Any CPA Network script not SaaS

Make your own? It is pretty easy.

Are we talking about the same thing? It's not irony, it's a real question. Products like Cake are pretty "complex".

You are correct, they are complex as fuck, however what i realized, if you focus on making critical features, those which you actually need, you can make it fairly quick. For example, when i was starting with mediabuying, i was told how i should buy subscription to one of those SaaS trackers, and i was like 100$ for what, to count only actions(which means, if user click on your link million times and you have million actions in package, it would be spent) and not even saving history. So i made my own tracker, which is quite simple as it have maybe like 50 lines of code overall, but it do the job - gives me all info about conversion, from which ad network it arrived, which campaign, which geo, which carrier, which OS, which ip and so on. And i run it on shitty 5$ monthly vps, works without any problem even with huge traffic dumped on it. And when it comes to non-critical features, you can add those gradually.

Hey Mark... You mention performance and security as reasons to keep it on your own server and wanting a script vs a SaaS.

From my experience, SaaS is much more reliable and intuitive overall vs a script, which I would assume would be extremely limited. This is an apples and oranges conversation. Two different creatures.

You also have to discuss growth of a network. When a network grows, there are many changes that come with the territory. Aside from the obvious infrastructure upgrades necessary in hardware, software and staff... you have to think about pleasing the affiliates within your network. You will find no matter what you do, you will never please 100% of your affiliates with whatever the software is... and if the software is limited, well that is just a turn off that will probably not net many affiliates in the first place.... or at least ones that are larger.

You really have to weight the options. If you think paying for and securing a server, getting a script and then supporting the script, is a lower cost than going with a company that does this every day and provides you with a staff of experts in this area already....well then I guess that's your prerogative.

That said, you should take a look at our software, NATS for Networks. And yes, I am going to plug our software solution here. We have been in the tracking industry for over 12 years now and provide superior products and support to some of the largest names in the industry.

NATS for Networks is no different, and the cost is negligible if you want a superior solution to grow a real network versus attempting to build your own from the ground up. Not saying it can't be done, but knowing what goes into developing and supporting what you are discussing, I can assure you it will take much more than you anticipate.

NATS for Networks is for sure a superb product but I can't understand why SaaS should more reliable and intuitive than a "script". Any SaaS IS a script, the only difference is that the system is hosted by the vendor the customers are billed on usage.

If you would offer a NATS for Networks with same NATS formula, how could it effect the structure of the script itself?

I'd like to handle my hardware. I want to decide if would be better have 1 or 10 load balanced DB servers, how to handle CDN for my creatives, how many servers use to host the core of the script. If your system slows down because of lack of servers/horsepower what could we do? Simply nothing.

Yep, for same reason i avoid SaaS scripts, due lack of control.

We have tried to study something in-house. So far the most difficult to do is how to get track of sales from sites.

Let me chime in as an affiliate. I can second what John said.

I really dislike in-house affiliate software. I don't think I've seen one that gives me enough information, and ability to break down data multiple ways, like NATS. And those programs probably all think that they developed something really good. Well, maybe it's good for them, but not for the affiliates.

Mind you, this experience is more about paysites, we don't promote many CPA offers.

Also, I was not aware that NATS for Networks was an SaaS-only product. Now I'll be really glad to promote such programs, as that guarantees that those affiliate programs won't be able to shave or manipulate data.



PS. John, does NATS give affiliates the option of adding their own tracking parameters to the links?
What I had in mind is something like this:
join.xxx.com/track/MTQ1ODIuMzUuFQuDFDF4dfdAuMC4wLjA/?affilparam1=XXXXXXXXX

NATS would save that 'affilparam1' value, and if the visitor joins, I as an affiliate would see the parameter value in the member join data. I'd generate unique affilparam1 IDs for each of our visitors, so I can see later see which ones converted to sales. It'd help to judge our traffic sources, study the behavior of users that are buying, etc etc.

