NATS5 Walkthrough
Main Affiliate Screen
NATS Remote Backup
Your business depends on your affiliate and sales data. If you lose that, you could lose everything. Hosts sometimes provide backup service, but to be safe as possible, Too Much Media offers a NATS data backup service. We will backup all of your NATS database data and templates to our server three times a week and, if your hard drive crashes or you lose data, we reinstall NATS and re-import all of your data at no extra cost.
For more information, please submit a ticket.
Customizing the Affiliate Area
The affiliate area described in the next few sections is fully customizable. You can add your own log, change the page layout, add or remove statistics, and add or remove whole pages. You can change the superficial page appearance by editing the CSS file; you can change page contents in the Skins and Templates Admin described below.
Affiliates see the main affiliate screen when they login to NATS. Like all NATS pages, you can completely customize its layout.
The links on this page take you to the pages described below. The graphs show the affiliate's promotional progress.
Affiliate Stats
What's an Affiliate Referral Program?
Affiliate referral programs, also known as Webmaster Referral Programs, let affiliates refer other affiliates to your program. The referring affiliate gets paid a percentage for all of the referred affiliate's sales.
For example: Affiliate Alice signs up Affiliate Bob; Alice earns 10% of Bob's sales. Affiliate Bob signs up Affiliate Conrad; Bob earns 10% of Conrad's sales and Alice earns 2% of Conrad's sales. In this setup, Bob is Alice's first tier, and Conrad is Alice's second tier. You can have up to eight tiers and you can pay a different percentage for each tier.
For more information, please see the Affiliate Referrals article.
What's a Campaign?
Campaigns let each individual affiliate track their traffic in their own way. Affiliates tag their referrals by assigning a campaign to their referral links. NATS records the incoming campaign tag and lets affiliates breakdown their campaign statistics on the Affiliate Statistics page.
For example: an affiliate creates two campaigns -- one for each of their sites. Now the affiliate can compare the performance of those two sites.
The affiliate statistics page gives affiliates all the statistical tools they need to analyze and improve their promotions.
The report lets affiliates get detailed statistical information in an easy-to-use interface. It groups traffic into a dozen different views. For example, the demographics view (illustrated below) lets affiliates view statistics on a continental, regional, or national basis, and the affiliate can compare traffic from several countries side-by-side.
Similarly, the Statistics report also allows affiliates to "breakdown" performance data by date, site, program, campaign, traffic tag, ad tool, and referring URL.
Affiliates can customize their default view to include whatever statistical reports they find most useful. The right side of the default view shows summaries of the affiliate's site, program, campaign, and adtool activity.
Affiliate Adtools
What's a Linkcode?
Linkcodes are referral URLs tracked by NATS, Linkcodes can be used directly by affiliates or NATS can embed the linkcode in an adtool for the affiliate.
What Are Downloadable Adtools?
Affiliates download your downloadable adtools and put them on their websites. For example, you can turn a video into a downloadable adtool.
Adding downloadable adtools is easy in NATS. For details, please see the NATS5 Adtools Management.
The Affiliate Adtools page lets affiliates get linkcodes and adtools for promoting your sites. You can access the Affiliate Adtools section by clicking the "Tools" link at the top of the page. Its simple tab-based navigation lets affiliates quickly find the type and style of adtool they want and then choose from a list of matching adtools.
The "Linkcode Settings" section lets affiliates choose which site and program to get adtools for. You can also select whether you want your NATS linkcodes to be encoded, un-encoded, or if you want them to display shortnames.
The adtools page comes setup for the most common adtool types, but you can add your own custom types (for example: page peels) very easily.
Affiliate My Account
Overriding Affiliates
You can change an affiliate's settings by overriding that affiliate. When you override an affiliate, you temporarily become that user; you can get their linkcodes, view their statistics, or adjust their account.
To learn how to override an affiliate, please see our NATS5 Affiliate Override wiki.
The Affiliate My Account page lets the affiliate change their account information, preferences, and send and receive messages. The eight in the "Navigation" box let the affiliate navigate between their settings.
- The Account Detail tab lets the affiliate change their account information
- The Settings tab lets the affiliate customize his default layout, as well as edit e-mail and notification settings
- The Account Change Log tab provides a detailed history of changes you have made to your account
- The Login History tab provides a detailed history of login activity to your account
- The Messages tab shows all sent/received messages and notifications
- The Manage Quick Links tab allows you to remove or change the order of the quick links that appear on the Dashboard
- The Campaigns tab lets the affiliate create or edit campaigns
- The Payment History tab shows a detailed report of payments that are owed to the affiliate, the payment method, and whether or not the payment has been stored/paid yet
Using the account settings tab, the affiliate can prevent anyone from changing their payment information with the affiliate confirming the change through email.
