred sales a month and it's an irresistable revenue enhancer.

The more pertinent question is "why should we believe for a moment that this doesn't happen?"

did u completely skip everything i posted thereafter? IF YOU DON'T MAKE SALES, YOU STOP SENDING TRAFFIC. YOU STOP SENDING TRAFFIC, I STOP MAKING SALES. seems like common sense to me.... if you're talking PPS, then its a different ballgame... but this is revshare and every sale counts so why would i WANT your sales to go missing or not get credited?

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 11:11 AM

the amount of nats bashing in here is amazing...you look at it as bashing - and while it did start out that way, John came by & turned it into an unanswered Q & A session, which disappoints most of us :(

shunga

2006-12-18, 11:37 AM

Good post, Q.

I've been hoping John would contribute more, too. I appreciate the signal to noise ratio can become a little overwhelming, though.

Preacher

2006-12-18, 11:41 AM

Qon

2006-12-18, 12:01 PM

This reminds me of a time about a year ago where some well known webmaster on some forum listed a handful of sponsors that he swore was shaving based on traffic numbers and ratios.

my deductions were not strictly based on traffic numbers and ratios and i believe i went thru all this.... don't u hate when people try to take your words and use them against you on a completely irrelevant subject? |club|

Useless

2006-12-18, 12:06 PM

my deductions were not strictly based on traffic numbers and ratios and i believe i went thru all this.... don't u hate when people try to take your words and use them against you on a completely irrelevant subject? |club|But Q, that's what many of us are saying. Hell, I'm here to blame the sponsors who use NATS as a tool to shave affiliates more than blaming NATS for selling those tools.

NATS doesn't shave people - people do.:D

And if NATS is as complicated to set up correctly as you've stated, and we're getting banged in the ass as a result, who are we to be angry at? We have no idea who has a good installation and who is driving blindly.

Qon

2006-12-18, 12:11 PM

NATS doesn't shave people - people do.:D

hmmmmm.... seems like a lot of you feel the best way to go about finding a resolution to whatever caused your ratios to go bad is to attack the developers of affiliate software rather than to simply do a bit of additional research to discover where the actual problem lies. as i've said, the errors are OFTEN due to PEOPLE's MISUSE of the application rather than the application itself. i've always been a proponent of honest affiliate/sponsor relationships and i certainly wouldn't have invested all my time and money into an application i felt wasn't built well for the job & effective in helping me maintain that relationship with my partners.

i'm sure i would be standing in the same place if i was using another affiliate software application and i saw people unfairly blaming it for their problems... i wasn't sent to "defend" nats (fyi)

And if NATS is as complicated to set up correctly as you've stated, and we're getting banged in the ass as a result, who are we to be angry at? We have no idea who has a good installation and who is driving blindly.

back to my previous point: make the effort as a partner to insure the place u send your traffic is working & setup properly. perhaps you could be saving the program and other affiliates with your efforts. its just as much your responsibility as it is the sponsors once you go into a partnership agreement of this nature. |potleaf|

Simon

2006-12-18, 12:20 PM

Maybe there needs to be a "NATS Watch" website.

What I mean is someplace that lists all of the required and optional configuration settings in the NATS software that are important to affiliate webmasters. The site could list how each sponsor has their copy of NATS configured. Those listings could be posted based on how sponsors say that they have their NATS set up, and also based on real world tests by affiliates to reveal if some sponsors may have misconfigurations they're not aware of (or if some are just screwing affiliates on purpose).

Useless

2006-12-18, 12:22 PM

hmmmmm.... seems like a lot of you feel the best way to go about finding a resolution to whatever caused your ratios to go bad is to attack the developers of affiliate software rather than to simply do a bit of additional research to discover where the actual problem lies.Well, being that I'm the laziest bastard in the business - and a lot people here can back me up on that - I haven't built a damn thing to promote anyone in a loooong time. So, I can see pretty clearly that a couple programs' ratios dived down to nothing after they switched to NATS. But being the silly little fucker I am, I don't contact the sponsor, I don't sit around pondering anything - I do what you suggested. I pull links. Of course, that's not possible on all pages. If you are gallery or free site submitter and you're using sponsor content to promote those fuckers, you can't just pull links or pages. You're stuck hosting a bunch of shit that you know won't make you a cent, but the sponsor is probably continuing to pull the same ratios on their end.

Qon

2006-12-18, 12:43 PM

Well, being that I'm the laziest bastard in the business - ....but the sponsor is probably continuing to pull the same ratios on their end.

1) you're lazy
2) you argue with conjecture and assumptions

go back to my original reply to this thread... a lof of the issues you are complaining about seem to have a lot to do with what you are NOT doing. nats is just an easy scapegoat for you... if thats the way you like to live, hey.... do your thing. i certainly would hope my affiliates would notify me if i DID miss something but u obviously aren't where that notification will be coming from. btw, every GOOD affiliate software app is complex in 1 way or another.... people are going to be people, don't villainize them or the software if all you have is assumptions about what's going on rather than experience and technical know-how :D

Useless

2006-12-18, 01:44 PM

a lof of the issues you are complaining about seem to have a lot to do with what you are NOT doing. Q - I've done nothing! Literally. I sit here and watch my traffic. That's it. You're arging for NATS because that's what YOUR PROGRAM uses. Big surprise. It's best for you and your friends at NATS for you to shift the blame upon the affiliates. That's fine. I'm sure it's a solid business decision for you.

I'm not looking for scapegoats. My ratios don't improve when I find something to blame. I just point out the obvious. Program A switches to NATS. My ratios drop. Program B switches to NATS. My ratios drop. Somethings up with the way they're running NATS. It's not fucking rocket science on my end.

Qon

2006-12-18, 01:54 PM

It's best for you and your friends at NATS for you to shift the blame upon the affiliates. That's fine. I'm sure it's a solid business decision for you.

what are you talking about dude? how am i shifting the blame on affiliates? whats the point of having a discussion with someone who doesn't actually read what you've said? |crazy| its MISUSE of software, not the software and its the responsibility of both the program owner and the affiliate to insure that the agreement you have come to is backed up by a functional use of the software they have chosen to use. its very simple so i reeeeealy don't understand why you're having such a tough time getting it.... or maybe you just like to find things to bitch about?

i'll say it one more time: DO SOME INVESTIGATION & DISCOVER THE PROBLEM. if they are misusing the affiliate software and you continue to send them traffic while they do that, who is to blame? both sides are to blame and the responsibility lies in both hands to resolve the issue.

