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

[PBucksJohn]

Originally Posted by [BV]

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]

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???

[PBucksJohn]

Originally Posted by Linkster

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]

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]

Originally Posted by Linkster

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?

It was mentioned as a problem. Its not a "major selling point". It wasn't even brought up by me.

[[BV]]

Originally Posted by PBucksJohn

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]

Originally Posted by [BV]

...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]]

Originally Posted by Greenie

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.

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by [BV]

...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

[digifan]

Originally Posted by Greenie

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.

Oh wow.. thanks for this info, I didn't know that

[Linkster]

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

Originally Posted by PBucksJohn

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.