Another ICOO sig whore working for his quarter.

If you want info on NATS do a full search on it or talk to our clients. Especially those who used to be on MPA. Strangely enough there aren't any MPA clients who used to be on NATS :)

For you, no;-)

For someone with $25k, sure!

Your confidence in your software shows :)

How about for once in a discussion the shaving issue is put a side, neither mpa3 or nats offer a built in version and YES i am sure for both pieces you could do something to allow a shaving feature, but both have the stance that accounts will be closed...

So continue again, what sets the 2 softwares apart.

I'd love to be able to have that discussion without anyone dragging it back the other way :)

We are more configurable - You can setup as many programs any way you would like to. You can configure nearly everything on a per affiliate basis. etc. etc.

We are more scalable and stable - We've moved MPA2 clients with high load who had stats taking 1.5 hours to load that do in 1.5 minutes now. From what I hear MPA3 is better but still not as efficent as we are IMO.

We offer things like exit management which is VERY useful

We do everything we can to get affiliates to our clients. We have launched a Beta of Account Admin which is really going to help NATS programs grow and we are releasing our client list on our site Monday. Most of our competition won't say a word about who uses them.

Our Demo is 100% wide open. You can go in and take a look around and use the REAL software not some screenshots of it or imitations of it. And it's open to EVERYONE. We have nothing to hide and no fear of our competition seeing what our software does, etc. We are VERY confident in our product.

Our support is top notch. One of the biggest complaints about competing products when people move to us is the support. First it's usually slow or barely there at all and second most people charge for every little "customization" anyone comes up with. To us if it's something we are going to include in our product it's not a "customization" so we don't charge for it. Others do. This sets us apart in a big way.

There are numerous other little things that set us a part these are just a few of the bigger points.

john have you taken a look at ES to see how it compares with your software?

Brad refuses to show me the software. Fabian got a briefly look at it in Vegas and said from what he saw it really doesn't compare as far as features and configurablity. I'd love to see it myself, but again, I'm apparently not allowed :)

To continue from John's post (I'll try to keep this as short as possible):

We allow you to pay resellers based on: raw, unique, sale, rebill, full member, %-age of sale amount, %-age of rebill amount, %-age of dialer. You can setup as many programs as you like which payout on any combination of the above. Because we thought this is not enough, we deceided it makes perfect sense to let you pay differently on the different join options a surfer can pick. So if you want to, you could pay 100% of the initial sale of each trial membership but only 60% of the initial sale of each full membership to any given site. You could also pay $15 for a trial, $25 for a monthly membership, $55 for a 3 month membership. Of course, all these are just sample numbers.
And of course, you can change these numbers for single resellers at any time without changing their previous sale stats and without changing everyone else's payouts.

More on configurability: If you want, NATS controls your join form. On-the-fly, you can enable and disable single join options on the form, you can set the default join option preselected on the form, and of course, you can do all this per PROGRAM _and_ per RESELLER.

The popup/exit manager lets you easily setup exit consoles, follow me programs, special options on join forms (like a trial only when someone exits from the join form). You can target exit consoles based on reseller, program, site, country and langauge. You could for example turn off single exits for a reseller that complains but you do not want to lose the traffic.

Compared to everyone else out there, our cascading system is extremly advanced: You can setup any number of cascades. A cascade in NATS is simply a button on the join form people click to join. We can cascade anything: Cascade from Epoch CC to CCBill CC to WTS (ACH) to a Dialer. Geo-target whole cascades, so that a button disappears if the surfer is not from the US. This way you can put an ACH button on your join forms but have it only show if the surfer is from the US. But of course, you can also target single items IN the cascade. Turn of ACH in the above example if not in the US, or create a "NO-CC" cascade which uses ACH for US, ELV for Germany, Dialers for the rest of the world. The possabilities are seriously endless.
If you use Merchant Accounts instead of IPSPs we offer the only thing you can really call TRUE cascading. We can cascade between the merchant accounts in the background. If you have 2 CC accounts, the surfer enters the info once, and we try the first account and if denied we try the second account without reprompting the surfer for any information.

Our Admin Reporting tools are ever expanding, currently we offer: Profit/Loss Reports, Trial Reports, Retention Reports, Transaction Reports and of course (sorry Brad, you are not the only one) Fraud Reports. All of these reports are constantly reworked, changed and tweaked based on the feedback of our big number of clients.
We also offer Surfer Stats, so you can actually see things like, how often your Surfers go to the join page before they actually fill it out or go to the first biller. If you want, you can even track all your tour pages.