Toby

2006-12-18, 02:07 PM

...make the effort as a partner to insure the place u send your traffic is working & setup properly...OK, but just exactly what are we supposed to be looking for beyond simply making sure that the links from the hosted galleries have our referral code?

BTW, nice to see you here.

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 02:53 PM

...back to my previous point: make the effort as a partner to insure the place u send your traffic is working & setup properly. perhaps you could be saving the program and other affiliates with your efforts. its just as much your responsibility as it is the sponsors once you go into a partnership agreement of this nature. |potleaf| Why is it my job to make sure the sponsors affiliate software is working?

Oddly enough, I do check most of the tours & hosted materials to make sure that the codes pass thru to the join page, but fuck me if you think that's my job!

9 times out of 10, I just delete the codes & move on - I do sometimes let the sponsor know about the problem, but I do not think that it's my responsibility to make sure the program owners have their affiliate software working properly - it's the program owners & the software developers responsibility.

Who has time to do this kind of stuff anyway when there 100's of programs out there that are set up properly?

And what does any of this have to do with our questions about the NATS software?

virgohippy

2006-12-18, 02:55 PM

DamnQ, you mentioned finding the "real" problem.

If programs can so easily turn sour as a result of a software change then how would it be in the best interest of an affiliate to NOT be skeptical of the software?

I don't care if the program owner is the one responsible for mucking up the works. As a business owner, I have to find trends in the market. And if using a particular software usually accompanies a drop in sales, I have little choice in the matter but to adapt. My survival as a business owner depends on it.

Furthermore, as UW pointed out, as an affiliate, I have absolutely no responsability in insuring the success of a program owner's business.

If something is consistently not right, I'm not going to waste my precious time doing research on a topic that's not going to help me run my business so I can fix someone else's problem. Not when I can easily work with people who can fix their own problems. That's just business.

The "real" problem is that I don't think your values are in line with the values of the affiliate marketers who disagree with you.

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 02:55 PM

....DO SOME INVESTIGATION & DISCOVER THE PROBLEM...I think you're missing the point here as well - a lot of us have done our own investigating & most (if not all) of the time, the problem involves a program using NATS.

If most of us see that our ratios & income drop when a program moves to NATS......

virgohippy

2006-12-18, 03:00 PM

I think you're missing the point here as well - a lot of us have done our own investigating & most (if not all) of the time, the problem involves a program using NATS.

If most of us see that our ratios & income drop when a program moves to NATS......

Whether it's the software itself, or the room for fucking up the software allows, the trend still forces a decision. |sad|

shunga

2006-12-18, 03:18 PM

If most of us see that our ratios & income drop when a program moves to NATS......

GG, the point is, most affiliates using NATS *can't* see a real drop in ratios, otherwise NATS would be a dead duck, and it would have been a dead duck long ago.

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 03:23 PM

GG, the point is, most affiliates using NATS *can't* see a real drop in ratios, otherwise NATS would be a dead duck, and it would have been a dead duck long ago.You wanna read thru this thread again, especially the posts by Danger Dave & Preacher.

I do have a stats run of 20 NATS programs with pre & post totals, but I'm waiting on one more person to get me their stats before I post it.

shunga

2006-12-18, 03:36 PM

You wanna read thru this thread again, especially the posts by Danger Dave & Preacher.

I do have a stats run of 20 NATS programs with pre & post totals, but I'm waiting on one more person to get me their stats before I post it.

The point remains that if ratios were so bad across the board, NATS would not be as used as it is. And it isn't popular with sponsors because it gives them tools to shave affiliates, either.

Useless

2006-12-18, 03:47 PM

The point remains that if ratios were so bad across the board, NATS would not be as used as it is. And it isn't popular with sponsors because it gives them tools to shave affiliates, either.I agree. Affiliates are all just a bunch of ignorant, whining wannabees with nothing better to do than bitch and moan. NATS is perfect and sponsors would never even consider shaving. You heard it from me first. |thumb

DangerDave

2006-12-18, 03:52 PM

the amount of nats bashing in here is amazing
Why is it that apologists always pull out the "<insert program name here> bashing" line everytime someone questions an action, process etc..

No one is bashing anyone... We have asked some legitimate questions, and as usual those that have the answers have treated us with contempt yet again.

DamnQ - what is your input in this? that you like NATS? Well "whoopee" for you - you could have said that in one line........

Yes.. NATS is coping some heat here and so they should... Legitimate questions have been asked and though they don't believe it(just yet) the opinions posted here do matter, and their product is being damaged.

but that said.... NATS/TMM isn't going to answer shit! because they know they don't have too While program owners continue to shell out the big bucks for their backend software.. which IN NO DOUBT assists the program owner in making more $$... they aint gonna say shit.... Which is why they ran away from this thread so fast..

DD

_______________________________
No Nats (http://www.nonats.com/) - Find programs that DON'T use NATS
Old Dollars (http://www.owamw.com/webmasters/program.shtml) - Selling older women via CCBill for longer than NATS has been around

shunga

2006-12-18, 04:00 PM

I agree. Affiliates are all just a bunch of ignorant, whining wannabees with nothing better to do than bitch and moan. NATS is perfect and sponsors would never even consider shaving. You heard it from me first. |thumb

Well, I don't know how you could agree with something I never said, but aside from that, I don't think NATS is perfect, and neither do I think CCBill are perfect. What I would like to see is more constructive input to address issues and concerns. That would benefit everyone.

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 04:07 PM

This is all nonsense & it's getting stupid.

If John (who has really disappointed me & others) or anyone else from NATS would like to come back & reply to my legit questions:
http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/showpost.php?p=316648&postcount=51
as well as the legit questions from others, please do so.

Anyone that does not work for NATS is just speculating on the problems like we are & in all reality, your input is not required.

