For Newbies - How to Use Nats Sponsors

Hey there,

I received an email today from a newbie to Nats that had no idea how to grab linking codes or banners in Nats, so I put together this little tutorial for him. I thought it might be of use to other newbies out there that have never made their way around Nats before. Please note there might be some variations based on how programs set up their Nats options, but I think this should at least cover some basic questions and help you find your way around. This tutorial only covers linking codes and banners, since grabbing the other affiliate tools (such as embedded videos or RSS Feeds) vary greatly between each different Nats affiliate program.

CHAPTER 1 - Linking Codes

1. Point your web browser to the Nats sponsor you want to promote, in this case http://www.zbuckz.com/ or http://nats.zbuckz.com/

If you are not already a zBUCKz sponsor, go ahead and create an account so we can walk you through this tutorial. You can sign up for an account at:
http://www.zbuckz.com/signup.php?nats=

2. Log-in using your username and password

3. You should now be redirected to the Affiliate's member page, in this case:
http://www.zbuckz.com/members.php

At the top of the page is you will see a bunch of light green text links. Click on the one that says 'link codes.' Here is the URL:
http://www.zbuckz.com/codes.php

4. Select your campaign. I know you are probably wondering 'what the bloody hell is a campaign?!' Allow me to explain. A campaign is a way for you to better track and filter your traffic. For example, say you have 3 blogs. One is called 'midgetsperm.com,' one is called 'lazybottoms.com' and one is called 'earlickers.com.' Let's say you want to see your statistics for how each individual blog performs on our sites. You would need to create 3 different campaigns. That way you can measure how well a site like 'lazybottoms.com' does versus 'midgetsperm.com' on promoting our websites. Obviously if you are converting 'lazybottoms.com' on GayRentBoys.com at 1 in 100 but 'midgetsperm.com' is converting at 1 in 10,000 you would want to send more traffic from midgetsperm and less traffic from lazybottoms. I think you get the point.

If you don't want to select a campaign at this time, just leave it on 'default' (which means no campaigns are selected) select 'next step,' and let's carry on.

5. Now is the point where we select 'Program to Use.' You will see there is a drop-down menu with a bunch of options. I'll explain each option to you here.

1. Pay Per Sign-Up (up to $40 per join)

Pay Per Sign-Up allows you to be paid for each sign-up you make, but it's important to realize with this option you DO NOT make any money if a customer rebills. It is a one time payment for each sale.
Pay Per Sign-Up is for affiliates that want their money up front, however you may lose more in the long term with this option since you do not get recurring commission from rebills.

2. Rev Share with Trials

Revshare with trials means that you will send the customer to a tour which will have an option for the surfer to sign-up for a trial membership, and (with zBUCKz.com) you will get 60% on all sales and rebills. In my experience, trial tours convert a lot better then non-trial tours, however depending on the quality of your traffic and how much the site you are promoting updates and the quality/quantity of content they may be less likely to rebill.

3. Rev Share without trials

The only difference from the Rev Share without trials link is that you will be sending customers to a tour where the join page does not offer a trial sign-up.

4. Webmaster Referral

Got a friend that is a webmaster and not promoting zBUCKz.com? Select this option and you can give them the link to sign-up, and get 10% of their earnings forever!

For brevity's sake, pick option 2 (Rev Share with trials) and click on the 'next step' button so we can continue with our little Nats/zBUCKz tour.

5. Here we are! The page where you can collect your links for each site. You will also see we have some Japanese and French tours in case you had a site in one of those languages. Now you can copy and paste the links into your html editor and you will be credited for your sales!

CHAPTER 2 - Grabbing Banners

1. Click on 'Tools' from the top menu bar on the members home page of Nats:
http://www.zbuckz.com/adtools_adv.php

2. Select campaign and program, same as numbers 4 and 5 above.

3. Click 'Show Ad Tools.'

4. Scroll down and you will see the sites listed and above that, text that says 'Available Ad Tools.' On the left Column on the top it says 'Banners.' The first thing is figure out the site you are promoting. The second thing is to figure out what size of banner you want. For a blog, if you are looking for a banner to run on your blog side bar, you will most likely need a 'sky banner.'
Hit the button called 'Sky Banner' next to the site you want to promote, then scroll down and you will find a list of 'sky banners' associated to that site. They are usually sized 200x800 or 160x600.

Another nice thing about Nats is it allows you to do a 'banner search' if you are looking for something more specific. For example, lets say you need a 200x800 banner for GayRentBoys. The first thing you would do is click on the kind of banner you want, such as 'sky,' for GayRentBoys. Then scroll down a bit and you will see the 'Banner Search' box. Here you can narrow the search criteria by width, height, File Size, Banner Type or the date added.

Hope that helps! Feel free to post in here any other other Nats related questions and I'll do my best to answer.

Great post. I've been around for fifteen years and built affiliate programs, so I'm
familiar with them, but I'm sure your post will be useful to a lot of newbies, and bring
you some business too.

Thanks Ray. Hopefully it does help. Nats is a universe of it's own so I can understand how new affiliates could have trouble finding their way around! :)