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

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.

[BV] · 2006-12-31, 03:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lassiter

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.

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

lassiter · 2006-12-31, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by [BV]

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

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.

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.

E4A email notice:

Quote:

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.co...tingtools.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.

Greenguy · 2007-01-07, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

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.

...

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenie

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.

[BV] · 2007-01-07, 09:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenie

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.

2007-01-04, 06:59 PM	#4
lassiter I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman! Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 473	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\| ] Last edited by lassiter; 2007-01-04 at 07:35 PM..

2006-12-31, 01:38 PM	#1
lassiter I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman! Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 473	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.