Linkster

2006-12-18, 07:30 PM

The point remains that if ratios were so bad across the board, NATS would not be as used as it is. And it isn't popular with sponsors because it gives them tools to shave affiliates, either.

Youre right - its not popular because of that - its popular because its cheap - any idiot can start a program using it without ever doing any programming on the back end(which unfortunately a lot do)
Also - comparing it to ccbill isnt a real comparison tool as they are two different things - while ccbill does give a few tools to look at it is not an an affilate program software standalone - it is a processor that gives a few tools and thats it - apples and oranges.
As far as the shaving - while it may not have anything built in - any monkey programmer can take care of that pretty easily - just like any other program out there - not saying its the programs fault - its just people are people - and if it can be done they are going to do it.

Ya know a long time ago someone in this industry (I think it was around 1999 or so) called me on the phone cause I had made a post at another board about one program back then that I had caught shaving - and he said real simple - why point out just one program? - they all shave - you just have to figure out how much and figure that into your biz model :)

Qon

2006-12-18, 08:17 PM

OK, but just exactly what are we supposed to be looking for beyond simply making sure that the links from the hosted galleries have our referral code?

BTW, nice to see you here.

an error in a join form entry can cause the transaction to stop before it even successfully reaches the process. you'll see the traffic to the join but no signups.... this is not because the site doesn't sell or because nats is fucking your ratios... its a setup error by the program owner. test a full, completed transaction... this will let u know if all is good..... moving on 2 the next question :D

Qon

2006-12-18, 08:32 PM

No one is bashing anyone... We have asked some legitimate questions, and as usual those that have the answers have treated us with contempt yet again.

DamnQ - what is your input in this? that you like NATS? Well "whoopee" for you - you could have said that in one line........

bashing = criticizing something without actual evidence that it is the cause of the problem. you and many others are doing that. insert whatever software/program into that. its obvious YOU don't like nats... if u would read what i said before, my entire point is based on logic. YOUR point is finding a scapegoat for a problem rather than finding a resolution.

1) there are errors in the USE of the nats affiliate software that can cause the changes in ratio that all of you are complaining about. because many of the "new" programs with slick designs & nats on the backend LOOK good, doesn't mean there are people there are 100% competent at running the software. hell, anyone can make a mistake so this certainly is a possibility as i have made errors during my learning curve while using the software that caused this. even a data stream setup problem with the processors can cause missing rebills BUT THAT ISN'T NATS FAULT.

Yes.. NATS is coping some heat here and so they should... Legitimate questions have been asked and though they don't believe it(just yet) the opinions posted here do matter, and their product is being damaged.

so your point is to damage their product and not find a resolution? |crazy| no one is going to stop using a good product simply because there are "haters".... ask Bill Gates. most of the complaints i've seen are cosmetic, personal issues that just have to do with your comfort level when accessing affiliate resources within the application. your misunderstanding of the software and how it works is apparent based upon your complaints.... your lack of experience and effort to thoroughly research the problem before pointing the finger is painfully obvious. i'm not tryin to insult you, i'm just OBSERVING your posts and your behavior. "NATS IS EVIL, I'M NOT MAKING SALES, IT MUST BE NATS FAULT!" come on dude... u sound like a kid.... really.

but that said.... NATS/TMM isn't going to answer shit! because they know they don't have too While program owners continue to shell out the big bucks for their backend software.. which IN NO DOUBT assists the program owner in making more $$... they aint gonna say shit.... Which is why they ran away from this thread so fast..

i don't know about you, but i DO have a life offline... family, other offline concerns and distractions. i doubt anyone is running from anything... this sounds like talk from people on that other board rather than experienced, sensible, logical webmasters...|cry|

Qon

2006-12-18, 08:35 PM

Anyone that does not work for NATS is just speculating on the problems like we are & in all reality, your input is not required.

i think experience counts for something... so basically if we oppose your way of thinking and we don't work for NATs then our input isn't welcomed? |confused|

Useless

2006-12-18, 08:36 PM

i don't know about you, but i DO have a life offline... family, other offline concerns and distractions. i doubt anyone is running from anything... this sounds like talk from people on that other board rather than experienced, sensible, logical webmasters...|cry|You know, Q, mabye if you weren't talking to mature experienced webmasters, you wouldn't sound like such a fucking asshole. But that's what you're coming off as. And I'm not saying that just because I'm in complete disagreement with you. And stick that |crazy| smiley up your ass.

Preacher

2006-12-18, 08:41 PM

did u completely skip everything i posted thereafter? IF YOU DON'T MAKE SALES, YOU STOP SENDING TRAFFIC. YOU STOP SENDING TRAFFIC, I STOP MAKING SALES. seems like common sense to me.... if you're talking PPS, then its a different ballgame... but this is revshare and every sale counts so why would i WANT your sales to go missing or not get credited?

This reminds me of a time about a year ago where some well known webmaster on some forum listed a handful of sponsors that he swore was shaving based on traffic numbers and ratios.

my deductions were not strictly based on traffic numbers and ratios and i believe i went thru all this.... don't u hate when people try to take your words and use them against you on a completely irrelevant subject?

I really didn't think I had to spell out the logical connection there, but apparently I do.

I guess the relevance was that you stated "why would i WANT your sales to go missing or not get credited". Why then would the sponsors that you outed as shaving "WANT your sales to go missing or not get credited"?

an error in a join form entry can cause the transaction to stop before it even successfully reaches the process. you'll see the traffic to the join but no signups.... this is not because the site doesn't sell or because nats is fucking your ratios... its a setup error by the program owner. test a full, completed transaction... this will let u know if all is good..... moving on 2 the next question :D
After mentioning the slipping ratios to the guy who runs the program, the first thing I did was ask if it was Ok to try a test join, which I did and they refunded all which showed up in the stats. So what's the next thing I was supposed to test?

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 08:49 PM

i think experience counts for something... so basically if we oppose your way of thinking and we don't work for NATs then our input isn't welcomed? |confused|Would I ask you why my cable box isn't working just because you have one as well? No, I'd call the fucking cable company because it's their fucking box. They own it. They programmed it. They're responsible for fixing it.

