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View Full Version : Yes, SterlingCash is using NATS!


daveydude
07-28-05, 01:16 AM
OK, we know a certain person already announced this last week, but here is the official announcement ;)

After several weeks of blood, sweat, and tears, Sterling Cash proudly celebrates its first birthday with the launch of SterlingCash v2.5, powered by the World's #1 affiliate tracking system - NATS.

We are totally blown away by the level of support we have recieved from Fabian and the team at NATS - these guys have gone way beyond the call of duty to look after us and smooth the transition from our previous system. The NATS system itself probably needs no intruduction, but we are blown away by its speed and versatility

All the SterlingCash v2 affiliates have been automatically moved to v2.5, with all their previous sales stats intact. There is some ongoing work to finish this off - we are just waiting to add in the old rebill stats, but this should be complete within a week. All the old initial sales have been added and can be viewed now. Affiliate codes from our Executive Stats system are all being automatically translated into NATS codes when they reach our server, so there's no need to go back and change them. Affiliates who started out with us last year and are using our old CCBill affiliate codes are still having those codes honoured - CCBill will continue to track those sales & rebills, and send your cheques out as usual. But we ask those CCBill affiliates to please sign up with the new system and start reaping the benefits!

The most exciting feature of v2.5 is the cascade billing - we currently have 3 main billers included by default. Taking pride of place in the #1 spot is Epoch EU, which offers the ability to take Maestro / Switch / Solo debit cards alongside all the main credit cards. This is already converting better for us with UK & European traffic. Failing that, second in the cascade is the ever trusty CCBill, followed by Eurobill which takes European debit cards and German direct debits. So there is now even less excuse for declines, and more chance to pick up sales from the vast number of Europeans who don't have credit cards! We currently offer affiliate payouts every 2 weeks by Cheque, Moneybookers, and Epassporte.

We mustn't forget to mention the help we've had from the team at our host, www.realitychecknetwork.com, who have managed to move us from one seriously overloaded server to a lean & mean 3 server system. We now have our tours on one dedicated box, members areas on another, and FHGs on a 3rd box over in Amsterdam. We are now set for some serious expansion over the next 12 months. Respect must also go to our buddies at www.digibucks.com for all the advice & help they've given us. You are all champions!

OK, this is starting to sound like an over-long Oscar acceptance speech, so I will shut the fuck up until our next announcement, which will be up soon...

ROCK!

Grisey
07-28-05, 07:32 AM
468x60 banners dave faith or juliet or juliet 125x125 to go next to faiths ?

daveydude
07-28-05, 12:13 PM
Yeah, now we've pretty much done all the hard work we will be able to concentrate on building up a nice big wedge of promo content. Banners are on my to-do list...

JT
07-28-05, 12:31 PM
Need webcam software ? Hit me up :)

consider yourself hit dude. What you got?

JT
07-28-05, 12:32 PM
P.S well done on the move to nats dude, hope it works out for you.

Out of interest why did you pick nats over mpa3?

daveydude
07-28-05, 12:50 PM
We know more people who use NATS, none of them had a bad word to say about it. MPA3 is probably just as good, but you can only use one of them. It's a case of Coke vs Pepsi vs Rola Cola in the affiliate software market at the moment I reckon ;)

We spoke to NATS at length about our requirements before we took the plunge, and they have come good with all their promises so far. They've done a lot to get us and all our affiliates moved over from Executive Stats. We are happier than pigs in shit at the moment.

Inbedwithfaith
07-28-05, 01:03 PM
for those who arent familiar with Rola Cola here is what Wikipedia have to say about it!

Rola Cola was a cola drink manufactured in the 1980s by the Silver Spring Mineral Water Co Ltd of Great Britain.

Although by then it had long ceased production, Rola Cola re-entered British popular consciousness in 2000, when comedian Peter Kay began to regularly mention the drink in his stage shows.

Tim
07-28-05, 05:45 PM
Congrats on the move! :)

daveydude
07-28-05, 07:04 PM
Cheers Tim - Aaron & I keep saying "i love nats" to each other on MSN lol. It really is amazingly good.

