Any affiliates out there hate NATS?!?

[TheHatchet]

Wondering if any affiliates out there have a dislike for nats based sites. Seems like it has a hold on most sites out there. Whats ur ????

[NTM]

[The Heron]

I dislike it. Though I wouldn't say hate it.
First because it requires each program to payout individually all the checks get to be a pain.
Second because each program sets their own minimum payout and then sometimes fail to actually issue payouts so I've got tons of money tied up in smaller programs waiting to hit the minimums.
Third the tools section is a bit annoying especially some of the outputs but that's more a function of bad skinning than the actual software.
And it goes on like this for some time.

[Va2k]

I wont use programs that use nats! I hate it and hate the owner!

[femdomdestiny]

This question is probably best to ask program owners that transfered from verotel or ccbill, to nats. For most of them,I've deleted links,because, I need to wait each account to collect money and some period after that. Personally, I dislike it and prefer Ccbill sites even if they don't have stats.

[Ditosta]

Well we have 3 programs.. so we give webmasters the choice

CCBILL , EPOCH, NATS

www.rhinopays.com

[Robbie]

As an affiliate I like NATS just fine. Easy interface to get the galleries I need. Easy stats layout.

Biggest sponsors I have use it or else a customized backend that is similar. Just makes sense to have cascading billing.

[slavdogg]

no other stats package is as useful as nats.. NONE

[st0ned]

The only problem I have ever had with them is when they had the huge data leak.

[dav3]

I don't mind it.

[papill0n]

i think nats is great

[Supz]

Originally Posted by The Heron

I dislike it. Though I wouldn't say hate it.
First because it requires each program to payout individually all the checks get to be a pain.
Second because each program sets their own minimum payout and then sometimes fail to actually issue payouts so I've got tons of money tied up in smaller programs waiting to hit the minimums.
Third the tools section is a bit annoying especially some of the outputs but that's more a function of bad skinning than the actual software.
And it goes on like this for some time.

I agree on the minimum payout thing. I have a bunch of sites that i have 1 random signup. Its my money. Pay-up. Besides that. I really like it, It is the easiest program to export stuff into files for easy import into CMS's. It has the easiest campaign management. It is easy to figure out where your hits on coming from.

[Roger MGC]

no NATS for us

[Si]

Not me! NATS is the NUTS

[WiredGuy]

I don't like NATS at all. Every program that has changed from their internal stats reporting to NATS has always had a minimum of 25% drop in sales. Why? I have no idea, its just happened every time and I've grown to resent it. Nothing personal against their staff or program, its just my sales figures show the drop...
WG

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

I don't like NATS at all. Every program that has changed from their internal stats reporting to NATS has always had a minimum of 25% drop in sales. Why? I have no idea, its just happened every time and I've grown to resent it. Nothing personal against their staff or program, its just my sales figures show the drop...
WG

I have seen that happen to some programs as well. But overall, my biggest selling sites that send me the big paychecks are on NATS. But yeah, I could name half a dozen programs that i used to make pretty good with on CC Bill that moved to NATS and just died for sales.

No idea why. Same sites. Same everything. Just moved their backend to NATS and instead of me making more sales like I should, I made less. But thankfully that was just a handful of sites. Overall as I said, I like Nats as an affiliate and I like it in my program. Just super user-friendly for both affiliate and owner.

[Si]

Originally Posted by Robbie

I have seen that happen to some programs as well. But overall, my biggest selling sites that send me the big paychecks are on NATS. But yeah, I could name half a dozen programs that i used to make pretty good with on CC Bill that moved to NATS and just died for sales.

No idea why. Same sites. Same everything. Just moved their backend to NATS and instead of me making more sales like I should, I made less. But thankfully that was just a handful of sites. Overall as I said, I like Nats as an affiliate and I like it in my program. Just super user-friendly for both affiliate and owner.

CC bill kills webmaster referals! not good for long term business. NATS allows you to manage each program seperately. this is key when tracking sales from diferent sites and niches. CC bill tries to compact many programs and fails in my mind.

[Shoplifter]

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

I don't like NATS at all. Every program that has changed from their internal stats reporting to NATS has always had a minimum of 25% drop in sales. Why? I have no idea, its just happened every time and I've grown to resent it. Nothing personal against their staff or program, its just my sales figures show the drop...
WG

If not worse than 25%. I can remember a couple years back when a popular reality site went from revshare to a backend and I went from $5k a month with them to hearing the crickets chirp.