Affiliate Support
Using Account Reps
Account Representatives help you manage your affiliates so that you can manage your business. Account representatives get to see statistics for the affiliates they manage. They can send news and notifications to their affiliates and receive support requests. You can even pay account representatives a percentage of their affiliate's income.
To create an account representative, please see the Account Representatives article.
We made the support page easy for you to customize so that you can give your contact information and support links to affiliates. Customizing this page is easy in the Skins and Templates Admin.
Skins and Templates
For more information, please see NATS5 Skins and Templates Available Skins
Other Templates
You can find most of NATS's templates in the Skins and Templates section, but certain templates are found elsewhere in the NATS admin area. For example, the Site Templates are specific to each tour. They include the most customized template in NATS: the Join Template. You can edit the Site Templates in the Tour Overview.
You can customize the look and feel of your affiliate program using the
Skins and Templates section. A Skin is a set of templates that work together to provide your affiliates with a consistent user interface.
NATS comes with the default skin you see in the affiliate area and you
can create as many of your own skins as you want.
You will not be able to edit the default NATS skin. This is a failsafe measure, as you will always be able to revert to the default skin if you lose your other code. You can create a new skin by pressing the "Actions" button next to an existing skin and clicking Add New Skin. A new skin inherits the properties of the skin above it with less indenting -- the parent skin -- and each template in the skin retains its parent's properties until you customize the child's template the first time. Click the "Edit Skin Settings" option to change the skin's name, description, and who can use this skin.
Clicking on "Available Skins" in the Skins and Templates section and clicking on any of your skins will show you a list of your skin's templates. The templates follow a specific naming scheme:
- The admin_ templates display administrative areas
- The affiliate_ templates display the affiliate areas
- The external_ templates display the public areas that don't require a login
- The function_ templates support the other templates
- The includes_ templates work with the Includes Section
- The mail_ templates generate email bodies
To edit a template for the first time, press the "Actions" button next to the template in the desired skin and click "Customize Template". There are several other actions to let you work with the template, which are displayed when clicking the "Actions" button next to the template:
- The "Revert to Original" option throws away your changes and restores the child template to a duplicate of its parent
- The "Edit Template" option lets you edit a template after you customize it
- The "Duplicate Template" option lets you duplicate a template
- The "View Template" option previews the template for you. Note: This preview won't contain any dynamic information the template expects, so a correctly coded template may display incorrectly.
Back on the Available Skins page, there are Import and Backup buttons that let you add a template from your computer or save a template to your computer. You can also change the default skin for the different user types. You can also flush the template cache by clicking the "Flush Cache" button; click this button if your templates are not displaying correctly.
Billers Section
For more information, please see NATS5 Biller Management
Biller Setup Instructions
Since each biller has different settings you must configure and optional settings you may have configured, we have separated the biller instructions into a different article for each biller. For example, we have an article each for CCBill, Epoch, and Netbilling.
You can find the complete list of instructions in the right-side wiki menu of the Billers Admin entitled Biller Instructions.
The Biller Management page is where you add and modify the settings for your payment processors.
To add a new biller, click the "Add A Biller" button at the top of the Biller Management page, choose your biller, and click "Add". (For a more thorough description, please see the Biller Management article)
After you add a biller, you will need to add a cascade to be associated with the biller. For information on how to do this, visit our Cascades wiki. Once you have created a wiki, you will have to create a step for that biller in the cascade, which will the associate the biller with the cascade.
Cascades increase the probability that a surfer will sign-up by adding an extra step to the sign-up process:
- A surfer visits your tour page
- They decide to join and fill out your pre-join form
- NATS sends them to the first biller in the cascade
- If the biller approves them, NATS makes them a member
- If the biller doesn't approve, NATS sends them to the next biller in the cascade
NATS keeps sending the surfer to new billers until there are no more billers in the cascade. You can edit the cascade to find the following options:
- Cascade weight: how often should NATS choose this cascade over other cascades with the same name?
- Automatic cascades: should NATS send the surfer straight to the first biller in this cascade without trying to collect any information beforehand?
- Hide cascade: don't let surfers choose this cascade; you can manually choose hidden cascades for surfers
- Target/excluded: let or forbid surfers from these countries from accessing this cascade
The custom cascade rules let you choose when to show this cascade to surfers. The first matching rule takes precedence over all over rules.
When adding a biller to a cascade, there are a few special options:
- Stop cascade: when the surfer gets to this step, NATS shows them the denial template
- Switch cascade: when the surfer gets to this step, NATS sends them to the top a different cascade you choose. You can use this rule to send them to a hidden cascade. You can also use this to switch biller payment methods (ex. if a surfer's credit card gets rejected, send them to a check payment processor)
- Show template: when the surfer reaches this step, NATS sends them to a template you choose
- Redirect: when the surfer reaches this step, NATS sends them to any URL you choose
Programs Section
For more information, please see NATS5 Programs Management
Shortname Rules
NATS keeps track of programs, sites, and many other things using shortnames. Each shortname must be unique within the NATS program and may not contain spaces or special characters.