Another thing that, as far as I know, is totally unique to NATS is our Mailer system. This is not a simple bulk-mailer for members or resellers. We let you setup Mails and clearly TARGET them to certain members or resellers. Send mails to all resellers that joined 5 days ago but sent less than 100 uniques till today. Send mails to all resellers that just did their 50th sale. Send mails to all members. Send mails to all members that canceled 5 days ago. The possabilites are endless, and we are adding more targeting very soon to let you classify this even more.

Unlike all our competition, we do not tell you what reseller payment options you can offer to your resellers (Check, ePassporte, Wire...), you can configure them and add as many as you want. Each payment option can have its own dump format, which is, like everything else in NATS, templated so you can change it to your liking. Each payment option can have a different charge (if any) that you deduct from the total amount. Even if you want to add a weird payment option, no coding is needed. Either we or you, depending if you are comfortable doing it yourself or not, add a new table to the nats database, setup a new template for entering the data, and then add the type to the Pay Via Admin and enable it. Thats all thats needed, your resellers can now pick that payment option.
Of course, we have a few standard ones already ready for you that we can add at any time. (Check, UPS Check, ePassporte, Wire, International Wire).

And there is more....

There are a lot more options out there for affiliate software besides MPA and NATS. Both these programs are fantastic, but not the only script around.

Do your own research before jumping into anything.

49...........

If I did not have confidence in my software, I would not have it running my own affilate program. How many years experience do the NATS guys have running affilate PPS programs? Have you guys paid out tens of millions?

i love nats threads, the entire nats staff goes in there and hammers everyone that has a sliver of critisism of NATS, even when the thread was specifically not addressed to them







Bullshit, I am sick of hearing you say that. THE FACT is that when you released that program, you marketed it VERY HEAVILY with the "you cant shave with NATs" propeganda






the suing thing is BS, also, imo, i will believe it when i see it. let me also mention that the fallback point in all of your main arguments is that "well duh, sure you can shave using NATS if you do THAT, but if your affilite prods around a bit, they will catch you", which applies to nearly EVERY form of shave as well



Nats is good software and i am sure that you guys took steps and placed controls to ATTEMPT to prevent the people using it from shaving, but the same tirade irritates me when i see it done every week; with all due respect, you guys need to be more professional, objective and even a bit more open minded, like your competitors



now, dont attack me, attack the points, however, i have said my peace, you wont hear from me in this thread again, i spent my time typing this, try to make something constructive out of it

BTW, we offer a full demo of our software to interested parties. But, due to our fraud features that we do not want leaked all over the place, demos are give on a one on one basis by Greg. They take 10-15 mins + any ?'s you may have. John is upset we have not given him a demo, we have simply been swamped with people really interested in buying the software.

About six months ago we started look for Affiliate software to integrate into our VOD solution. At that time the options were

1) Write our own
2) NATS
3) MPA

After talking to a lot of customers we decided to go with NATS primarily based on what our customers wanted. I am not going to talk about technical strength about NATS or MPA because we never evaluated MPA as our customers were dead against using MPA.

MPA just got a bad reputation in this business with the whole MPA2 shaving function and that has left a bad taste on a lot of people?s mouth. End of the day integrity counts a lot in this business and people just don?t want to be associated with MPA even if it?s 100 times better then NATS.

Starting next month you can buy NATS and our VOD software as a package, all will work as a single system. Press coverage on our NATS deal can be found at http://www.objectcube.com/press.html

Jay
www.objectCube.com

PS: To be fare to Brad, when we decided to work with NATS, his product has not hit the market.

The entire nats staff? You think John and I are the only people in the company?
And we hammer everyone that has a sliver of critisism? Not really true, we simply post our replies to that critisism. Are we not allowed to do that? So if I go and attack you in a thread thats not about you, you do not want to defend yourself?

Although, as posted earlier in this thread, we do nolonger want to talk about shaving here... tiny remark: our marketing did not start with "its impossible to shave with nats". We actually did not even say that, we simply said we have no shave feature because webmasters kept constantly asking us about it. Program owners started to pick it up and mentioned they use nats and thus "can not shave". But enough about this.

"PS: To be fare to Brad, when we decided to work with NATS, his product has not hit the market."

Nothing wrong with NATS, it looks ok to me. I just can not see running a large scale operation without access to the code. NATS and ES target markets are not exactly the same. NATS can have all the guys they want at $150 a month.

