Any affiliates out there hate NATS?!?
 

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 :2 cents:????

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

yes
 

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.

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

CCBILL , EPOCH, NATS

www.rhinopays.com

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. :)

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

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

I don't mind it.

i think nats is great :2 cents:

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.

no NATS for us

Not me! NATS is the NUTS

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.

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.

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.

Some do, most don't.

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

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)

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

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.

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

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

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 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).

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

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)

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.

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

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.

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

:2 cents:

People need to research Porngraph....

people need to get over shit

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

Good post, thank you :thumbsup