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

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.

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.

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.

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

|huh

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.

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 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.

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. :)

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

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?

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

Go Dave, go Dave. :D

-N

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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?

Tell Taboo that their current stats are insufficient and light a fire under their ass to improve them. |thumb

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. :(

UW - that's actually good to know |thumb

|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...

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|

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

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?

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 :(

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.

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|

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.

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)

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|

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).

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.

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

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.