I think these sorts of experiences have been the main reason why I don't use backend software on my own sites, even if it is difficult to make affiliates understand it.

[TMM_John]

Some do, most don't.

We wouldn't have the huge market share we have if that were the case.

[scouser]

wish you could easily on the fly add tracking ids. the campagin thing is nice, but outdated. we need something to be able to add a tracking id like on most cpa networks. ie you put &trackingid=whatever, without having to set up whatever in the nats panel...

oh and saving pws unencryped is very bad too. (not sure if they still do. did last time i lost my pw)

[HowlingWulf]

NATS stats never seem to match when you break it down by site vs the summary.

[Iron Fist]

Nothign wrong with the technology.... the only gripe I have is every time I sign up with a NATS sponsor, I have to work towards their stupid minimum payout... unlike CCBILL, where I can sign up and merge all my accounts under one, and get paid every week.

Just pisses me off and keep me away from signing up to more NATs sites.

[cykoe6]

Personally I much prefer sponsors who use Nats. It has the best stats and referer tracking by far.

[fuzebox]

What does minimum payouts or programs sending checks have to do with NATS?

[tical]

so what is it about nats that causes sales to drop 25%?

cookies / session handling? complex join forms (these can be changed though)?

i mean, if nats acknowledges it happens... how come there hasn't been a fix for it? are these sales just ending up in in house accounts or are there legitimate errors during the signup process that aren't handled?

[BigBen]

I don't hate it, but it could use a lot of work from the affiliate standpoint...

The campaign management needs much improvement.

Some sponsors do some strange things with the link codes (Sapphic Cash fhg's, for example).

It really needs an affiliate postback feature with passthru variables. Ideally, NATS would have an API that affiliates can integrate with, to get detailed sales info, link codes, promo material, etc.

A multi-user system would be nice. Rather than a username/password login, have an account/username/password login so the affiliate can have separate logins for their staff that have limited permissions (grab only promo materials, no stats info, etc). Although, if all NATS programs had a nice XML API, this wouldn't be necessary.

It's really very basic on the affiliate side. If it had more advanced functionality, affiliates would be able to better integrate with the programs they send to, making more sales by running a more efficient, automated network. With their market share, they're in a great place to make a lot of positive changes for affiliates, and hopefully some standardization in this industry, if they raised the bar with their software. Unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon, even with v4 coming out (which actually looks worse from a usability standpoint).

[icymelon]

at least nats has refering url its nice information to know where the clicks are coming from

[andy83]

as an affiliate who have been hurt by NATS sites before, you should know whats my stand. but i'm slowly starting to trust NATS sites again (only a select few)

[DWB]

I have seen nothing to show any loss of sales from moving to NATS. I don't even see how that is possible. If you have ccbill and then you use NATS and still use CCbill, the sale is still going through with CCbill.

The only thing that is different is that the join area looks different when you first come to it. I suppose, and it's a long shot, that scares off some guys, but the cascading alone should make you even MORE money than just 1 biller.

Perhaps you have to question the honesty of the program you are using and saw such a large drop on. Maybe they are doing funky on the inside OR their NATS codes are not properly set up on their sites / galleries. I think human error would probably cause more damage than just a change on the join page.

[MetaMan]

no no nats rules other then the fact ALBRIGHT the owner is a piece of shit faggot who is scum.

[WiredGuy]

Originally Posted by Robbie

I have seen that happen to some programs as well. But overall, my biggest selling sites that send me the big paychecks are on NATS. But yeah, I could name half a dozen programs that i used to make pretty good with on CC Bill that moved to NATS and just died for sales.

No idea why. Same sites. Same everything. Just moved their backend to NATS and instead of me making more sales like I should, I made less. But thankfully that was just a handful of sites. Overall as I said, I like Nats as an affiliate and I like it in my program. Just super user-friendly for both affiliate and owner.

User friendliness does not outweight lost sales in my opinion. The interface can be ugly as hell, sales is the bottom line, not a pretty stats section.

[WiredGuy]

Originally Posted by tical

so what is it about nats that causes sales to drop 25%?

cookies / session handling? complex join forms (these can be changed though)?

i mean, if nats acknowledges it happens... how come there hasn't been a fix for it? are these sales just ending up in in house accounts or are there legitimate errors during the signup process that aren't handled?

