affiliate program [rat][request][praise]

Let’s start with the praise part: s2member is awesome.

Awesome software, awesome docs, awesome forum, awesome support.

Unfortunately, I spent way too much time trying to figure out an affiliate program solution with 3rd party software, to the point where I hired one of the creators of one affiliate program solution to fix it up for me and he gave up and gave me a refund.

So I moved to aMember (here comes the rant), which is a very cool membership software, with a built-in affiliate program. Unfortunately, the docs for aMember are a joke – out dates, unclear, and often non-existent. Their forum is even worse – ask a question, wait 3 days for a 1-line response like “what version?” then 3 days for another response like “look it up in the docs” or worse, a 2-line response which assumed way too much knowledge on my part. Don’t even get me started on their support.

All this makes it very hard to use the system, not to mention extend it to fullfil my needs.

And it’s especially disappointing comparing to the s2m forums where I can find tons of my problems solved, and get such great support – all the info I need (even if it’s available in the docs and I missed it). Even if it’s never done before, I all the info I need to hack my way to the solution.

So at this point I try to use s2member for projects where I can live without an affiliate solution. However, since I realize you guys are working on a new version, I wanted to bring up this subject one more time, and beg you to create an out-of-the-box affiliate program within s2member which will allow us to enjoy the same level of professionalism and support we get for s2m.

I promise it will increase sales! :)

Thanks for the kudos, Adam! We try our best to give the best product and support, even if not always perfect. :)

I’m sorry you had so much trouble with an affiliate software. What have you tried? Have you tried iDev Affiliate or WP Affiliate? Those are the two names that come to mind from other users having used them successfully so far. I know iDev is quite powerful in what it can do, not sure what you need it to do, though.

The affiliates plugin hasn’t been a priority because iDev can do it quite well already, honestly, but we are considering it. Our priority is to get the new s2Member ready for beta, test and fix it, release it publicly, zap any bugs left and continue adding the features we left out of the first release. After it’s stable, we may start working on sister projects, like this and others we have in mind that would complement s2Member.

Don’t remember why I skipped idev but I remember I decided it’s not for me (I must’ve had a good reason, trust me ;)).

Wp affiliate -> got awesome support, and the dude even developed a feature I requested, however, it failed all my testing and after hiring the developer who made it himself, he gave up, said he has no idea why it’s not working for me and refunded my money :(

If I develop anything on my own, would you guys be interested in working it in or endorsing it? (I’m not interested in another 3rd party solution, I’d like to build something that integrates into the s2m panel seamlessly and exclusively).

Just looking at iDev now, I already can tell you one thing: It takes WAY too much tome to figure out how the whole thing works, what it supports and how well it integrates with s2m. Pricing isn’t clear, plans aren’t clear, addons are expensive (and very unclear – what do I need, what can I skip). All this would make me assume their support is bad, but I would just not spend the time it takes to find out.

Time is way more expensive than money, imho, and so I just thought buying amember would be much better than trying another 3rd party solution (and it was, installing was really quick, and I had no reason to assume their built in aff solution would not be compatible).

Alas, the final result was lost sales and even more time lost begging for support.

I swear, if you presented me with a page that only says “here’s an s2m affiliate modul, it works, don’t worry about features, just pay up and start using it” I’d pay twice what iDev are charging.

The time spent researching, reading about installation and integration etc is just so expensive.

I hear ya. Okay, I’ll let Jason know.

If you decided to build your own and give it away or sell it, we wouldn’t mind recommending it, just as we mention the other ones. What we want is for our users to have a solution that actually works for them as simply as possible.

Cool. Anyway we can chat on Skype/email to discuss?

Sure, email us via the contact form and I’ll see that Jason gets it. s2Member® » Private Contact Form

Hmmm at the risk of sounding stupid… I get to the pricing page (even from the menu). Am I missing the contact form on there?:)

I haven’t searched for other threads to see if you’ve listed what exactly your looking for, but I’d be willing to take a look at what it would take to do it.

If you want, send me an idea of how you want it to work. I’ll see if I can put something together in my spare time. :)

My contact is in my forum profile or you can just post your requirements here or if they are in another post, link to that one.

I know this has been a pain for a lot of s2member users. S2 has some good integration options but not everything works for everyone.