Good Shortnames
- my_program
- program1
Bad Shortnames
- my program
- program#1
NATS uses programs to define how affiliates get compensated for referrals, such as page hits, member joins, and rebills.
You have the option to create a program with automatic enrollment or manual enrollment. A program with automatic enrollment set will automatically enroll all new affiliates in the program, but not current affiliates. A new program with manual enrollment set needs affiliates to be manually added to the program. Affiliates will not be able to choose which program they will be enrolled in.
Note: If you want to create a new program that will have all current and new affiliates enrolled, you must create a new program set to manual enrollment, and then update the program to set it to automatic enrollment.
A new program requires a name, shortname, a type, and the kind of affiliate enrollment option. The name is displayed to affiliates, the shortname is used by NATS as an internal identifier, and the program type defines how affiliates get paid.
- A Standard Program promotes membership sites
- A Cross Sale Program promotes cross sells between your program and other programs
- A CCBill-Paid Program bills your customers using CCBill and pays your affiliates using CCBill
- An Affiliate Referral Program pays your affiliates for referring other affiliates (up to two tiers)
- An Affiliate Referral 8 Tiers Program pays your affiliates for referring other affiliates (up to eight tiers)
- An Account Rep Program lets you pay account representatives for managing affiliates
On the main Program Management page, each program has several actions available by clicking the "Actions" button:
- Program Overview: Access the program's Program Overview. For more information, please see our NATS5 Program Overview wiki.
- Switch to Manual Enrollment or Automatic Enrollment: These options will be available depending on what kind of enrollment option the program already is set to. A automatic enrollment program will have the "Switch to Manual Enrollment" option, and a manual enrollment program will have the "Switch to Auto Enrollment" option.
- "Delete, Remove and Redirect": Delete the program, redirect all traffic connected from the program to a new standard program, and enroll all affiliates currently associated with the program to the new program.
You can create standard permanent payout changes, temporary payout changes, tiered payout changes that pay affiliates for sending more than a specific amount of traffic, or recurring payout changes that happen on a schedule. For more information, see the Payout Changes article.
Sites Admin
For more information, please see NATS5 Site Management
What's a Site Partner?
Site Partners share in a specific site's revenue. Often site partners are affiliates with a special interest in a site; for example: a site devoted to an actress may have that actress as a site partner. NATS also gives site partners statistics about all of the site's activity.
You make affiliate site partners in the Affiliates Admin and you tell NATS which sites they're partners of in the Sites Overview. For more information about Site Partners, please see the Site Partner article.
The Sites section allows you to set up and configure a site in NATS for each website you want to promote.
Click the "Add a Site" button to add a site. There are several different types of sites:
- A Membership site sells subscriptions.
- A Token site lets surfers buy tokens to use features on the site.
- A Store site sells non-membership goods and services.
- A Third Party site lets surfers by a membership to a third-party site.
- An Affiliate site lets affiliates refer other affiliates.
Next to each site on the main Sites Management page is list of some tour details and a number indicating how many tours are in that site. Click on the number of tours to see the tours for that site, and click on the tour to see its details.
- The URL is where surfers start the tour
- The Linkdomain is the domain linkcodes point at
Activate the billers for this tour by entering their tour-specific
settings, such as merchant ID, passwords, etc. in the Biller Details section. These settings must be obtained from the biller themselves.
You add join options by clicking Setup Additional Options for this Site. There are three checkboxes:
- The Free Pre-Initial checkbox lets you add a join option that starts with a free trial
- The Disallow for Old Members checkbox lets you forbid previous members from using the free trial again
- The Active for All Tours puts this option on all of this site's tours
Enter the join option's prices and join form text and then enter the join option-specific settings in the Biller Codes section.
After you create a join option, you can edit it on the same page. You can also edit its templates -- including the very important template, the join form -- and you can change the Join Option Rules. These rules determine when the join option is shown to surfers.
On the main page of the Sites Admin, each site has several icons.
- The Edit Site Details icon edits the site's details. For more information, see the Site Setup article.
- The Add New Tour icon adds a new tour
- The Set Join Options icon lets you add or remove join options for all tours on this site.
- The Set Active Programs icon changes which programs this site belongs to
- The Edit Site Partners icon lets you add site partners to this site. For more information, see Site Partner article
- The Edit Site Templates icon lets you modify the site templates. For more information, see The Sites Admin Templates article
- The Redirects icon lets you take traffic to an old tour or program and redirect it to a new tour or program
- The Delete Site icon removes a site from your Active Sites list.
- Click the "Click Here to Show Deleted Sites/Tours" link to display your deleted sites and tours