I wish I knew, but clearly its not just coincidence, seems a few people have the same issue.
WG

[CunningStunt]

Originally Posted by Fungus

I wont use programs that use nats! I hate it and hate the owner!

[KillerK]

People need to research Porngraph....

[Super Negro]

Originally Posted by KillerK

People need to research Porngraph....

people need to get over shit

we all have things in our pasts we regret, nobody is perfect

[SteveHardeman]

Originally Posted by tical

so what is it about nats that causes sales to drop 25%?

cookies / session handling? complex join forms (these can be changed though)?

i mean, if nats acknowledges it happens... how come there hasn't been a fix for it? are these sales just ending up in in house accounts or are there legitimate errors during the signup process that aren't handled?

May I ask if this 25% drop in sales applies to every program you promote? If it is every program you promote, may I ask if the programs you promote are the ones doing $100PPS on $30 sales?

[marcjacob]

I hate when sponsors move to NATs and dont keep CCBill links alive. How hard is it to mirror a tour? They might also keep the webmasters who hate NATs at the same time. Seems like an obvious business decision to make.

I like NATs as I like the campaign tracking and Im used to how they report stats, sales and payments.

The referred webmasters stats is next to useless imo. There are many ways they could make it better. It would be good if they did a survey of affiliates and sponsors before the next release so we can tell them what we really want and they can write a script that will fix the bits we dont like.

[notoldschool]

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

I don't like NATS at all. Every program that has changed from their internal stats reporting to NATS has always had a minimum of 25% drop in sales. Why? I have no idea, its just happened every time and I've grown to resent it. Nothing personal against their staff or program, its just my sales figures show the drop...
WG

I have had the exact opposite experience with companies that know what they are doing. You most likely got some owners that didnt know how to integrate it right. Sales go up not down when Nats is installed right.

[TMM_John]

Originally Posted by deadmoon

wish you could easily on the fly add tracking ids. the campagin thing is nice, but outdated. we need something to be able to add a tracking id like on most cpa networks. ie you put &trackingid=whatever, without having to set up whatever in the nats panel...

oh and saving pws unencryped is very bad too. (not sure if they still do. did last time i lost my pw)

http://wiki.toomuchmedia.com/index.p...atic_Campaigns for on the fly campaigns.

Passwords have been one way encoded for a while now. This is why you can not retrieve your password, you must change it. Any NATS install that is on a version which isn't more than a year outdated should be this way. And anyone on a version more than a year outdated isn't really doing much with their affiliate program.

Also, all sensitive data (emails, ssn, etc.) are two way encoded unless the program operator requests otherwise.

[TMM_John]

Originally Posted by BigBen

I don't hate it, but it could use a lot of work from the affiliate standpoint...

The campaign management needs much improvement.

Some sponsors do some strange things with the link codes (Sapphic Cash fhg's, for example).

It really needs an affiliate postback feature with passthru variables. Ideally, NATS would have an API that affiliates can integrate with, to get detailed sales info, link codes, promo material, etc.

A multi-user system would be nice. Rather than a username/password login, have an account/username/password login so the affiliate can have separate logins for their staff that have limited permissions (grab only promo materials, no stats info, etc). Although, if all NATS programs had a nice XML API, this wouldn't be necessary.

It's really very basic on the affiliate side. If it had more advanced functionality, affiliates would be able to better integrate with the programs they send to, making more sales by running a more efficient, automated network. With their market share, they're in a great place to make a lot of positive changes for affiliates, and hopefully some standardization in this industry, if they raised the bar with their software. Unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon, even with v4 coming out (which actually looks worse from a usability standpoint).

Good post, thank you

[TMM_John]

Originally Posted by MetaMan

no no nats rules other then the fact ALBRIGHT the owner is a piece of shit faggot who is scum.

"a piece of shit faggot who is scum." wow, that's a good one. Haven't been called that since 3rd grade!

And, it might carry some weight if you actually knew me.

[spacedog]

I don't like the lack of reply when I ask about if there's a feature that allows sponsor to erase commissions and detailed stats since that's what it looks like happened with a certain program..


Other than that... I love using programs that use NATS..

[TMM_John]

Originally Posted by spacedog

I don't like the lack of reply when I ask about if there's a feature that allows sponsor to erase commissions and detailed stats since that's what it looks like happened with a certain program..


Other than that... I love using programs that use NATS..

