This would be a great idea, i have been thinking of joining a program like Commission Junction, but its expensive to start and a pain to integrate.

I guess if you set up a process where affilates link to page on 2CO that places a small tracking cookie then forwards buyers to the respective vendors site, the cookie will then remain active for X amount of time. The vendors then add a code that checks for the cookie on their confirmation page, which then sends back to 2CO that sale occurred via X affilate and they then get X% of sale. I know this is how google adwords works for confirming a sale occurred through a click through and a similar principle that Commussion Junction works.

Sorry if the above is confusing, i am not the best to put into words how these things can work.

Yes, 2CO would obviously benefit from an integrated affiliate program. The key difference from using third-party affiliate tracking along with 2CO’s current functionality is that 2CO itself would handle affiliate commissions payouts (preferably via exactly the same mechanisms that are used for 2CO vendor payouts; in fact, there might be no need to separate vendor vs. affiliate accounts).

I suggest that 2CO staff look at shareware registrars. Of those, RegNow probably has the best integrated affiliate program.

sharper130 - what you describe is about right, but it’s more complicated than it needs to be. There’s no need for vendors to add any code in order to support affiliate sales. Everything is to be handled by 2CO, like it is done with some shareware registrars. If a vendor’s website is initially visited via a redirect hosted by 2CO, then 2CO may set and receive back a cookie - that is sufficient for 2CO to track the sale. The vendor/affiliate relationships and commission percentages (or fixed dollar amounts) should be in 2CO’s database. It should also be possible for vendors to make public offers to all potential affiliates (with no need for prior “relationship” in 2CO’s database).

This would be very interesting if 2CO handled the payment of affiliates.

I’ve got to make this quick, but an affiliate system could make us and 2co a LOT of money.

I use 2co with Commission Junction, but CJ charges 30% of the affiliate payout to the vendor. This makes it almost impossible to be competitive with someone in my niche who is with a company like Clickbank (that offers in house affiliate program).

It would definitely need to be integrated with the current payout system. Basically it wouldn’t be that hard to do. Like someone mentioned, it would just be implementing some sort of “hoplink” type system (.php I guess?) and any vendor could then make an affiliate sale for any other vendor.

An affiliate system would be great and Ive been waiting for it ever since! The only reason I want to switch to paypal is because they have an awesome affiliate system but its not available in my country.

It would be great if 2CO introduces an affiliate system where resellers can resell our product(s) and get paid their commission (% set by the supplier) for it.

You might want to look at TWSC Affiliate Lite which is more than 4 years on the market. It is an affiliate script written in PHP and we have a module available for integration with 2Checkout. We’re upgrading the 2Checkout module for TWSC Affiliate Lite at the moment. Google for TWSC Affiliate Lite or contact TWSC.biz for more information.

This is not about PHP script.

I think 2checkout should do something like Clickbank is doing.

Full service for merchant and affiliates with marketplace to meet.

Most important is that affiliate should get commission paid by 2checkout directly.

2checkout would have big market advantage because affiliates can be paid by direct deposits and wire transfers on top of check. Cashing US check in some coutries takes up to 8 weeks so many affiliates would switch to 2checkout to get they money faster.

Currently on most of my websites where I sell digital product download with affiliate program I use clickbank because of two reasons:

- affiliate trust that they will be paid on time every 2 weeks
- I do not have to have any paperwork with getting W-9 from people, remember to send commission etc.

Basically I want to have site on full autopilot.

Check for example two of my websites

www.SecretsOfEliteMarketers.com

www.ResellRightsPack.com

I give the free stuff up front then I have One Time Offer trough clickbank and when person lands in member area can get instant affiliate link and promote so process starts again.

Between those 2 websites I have over $37k monthly in sales with hundreds of affiliates.

Full autopilot because clickbank pays commissions so I do not have to do anything and can build more products and websites.

I would be very good if 2checkout has similar service.

It would bring a lot of money and people to 2checkout.

Thanks
Cody Moya

Free Internet Marketing Courses

I feel 2co has a lot of merchants who can either decide to promote another merchant or join an affiliate programme.
The best way forward would be to create an affiliate network among merchants within 2co,followed by a full fleged affiliate network.
2co will have to be fast and innovative in order to get into the competitive feild of affiliate marketng.
Well who knows the future?No one ever heard of google 7years ago.
Thumbs up and all the best to 2co,hope they start the affiliate programme soon.