I'm not opposed to your way of thinking. I'm opposed to you or anyone else that does not work for NATS speaking on their part - especially after we had John from NATS in here answering questions 2 weeks ago. He said he was going to come back. He was on the board reading this thread a couple days ago. He has not posted. This simple fact has me very upset with NATS.

There's a lot of things that I do like about NATS. But some things make me scratch my head. I posted those questions 2 weeks - as did others - and we are all still waiting for replies from a NATS representative.

Personally, I'd love to hear about the scrubbing code that Flash Cash removed.

Qon

2006-12-18, 08:49 PM

Why is it my job to make sure the sponsors affiliate software is working?

no one said its your job... if you hadn't noticed, in the TOS of most programs, you're agreeing to a partnership. basically, you're saying you just want the program owner to do all th work and you make all the money? lol... "give me hosted galleries.... give me linking code i can figure out.... give me... give me" IT'S A PARTNERSHIP. PARTicipate in helping to run it.

Who has time to do this kind of stuff anyway when there 100's of programs out there that are set up properly?

why would any program owner want to partner with people who don't take their partnership seriously? why should they be concerned about what someone like that thinks? if a program has a site that you KNOW is great... you have had good history with sales and retention, but then something happens and that changes. do you think it will be easy to find another site to replace the one you have PROVEN to make you a fat check? so doesn't it behoove you to make some effort to fix the problem... something as simple as going thru a signup with the site just to check functionality?

but thats a little too much for you.... u just want to put up links and get paid. fuck the program owner (your partner)... if that's the case, why should an affiliate program owner care about ONE or TWO affiliates when there are THOUSANDS out there that are looking to make money from this site that sells so well? you want to say FUCK them but you want them to care about each and every one of you |hammer

personally, i'm on both sides so i can see it. i've noticed changes when programs change from one software to another. i've noticed when they don't change at all. the biz isn't perfect traffic isn't perfect... the real question is do you trust your affiliate program owner? have you spoken personally with the guys that are sending you checks? met them in person? NATs is just software.... misuse of it and other factors can and DO affect your sales numbers. don't find scapegoats for anything... help find a resolution or you are just as much a part of the problem. i think CCBill is cool but of course i prefer a solution that will logically make me more $$$.... whether its nats, mpa3 or partnersoft... i'm going with cascading over any dependency on my money coming from a processor. that's just me.... that's all i'll say on this. feel free to continue nats bashing, or bashing whatever u choose.... you'll get tired and find something else to scapegoat eventually. have a good 1.

Qon

2006-12-18, 08:54 PM

Would I ask you why my cable box isn't working just because you have one as well? No, I'd call the fucking cable company because it's their fucking box. They own it. They programmed it. They're responsible for fixing it.

so if i used to install cable boxes or repair them then you wouldnt..... awww fuck it :D

virgohippy

2006-12-18, 09:05 PM

but thats a little too much for you.... u just want to put up links and get paid.

Yes. And I imagine you want me to send you traffic so you can get paid.

fuck the program owner (your partner)... if that's the case, why should an affiliate program owner care about ONE or TWO affiliates when there are THOUSANDS out there that are looking to make money from this site that sells so well? you want to say FUCK them but you want them to care about each and every one of you |hammer

Do you have a lot of affiliates who ask for more then you feel they deserve?

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 09:07 PM

no one said its your job...You really are fucked in the head & I did have a much higher opinion of you until this last post.

1st off, I can't even begin to understand how you can direct those "give me" comments at me. The ONLY thing I need to promote a sponsor is a link code. I barely use hosted galleries & my use of hosted free sites has actually declined over the last 6 months (even though more & more are being released) I only use a handful of banners and I have no use for RSS feeds or blogs or whatever promo material is the current fad.

You know what my job is in affiliate/program relationship? My job is to get surfers to the program's site. That's it - nothing more, nothing less. It is their job to convert & retain them. It's their job to make sure their scripts & servers are working. It's their job to count the hits, credit me with sales & send me my cut of the money.

Sure, I do help out some programs when I see something that needs to be corrected. But I'm doing less & less of that these days as most of the time it falls on deaf ears or I get told to mind my own business (yes, this has happened)

so if i used to install cable boxes or repair them then you wouldnt..... awww fuck it :DAre you saying that you can (but no longer) install & repair NATS software?

Qon

2006-12-18, 09:25 PM

Are you saying that you can (but no longer) install & repair NATS software?

the point is simply that experience can mean mountains when it comes to dealing with something, you don't have to be the one who made it to be able to help those who DON'T have experience gain a better understanding of it. i guess you won't see that since now... you're mad. moving on....

You really are fucked in the head & I did have a much higher opinion of you until this last post.

if my posting on your board (on the internet), my logic and stance on being open minded, and not finding scapegoats for problems is all it takes for you to think less of me, then your opinion of me isn't that important anyhow.

1st off, I can't even begin to understand how you can direct those "give me" comments at me. The ONLY thing I need to promote a sponsor is a link code. You know what my job is in affiliate/program relationship? My job is to get surfers to the program's site. That's it - nothing more, nothing less. It is their job to convert & retain them. It's their job to make sure their scripts & servers are working. It's their job to count the hits, credit me with sales & send me my cut of the money.

then you and i are in the same boat on the affiliate said AS I WOULD SAY THE EXACT SAME THING ABOUT MY SITE AND THE WAY I SEND TRAFFIC... so y are you crying about an encoded/un-encoded link code, dude?

Sure, I do help out some programs when I see something that needs to be corrected. But I'm doing less & less of that these days as most of the time it falls on deaf ears or I get told to mind my own business (yes, this has happened)

u know what? i wouldn't do that... to anyone, let alone an affiliate. not every sponsor is the same, they are not all run by the same PEOPLE (note i said PEOPLE, not affiliate tracking software). i'm not seeing any advantage over my affiliates when using this software and if anything, u should take that to mean a bit more than just a program owner with no experience running a site VERY similar to yours rather than get heated cuz i mention some truths not everyone wants to hear at the moment.

to me, this is a forum, its a discussion, that's it.... i'm still cool with you. if you're mad at me about it? there it is again... nothing i can do about that.

