

Ask HN: Affiliate Programs - jcnnghm

I have a software as a service app that I've decided I would like to offer an affiliate program for.  I spent some time today looking at various programs that are available and they all seem to have relatively high monthly fees, high setup fees, and obtuse setup processes.<p>Does anyone know of a simple affiliate program without setup or monthly fees?  Ideally the provider would setup the affiliate accounts, charge me for the affiliate commissions plus their cut, then pay the affiliates.  On my end, I'd look for the affiliate code and setup a cookie, and make a POST to the program with the affiliate code when someone signs up.  I'd also like to review the affiliate applications to make sure they aren't spammy.<p>Does anything like this exist?  What do you all use?  If nothing like this exists, would anyone use it if I built it?
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barmstrong
I'd say develop it yourself.

It only took about a day in rails.

\- make a migration to add "referrer_id" to users table

\- put a before filter in application_controller to watch for a special param
used in affiliate codes, if it exists store in session

\- when new users sign up set their referrer_id out of the session if it
exists

\- whenever the "action" is taken by the user that triggers a referral
commission, put this is pending transactions

\- use a monthly cron job and paypal gem to send affiliate commission each
month

That was the gist anyway.

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jarin
I built something exactly like this in Rails for a client, and it was cake. As
long as your affiliate commissions aren't excessive (like the 70% commissions
in the porn industry), you really don't have to worry too much about click
fraud either.

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jasonlbaptiste
Hey there, were building exactly this with cloudomatic(flow) :
flow.cloudomatic.com. It's a pretty big problem, especially for app
developers. Feel free to reach me via email at : j@cloudomatic.com .

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ccollins
This looks really cool, but I was pretty turned off by lack of pricing
details. This is all I could find:

"Cloudomatic(flow) has no sign-up fees, monthly fees, or minimum transaction
amounts. We only make money when you make money."

Can you be more specific?

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
Yeah, we did that since were still trying to gauge fair pricing. Basically the
original poster here has what were looking to do: take a % of affiliate
revenue made. No fees to setup/integrate either. Exact %? were still working
those details out. Volume tiering too - ie the % goes down with volume too.

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mbenjaminsmith
I was actually looking for the same thing the other day and didn't find
anything. I haven't looked into it that far yet but I think I'm going to roll
my own. Whatever the costs would be, I'd rather that amount go to either us or
the affiliate.

Are you interested in building and selling this or just making it available to
others? Either way I'd be interested in helping in exchange for a working
product. If you're interested ping me at mbenjaminsmith [at] gmail [dot] com.

~~~
jcnnghm
I think I'll probably end up building something, and if I publicly release it,
I would have to charge something to cover the risk from fraud, and the
transaction processing costs. My initial thought is to charge between 5 and 10
percent of the commissioned amount. In other words, if the company is offering
a 10% commission, and they make a $100 sale, I would take $11 from them,
passing $10 on to their affiliate.

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proexploit
I've looked for the same thing for many hours with no luck.

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dmurko
Clickbank (www.clickbank.com) which is used by most internet/affiliate
marketers is a great solution if you don't mind that they'll manage all your
billing/affiliate transactions. They have a secure shopping cart, they
automatically pay affiliates and the setup is just 50$ or something. But they
do take about 10% of each transaction.

But you can't review your affiliates or in anyway edit their payment process.

On the other hand they have over 10.000 affiliates in all niches.

It all depends on what your priorities are - do you want an army of affiliates
or would you just like to offer the program to a few selected ones.

(I'm in no way affiliated with Clickbank, we're also looking for payment
processing for our web app)

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nextbee
Check out our service (<http://www.nextbee.com>). We can do tracking based on
referring domain as well so you will get SEO benefit also from your partners.

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maneesh
check out idevaffiliate at <http://www.idevdirect.com/idevaffiliate.php> , I
use it via my software and email list on <http://ManeeshSethi.com> to generate
a lot of passive revenue, and it is only like $100 or $300 for the upgraded
edition

~~~
jcnnghm
I'm sure this will do what I want, but I think it's more complicated than I
need.

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braindead_in
You can implement it on your own and advertise it. There are several networks
where you can post the information.

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joubert
So many people seem to be reinventing the wheel. Is there perhaps an open
source solution?

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amih
I'm interested too! A 2nd tier affiliate would be very interesting addition.

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rgrieselhuber
I think Posterous just started using something that is super-easy to set up.

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jasonlbaptiste
You mean viglink? That's more for publishers to make money. I _think_ the op
was referring to software that enables saws/ web app developers to setup their
own affiliate program.

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Sky1234
Check out hasoffers.com. Their freeversion is pretty good.

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thefool
I would possibly be interested.