Another drive by post by an anonymous poster. I'm not going to reply as you said you won't even be back. Plus I've replied to the same stuff 1000 times before.

However, when you want to tell me who you are, who you work for/what you own and when you actually know me. Then you can comment on my professionalism. Ask our clients how professional we are. Believe it or not, we're a shining star in an industry mostly full of children.

1. We offer a shopping cart solution with MPA3 FOR FREE
2. MPA3 have had a gateway cascading (true cascading) working for a long time

Based on 1) or 2) the conclusion is: if you sell tangible good MPA3 is definite the choice.

4.) MPA3 do not hide the variables
5) MPA3 database are monitored by a third party ( clicktruth.com ). Cant not see that no other program offer that.


6) We know that bad support can destroy your biz. We are the only once that have a support center with a support ticket system in place. We also have support 24/7
I would personally not buy software WITHOUT support site and ticket system.

Feature wise we have as good as everything that the others have, it might be one or two we do not have, but I can show you at least 10 different features that we have that the others dont.

What should be of importance for future customers to know is that we have been selling affiliate softwares since 2001. We are a real company with a real support team and we always strive to please each and every customers ALWAYS!

NATS rocks

EXACTLY!!!! Thank you .... here is someone who is a smart businessman and makes sense ..... i couldnt have said it better...

I own AdultLounge.com and use MPA3 , i also have % interests in other affiliate programs and will be using NATS....its the owners you should get to know and not what software they use....anyone is welcomed to come over to our offices in Glendale and meet with me and my entire staff of 12 in our offices....

raffi
CEO & Founder
AdultLounge.com
WorldWideContent.com

It is Saturday, I just came back from a beautiful day at a boatshow here in Marina Del Rey with my daughter. The sun is shining and I had another MPA3 contract in my fax. Its been a good day.

Have a good weekend everyone.



:thumbsup

Wonder why a potential client of yours came to us just a few days ago with true merchant account cascading being one of his number one points and you guys told him you do not have it right now.

We do not have a shopping cart solution inside NATS, we are not a shopping cart, there are big shopping cart apps out there, plenty of them which I am sure are more powerful than a shopping cart you just have "in" mpa3. And we can easily be setup to work with any of them.


We do not HIDE any variables. We cleanup the linking codes, making them SE friendly. Its rather easy to grab the data from that code.
Regarding Clicktruth, I am not familiar enough with their system to deceide if they are good or not. I just looked at the system shortly and am not sure what they exactly do to AUDIT anyone.

What exactly do you think this is: http://clients.toomuchmedia.com/ ?

Please do show everyone here the at least 10 different features that the others do not have. I'm sure everyone is dieing to know.

John and I have been doing affiliate software since at least that long also btw. But other than that, you mean that our company or Shaw Internet is NOT a real company with a real support team? You got to be kidding.

And btw, it would be sad if you would not strive to please every customers. The question is, DO you please every customer? :)

I'm thinking about going to Boot 2005 in Düsseldorf this year. Just started today.

Hope you had a nice day, and congrats on the contract ;)

Have a good weekend too...

I agree Raffi, the owners are much more important in terms of trust than the affiliate program is. By far more important. But if you use an affiliate system that is totally untrusted by anyone, it does not help you a lot to gain trust in general.

Anyway, enough about this subject, there are many more features that all these affiliate apps provide which are worth discussing and important when you deceide which one you would prefer to use.

Nobody with half a brain will ever run their program on software like MPA2 or NATS since they don't come with source code, plain and simple

Do you use Windows? Do you use ICQ? Do you use an E-Mail app? Do you have the source to all of that?

Why do you think you need the source? Do tell me. What good does the source do you? You want to change the app? You want to add features that you can only add by modifying the existing files?

Enlighten me.

Damn! There are a lot of programs run by people who have had labotomies!

I mean confidence in it being a superior product. If you felt it was you should have no problem opening up your demo instead of flashing that same screen shot again and again ;)

As far as experience. You have more experience in running programs, we have more in writting and supporting software. We're a software company who bases our product on feedback from our many clients. And believe me, they are very experienced.

The input and ideas from dozens and dozens of program owners being deployed by very experienced developers will always outweigh the input of one program owner.

Do you ever talk to your clients? Seems you spend all your time on message boards whoring your products. Enlighten me lol.