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 09:30 PM

...to me, this is a forum, its a discussion, that's it.... i'm still cool with you. if you're mad at me about it? there it is again... nothing i can do about that.
You're right, but that "give me" comment which was directed at me personally really rubs me the wrong way.

But we've known each other for a long time, so I can let it slide |shake|

Forget about everything in this thread with the exception of my 1st post that started the thread (we'll get back to everything esle later)

Do you think that those are useful options?

Qon

2006-12-18, 09:36 PM

Do you think that those are useful options?

actually i think that's a silly way to display stats and i'm not sure y anyone would set their NATs to display that way. i've seen some unique ways of setting things up but i've always been comfortable with the default setup (i haven't had any complaints or requests for additional stats displays on the owner's side either). i can understand wanting to give more detail but just as u said, this actually my cause confusion rather than accomplishing their initial goal.... which was probably to give u more data. |potleaf|

Greenguy

2006-12-18, 10:06 PM

It's not even that it's more data, but more like the same data that everyone is used to looking at side-by-side sorted into different tables.

I do like seeing the totals on the bottom that say how much was generated & how some sponsors fuck you out of 24% of the gross |thumb

Ok - that's it for me. The only other questions/suggestions that I have can really only be address by a NATS rep.

xxxjay

2006-12-19, 12:35 AM

Newbie question but. Where can you find stats for all of your NATS sponsors? I am sort of new to dealing with them.
Piece of cake with CCBill

Statsremote just added something like that...I haven't used it but I did see a blurb about it on the login page.

xxxjay

2006-12-19, 12:37 AM

Ok - that's it for me. The only other questions/suggestions that I have can really only be address by a NATS rep.

I am sending this thread to TMM...maybe Albright or Charlie will get in here.

lassiter

2006-12-22, 04:04 PM

I am sending this thread to TMM...maybe Albright or Charlie will get in here.

Guess not. |yawn|

Useless

2006-12-27, 11:42 AM

bluemoney

2006-12-27, 12:52 PM

Useless

2006-12-27, 01:21 PM

Only one off the top of my head that does is Radical Cash (http://refer.ccbill.com/cgi-bin/clicks.cgi?CA=927523&PA=?id=1405993&HTML=http://www.radicalcash.com/) :D
Well that settles it. I'm a fucking genius. It can be done. |thumb

bluemoney

2006-12-27, 02:32 PM

I'm a fucking genius. . . . |thumb
And don't forget "all around bad ass mofo" |thumb

Toby

2006-12-27, 02:36 PM

KatVixen's CCBill program still works even after the site was added to JayMan Cash.

[BV]

2006-12-27, 02:58 PM

Just a passing thought...

Since many programs who start as CCBill-only and then downgrade to NATs often allow affiliates to maintain their original CCBill links, why don't programs offer the option for us to use CCBill or NATs? I mean, if they are really looking to please the affiliate webmaster, wouldn't that be the smart thing to do? Anyone out there brave enough to do that?

We do that.

If a program stops using CCBills script and still allows you to use your old CCBill links then they are allowing you to choose either or. (providing they have things set up correctly)

The problem occurs when hits from your CCBill links are sent to the new tour used for the new script.

Any other affiliate scripts are not going to recognise a CCBill code besides theirs. You will still see clicks in your CCBill admin, but you will be seeing no sales in your CCBill admin or the sponsors new admin.

If you are still using your old CCBill link codes the sponsor should have a CCBill tour set up just for that traffic. If not chances are that sales are not being tracked.

Here is an example of how BikiniVoyeur works. It was originally only using CCBill's script and still does for this style of link: http://refer.ccbill.com/cgi-bin/clicks.cgi?CA=910662-0000&PA=620577
will take you to the CCBill tour here: http://www.bikinivoyeur.com/index-ccb.php

Our new codes looks like so:
http://www.bikinivoyeur.com/affil.php?affilid=147 and will take you to its own tour here: http://www.bikinivoyeur.com/index2.php

If you notice both tours look similar but the CCBill tour has a different join page that's able to track the ccbill link code.

If I was to send that traffic to the other tour no affiliate sales would be tracked.

lassiter

2006-12-31, 01:38 PM

I just spent some time computing my conversion ratios for the year (yeah, it might be thrown off by a last-minute massive surge of NY Eve sales, but I doubt it).

Anyway, I found something of minor interest here. Both my best-convering sponsor (at 1:213) and my worst-converting sponsor (0 sales out of over 23,000 uniques |shocking|) use NATS.

So NATS alone is obviously not costing me sales or loss of ratios, but I do suspect that the way NATS is set up by individual sponsors to count sales may well be a factor.

Alas, I have no data for any of my CCBill sponsors yet, since CCBill's stats are giving me error messages if I try to grab more than one pay period worth of stats at a time. |banghead|

[BV]

2006-12-31, 03:55 PM

lassiter

2006-12-31, 04:03 PM

;322275']Is the 1:213 first page, second page, or join page ratio?
If it's 1st page then thats a dam good ratio. |thumb

Unique hits. But a.) it was a highly specialized niche, and b.) most of my sponsors didn't convert even close to that well, so I'm not a miracle worker. :)

Hm - I did do 1:422 on a particular sponsor's gay twink site (non-NATS) but no, I'm not telling which. :D

lassiter

2007-01-04, 06:59 PM

OK, I just dumped one NATS sponsor where I had a horrendously bad sales ratio (as mentioned earlier in this thread) but now I've signed up with a new sponsor that does the exact same thing the old one did that makes my "bogosity" meter go into the red.

On the standard NATS stats interface, you get a breakdown by "raw," "unique," "signups,: etc. and then on the right side is "Break down by: site, program, campaign."

I've only been promoting this sponsor since the 2nd. I had 3 hits under "unique" each day for the first two days. I can click that numeral "3" for each day and get the referring FHG urls that sent the traffic to the tour. And when I click the "Break down by site" link, I get the two sites I was promoting, and the 3 total hits. So far so good.

But as of today, the "unique" hits show 33 hits so far. Wow! My links must be doing really well! But when I click the "33" under unique, it only shows 2 referring URLs with 1 hit each. Hmmm.