And no, we don't get a discount for sucking their dicks on the boards ;) We just like to give credit where it's due.

NumptyNuts
07-28-05, 07:53 PM
Its a lot better then the previous system you had in place - :-)

spann0
07-29-05, 01:14 AM
good move!

Alf Garnet
07-29-05, 03:55 PM
Cheers Tim - Aaron & I keep saying "i love nats" to each other on MSN lol. It really is amazingly good.

And no, we don't get a discount for sucking their dicks on the boards ;) We just like to give credit where it's due.

When Jason and Alex went over to nats, sales fell through the floor. Thank fuck they dropped it for the pile of shit it is

daveydude
07-30-05, 11:59 AM
When Jason and Alex went over to nats, sales fell through the floor. Thank fuck they dropped it for the pile of shit it is

lol, "pile of shit"? Have you used it? Can you back that statement up in any way?

Alf Garnet
07-30-05, 12:16 PM
lol, "pile of shit"? Have you used it? Can you back that statement up in any way?

"lol" = Im glad you find billing systems so funny

As I said

"When Jason and Alex went over to nats, sales fell through the floor."

So they dropped it and dropped it in public http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=449372&page=3&pp=50


Looks like they didnt "LOL" quite as much as you about an affiliate getting paid for 5 rebills over the 275 rebills he should have been paid for.

-HF
07-30-05, 01:24 PM
wicked. that sounds rather similar to the ES issues.

daveydude
07-30-05, 02:12 PM
wicked. that sounds rather similar to the ES issues.

It does indeed. I'm gonna become a farmer.

-HF
07-30-05, 02:32 PM
It does indeed. I'm gonna become a farmer.


get your own merchant account, you'll most likely still get accusd of shaving by some, but at least you yourself know what is going on. :D

NumptyNuts
07-30-05, 03:05 PM
You could get one for the IBWF site as it was prior to the cat being let out of the bag ;-)

Alf Garnet
07-30-05, 03:07 PM
It does indeed. I'm gonna become a farmer.

Either way you will have to deal with Mad Cows

daveydude
07-30-05, 03:23 PM
"lol" = Im glad you find billing systems so funny

As I said

"When Jason and Alex went over to nats, sales fell through the floor."

So they dropped it and dropped it in public http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=449372&page=3&pp=50


Looks like they didnt "LOL" quite as much as you about an affiliate getting paid for 5 rebills over the 275 rebills he should have been paid for.

Was just laughing at the "pile of shit" comment and was wondering if you'd ever run a program with NATS or had any experience with it other than what you've read about on GFY? A problem with a product does not mean it's "a pile of shit", but it might mean that's it not right for you or your business. Can you name anything that's 100% perfect?

Sales data in NATS is entirely dependant on the information it gets from the biller. I can see the problems that might occur where a biller has changed their scripts and not informed NATS, so the information in the postback is incorrect or causes problems in some way, such as not correctly crediting rebills. It's up to program owners to check that the stats from their billers correlates to the information in NATS, and if there is a problem, NATS and / or the biller can deal with it. We're talking about software here - none of it is perfect.

As far as I know, if a biller isn't sending correct data to NATS, the process would be to make sure the postback script was correct, and then get the biller to repost the information or get a csv dump of the data from them and add it to NATS manually or via a script. Obviously that didn't work for J&A so the problem must have a deeper root.

The problem we had in ES *was* an error with the ES code. That's one of the reasons we moved away. It sounds to me like J&A had a problem with data moving between Electracash and NATS. Of course if it wasn't fixable then that's a good reason to switch to another backend system, but you don't see that happening everyday so maybe there's more to it than we know.

Our sales & conversions under NATS are better than under ES, so we are happy for now.

daveydude
07-30-05, 03:25 PM
Either way you will have to deal with Mad Cows

Yeah what am I thinking, I bet farming is even harder than making porn. At least we don't have to slaughter all our models if they catch a cold :P