Hello all,
The affiliate program has been in the works for a good part of a decade..
Finally it is finished but it does not serve a purpose at all.
1. Affiliates can see their signups in their account only after 60 days! Hello, did i miss something here???
It doesn’t matter when the affiliate would be paid but they should be able to see their signups real time or as soon as order is approved. I believe this is an industry first!!! 60 days!!!
2. No affiliate ID is passed back to our backend after a signup!
Vendors might need to take different actions depending on different affiliates. Affiliate ID is a must. So many useless parameters being passed, why is the affiliate ID being left out?
3. Affiliates go through the same kind of screening process vendors do.
This is outright wrong and extra hassle for people interested in our items. Our affiliate is not selling a product — we are. Already we, the vendors, are scrutinized for hte products we are offering. An affiliate is just a person who markets our products… they do not sell anything of their our own. If they want to sell something their own, let them sign up to be a vendor and check their products/account accordingly. This defeats the whole purpose of an AFFILIATE/RESELLER scheme.
Fine there is fraud with the affiliate. So what? We are the vendors, we scrutinize our own orders from wherever it is coming… and it is our CHARGEBACK from our products — not our affiliates. Why all this hassle for a person who wants to market our product?
9 years and you have still nothing functional.
I am disappointed.
R.T
PS: Cannot submit on AFFILIATE SECTION… Goes to Getting Started even if AFFILIATE PROGRAM is chosen! Duh!
18 Comments »
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Hello somebody, Thank you for the feedback you have provided regarding our product affiliate feature. This feature is relatively new and was introduced with the release of our new vendor admin area. We have plans to expand this feature considerably so your feedback is welcomed.
If we are talking about 2Checkout signup referrals which earn a $11 credit per signup, then this information can be viewed right away. These signup referrals can be viewed by logging into the classic sellers area and entering the Vendor Reporting section, then by clicking on the “Affiliate Signups” report. Product affiliates, who earn commission selling a vendors product, will see the sale after it has deposited, which is about 48 hours, and are paid that commission after 60 days.
I will work with our development department to see if we can get the affiliate ID number sent back to your site after a sale is made. This would only apply to the product affiliate program.
Affiliate only accounts do not go through the same kind of screening process as traditional vendors. I will have another member of our community provide more information on this process as soon as possible.
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Joel, your information is conflicting with what is told to me by 2co support.
We have an affiliate signup 5 days ago. This still is not showing up with our affiliate.
When we opened a support ticket, we have been told, i quote:
“the sale will not be visible in their pending payment until 60 days have elapsed from the time of the sale”
Can you recheck please?
R.T
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I am sorry for the confusing information. Affiliates will see the sale in their account after it has deposited, which is about 48 hours. However, the commission for the sale does not get added to their pending payments for 60 days. Affiliates can still get their pending commission information in their account during the 60 waiting period.
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Please take a look at ticket #[8570-OGCN-6803] and tell me why the affiliate still cannot see the sale anywhere in their account after 5 days.
We can see the affiliate is properly mentioned on the sale in our vendor account.
I know this is not the place, but you need to clarify somethings internally as it is conflicting with support responses and our affiliate accounts.
Thank you!
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We are currently investigating the issue and will respond to your ticket when we have more information.
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Upon further investigation we have found that our “Affiliate Commissions” page is currently not populating with the sale information when an affiliate sale deposits. The issue has been submitted to our developers who are working to resolve it as soon as possible.
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One month and nothing. An affiliate cannot see his sales. We are trying to get an affiliate set up and working since beginning of December!
Considering that affiliate program has been in effect half a year and more, and still an affiliate cannot see his sales, I think it is safe to assume that we are the only one that ever used affiliate program.
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Hi somebody,
In response to part 3 of your above post, “Affiliates go through the same kind of screening process vendors do”:
We agree that it should be as easy as possible for for an affiliate to sell your product. This is why the account and site review process that we have in place for affiliate accounts is actually quite different from the reviews performed on a standard 2Checkout vendor account.