Ah but now, when I click the "break down by site" link I get a list of hits to a bunch of sites that I'm not promoting and didn't even know were in the program! Where the hell is that coming from?

The NATS system of the aforementioned first sponsor was doing the exact same thing. And now I suspect that I was really only sending that sponsor 1/20th of the actual hits the sponsor claimed I was sending. Why would a sponsor do this? All it does is make my sales ratio look 100 times worse than it actually might be - and that's supposed to encourage me to promote them? Rather the opposite, since I dropped Sponsor #1 like a hot potato when I looked at my end-of-year stats.

Most of my other NATS-using sponsors appear to give me accurate, or at least believeable, data.

Can anyone explain what's going on with this? Obviously the NATS folks themselves aren't gonna do it, and I'd like to get some perspective on this before I contact the new sponsor.

[Edit: I did ICQ the rep for sponsor #1 about this issue a few days ago, but they haven't seen fit to reply yet. So I guess I can mention that it's PanchoDog. |pissed| ]

Useless

2007-01-07, 07:10 PM

Allow me to take a moment to applaud Exclusively4Affiliates' decision to discontinue the use of NATS and return to being a great amateur paysite program. Thank you Mark. |thumb

E4A email notice:
Very Important Affiliate Information About E4A Cash!!!

E4ACash has decided to discontinue the use of the NATS affilaite system. All of our billing will now go directly through CCBill, as it was in the begining. The reasons for this decision are numerous but suffice it to say that we feel it is in the best interest of our affiliates as well as E4ACash.

As of January 15, 2007, all NATS linking codes will no longer work. You WILL need to sign up with CCBill and replace your new link codes ASAP.

You can sign up for a CCBill account here: http://www.exclusively4affiliates.com/signup.html

If you already have a CCBill account with us then please go here: http://www.exclusively4affiliates.com/marketingtools.html
and grab the new links and promo materials :)

What about active members and recurs?
As of Jan 6th 2007, you will be paid 2 months in advance on all active rebilling members you have in your account, whether they rebill or not!! It's our way of saying thanks for seeing through this transition.

BTW Mark - I'm an idiot and just re-signed up through CCBill even though I already have a pre-NATS CCBill account with you. I was so excited I only read the part to your email. |loony|

Greenguy

2007-01-07, 08:17 PM

Allow me to take a moment to applaud Exclusively4Affiliates' decision to discontinue the use of NATS and return to being a great amateur paysite program. Thank you Mark. |thumb...While part of me is glad that they did this, part of me is pissed because I think this is the 4th (maybe 5th) processing/admin/linkcode move/change in the last 3 or 4 years.

Useless

2007-01-07, 08:26 PM

While part of me is glad that they did this, part of me is pissed because I think this is the 4th (maybe 5th) processing/admin/linkcode move/change in the last 3 or 4 years.That sucks big time. BIG TIME. But being that your last set of stats (http://www.greenguysboard.com/greenguystats/Revshare/06-dec-overall.html) had them at 0:12556, I'm betting this move will prove to be a good thing.

Greenguy

2007-01-07, 08:39 PM

That sucks big time. BIG TIME. But being that your last set of stats (http://www.greenguysboard.com/greenguystats/Revshare/06-dec-overall.html) had them at 0:12556, I'm betting this move will prove to be a good thing.I didn't really want to get into that stuff, but I pulled their links after that last stats run.

I remember signing up to promote them years ago. They then moved to a new admin, so I swapped the link codes. They then did it again (might have gone back to the 1st one) so I just pulled the links. Then they moved to CCBill & Mark asked me to sign up again. When I asked if they planned on changing admins in the future, he told me about going to NATS, so I waited until that was released before I signed up.

So now I'm back to doing this a lot |huh

Useless

2007-01-07, 08:45 PM

So now I'm back to doing this a lot |huhWow, it's gonna be a real bitch when they move to MPA3 in a few months. :D

[BV]

2007-01-07, 09:36 PM

While part of me is glad that they did this, part of me is pissed because I think this is the 4th (maybe 5th) processing/admin/linkcode move/change in the last 3 or 4 years.

I'm not sure if this would help you out now or not, you may already know this, but for those that don't here is a little bit of php code that might come in helpful:

<?php
header("Location: http://www.yahoo.com");
?>

Save the above code in a text editor like notepad, name it and give it a .php extension.

Upload to your server.

(first change yahoo.com to your appropiate link code for that particular sponsor)

Now you can link to files like this for all your sponsors.

If the sponsor goes down, changes link codes, doesn't perform any more, whatever may happen, all you have to do is edit that one file to a new link code or new sponsor.

This is good idea for tgp gallery submitters that have 100's of thousands of pages and want to change a link code and not alter the original page and set off any TGP owners alarms.

You can also use php ads or similar scripts but I find this more simple and you can use it on as many domains as you want. :D

Greenguy

2007-01-08, 07:43 AM

;323791']I'm not sure if this would help you out now or not...You've never run a link list :D I've got 20K total links in 130 different categories. I don't know the exact number of paysites, but I am activly promoting 200+ sponsor programs, so a simple include file isn't gonna help.

Useless

2007-01-08, 08:38 AM

You've never run a link list :D I've got 20K total links in 130 different categories. I don't know the exact number of paysites, but I am activly promoting 200+ sponsor programs, so a simple include file isn't gonna help.It's not an include. At this point, with 200+ sponsors, it would be total pain in the cock to set up, but probably worth it. You create a separate file for each PAYSITE, named for that paysite. (Yes, a lot of work for someone as established as you.)
Let's say the one for Wet Wifey MILF is called wet-wifey-milf.php. The file itself would look like this:
<?php
header("Location: http://refer.ccbill.com/cgi-bin/clicks.cgi?CA=927716-0000&PA=847473&HTML=http://www.wet-wifey-milf.com/home.html");
?>

Instead of linking directly to wet-wifey-milf.com on your pages, you link to wet-wifey-milf.php. Then, whenever the link code gets changed to wet-wifey-milf.com, you only have to change it on the wet-wifey-milf.php.

