How much do affiliates really care about NATS?
 

How do you choose what to promote? Can you say, in order of importance, what factors influence your choice of sponsors?

Affiliate tracking software
Processor
Visa/MC acceptance
Free promo content
Free-hosted galleries
Other webmasters' recommendations
Reputation of the sponsor
Niche of the site or site
Number of sites/niches available to promote
(add your own)

Personally, I concern myself most with how the niche fits into whatever I'm working on.

I prefer NATS programs because of the easy tracking.

Visa/MC acceptance is important.
Fitting into my niche is important.
Promotional content is important.
Nats itself though isnt important.

Nats can help with new programs to show people that shaving is not occuring, but at the same time I dont think its neccessary.

Jim

ill explain why nats is good and ill explain why nats is bad

Nats is good because if your the most familair software ( regardless of your options ) you dont have to re-teach your affiliates how to use the features , as they are most likely already aware of another NATS sponsors and familiar with the "feel" of the product.

Its bad because once you use a box product you tend to start to look much less unique than other sponsors and have a much larger competition, you are also prone to the same types of hacks/backdoors/shaving and problems as all the other "box" sponsors out there..

campaign tracking
informative stats
epass payout
reasonable minimum payout like $100

nats cant detect shaving , they can detect some buts thats like having a car that can detect SOME accidents, its useless..

NATS sponsors are just as "shaveable" as ANY other sponsor, the only difference being supposedly they would "blacklist" you if it was caught..

I have found NUMEROUS nats sponsors with tracking problems where the affiliate didnt get credit , thats basically shaving... and no "blacklist" so... i guess its all in how you consider shaving,, if all it means is the shaving is more "covert" now.. then its guarantee is worthless and deceptive

If a sponsor touts themselves as "unshaveable" because they use nats , i would be VERY suspicious of their motives.. as it simply isn't true..

Ninja Razors?
Why are folks beginning to suspect NATS programs are shaving?

apparent effectiveness of the tour pages didn't make it in there anywhere?

i dont think "they" are shaving , im just saying they cant prevent it any more than anyone else in general..

Sponsors have been shaving since the beginning of online adult biz, what makes you think that NATS is some miracle solution that stops shaving? Sponsors that wanted to shave were able to, they are able to shave now with nats or any other affiliate software, and they will be able to shave no matter what other affiliate software comes out in the future...

getting paid is good. get paid.

Best to look at what NATS will do for you, then what it will do for your affiliates.

Reputation of the sponsor

That's something you find out after you start promoting. With a lot of experience you might be able to recognize a good-converting tour right off the bat most of the time but the real test comes after you start sending traffic.

Like this: http://hotfat.com/enter.html

Can you tell me how it converts just by looking? ... I've seen freesites with more sophisticated designs, but when looking it over I had to resist the urge to sign up...

I don't:)

I was just posting to up the drama level.:1orglaugh

Well I agree no software is unhackable, the fact that NATS is encypted on the backend certainly stops complicated indepth shaving going on. I'd certainly trust a $35 PPS console free program on NATS far more than I would a $35 console free run on someones own custom backend thats for sure.

Personally I look for high quality sites when promoting other sites and low trial prices (cause that matters alot), and if they are on NATS then I trust them just that little bit more.

Matt

no shaving :thumbsup :)

This has been pondered quite a few times on gfy and many a "indepth shave" can be done without detection.

Personally for me i trust every sponsors tracking about the same ZERO , until given some reason otherwise..

You should trust your sponsor first , the software they use second :winkwink:

If you trust the sponsor , it wont matter who the software is made by..

kind of like guns, they are made with safety locks , to prevent accidents.. , now would you trust a retard with a loaded gun with a safety lock , or a gun expert with no safety lock :)

People should use NATS because of what it offers not what it prevents ( especially when its been proven it doesn't )

As an affiliate, I'm not all that fond of NATs for a few reasons.

1. It seems too complicated for the small time operator. I've seen a lot of small programs that just seem to make a mess of things using it.

2. I feed ALL my links thru a script that is used accross many sites. That means I can't use the campaign code because of the stupid way they've implemented it.

3. Getting promotional material is a pain in the ass. Whoever thought displaying the graphics/thumbs on the page etc. really was an idiot.

4. Grabbing links is a pain if there's several sites. Yeah.. I have plenty of time on my hands to copy and paste each link one at a time.

5. Small programs need to cut their own cheques. I'd much rather a small program keep the billing thru CCBill so I can minimize the risk of them not converting and still get my money out of them, not to mention trusting them to actually send me a cheque.

The people that write this sort of software need to stop looking at it as a Wm promoting just that program and one or 2 sites.. Most WMs have multiple sites and want tools that allow us to BULK grab what we want as fast and efficiently as possible.

So NATs is great with the "no shaving" promo (although it's a false sense of security since you can still be shaved in many ways) and the stats you get. Note however that the programs that have really great stats have worked on it after the fact. NATs doesn't necessarily come with great stats out of the box.

But the risk is in small programs not converting and not sending you cheques.

you always amaze me smokeythebear :)love reading your posts like p1mpdogg posts very different though but i like it :) :thumbsup :1orglaugh

Now I'm going out on a limb and assuming 95% of NATS sponsors are doing the monthly leasing option.

If you're serious about business and being in this long term, why would you put so much trust (practically your entire business) in the hands of something like NATS? When I say something like nats, I mean a monthly lease option for software. You're counting on them being up and online and this adds an extra element of risk to your business that quite honestly none of us really need :2cents

While the software isn't the thing I would be looking for when choosing a new sponsor - if that is their major selling point "we use nats" - then as SmokeyTheBear said, it doesn't say much for their originality and probably shows on their sites too.

Now I'm going out on a limb and assuming 95% of NATS sponsors are doing the monthly leasing option.

If you're serious about business and being in this long term, why would you put so much trust (practically your entire business) in the hands of something like NATS? When I say something like nats, I mean a monthly lease option for software. You're counting on them being up and online and this adds an extra element of risk to your business that quite honestly none of us really need :2cents

While the software isn't the thing I would be looking for when choosing a new sponsor - if that is their major selling point "we use nats" - then as SmokeyTheBear said, it doesn't say much for their originality and probably shows on their sites too.

Not in my case... if the tour looks bad I don't send it traffic unless someone else I have reason to believe is swearing by it.

That's not a niche I'm very familiar with but the design looks awesome IMO. Lots of text to read & get intrigued by. Photoshop effects, flash, etc. aren't really much of a consideration for how good a tour will do.

Then again I made about 94375643209658436 different tours for my paysite when it was running so maybe I look at tour pages a little differently than most.

nats dont mean a fucking thing to me if the sponsor dont sell.

:thumbsup

I try to stay away from sponsors using NATS.
it cannot be a coincidence that my sales go considerably down.Its are even harder to get a sale than with ccbill