I bet they like how requests are treated cause your company is too busy serving dozens of other customers and has other priorities. Your success comes at a cost. Must be hard with 100 mom & pop programs bugging you guys on ICQ and email tickets 24/7 asking how to setup their lousy little CCBill product codes. And then all the board whoring you guys have to do explaining how nobody can shave with NATS lmao

Anybody who has some $ upfront, think about it. Buy some established source code outright and get a dedicated, loyal, local programmer in your office. No ICQ or email bullshit. Yes it sounds risky and it's so much more convenient to trust some board personas and their asskissers how great their support is. Still, you will be better off long term and never look back.

100%......waiting for someone to say that...it is so funny. Also I have been hearing more about "processor shaving" diversion of traffic before it even hits processor, please tell me it aint so?

Also its PEOPLE who shave not the PROGRAMS... :Oh crap

Ah right, so 100 one-man-show newbie programs make up years of in-depth industry experience. Might be true arithmetically, just doesn't compute in the real world.

I dont use either, I dont use any software that I have to have a subscription to or that they make it so expensive that they encourage people to buy a subscription to, make your business to exposed to problems if they go down or want to charge you more.
There are lots of good affiliate software out there you buy buy for just a few hundred dollars thats as good as NATS and MPA.
If you want a URL to what I use shoot me an email

[email protected]

nathan or john how much do you charge to add extra features to a nats setup for a client?

Me? On the weekends. Sometimes, not often though. I do not talk to our clients often in general really, my primary job is not support or sales.

Actually, they do like how requests are treated. You know why? Because our software actually is stable, efficiant and easy to use. It has a LOT of features already and the best part of it, we keep adding new features EVERY DAY. Those are features clients requested btw. Oh, and in case you did not realize, all our clients have new ideas every day, and the best and most important ones are picked and added to NATS constantly. The more clients we have, the more awesome features NATS will have and all our clients love using every single one of them.

The programs you call "mom & pop programs" could very well grow to a substantial size rather fast. And with the help of our software, a lot of clients have grown their programs very nicely over the course of using it.
You seem very angry, do you have a problem with all these programs that might take traffic away from your big program? (If you even have one.)
I won't even comment on the shave remark, shows that you actually do not read.

So, you suggest that you buy a source code that, in Brad's example, took them 2 years to write, and then you hire a local programmer who first has to sit there and read and understand the source so he can even modify it without breaking something that might sit in another area of the system.

Also, I find it extremely interesting that many of our clients actually had their OWN software or bought an app with source before, and at some point they noticed that it was just not cost effective for them to keep the in house programmers required and the headache was too much that it was easier to go with a solution like NATS which they knew had the backing of the community and also had the backing of a software company dedicated to make this the best product on the market in every aspect. The input of all the clients to make the product even better was of course also a "small" plus. ;)

To each one their own of course, no reason to get mad at me for anything.

Dude, do you even have a CLUE who our clients are?!

One-man-show newbie programs? Give me a friggin break.

If its something very usefull for nats and all clients, most likely it will cost you $0.

We do not charge you for developing our own software. If you have a great idea, we add it free of charge.

If its something very special just for you, which we could not reuse for anyone else, then we will of course have to charge you depending on the amount of work involved. Hard to give you an exact price without any idea what would need to be added though.

Mike,

I'm sure "processor shaving" is something people with no other way of shaving will start to try. There is one good thing that Executive Stats and NATS have that helps to prevent or dedect that kind of stuff happening (maybe MPA3 has that too, I am not sure though). Both offer membership management, so if the app is used only for protecting the members area, the member has to be added to the app's database. So the app can find members it did not add by itself in the list of members. Not a perfect thing of course, but something you can take a look at at least.

And you are correct, like I said further up, trust in the program owners/managers is more important than trust in the software they run. But if the trust in the software they run is already non-existant, it just makes it harder to trust the owners/managers, don't you think?

Not mad at you at all. Just saying that people might better take a minute and look beyond the asskissing on the boards. Is your software or Oystein's good? Probably. Is it the lands of milk and honey? Probably not. Nothing is. The source code issue alone should scare anybody with ambitions away. You got a valid point though, it's not easy for an out-of-industry coder to dive into a 2 year old 3rd party project.

You're hilarious. I've never seen someone talk out of their ass so much in my life.

You really can not imagine how many additions and tweaks we put on this app every single week. Those are worth much much more than you getting the source like it is now and changing it yourself. We can nolonger add features to yours that we do once you change the source, can nolonger guarantee that it would even WORK. What do we know what you changed.

The benefits by FAR outweight the negative side of not having the source code. Especially with our fast turnaround time of features.