Guaranteed Designs Free Paysite Tips

It’s a simple enough question and I’ve seen it come up on a couple boards and with a couple consulting clients recently so I guess it’s time to talk about it here. =]

I think the best way to approach answering the question is to make a simple pros/cons list. I’ll start with the cons because I always like to end on a positive note. So here goes:

Cons:

1. Cost. This con is enough to stop most people from considering it. There are several affiliate management softwares out there and prices are competitive to one another. Usually you’ll pay some fee to get it installed and then some fee for monthly usage based on how many members your site(s) has. The scaling of the cost is never going to be prohibitive though so the cost issue is only really a concern for startup sized programs.
2. Complexity. Affiliate management software handles tons of details and hence takes some getting used to. You’ll have to learn to work with template engines and adjust some of your HTML so it has tracking codes and all that. There is a learning curve involved that some people just don’t want to deal with. Of course there are guys like me out there who will service these needs but then you have to figure in a bit more in the cost column.
3. Server load. Using software on your box to manage so many functions for you is going to put increased load on the server. You have to make sure you have the “beef” to handle it especially when you get busier. It’s more a concern for larger membership bases but it’s worth mentioning.
4. Trust. Some affiliates just don’t trust anything but third party solutions like what CCBill offers. I find it best to combine affiliate software with a third part solution so you can offer either but that takes some doing to make it all report in one place and not be an accounting mess so you have to be ready for some significant setting up to do that. [We have this at http://www.sterlingcash.com/ccbill.html].

Pros:

1. Cascading billing. Most of these softwares started just to help webmasters solve the issue of good clients getting denied by one biller or another. The ability to send a denied transaction to another biller increases sales and better yet, the ability to choose which biller gets first crack at any given time is even better. Those of us who have been around a long time have gotten shot in the foot by having all our members with one biller and having that biller go tits up. Changing around your billers can alleviate the “all eggs in one basket” issue. It also can mitigate days where one biller is scrubbing too heavily.
2. Tons of data. While the billing companies do offer lots of data, the formatting of that data often makes it difficult for you to cull useful information quickly. With a program like NATS, your first report page has a snap shot of your sales and conversions to each site, top lists and bottom lists of resellers, new affiliate signups and much more. You just can’t beat that kind of reporting.
3. Ad tool delivery. Getting link codes and ad tools to your affiliates in a fashion that gives them everything they want and doesn’t take you hours out of every day is priceless. There are probably even a dozen tools and formats for tools your affiliates might want and never bug you for that you don’t even realize would help you get more traffic and sales, then when you see all the things your affiliate management software has entries for you end up filling it up and getting more out there that you wouldn’t have thought of before.
4. Customization. The thinks you can change in your program at the touch of a mouse button are astounding. Changing payout structures, setting up specific payouts for specific campaigns and resellers, setting up different price options for just one campaign or reseller without having to make a new join page, offering rewards programs, etc… This list goes on and on and on. It should be a like 20 pros if you’re comparing lists here. =]

I realize too that some people would be thinking that having a single third party solution is better for getting payments out (they let the biller deal with it) but I didn’t see this as a pro or con because you can just take a data dump from affiliate software and send it off to a company like paychex.com to make payments. It is one extra step but the abilities you gain by being able to payout from multiple billers make this issue a even on both sides to me.

So there you go I made an evenly balanced list numbers-wise anyway but in my own opinion it’s just not a contest. The only significant factors on the cons all boil down to finances and the amount of money it takes to do the affiliate management software is not prohibitive to anyone who is doing even just a few joins per day. Certainly there are some decent sized programs out there not using any software but you’ll see they’ve done a lot of customizing and extending of what the biller offers on their own to meet the needs of what you can just buy off the shelf nowadays. If you are going to be serious about the paysite game then I strongly recommend affiliate management software is in your plans.

The softwares I know of are:

Nats: http://nats.toomuchmedia.com/

MPA3: http://www.mpa3.com/

Executive Stats: http://www.executivestats.com/

I’ve done some work at different times on any of the three and they all have strong and weak points but will do all the basics you need. I’m far more experienced with NATS however and am very pleased with all it offers and how often they add to it’s functionality.

Until next month… happy porning!

[ed. This comment was posted on Netpond by Player Rob and I thought it beared repeating here.]

I agree with you on that article especially the trust and cascading billing side hence why our affiliate software signs up the affiliate to both Epoch and CCBill, cacades and the affiliate gets paid by the 3rd parties.

One point you should have put in there is about cashflow when making the payments yourself. Initially on the first payments out to affilates the company will have to pay the affiliates from their own pockets and will be short on cash due to reserves being taken and payment not received from the biller, unless using own merchant account.