The new trend in affiliate networks is to also increase link popularity of merchants by placing a link to merchant website code on the html tags given to affiliates.ClixGalore.com is providing this service,and because of this feature a lot of merchants have singed up with them.I hope 2co will also use this feature.

Another model is to follow what shareAsale has done with improvements.

I don’t know if anybody said about this before, but what I would like to have in affiliate program is getting % out of sales of those people I recommend to open account at 2CO.

Keep the system easy to use specially on paying out affiliates for their monthly commissions and also for setting x% commission per product sale for affiliates. And if possible different x% commission setting per affiliate level or affiliate performance based on a custom supplier defined setting. Like for example in amazon, affiliates can get a default of 4% commission on start and could get 6% commission if they can sell 10 more products…

yea, glenn explained it very good. that is what we would like to have here.

I would like a simple affiliate program where there’s no room for mistakes.

Specifically, I would like to advertise on any affiliate sites and add their affiliate code to the link, so I can track whether the affiliate helped make a sale, and give them a cut of the profit.

This wouldn’t work with Google AdWords Advertising, because only one affiliate code could be used for each search term. It would be nice if they could fix that…

As others have noted, it would certainly be nice if 2checkout.com could handle payments to affiliates.

Simple, clean and reliable.

Hi,
I hope 2co will do some research on the big guys (Linkshare,Commission Junction,Clixgalore,Affiliate Fuel,ShareAsale).2co can then produce a better affiliate network.

As an incentive for new merchants to join I hope 2co will make it entirely free ONLY if they agree to use 2CO ONLY for payment processing.

I hope 2CO will make the affiliate programme free for their merchants to join,since both merchants and 2CO will benefit on the long run.Merchants like me are ready to pay US$50 PER SALE.2CO can always deduct their affiliate commission and payment to affiliates whether the merchant agrees or not.That is the added advantage of an integrated affiliate programme.

Dear Cliff,
I hope 2co will employ some Adsense and other search marketing experts.That way 2CO can have a super Affiliate Department.

The super affiliate department can pick out Merchants with high Pay out rates,High conversions or new merchants with good Pay out rates and impressive site.

For eg there are Merchants like me selling high end jewelry at much lower prices than the etablished firms.I am paying US$50 per sale plus a bonus of another US$50 for every US$500 in sale,not time limited.I believe search marketing experts can make huge profits for 2CO.

In the present era of get rich quick affiliate websites that have sprung up everywhere solely consisting of banners do not perform at all.

I am dead sure 2co will get millions of low quality affiliates who will sign with little or no traffic on their websites,they just put up the banners and hope to get a fat cheque at the end of the month.

CPA empire,linkshare,commission j and the other top shots in the arena are actively seeking out websites with very high traffic rates all over the world.I hope 2CO will look into that.It is also much more likely that the owners and webmasters of high traffic sites will respond to 2CO call,an established company in USA rather than an affiliates or merchants call.

e mail marketing(NOT SPAM) is also a very powerful and cost effective way affiliate marketing.CJ has acquired many well established e mail marketing firms.I believe 2CO should look into this aspect.2co could come into some form of corporate partnership with some e mail marketing firms that already have a huge sign up from many websites.

I hope 2 co will include catalogue marketing,selection of landing pages by affiliates and an option for landing on any individual product.

Regarding an affiliate program and 2CO vendors who sell digitally delivered products. I can not logically see any affiliate wanting to waste their time or money promoting products when any customer can easily steal any digitally delivered product for free (sold via a 2CO vendor) by simply adding ‘demo=Y’ at the end of the ‘purchase product’ link and pasting it in their browser bar.

2CO needs to fix this major flaw in their program before even thinking about starting an affiliate program. A simple ‘disable demo’ link on their setup product page is definitely called for and should be number one on their priority list - not an affiliate program.