All that little php page does is redirect the surfer to the correct page. They never realize that they've been to wet-wifey-milf.php. It's a good tecnique for free site and gallery builders.

I'm sorta sorry I mentioned this whole E4A thing as this point. :(

Greenguy

2007-01-08, 08:56 AM

It's not an include. At this point, with 200+ sponsors, it would be total pain in the cock to set up, but probably worth it. You create a separate file for each PAYSITE, named for that paysite....I used the wrong terminology - I do understand what he meant :)

But fuck me, even if I was starting out from scratch, 4000+ active paysite links (I shudder to think of the number that I've removed over the years) would be a pain in the ass as well.

It's not that bad pulling links - just a simple search in the admin for some common text/numbers & then I can delete them rather easily. It's when the link codes change that it becomes a pain in the ass with pulling the database & doing it by hand...which is pretty much the same as that php thingy that is apparently not an "include" :D

And don't be sorry - I'll just kick you in the shin the next time I see you & we'll be even |thumb

Simon

2007-01-08, 09:35 AM

4000+ active paysite links
Anyone have any hard data on whether there'd be any SE benefit to having those 4,000+ paysite links pointing to pages on your own server instead of pointing off-site to the paysite urls directly?

Greenguy

2007-01-08, 10:34 AM

Anyone have any hard data on whether there'd be any SE benefit to having those 4,000+ paysite links pointing to pages on your own server instead of pointing off-site to the paysite urls directly?
I think most spiders notice that the php links get instantly redirected, so probably not.

Greenguy

2007-01-08, 10:36 AM

For the love of |buddy| we are really off topic - lol

I might have to go thru this thread, drag out the legit questions & start a "Attn: NATS Rep: Please Answer These Questions" thread.

[BV]

2007-01-08, 04:43 PM

I think most spiders notice that the php links get instantly redirected, so probably not.

yes, same as all your CCBill links. You might as well create 2000 inbound links to your own domains and create your your own link popularity for your own domains rather than CCBill or other sponsors.

Say you had 10 or whatever domains set up for all different niches or however you wanted to do it.

Would be much better, but I agree starting now would be a task but it's never too late to start, and it's clearly a no brain-er win win situation afterwards.

Allfetish

2008-08-25, 04:40 PM

This is an extremely interesting thread that I missed before. :)

Greenie, did you ever publish your list of pre and post NATS?

Greenguy

2008-08-25, 10:52 PM

...Greenie, did you ever publish your list of pre and post NATS?I never published them because there were only 2 or 3 sposnors that I had a decent amount of before & after data for (and those were pretty much the same)

But I can go thru some now, like Meat Cash would be a great one for me to compare.

Any other ideas? Who else did Dee Cash buy up where I'd have 6 months of Nats stats to go with my pre-nats numbers.

Preacher

2008-08-26, 12:51 AM

I never published them because there were only 2 or 3 sposnors that I had a decent amount of before & after data for (and those were pretty much the same)

But I can go thru some now, like Meat Cash would be a great one for me to compare.

Any other ideas? Who else did Dee Cash buy up where I'd have 6 months of Nats stats to go with my pre-nats numbers.
Meatcash. Oh how I loved you so.

As Grennie well knows, the day Meatcash changed to NATS my stats plummeted. My belief was and still is, that this is because from day1 of their NATS install they moved to a 1 hour cookie life. They had always been good to me, up until they realized how much more money they could make by taking away my return sales. The surfers I introduced to their product that came back after the 1 hour cookie had died off.

I believe I lost 90% of my sales and eventually income as the rebills died off from that one paradigm shift. :(

Of course now I've heard that Dee has cancelled production on most of their sites now and rebills are declining as well.

Given those factors, maybe Meatcash isn't that great a choice of comparison. |huh

Greenguy

2008-08-26, 09:52 AM

My comparison would be just ratios & on a site-by-site basis.

If you guys can do the research, I'll write the paper - give me a list to work with!

Allfetish

2008-08-26, 07:54 PM

My comparison would be just ratios & on a site-by-site basis.

If you guys can do the research, I'll write the paper - give me a list to work with!

Hmm. As a preliminary here are some programs deecash seems to have bought.

http://badgirlbucks.com
E*** Cash (Greenie know who I mean)
http://jasonandalex.com/index.php
http://extremepaychecks.com/
http://triplexcash.com/
http://ragecash.com/
http://elitedollars.com/ (I think?)
http://nichedsites.com/
http://nats.badgirlbucks.com/
http://mayorsmoney.com/
http://joinrightnow.com/ (long LONG ago this was a ccbill program)

I'm sure there are MANY more. :D But I guess we need to start somewhere. You are looking only for ones which were ccbill before and went to nats or just switched to nats from whatever?

Greenguy

2008-08-27, 01:56 PM

I'm not looking for just Dee Cash sites - I'll do some homework when I get home - I'm due for a stats run anyway :)

NY Jester

2008-08-27, 02:00 PM

My sales for Rage Cash actually increased post-NATS - which I was pleasantly surprised about after reading some stories as to what could be done with NATS numbers and cookie life.

Useless

2008-08-27, 02:32 PM

My sales for Rage Cash actually increased post-NATS - which I was pleasantly surprised about after reading some stories as to what could be done with NATS numbers and cookie life.I thought Rage Cash was launched with NATS. |huh

FatalAttraction

2008-08-27, 09:53 PM

I thought Rage Cash was launched with NATS. |huh

No, they used partnersoft until dee bought them and switched them to nats.

Twistys just switched to nats, but that's been very recent. Probably too recent for you to compare yet.

NY Jester

2008-08-29, 12:43 AM

I thought Rage Cash was launched with NATS. |huh

No Im pretty sure when Dee bought them and Extreme paychecks it switched to NATS..I could be wrong though

dunc

2008-09-01, 09:21 PM

Meatcash changed to NATS my stats plummeted. My belief was and still is, that this is because from day1 of their NATS install they moved to a 1 hour cookie life.Wow - this just pissed me off, because I just built a site promoting Meat Cash |cry|

matyko

2008-09-02, 06:19 AM

I started pushing CCBill sponsors because of this board and it was a good decision for sure.

