Guess not. |yawn|

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?

Only one off the top of my head that does is Radical Cash :D

Well that settles it. I'm a fucking genius. It can be done. |thumb

And don't forget "all around bad ass mofo" |thumb

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

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/clic...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.

Conversion ratios and NATS
 

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|

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

NATS stats weirdness
 

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| ]

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:
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|

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 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

Wow, it's gonna be a real bitch when they move to MPA3 in a few months. :D

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:

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

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:
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. :(

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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