Affiliate accounts; meaning free accounts that are not obtained for selling their own product, but to market that of our existing vendors, are reviewed only to confirm that the affiliates website does not contain pornography, otherwise explicit images, common “objectional” material and/or anything illegal. Even though an affiliate account is not actually subject to all entries on our PPL, we may still choose to deny the account if it lays outside of 2Checkout’s core values. 2Checkout takes it’s brand integrity very seriously. Because of this, there are some sites out there that we wish not to be associated with in any way.
You mention “Fine there is fraud with the affiliate. So what?” Again, we agree. Well, mostly. You’re right, vendors are responsible for any order originating from an affiliate. Any chargebacks or refunds associated with that affiliates sale will be debited from the appropriate vendors account. With that said, we are willing to give nearly any new affiliate a chance. However, if that affiliate is one that is either manipulating the system and/or is someone that 2Checkout has had a prior negative experience with, we do reserve the right to cancel that affiliates 2Checkout account. This is yet another way in which 2Checkout helps to protect not only ourselves, but vendors and customers alike.
I hope these clarifications have lessened your disappointment in how our affiliate program currently works, but if not, feel free to keep your questions and suggestions coming. We’ll take them to heart and do what we can to make any needed improvements. Ultimately, the success of the program promotes the success of our vendors, which in turns promotes the success of 2Checkout. That’s why we’re all here. Right?
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Thank you Jeanie for your explanation. As someone very interested in this particular topic this discussion is very important.
My question though is that if you do have relaxed review process for affiliates, why not mention it clearly and boldly on the affilaite sign up page. That will help us suppliers get more affilaites easily as there is content on the net that leads prospective affiliates think otherwise… Also I would like to know if it is possible for affiliates to append the code snippet in their newsletters (email)?
I also have 2 suggestions, firstly can something be done about the affiliate sign up page to make it more customized to our branding just like the order page is? I think that would allow for a more seamless integration.
Secondly as you have mentioned and being a supplier of tangible goods myself the returns, refunds and chargebacks are indeed our headache and we have provisions to deal with it. Can it be made possible that a “Transaction Policy” link be added next to the buy from 2CO button internally by you or that we may be allowed to do so ourselves that states that all returns and refunds will be conducted by the supplier and click here to review the SUPPLIER’S warranty or return policy or something on those lines.
I suggest this because we see a lot of bloggers and discussion board owners as potential affiliates and making the process as painless as possible will help us broaden our market!
I thank you in advance for a response and action on these points
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Thank you jeanie for the explanations.
Our experience to get an affiliate account up and working has been outright nightmare though. That is why i am posting here.
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We apologize for the problems you encountered and thank you for bringing your experience too our attention. Your feedback is certainly welcome while we work to expand on this feature.
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Did you fix this issue? Can affiliate see the signups real-time now?
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Referral bonuses for 2Checkout sign-ups, which earn a $11 credit for each sign-up can be viewed in real-time.
The issue with the product affiliate program and affilaites not seeing the commissions is currently being worked on by our development team along with other improvements to the affiliate program.
I will update this post when this has been completed.
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Listen joel, craig, jeanie or rest of the 2co staff.
ARE YOU PLANNING TO FIX THIS CIRCUS?
5 months passed since we rolled the reseller program…
3 months passed since we complained about this issue…
A YEAR or more since you launched your reseller program…
A DECADE or so since we have been asking about it…
…And the reseller CAN ONLY STILL SEE THE SIGNUP MONTHS AFTER IT HAPPENNED. Who lives who dies in that time?
How hard is it to throw few lines of code and show the order under reseller’s account? It is already being showed under the vendor’s account.
Is it so hard to send reseller id to the vendor’s script? You are already passing back a bazillion of useless parameters. How hard would this one be?
Please. Come on. DO SOMETHING.
If this was to be something broken, why did you advertise it and waste our time and our resellers’ time?
If no improvement soon, I will be escalating this issue. We requested reseller program from Jeff (R.I.P) and Alan 9 years ago!
This is beyond ridiculous.
RT
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somebody – I am watching this issue very closing have been working with our development team to get into their schedule so it can be resolved. I will continue to work with them and push for this fix until it is resolved. Once it has been resolved I will post a reply to this thread.
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Hello,
Another month gone but there still no any improvements. Nothing changed.
There are a few most repulsive reasons that stop me from using 2CO affiliate system.
