Script/Software Affiliate Program? Need Opinions

[MadMax]

As a few of you know I'm currently working on a few commercial scripts, with many more to come. I've been kicking around the idea of going with CCBill for payment processing (since I'm not selling adult content I'd avoid the $750 Visa fee, meaning essentially $0 setup for payment processing).

If I do decide to go with CCBill, the option opens up to have an affiliate program. There are pluses and minuses to this concept, one being the need to figure out a good commission rate for affiliates.

Since I'm trying to price my scripts to sell (especially the smaller, simpler ones), I don't know if I could make 50%-60% fly so I might have to go more like 35% commission...which is a downside for potential affiliates. The upside would be that in the future there would be scripts selling at over $100 each, so those sales would be pretty nice; and the program could be merged with other CCBill accounts so the payments should come pretty quickly for most affiliates.

Commissions would also be paid on installation and setup as well if purchased.

In general I'm just hoping to get a discussion going on the concept here...as far as I know I'd be the first to have an affiliate program offering revenue on a range of scripts instead of just one or two; though there could be others I haven't heard of before.

Above all else, would anyone even be interested in a script affiliate program? Hoping for a good discussion on this.

Max

[SirMoby]

One thing to consider is charge backs when taking payments of any sort. Of course when dealing with $19.95 a month it's not that big a deal but if you're dealing with a few hudred dollars in scripts it could get a bit frustrating.

[chilihost]

why pay ccbill's high processing fee if you are selling non-adult scripts mainly to webmasters? Go with a non-adult online processor and you will save yourself about 10% in fees.

cheers,
Luke

[T Pat]

Hey Alex
I'll save you a little research time
You can go paypal for $20 one time (to get their virtual terminal) .30 and 3%
Problem with going directly through paypal is you lose the leverage you would gain with afilliates unless you write a script yourself.

I took a good look Yahoo Small Business Solutions $39 without Affiliates and $100 per month with. They use payment Tech another $22.95 per month .20 and 2.69% for Visa and Mastercard (2.58% for debit cards) I'm sure useing Yahoo would get Some Brownie points from their Search Engine Spiders

http://www.clickbank.com/ $49.95 setup fee markup is $1 + 7.5% of the total purchase price, but when a customer is referred by an affiliate our markup costs you only a fraction of this amount. When you pay a 33% commission, our markup costs you $0.67 + 5.0%. When you pay a 66% commission, our markup costs you only $0.34 + 2.5%. Click Bank drives me nuts I have spent hours lookin for a program that I dee others sellig, They realy need Some Improvements


https://paydotcom.com Opened for Business this week. One Time Setup For for unlimited products $29 one or two tier affiliate program Paydotcom fee $1 to $3 split by seller and affiliate uses paypal (3%) and Stormpay (%7) They have been hyping paydotcom for a couple months so it's taking off like a rocket

http://www.amazon.com Singel Items $0.99 plus 6 to 15 percent of the sales price
Pro Merchant Subscription fee of $19.99 a month first two months then $39.99 per month $0.99 per sale plus 6 to 15 percent of the sales price ( Books and Software are 15%) That 15% pays Amazon and your affiliates
I've been picking up old scripts and outdated get rich marketing ebooks with resale rights for the last couple months to open an Amazon Store and do some Ebaying isn't it amazing what a desperate man will do for traffic

[MadMax]

Thanks for that summary TPat, there are a couple there I wasn't familiar with.

Luke: I'm leaning towards CCBill because there's no monthly fee, and the other processors I've seen either have some fairly stiff monthly fees or don't support affiliate programs, and especially starting up I can't assume I'll be making a ton of sales out of the gate. If I decide to go with an affiliate program I'll probably choose CCBill, in large part because my affiliates would at least mostly be adult webmasters, and it would be easy for them to get their payments from me along with their other CCBill programs...so they wouldn't have to wait forever for a check. Also, CCBill doesn't just offer affiliate programs, they specialize in them...and though some people have issues with CCBill I never hear anyone complaining about not getting a check

[DonPaul]

Have you checked clickbank? I dont know about their fees, but alot of mainstream guys seems to use them. Also 2checkout seems to be popular

[GunnCat]

If you write scripts, why not just write your own script for an affiliate account, create your own merchant account and payout your affiliates yourself? Seems the most logical way to things.

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by GunnCat

If you write scripts, why not just write your own script for an affiliate account, create your own merchant account and payout your affiliates yourself? Seems the most logical way to things.

That's probably more expensive when tracking time and services then a solution that's already in place.

Would you trust a new affiliate program that didn't use some named softweare?

[GunnCat]

It depends. I have before. A lot has to do with the sponsor. I find myself using CCBill sponsors for most things though.

[MadMax]

Originally Posted by SirMoby

That's probably more expensive when tracking time and services then a solution that's already in place.

Would you trust a new affiliate program that didn't use some named softweare?

You hit it right on the head. I'm much better off writing scripts for customers than writing a back end that will cost my affiliates money if it's got one bug left in it.

I'd like to use a processor that's already got a good affiliate management setup in place, preferably one that supports instant downloads (which ccbill doesn't, unfortunately). I've been looking at Jettis, but the setup fees are a bit stiff. I may have to wait until I can bankroll a setup fee on a proper processor before launching the affiliate program.

Clickbank seems to be a potential option. Since I've never really done mainstream before I've got no experience with them, but they seem to have a good name in the mainstream community.

My other consideration is that I may want to start my own adult affiliate program sometime in the next few years, and in a perfect world I'd like to have an adult friendly processor for this project too.