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

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.

..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

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

I hate those undisclosed fees. I've dropped more than one sponsor over it.

There 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.

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?

Yeah!!! |angry|

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

Shouldn't that be 36%? |couch|

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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


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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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'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.

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.