The answer to that is no. I thought that was pretty obvious over the last 5 years or so.

[gleem]

ok, first thing, using NATS doesn't drop your sales 25%, webmasters who don't know how to optimize it make a couple big mistakes. I know the biggest mistake is they use the default join form.

After a couple months another kind experienced sponsor program saw I was using the default join form, and told me if I only asked for a username/password on it instead of the default First name, Last name, zip code etc... my sales would go up, and sure enough it made a whopping 15% sales increase difference!!

I'm guessing the other 10% drop some get is because NATS makes it easy to use cross-sells, and some webmaster toss in cross-sales immediately which may drop sales 5 to 10% in some cases, and the rest of any drop would be mis-configured gateway pages and idiots trying to run NATS on servers that are less than optimized to use a hardy SQL database slowing down the overall performace of the site.

After I used NATS for my own program it only made me want to only stick with NATS sponsors for my own affiliate activities since I use 100+ sponsors in any given period.

At the same time, you ccbill die hard affiliates are making me launch a parallel CCBILL version of my program, something I'm not crazy about since I know 2 things about CCBILL. #1 they allow webmasters with 100% stolen content to run programs with them and #2 They scrub so hard that you are guaranteed to have a lower conversion ratio.

[BigBen]

Originally Posted by PBucksJohn

Good post, thank you

No prob... I push a lot of NATS sponsors so would love to see affiliate side improvements. Just saw the wiki too... looks good.

[Si]

NATS is still the NUTS!

[Shoplifter]

Originally Posted by DirtyWhiteBoy

cascading alone should make you even MORE money than just 1 biller.

Perhaps you have to question the honesty of the program you are using and saw such a large drop on. Maybe they are doing funky on the inside OR their NATS codes are not properly set up on their sites / galleries. I think human error would probably cause more damage than just a change on the join page.

Unless they are using merchant accounts cascading is of limited benefit. Cascading amongst IPSP's has a benefit that is directly equal to the probability that one of the IPSP's is having a technical issue at the time. I am considering changing IPSP's on some of my sites and just finished a lengthy test that found that the differential in approvals amongst the IPSP's was about 3%. There are benefits to be had if you are cascading down to SMS or whatever tho.

I can honestly say I have never in all my time as a webmaster had a backend (NATS/MPA) site work out as well as what it was previously. I feel as I run paysites I know the value of my own traffic and have an insight as to it's saleability and it becomes clear very fast when something is wrong. Others say differently.

And personally I have never liked the lack of transparancy with backends. Obviously it's prone to a lot of abuse and becomes a matter of trust regarding the program. If one of the IPSP's can ever come up with NATS like tools and 3rd party accountability in the stats it will be a great product.

But NATS should be a great tool in the right hands. I think you are right in that NATS is complex and a lot of programs that migrate to it don't have the ability to use it correctly and sales suffer.

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

User friendliness does not outweight lost sales in my opinion. The interface can be ugly as hell, sales is the bottom line, not a pretty stats section.

Note that I said a handful of programs did that. I also said that my biggest checks come from programs using NATS. Any lost sales from those handful of sites is on that site owners end for whatever reasons. NATS itself is a great backend. And I wasn't saying the stats were "pretty"

I meant that as an affiliate of a few hundred different programs I need to be able to move quickly. My time is my money. And if I'm gonna grab ad tools I need it to be quick and efficient. And the NATS interface is.

[MrVids]

as an affiliate, i love nats. the layout is the same for most every sponsor out there. so i can login and get to my tools/stats quickly and efficiently. no feeling my way around to find what i'm there for. thats my biggest complaint with MPA, no standardizations like that, its seems each installation is customized which makes it difficult to navigate.

I'll make guesstimation that you'll find that 90% of affiliates out there either like NATS or CCBill. Since NATS allows you to set it up so people can just CCBill alone (i.e. payments via ccbill directly), then using NATS is likely the way in which you can make the most affiliates happy. Of course, as they say, you can can make some people happy some of the time, but never make everyone happy all of the time.

[Mark_E4A]

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

I don't like NATS at all. Every program that has changed from their internal stats reporting to NATS has always had a minimum of 25% drop in sales. Why? I have no idea, its just happened every time and I've grown to resent it. Nothing personal against their staff or program, its just my sales figures show the drop...
WG

i wonder if this has anything to do with the 1st join page asking for email ect.. on an unsecure page.. ( very very few secure that page )