Do they need to sign up with 2CO for $49 fees?

Can I put a sign-up form on my website so that they register there?

Someone please shed some light on this!

Few days later he made purchase again – and again with discount 25% code. And again I paid 25% affiliate commissions.

Question is: how long to wait till relations between affiliate and customer “wears off”? I wanted to offer special discounts to this customer – but combined with affiliate commission it makes deals non-profitable. It’s not fair to leave good customer w/o special discounts – I guess. Now I’m thinking to either remove affiliate commissions or make them alot less than 25% (like 10 or so) – which is the same thing.

I have set up a system on my website, whereby an affiliate only needs to link to me to make sales. I now see on this forum (information in general on 2CO is VERY hard to find and seems to be scattered around the place in forum/blog posts) that sales from an affiliate must come from the affiliate’s website (news to me).

I presume you check the “referer”? Under my system, the affiliate simply makes a link to my site. The customer then purchases from MY site. Therefore my site will be the “referer”. Does this mean the sale will/won’t go through? Does this mean the affiliate will/won’t get commission?

This is the format of the purchase link on my site:

https://www.2checkout.com/2co/buyer/purchase?sid=1333122&quantity=1&product_id=2&aff_id=xxxxxxx

(where xxxxxxx is the Affiliate ID)

Looking at the sample HTML you provide for linking to Vendor products, the above link looks good to me but I need urgent confirmation about the “referer” (I currently have this system up and running – with as yet, no affiliates).

This is the format of the link that the affiliate makes to my site:

http://formtoemail.com/formtoemail_pro_version.php?aff_id=xxxxxxx

(again, xxxxxxx is the Affiliate ID)

This page explains how my system works:

http://formtoemail.com/affiliate.php

If all of the above is acceptable, then I think I can use this program. Some issues of concern, though.

1. Extremely poor information on Vendor’s products and the Vendor that I might be interested in selling. I had a look at the affiliate “opportunities”. I saw some vendor’s products that I was interested in and figured I could probably sell from my site. I wanted more information on the product and the vendor. That information wasn’t available to me. Yes, I know the vendor provides a description, but under the way the affiliate program is currently run, I need to sell the product from my own website, with the customer purchasing from me and getting sent directly to the 2CO purchase page.

There is NO WAY I can do this. This has the effect of the customer purchasing from ME. They do not see the Vendor’s site, they know nothing about the Vendor (heck, *I* know nothing about the vendor, his site or his product!!). I took one look at this and backed off straight away.

Even if I did know A LOT more about the Vendor and his product, under the current scheme the customer is purchasing from ME. So if the customer has a problem with the product, they will come to me for support. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY I can/will support another Vendor’s product.

2. No way to simply link to the Vendor. To save all of the above hassle, an affiliate could simply make a link to a Vendor (that’s what I provide for prospective affiliates on my site). This makes it extremely easy to get Affiliates linking to our products. I await clarification on the above to see if the system I am currently offering is in fact any good!

3. Bad signup process for new affiliates. As has been said before, the signup form is very poor indeed. It is confusing and off-puting. Firstly, it is the signup for the 2CO Vendor account referrals scheme. This is the first thing you see at the top:

“Earn extra cash for yourself by referring your customers and site visitors to 2CO”

Palease!!! This is the form I want *MY* prospective affiliates to use!

I can see people leaving right away at that point, bewildered and confused.

The wording then continues, “to become an affiliate for FREE”. Again, WHOSE affiliate??? 2CO’s or the Vendor’s??

The form must be rewritten to make it CRYSTAL clear what the visitor is signing-up for.

The form is also daunting with the amount of *required* information and the emphasis on the “Company” details, the insistance on a “Customer service” phone number for example. It’s highly unlikely you are going to get Corporate users signing up to the affiliate program, they are more likely to be part-timers, clubs, hobby website owners. That said, with its present fundamental failings, it’s highly unlikely you will get anyone signing up for it!

Please clarify all of the above points. The future of my participation in this scheme, depends on it.

Regards.

Charles Sweeney
FormToEmail.com

Please post your impressions here.

PS: Again this post did not go to the AFFILIATE PROGRAM section.

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!