Is NATS worthwhile?
 

I'be been thinking about switching over to a NATS based affiliate program and wondered what the overall thought is to me doing so?

Also, I've heard it's kinda hard to setup, is that true?

Thanks for your input...

Dave

Most people here will tell you it is. But a lot of affiliates tend to prefer ccbill for a reason these days. If you do use NATS I suggest keeping ccbill for payouts (you can do that) and make sure the old codes still work. I usually just drop programs that switch link codes and invalidate the old ones. Especially with little or no notice given.

Thanks for the info!! :)

CCBill to NaTS is one of the first steps from baby to big boy.

A lot of affiliates prefer ccbill?
All our programs run NATS

I Tend to believe affiliates prefer nats

Nats3 is good!

I'm considering NATS 4.1 when it's released.

Running a program, I'd prefer to have some of the benefits of NATS, but, as an affiliate, I do prefer CCBill programs.

I've been wondering, since RealityCash merged all their programs into one awesome one, is there any special reason why you don't have your massive empire under one roof for affiliates to promote everything with merged payouts?

with huge percentage of failure. at the end webmasters don't get paid :2 cents:

ask your current affiliates first before migrating to nats. many of them will tell you it sucks

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=926650

pimproll did and it appeared webmasters actually don't like nats

nats sucks, maybe you should look up porngraph before you use it..

i preferred nats previous version, i hate the current version clock

Lots of the programs i working with use NATS. Seems pretty good.

Dave,

Thanks for your interest in NATS!

To answer your question regarding set-up, here are some of the things we do to make it as easy for you as possible for you; Our tech's will install NATS on your server, import your affiliate and member data from CCbill or any other affiliate software along with redirecting your old link codes to work with the new NATS link codes. Also, we will give you a 2-part training session over the phone about 2 hours each with our tech's explaining every single admin inside NATS and the general usage/set-up. After this is all done you will have full access to our in-house tech support team for any questions on set-up, tech issues, etc.
We pretty much do everything we can to make you comfortable with our software!

I would def. recommend to do some more research on what you think fits best for your affiliate program as this the best way to make sure you made the right decision for your company. Please don't base it on some of the replies from the non-reputable members on here and actually ask some of the affiliate program owners running NATS. They will tell you why they think NATS is the best affiliate tracking software out there.

I have sent you an email by the way, please don't hesitate to contact me at anytime for further questions.

Thanks!

NATS is great, and the setup was easy. It wasnt the right choice for us due to reasons unrelated. It tracks every aspect you could imagine, and is easy to add new sites, billers, etc.
If you only have one site, it might not be the best idea unless you are planning on expanding.

And also ask your affiliates and potential affiliates since after all it is an affiliate program and without affiliates what's the point? :upsidedow I think some people forget that.

TMM does have their shit together though and as far as software and support goes, from what I see, NATS seems solid. But still see first reply for my opinion which I won't repeat.

When it comes to minimizing risk of the company not paying you, yes.. Or if you don't send enough to a program to reach the minimum very often cause they have it set so high, yes...

We went through a similar cross road last year when we wanted to redo Private.com. After reviewing our options of - NATS, building a system ourselves or looking at other systems the obvious choice was to go with NATS. Quickest to market, industry standard tools, most affiliates are familiar with the system and their scripts don’t need to be adjusted for a custom build program, etc…

Hit me up if you have any questions and I will be more than happy to give you my feedback.

Good Luck.

nats works fine does its job

:1orglaugh

But only the "big boys" are closing shop and hauling ass with people's money.

quoted for truth :(

right, DMR, IBill etc. many 3 party processors also went under owing money to affiliates / program owners...

If anything ever happens to CCBill all you fan boys will loose EVERYTHING you have because you are so convinced it's the only safe way.

I don't let what backend (ccbill or nats) determine who I promote, but I will tell you the NATS programs are higher in the list, much easier to deal with, and I know the system fairly well. And all the eggs are in different baskets.

i like NATS version 3. works great for affiliates and site owners. setting it up is difficult, using it for the first time is also difficult, but it makes managing affiliates and sites easier once you are familiar with it. just my :2 cents::2 cents:

Hit me up, icq 33375924 or woj [at] wojfun.com, you can get some great affiliate tools that will take your affiliate program to the next level for fraction of the cost of getting nats...

ask
 

It is best to ask your affiliates. As I am concerned, I am running away from all those NATS, mpa3 or similar programs because if someone fucked me for money, they were them so many times.

Literally 10,000's of Affiliates push nats programs... its without question that affiliates like and use nats. Oh sure, you can find some that hate it, just like you can find affiliates that hate every backend. But if it converts, it makes no difference what backend it is on.

As for payments, the only safety that ccbill provides over nats is your last check. Outside of that, plenty of ccbill sites/programs have gone out of business and anyone could screw us over at anytime.

I prefer it giving we are so use to the majority using it

As an affiliate who's been managing sites since 2004, I can tell you that every time a sponsor switched from ccBill to NATS, I lost money. I'm serious ... every time conversions were less. Always made the old hippie conspiracist in me think there are some "backend features" in NATS that they don't want affiliates to know about. I call it "The Gillette Protocol"

it's kinda general known stuff :2 cents:

I've actually seen what you're talking about first hand... in the admin stats. I can also assure you, I've seen it go the other direction as well.

Not to knock anyone doing this, this Industry is all about learning so taking the step deserves some respect. But normally what happens is, they aren't able to manage the full scale of nats, at least not at first.

The learning curve is huge, and if you don't have the team to help it will be that much more complex to setup correctly. But once a program has learned it, has it setup correctly, a nats program IS an extremely powerful and beneficial tool for the affiliates and the owner.

A great number of programs have made the switch and never went back. Statistically speaking, 100's of owners aren't going to doom themselves if it was all downhill after nats.

That is what we said 5 years ago and thankfully many have listened!

:thumbsup

PS: Remember this one?

http://design.mansionproductions.com..._avn122005.jpg

Bump for mansion ! their support rocks !

ps hope to see new mas version soon...

I wish I could jump in all of your MPA3 threads and post "alternatives", problem is there is never any threads about you guys. :(

True, perhaps the current affiliates may like your current setup. That's not to say you won't gain many new affiliates by switching to NATS.

TheDoc ... I'm sure the owners don't go downhill at all. I'm sure their conversions are just fine. I'm saying that as an affiliate .. maybe .. just maybe .. not all sales are being properly credited .. at least that's what it appears to me on my end. Like I said .. in over six years .. every ccBill-to-NATS conversion I've been a partner to ... has resulted in lower income for me. Truthfully, every one.

Again .. maybe it's the the old hippie conspiracist in me. But at the very least, it sure is an amazing coincidence.

So what you're saying is we have a secret feature in NATS designed to steal sales from affiliates?

There are probably certain settings which would effect how sales were tracked though, right? Cookie life, how type-ins are handled, etc. Maybe that's part of the problem. Affiliates just don't know all the possible settings sponsors have (and is there a page which discloses some of these settings sort of like ccbill's program details?) so they are naturally a little worried given some past happenings in the industry (PIBcash).

http://wiki.toomuchmedia.com/index.p...S4_Walkthrough seems like a nice source of documentation. Anything else you'd recommend?

Personally I think the CCBill Paid feature is pretty cool and I wish more programs would use it. It seems like the best of both worlds to have NATS features and stats combined with CCBILL payouts.

NATS makes it easy to setup and automate most affiliate and biller related issues. Add your choice of login system, and throw a few sites in. Boom, done.