Dave

Thanks David. Will email you in a bit.

Customer Support Form Is Here:
Support / Docs -> Private Contact

Here is a link:
http://www.s2member.com/contact/

:)

Dave

EXCELLENT, can’t wait!

Please note: Paypal isn’t doing ‘Mass Payments’ any more, so each of our affiliates (100’s?) will need to be paid separately every month – read: massive headaches, ie: serious deal breaker.

You will need to use PayPal’s Adaptive Payments API so affliates can get paid straight away. Member pays site owner, PayPal then immediately pays affiliate from site owners account, and the member knows nothing.

Simple sign up for the Affiliate – register as usual – ‘Affiliate’ is a just user, like ‘Editor’ or ‘Subscriber’ – but an extra field for their PAYPAL email address, and s2member just uses the unique wp user id as an affiliate id.

Great to have an ‘in house’ affiliate program, so to speak, as then members can also be affliates.

Basically guys: KISS

As long as an affiliate can send traffic to something as simple as: mysite.com/s2aff.php?1234, the vistor is cookied, and the affiliate gets paid as soon as the vistor buys, even if they return months later, then that’s just cool.

Seriously. KISS.

I appreciate, this isn’t an ‘I’ll knock this out over the weekend’ kinda thing, but it is seriously needed. 3rd party affiliate platforms/software are just nowhere near flexible enough for the genius of s2Member – it’s their way or the highway.

And I’ve tried FOUR affiliate platforms and even got lost in iDevAffiliate.

Let’s have the s2Affiliate Plugin asap please. Keep it simple, and I’ll be first in the queue with my wallet open!

Go For It Guys!

Thanks for the input Paul!

Personally I don’t even expect the aff module to handle automatic affiliate payments. I just look at the reports and pay affiliates manually (of course, personally I haven’t reached a point where I have so many affiliates that this is a problem…. I guess it’s a good problem to have :))

@Paul

Thanks for the input and the heads up. As you said, this isn’t an overnight or over-the-weekend gig. :)

@Everyone

My idea would be to start with a basic functionality and then add more advanced functionality as we can. Of course, if Jason comes up with something cool that is automatically integrated, all the better. I’m waiting to see if this is on his list for the New version of s2member. If it’s not, then I’ll push more to get it done.

Here are my basic function (Phase 1) thoughts:

Admin:
1. Ability to set a global commission on all purchases (registrations, cc’s, specific post/pages, etc.)
2. Ability to set a different commission on specific purchases (I’m thinking via the shortcode attributes)
3. Ability to set a different “global” commission for an individual affiliate
4. Ability to see all clicks and commission stats by referral
5. Ability to view, download and edit commission information for each referral (edit: add, remove, mark as paid, etc.)
6. Ability to set individuals, roles or all users as affiliates
7. Ability to save list of products which affiliates can promote

Affiliate:
1. Ability to create dynamic referral link for any product
2. Ability to view own clicks and earnings
3. Ability to set payment type

This is a working list so feel free to add as you think. If you believe something is good, but probably not in the initial phase, just put “New Phase” so we know you aren’t intending it to be part of the original.

I’ll post source code as soon as I get some basic stuff done so anyone can offer changes and advice from there.

We’ll see what happens… lol!

Dave

Hi all,

Just a quick (?) question – how easy would it be for a system like this to handle the situation where a client returns/refunds the product? If the affiliate was paid “on payment” I can see this causing issues, and am not sure if this is something PayPal can handle?

Derek.

@ Derek, @David

This affiliate plugin, would (unfortunately) just have to be a standard affiliate set up and recording/reporting script with the functionality described above.

A the end of the month, the site own would need to pay the affliates individually, like iDevAffliate, and indeed other other WP-Affliate plugins.

To have this as a part of S2Member would be excellent, since it saves trying to integrate other third party affliate plugins and indeed using affilliate plaatforms.

Following exhustive research on this I discovered that Affiliate platforms are able to use Adaptive Payments, since it is their account that is taking the money then passing it on to the others involved.

That is the platform (in Paypal terms, the primary reciever) can take the payment from the customer, keep his commission, then divides the rest up and pays up to five other people (called the secondary recievers), in what is called chain. Everyone is then responsibel for there percent of the fees, based on the money the recieve.