Secondly, the most notorious affiliate program for digitally delivered products is ClickBank. However, the quality of most digital products that are sold ClickBank are substandard to say the least. In fact, most products sold on ClickBank more and more are making online shoppers leerier than ever to purchase any product online. It would be to the vendor’s disadvantage to be associated with a company that caters to Elance writer’s rewritten garbage. I fear the loss of credibility 2CO vendors would risk should an affiliate program be implemented.

These are musts in my opinion:

* payment of the affiliates provided directly by 2co
* affiliates can sign-up for free
* merchants will also be able to promote other products using their primary account (no need to switch between to many accounts)
* an affiliate network, where everybody can visit the products that merchants provide affiliate support for (with categories and subcategories)
* advanced tracking features

The last topic is not very discussed, however this is very important. If you could give options to the affiliate to make campaigns for every creative the merchant provides. Or why not, to be able to test creatives and see what performs best for him.

I have a tracking and testing solution at http://www.kaizentrack.com that is currently sold exclusively through 2CO. If you want, I may be able to help you with the area of tracking and testing for your new affiliate network.

You can reach me at ciprian@kaizentrack.com .

Thank you,
Ciprian Pintea

Best Taguchi Software - Double Your Sales Conversions Or We Will Pay You 100 US Dollars.

Richon,

Probably the affiliate link will look something like this:

www.2co.com&merchantid&affiliateid

It will be nice to be able to add a &sourceid to the link. i.e.: An affiliate bids on google adwords to promote a product. The source might be the exact keyword.

This way the affiliate will be able to track the ROI of the advertisement and to continue advertising on the mediums that produce results. (On his 2co account he will be able to see exactly what source made each sale.)

Another good feature would be to allow the affiliate to choose a specific landing page where visitors coming from him will visit the merchants. For example an affiliate may want his visitors to visit directly the merchant’s ”order page”, because he is doing a great job at selling directly the product. Another may choose to direct his traffic directly on the merchant’s ”sales letter”.

Also, a good functionality would be to allow merchants inside the their merchant account to post marketing creative for affiliates to use (email newsletters, articles, banners, solo ads, PPC ads for google, yahoo and msn, etc. ) This way affiliate will be able to get a lot more support from their merchant and using 2co they will just copy/paste the creative (their affiliate link will be automatically included.)

On top of that functionality a ”rotator” tool would be great. For example an affiliate has a blog. He may be able to rotate 2 different articles and track the performance of each article, so he will know what article did best.

It will be very useful also for the merchant to know that creative he provided made the most sales.

We have experience in the field of tracking and testing (we will release in about a month a ”marketing commander” platform that has been under development for over 1 year) and if you want, we may be able to provide you with some great solutions to support affiliates and merchants have a great performance.

Best regards,
Ciprian Pintea

http://www.kaizentrack.com - Double Your Sales Conversions Or We Will Pay You 100 US Dollars.

Hi

Multilingual support for the affiliate network is very important,especially with regard to countries where e commerce is well established like Germany and Japan etc.

Merchants should be free to have more than one affiliate network.We already have an affiliate account with another network we would like to keep using it as well.

I don’t think there will be technical setbacks in developing a highly sophisticated affiliate network.The major challenge will be getting quality affiliate sign ups by advertising.There is also huge online competition in the arena of affiliate networks.How does 2co plan to market their new affiliate network?

I’ve my 2CO account for 2 years+ but have never use it because of this one drawback compared to others. It’s interesting to see that 2CO finally plan for the integrated affiliate network.

Going to be excellent for both vendors and the general affiliates.

When will this feature be available?

Hello 2co team,

Adding to the threads above, My opinion is that 2checkout has the ability to create a service that could not only match its competitors but eat them for breakfast with regards to functionality.

The internet is transparent enough for developers to research the competition and design a product/service that can offer over and above what the current services that are available to the world of affiliate networking and marketing.
Find out the limitations and provide a service that exceeds expectations.

Alot of current affiliate marketers, product owners and for example Guru’s will consider moving their business to a service that can offer better than current standards. Its like When a bank offers you the better services for cheaper fees, its a no brainer.

It really is a win win situation for both the provider and vendor if they can choose to implement this.
There is an online community that have information about what services they need to improve what they do already and i bet a group of them have wanted to build a company around doing this to match the competitors that hold the market.
If you do the research and know where to look you will find this gold mine and then your company will explode.

