roydovaston

Hi,

I've tried asking a couple of questions on Affiliates4U but the unless i'm doing something wrong, i'm not really getting much feedback so i'm going to ask a similar set of questions here and hopefully someone will be kind enough to help from the Acorn Domains community!

The situation is that we run a small but successful personalised gifts web site http://www.utterlypersonal.co.uk and we're looking to start up a affiliate programme which we wish to self manage using possibly Omnistar.

We had made enquiries with Affiliate Future, Affiliate Window and Webgains but the quotes receieved varied and in some cases the setup fee alone blew us out of the water!!! Anyway, to cut a long story short, if we did go with one of those it would have been Webgains and we may still do that depending on how the self managed idea goes!

1. Does anyone recommend a hosted package any better for the job than Omnistar?

2. If we were to setup our own programme and post into the usual forums a link to our affiliate programme outlining the commision structure and policies and a little about us clearly, are we likely to get interest, signups based on the fact we're not on a major network.

3. How do companies usually pay their affiliates? Is it done by affiliate invoicing company once per month? I noticed a few systems look like they have integration with PayPal to pay affiliates but we're not into PayPal.

4. How are comapnies providing a product feed? We have ability to output our products into CSV & XML but how do the affiliates keep their sites up to date? For example we may update a product or add/remove a product at anytime, how would the affiliate keep their site current?

Sorry in advance if the questions are basic.

Here's our planed structure per month based on a 45 day cookie.

7% commission when sales value achieved up to £200
8% commission when sales value achieved between £200 and £500
10% commission when sales value achieved £500 and over

Thanks in advance,

Roy

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Personalised Gifts

redbird

Can't answer all questions but from a PERSONAL perspective (not sure how common that would be from others).

2. I tend to stick to main networks primarily because I have automated cron jobs for updating daily product feeds. To add a merchant outside of the main networks it would have to be products I really wanted to promote which weren't available elsewhere via a netrwork because of the additional work involved.

Edit: Plus it's handy (accounting wise) having just half a dozen networks payments for potentially hundreds of merchants rather than lots of independants. It can be hard hitting a target for payment from an individual merchant but when all lumped together in a network it doesn't matter if one merchant only earns you 25p a month !

3. Most of the main networks pay me via BACS. I think some may have paypal options but I prefer BACS usually once a month when target reached.

4. Most offer csv and xml. Either download direct from network interface once logged into account or in my case I prefer htttp downloads via daily cron jobs to feed into a mysql database. This is a custom solution for each network.

Hope that helps a bit

Dave

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roydovaston

Thanks Redbird,

Is this the general consensus that self managed programmes are often overlooked?

Roy

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djbw

I'm still relatively new to this so take what I say with a pinch of salt, but I would only go direct to merchant if they sold something that I couldn't get anywhere else and I desperately wanted to market, or their commissions were substantially better than the alternatives available on the networks. Hope this helps and others chime in.

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dragon

Have you tried http://www.hasoffers.com/ for affiliate tracking/management?

mally

Having spoken to other affiliates and having met some of the staff (on acorn outings) I would suggest you also give paidonresults.com an opportunity to give you a quote

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roydovaston

Thanks Mally,

I've done that and will see how that pans out. I must say, i was impressed with Webgains but i thought £1000 float was overkill which is what eventually halted proceedings.

Roy

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Wedding Favours | Outsourced IT Support London |
Wedding Gift Ideas | Personalised Gifts