1. Affiliate website URL requirement. It MUST be optional for affiliates. Why? Because I have many affiliates who make a huge part of sales for me and they don’t even have a website. They just don’t need it because they advertise my product on many various internet services (like YouTube, Craigslist, etc), and just send visitors directly to my websites thruoght their affiliate link. They don’t even know how to make a website and they don’t need it at all.
2. Sixty (!!!) days before affiliate get paid. You know, 60 days is an eternity for internet citizens. No one will even think of becoming my affiliate if they understand that they have to wait two months to get paid. They want their hard earned money ASAP. Why not pay them like you do with your vendors? Just hold some amount percentage to cover possible refunds, say, 15% or more. Most of integrated affiliate systems acting this way, so, it is a well tested, foolproof algorythm to make all sides happy.
3. Your “Affiliate Opportunities” is ABSOLUTELY useless. How can I promote a product when I don’t know anything about it except for just a short description. There is no way for affiliates to find a real product URL and vendor’s website.
4. Affiliate linking. You provide affiliates only with links to shopping cart or order form. They are almost useless. There must be at least a direct link or better affiliate link to vendor’s website. Also it would be perfect if there is a way to pass landing URL as a parameter in the affiliate link. Why dont you make your system cookie based like most successful systems do?
5. Not passing affiliate ID to vendor backend after order processed. We need it.
…and many-many (unfortunately) other…
You must confess that your first attempt failed. Completely. I have been googling for at least a single affiliate promoting 2CO products – no luck. And your affiliate system launched over a year ago. Guess what do this mean?
It seems like current 2CO affiliate system developed by people who have only base understanding of what affiliate marketing is but have no experience in that area. It works technically, but it absolutely can not be used practically. This is just like if some old bank clerk created his own bank – he knows perfectly what money is, how to safe/count/transfer money, BUT he have no clue how to attract investors, how to invest money, how to make people want to become a customers of his bank.
So, why not asking us – experienced vendors and affiliates – what features we really need? Stop reinventing the wheel – just examine other successfull integrated affiliate systems (like RegNow, Plimus, ShareIt, ClickBank, CJ, Paydotcom), absorb all the best from them and then create your own, best on the Net! And don’t forget to ask for our opinions/suggestions.
2CO has the most paranoid TOSrulesrequirements I ever saw. One website per account, selling strictly from one website, only ‘Buy Now’ and ‘Buy from 2CO’ text on buttons, and many more senseless restrictions… and near 10+ screens (on my 24″ monitor!!) affiliate agreement to read and agree before trying to use an affiliate system that is infact totally useless.
Please, give us more flexibility, more functionality, more configurability, more FREEDOM – and we will bring you more money. Much more money.
beho
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Thank you for bringing these issues to our attention. Specific requirements such as affiliate website urls and 60 day payment holding periods are put in place to protect our suppliers and are further explained in the comment from our risk department above. We appreciate your suggestions and will discuss them further with the appropriate department.
We are currently working on a major redesign of the affiliate program which is a direct result of supplier suggestions and our Affiliate Marketer Meeting. The redesign should help to facilitate better communication between the affiliate and supplier so that affiliates can obtain all of the correct marketing information for their websites. We understand that the affiliate ID is necessary for suppliers and have already slated the issue to be corrected. The other issues you brought up will be brought to our developers so that we can discuss possible integration in the future.
We thank you for your input on these issues. 2Checkout created this community to facilitate an open forum were we can listen to our suppliers requests and concerns and improve our service accordingly. We have since rolled out many new features as a direct result of this communication. We appreciate your requests and can assure you that each one will be discussed with our affiliate development team for possible integration on future rollouts.
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I really hope this all gets fixed soon! I’m wanting to attract affiliates, but so far NONE of the heavy hitters want to touch my product.
The conversation goes like this:
Them: “Your product looks great! And converting well too. What pay solution are you using?”
Me: “2Co”
Them: “Nevermind…”
Seriously! I’ve been an affiliate for almost 2 years now (well before I was a product vendor) and I’ve successfully promoted products from Clickbank, CJ, CPA networks and others…2Co is the most complicated and useless affiliate program right now.
So, I have high hopes that these changes will be made soon, as a LOT of money for everyone that operates with 2co is sitting on the table due to these problems.