All the best, Im watching this space.

I would really love to see this affiliate program also in Spanish.

I’m willing to help you with the translation if needed

Best,
Dan

Hello Cliff, richon, and 2CO staff,
The subscriptions to our site that we sell through 2CO are set to pay the affiliate that is responsible for the sale.
But this only occurs on the initial sale.
This makes it so we can only offer initial ”automated” commissions.
We would like to offer LIFETIME commissions where by giving the commission each month the subscriptions renews the affiliate makes the same sale. Basically giving the commission over and over for the life of the business they brought to us.
Now, we can set that up in Quick Books but it would be a lot more simple if you would echo the same script to our affiliate program on each sale like the one you send out on the initial sale.
Thank you for your efforts.
Kind regards,
joeorbis

Hi Rachyl and 2CO,
Thank you for the response.
We are excited to hear the great news and are anxious for the arrival of this feature as it would boast our sales tremendously.
Do you have an approximate date for its arrival?
We would be interested in beta testing the new feature for 2CO if needed.
Thank you again for all that you’re doing.
Regards,
joeorbis

I discovered this thread because I’m recommending 2checkout in my blog, www.thegoldenpencil, for non-US writers who want to make it easier for US clients to pay them… if I got to do it all my way I’d be paid $25 for each person who completes a sign-up and then half a percent or something like that on every transaction (this is the way banks often handle affiliate credit cards)

I need easy to insert text links and maybe a small banner for my sites.

And I’d be more than happy to help beta… two blogs, three active websites.

Loving the service.

A

I think that’s a good ideea to start an affiliate network.
But it would be better not to limit the payment options to Paypal. There are a lot of trustworthy payment procesors. For example, I’m from a country which isn’t on the Clickbank’s list and I can’t open an account, not even to join an affiliate program. Same story with Paypal: my country (Romania - EU member) is on the ”Send Only” list: I have an account, but I can only make payments. I can’t receive money in my account, so I can’t sell something using Paypal. At this moment, if I want to sell something, 2checkout.com is my only option.
International wire is a MUST for payyment options.

Paul Mihai Pavel

Any word on this?
Our company would be very very keen to put more products with 2CO if/when this happens.

Before the end of the year?
Before november?
Has any beta testing started?

I know Trey and Cody, they do lots of online sales through Clickbank, as well as I do.

Here is what I would like to see:

1. Two tier affiliate program support.
2. Recurring commissions support.
3. Tracking code in URL.
4. Custom landing page.

Let me explain each:

1. There are certain people that know other people in the same niche. If they recommend joing a certain program, they get a slice from each sale for having recommended this new affiliate. (Something Clcikbank lacks.)

2. Membership sites/services can charge for services (for example, monthly) and each charge to the customer, the affiliate (or two-tier) gets a piece of the action. (Clickbank has just added recurring processing, but no two-tier.)

3. Affiliates use various methods for marketing, PPC (Pay Per Click), targeted web pages, etc. As an affiliate, I like to be able to track were the sale was generated. So, a tracking ID that I can include in the URL is a must. (Example: ?tid=coffee_cup) (Clickbank has this, they allow 8 characters, others, such as CJ.com allow for more.)

4. This allows affiliates to send people to a specified page. This is used by some companies. CJ.com allows it, if the merchant chooses to allow it, it’s on a link by link basis. (Example: The merchant sells magic tricks, the merchant has a link for an affiliate that just goes to the ”card tricks” section, but allows the affiliate to customize the landing page URL, this means that the affiliate can change the URL that the visitor will be sent to. This is good for: Say I want to promote a Svengali Deck of cards, I can send the visitor directly to that product instead of the main ”generic” magic page, or ”broad” card tricks page.

Troy

my opinion, …please do ”your own” Affiliate Program, not go to a
third party. our company would not be interested in a third party
and i know many with the same feeling about Affiliate programs.

-too expensive for 2CO, and unnecessary
-third party Affiliate programs are too slow to pay and require minimums
-we can easily get paid by 2CO with no problem

…and include the 4 features that Troy suggests

if you need to have a third party to get more Affiliate sellers, then
please also give the option to deal direct with 2CO.