Mateusz

2008-09-02, 06:32 AM

My belief was and still is, that this is because from day1 of their NATS install they moved to a 1 hour cookie life.

I believe I lost 90% of my sales and eventually income as the rebills died off from that one paradigm shift. :(

Fucking great. I just added all of their sites to my banner rotator something like a week ago. Now I need to waste some more time to remove them |pokefun| |banghead|

Greenguy

2008-09-02, 08:19 AM

I'm not looking for just Dee Cash sites - I'll do some homework when I get home - I'm due for a stats run anyway :)I've decided that with future stats runs I'll be adding yet ANOTHER column that will contain my pre-Nats ratios for programs that switched over.

When that next run will be is up in the air, as I need to finish some other projects 1st.

Simon

2008-09-02, 08:22 AM

because from day1 of their NATS install they moved to a 1 hour cookie life

I think it may be time to start a new thread about cookie lifetimes used by various sponsors. Maybe we can come up with a big list of sponsor names and how long their cookies live before expiring. That's something that could be valuable to a webmaster deciding on which sponsor programs to start promoting. It could also be valuable to webmasters who are already affiliates of particular sponsors, but have no idea how the sponsors handle their cookies. Might even be worth adding as a column to the current sponsor info available in the sponsors list on this board.

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a message that differs between sponsors who use 255-day cookies (the max CCBill allows) and those who use things like 1-hour cookies. Seriously, is there any reason to use short cookies besides depriving a webmaster of an earned commission as early as possible?

If a webmaster sends someone to a tour and he gets interrupted by something before he can join but goes back later, or tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or whenever, I think the original webmaster who sent that surfer deserves a commission if he was the last affiliate who sent that surfer to the sponsor's tour.

All traffic has some cost and therefore some value, even if only the time and work that went into building the pages or writing the posts which originally convinced the surfer to visit the tour page. Short cookies seem to say that the sponsor doesn't believe our traffic has much value to them. Which makes me think it may not be a very good idea to send our traffic to them either.

Anyone else feel it's time we called out the sponsors who use shorties?

.

nibbler

2008-09-02, 09:25 AM

dunc

2008-09-02, 09:29 AM

Anyone else feel it's time we called out the sponsors who use shorties?Yes me :)

Preacher

2008-09-02, 10:50 AM

So what I'm hearing is that during a default install of NATS, you get a 1 hour cookie expiration. I started promoting MeatCash post NATS and was doing great until they got bought out. My sales went to shit, but I'd like to believe it was due to them not updating their tour during the transition.

No, I believe that the default is 10 days because that is what most of my sponsors have. Another sponsor I have is set to only 3 days, but them and Meatcash were the only 2 I had below the standard 10 days.

Allfetish

2008-09-02, 06:44 PM

I think it may be time to start a new thread about cookie lifetimes used by various sponsors. Maybe we can come up with a big list of sponsor names and how long their cookies live before expiring. That's something that could be valuable to a webmaster deciding on which sponsor programs to start promoting. It could also be valuable to webmasters who are already affiliates of particular sponsors, but have no idea how the sponsors handle their cookies. Might even be worth adding as a column to the current sponsor info available in the sponsors list on this board.

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a message that differs between sponsors who use 255-day cookies (the max CCBill allows) and those who use things like 1-hour cookies. Seriously, is there any reason to use short cookies besides depriving a webmaster of an earned commission as early as possible?

If a webmaster sends someone to a tour and he gets interrupted by something before he can join but goes back later, or tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or whenever, I think the original webmaster who sent that surfer deserves a commission if he was the last affiliate who sent that surfer to the sponsor's tour.

All traffic has some cost and therefore some value, even if only the time and work that went into building the pages or writing the posts which originally convinced the surfer to visit the tour page. Short cookies seem to say that the sponsor doesn't believe our traffic has much value to them. Which makes me think it may not be a very good idea to send our traffic to them either.

Anyone else feel it's time we called out the sponsors who use shorties?

.

I think it is a great idea as well.

I like to use http://web-sniffer.net/ to check cookies but there are other ways as well.

Your point about the reason for using a smaller cookie is well taken. One thing I have learned over the years is to look for little signs from sponsors to see if they respect me as an affiliate and to check if they seem to be doing everything possible to take my money. Little things like this indicate their philosophy when it comes to affiliates. These little things often say quite a bit. :)

Licker4U

2008-09-02, 07:55 PM

Well, I was going to ask how you can tell what the duration of a cookie is but I guess that's been answered...

NY Jester

2008-09-03, 08:58 AM

I think it may be time to start a new thread about cookie lifetimes used by various sponsors. Maybe we can come up with a big list of sponsor names and how long their cookies live before expiring. That's something that could be valuable to a webmaster deciding on which sponsor programs to start promoting. It could also be valuable to webmasters who are already affiliates of particular sponsors, but have no idea how the sponsors handle their cookies. Might even be worth adding as a column to the current sponsor info available in the sponsors list on this board.

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a message that differs between sponsors who use 255-day cookies (the max CCBill allows) and those who use things like 1-hour cookies. Seriously, is there any reason to use short cookies besides depriving a webmaster of an earned commission as early as possible?

If a webmaster sends someone to a tour and he gets interrupted by something before he can join but goes back later, or tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or whenever, I think the original webmaster who sent that surfer deserves a commission if he was the last affiliate who sent that surfer to the sponsor's tour.

All traffic has some cost and therefore some value, even if only the time and work that went into building the pages or writing the posts which originally convinced the surfer to visit the tour page. Short cookies seem to say that the sponsor doesn't believe our traffic has much value to them. Which makes me think it may not be a very good idea to send our traffic to them either.

Anyone else feel it's time we called out the sponsors who use shorties?

.

Simon, I actually was thinking the same thing along these lines. I'd like to know what programs use in regards to cookie life. As I myself feel that it reflects greatly with the number of sales, and probably has a lot more to do with low numbers than some much more easy to point the finger at scenarios. And even though the scenarios are surely to blame for some lack of sales, Im sure cookie life is a key part as well.

Do programs usually keep that info in their terms & conditions section? If not, there should be an open invite for program owners/reps to provide that information.