Have a look at prosper202:
http://prosper.tracking202.com/apps/

I agree completely. Affiliates for the most part get familiar with certain systems and require more features and options than a 50 line script for example, can compare with over 1,000,000 lines of code. There can't be the level of reporting, accounting and management in 50 lines as compared to what I said above. Remember, affiliates just don't take banners and just guess what's working. They want statistics that show various metrics to help them make better business decisions as to what and how to promote.

Hi BigFurry, yes you can accomplish your example with NATS. As an affiliate, you would add a Campaign Tag to the Linkcode you are looking to use, which is encoded into the tracking already, so you won't necessarily see 'affilparam1' in the linkcode, but when you check your Statistics/Reporting, any time that link is clicked, it will track that specific parameter(s) throughout the whole conversion flow. You can sort your Statistics by Campaign->"Traffic Tag" and see your conversions based on those specific tags and know what is working from what campaign or tracking tags applied. (Screencaps below)






As for NATS for Networks, it is a phenomenal software platform and provides the power of NATS with additional features that allows networks to really harness their marketing information and provide affiliates/publishers with valuable data at the same time. It's a win-win for all involved.

Okay, that's pretty good, I might start using it, thanks!

It's not entirely my use-case though, correct me if I'm wrong. I also want to pass an ID that's unique for every single one of my visitors.
I don't think it's a good idea to create a hundreds of thousands of tags, or can NATS handle that?

I guess this is the matching documentation: Automatic Campaigns - TMMwiki

So instead of the current
?autocamp=campaign,traffic,tags
I'd like
?autocamp=campaign,traffic,tags,id :-)

Unlike campaign/traffic/tags, I wouldn't want to break down, or sort by this 'id', only see it when I view the details of a join.

I can comfortably say, speaking for our company and our SaaS solution... infrastructure is of the utmost importance when it comes to providing this service. We have 100's of millions of monthly clicks running through our N4N SaaS platform, and have never had a security or uptime issue. When a good company does this properly, the results speak for themselves... and I have to say, our reputation is quite stellar.

Hey, BigFurry, can you reach out to me via email or Skype?

Well to give everyone the answer here to BigFurry's question, because I imagine there are others who would like to know, and information is key... What he is specifically trying to accomplish can be done. We have a few wiki articles describing the process with NATS for you to review at your leisure.

An excerpt from the NATS4 Additional Tracking page on our wiki:

"In NATS 4.1 (version 4.1.7.1 and above), you have the ability to allow your affiliates to add additional passthrough variables in their linkcodes that will get stored with a member's subscription record. These variables become available on postbacks. In addition to these passthroughs, methods for forcing the join option to be used on the join form and changing the default join option have also been added. These additional tracking features can only be used if you allow them within their "Edit Affiliate Admin Settings" page. The two settings are called "Subscription Passthrough Variables in Linkcodes", and "Force Join Option in Linkcodes". Once you enable the feature for their account, they can add a "nats_at" array with the additional variables to the end of a link code"

See the full resource here: NATS4 Additional Tracking

An excerpt from the NATS4 Affiliate Postback page on our wiki:

"NATS4 has to ability to post detailed member information to your affiliates based on any basic action the member takes through NATS. This is made possible by using a backend POST, which is based on the basic actions the member takes in NATS. For other postback examples, please check this article: NATS4 Postbacks and Post URLs
To use this feature, you must first activate it in the Configuration Admin. When it is activated, your affiliates will be able to receive detailed information on what actions their members are taking"

See the full resource here: NATS4 Affiliate Postback

Thanks for the detailed info John, good to know about all those options.

Anything that the sponsor has to enable will not work for me, it's just too much work hunting down all programs, and having them have their tech guy add something. Some are unresponsive as it is. :/

You mean this?

NATS4 XloveCash - TMMwiki

I don't think so. That sounds like a way to put/link XLoveCash in your NATS install.

I don't have a NATS install, I'm a simple affiliate, who wants to track his joins better at numerous sponsors using extra parameters.

John has answered my questions though.