Secondary recievers in an affliate platforms case woulld be you, your affliate, a second tier affliate if you have them, and up to two jv parners, to make a total of up to 5.

In the case of a refund, you have to go back to the aflaite platform to issue one, if that is the buyer hasn’t already instiagted it via paypal.

The primary reciever’s acount ( the affiliate platform) is debited, and a request for money is then sent to the other accounts.

And yes @Derek, this would be is cause for concern.

However what actually happens is that when you join an affliate program to sell your product, you go through the paypal set up process through the affliate signup and in doing so give the platform permission to pay in to your account, and, crucially, debit it too, all done via the paypal api’s.

So if a refund is instigated, or requested, it is the afliate platforms account that is debited, since with the Adaptive Payments process, the primary reciever is liable for the return of the money to customer, no matter what happened to it after payment.

So as you can see, integrating Adaptive Payments in to S2member is sadly simply not possible.

The S2Member Pro User, you or me, for example, would need to have the an app set up using the paypal api’s that allows you to ask the affiliate registering with you to confirm that he will allow payments to made from you to his account as well as, crucilly as we have seen allow you debit. Your JV parners would need to register with you in this way to.

Look as this ‘app’ like setting up a ‘facebook app’ to allow you to create your own pages via tabs on your page. Just a bit more advanced since it’s money that’s in volved here.

Now, in order to be able to use this functionality of app apis in Paypal, as well as use their adaptive payments service, you have to be a limited company, and pass additonal credit checks, accreditation through paypal. (Which I wasn’t aware of when I first commented on this thread.)

And obviously not every S2Member user wanting an affiliate solution is.

So basically, our only option for this if for someone to develop an affilliate plugin that is designed to to work along side and provide more integration with s2Member rather than just be a stard 3rd party affliate plugin, and I’m pleased to say that @David has already offered to get going with some coding which is great!

Though as with all 3rd party affliate plugins, it will only do the tracking and reporting for you, you’ll have to do all the payments once a month manually.

So, sadly for me, I have moved any further on, and have decided to go down the route of changing the way my membership site works in order to be able to list on one of the affliate paltforms, which is a problem in itself, since they don’t return one of the most crucial parts of the paypal IPN – the item number, which interms of S2member is used to represent the member level number that the subscriber changes to.

Can’t have everything in this world.

Thanks to @Adam for raising the request for an s2member affliate add on. I feel I have maybe complicated the issue with refence to Affliate Platforms and Adaptive Payments, as I see that is never going to be possilble, with any plugin afflaite software.

Probably why only the affliate platforms are able to do it.

There is of course scope for me to develop and ‘Affiliate Platform’ specifically for s2Members so any s2Member user can have all the affiliate stuff, including reporting tracking paying etc taken care of.

As well as though obvious benefits, as soon as an s2Member user registers their site/product on the platform, all the ofher s2Member owners will be able to promote it too an there own sites. An instant s2Member family of affiliates, all promoting each other and paying each other comisiion immedialey, increased sales all round!!! Exclusively for s2Member users.

I like it.

Actually, that model isn’t new, The affiliate platform RAPBank.com came about as a way for owners of the Rapid Action Profits program to promote each other products, and now not only does it have a wp plugin for anybody to use and get commision on products sold through clicks on a blog etc, (similar to a various ClickBank ones) it also allows other people like you and me to register their own products.

So and afflliate platform specifically for s2Members that works in the way s2Members does re adding and upgrading downgrading new members.

Incidentally, RAPBank.com is is custom developed wordpress plugin, running beneath a custom developed wordpress theme!

I’m an excellent marketer, website designer, developer, but not a php coder. Any excellent coders fancy a joint venture partnership to build a kissass affiliate platform exclusively (at least at first) for s2Member users? ;)

Update

I have started on this project / concept. Unfortunately right now I’ve got a client web application that is eating my lunch and I just launched my own website that is slowly starting to pick up some steam.

This one is kind of on the back burner for now, but I’ll work on it more as I get time. Maybe we’ll get lucky and S2member’s next version will come out with everything we want! :)

Thanks!

Dave

update: http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/official-s2m-affiliate-plugin-thread/

That’s great, Adam! :)