Deducting PP fees from iDev commission?

Hi guys,

I have just integrated iDevAffiliate with s2Member.

All very straight forward thanks to Jason’s documentation.

I have 2 questions.

– Can a future release of s2Member deduct PayPal fees from commission payments?

If giving 50% commissions, it means affiliates get MORE than we do! :)

This would apply to Buy Now buttons, as I’m not sure it could be done on recurring payments as I think we can only use mc_gross?

Jason might be able to clarify that though?

– Are there any safeguards in place to stop people signing up for an affiliate account and then using their own links to save money on their own purchases.

I give 50% commission as do you guys at S2.

What’s stopping someone signing up and then using their own link to save 50%?

I’m sure there must be something, but just thought I’d ask.

Great job guys, loving your work and can’t wait for next gen S2!

Hi Ross. Great to hear from you.

Regarding affiliate payout percentages:

In a future release of s2Member, yes, it will be possible. However, most affiliates expect to be paid what you’re collecting (i.e. what is advertised), and not what is actually coming in after your fees. In other words, if you sell something for $100, the affiliate expects to get paid 50% of $100. So my suggestion (for now at least), is to set the percentage a bit lower, maybe to 45% instead.

That being said… we ARE making some additional variables available in the next generation of s2Member, so the flexibility will be there for those that need it. This will continue to be hairy though, given the expectation of an affiliate, versus what is actually calculated by your configuration of iDevAffiliate. I personally prefer to be VERY generous to affiliates. I really don’t mind if they make a little more; but that’s not going to work for all business models, and we realize that.

Regarding iDevAffiliate & Existing Affiliates During Checkout.

This is a really tricky issue to deal with, and we’ve tried to just stay out of it, to be honest. We feel like it’s really something that the iDevAffiliate software should make possible. Or, if a site owner needs/wants to block this from occurring, it should probably be handled with the help of iDev, or from iDev support.

To my knowledge, there is nothing preventing this in a default installation of iDevAffiliate. I suggest that you run some conditionals before displaying your iDevAffiliate tracking code, which might look for an existing affiliate by IP address, and prevent a commission in these cases.

But before, I mentioned this was tricky. It’s tricky, because affiliates (especially the bigger ones, which mean the most to you), are going to want to test your checkout flow for themselves, and you’ll want them to see a positive result before deciding to promote your product/service heavily. So this really is a judegment call. I’ve seen some site owners make attempts at some complex routines to allow a single commission, only under certain types of transactions, while others just let these slide through. I’ve also seen site owners that just let these slide through; but then they review them manually & send the affiliate an email noting the commission was tracked, but then decline to pay it for obvious reasons. I would suggest that you send an email over to the iDev support team, and ask them what solutions that might have for this. If you do that, please share your findings.

FYI: Your installation of iDev comes with several example API/scripts. While the majority of the source code is locked down, it is possible to use those example scripts (while also considering the structure of the database tables that iDev uses), to find affiliates by IP address (i.e. you might have a conditional routine that scans the database before displaying the tracking code). iDev support might be able to help you with questions about how this can be accomplished, should you run into any trouble.

I don’t know a way to prevent an affiliate from using his own aff link to purchase cheaper. You could either screen the affiliates you sign up, so people that will realy promote you get a link, and not just a regular customer. Another option is to set a commission amount to be reached before you pay the it, that way they’ll have to promote a bit to get paid, in which case it shouldn’t matter that they got a discount on their own copy.

Wow guys, thanks so much for such detailed answers!

To be honest if I can get some BIG affiliates on board, then I really don’t mind giving over the full 50% commission.

Would be cool to be able to have the option of taking PP fees into account though in the next gen version of S2 though.

In terms of stopping affiliates from using their own links to save money, iDev have replied to me saying that it is just one of those things that is inherent to all affiliate programs.

I don’t mind cross referencing IP addresses if that is possible?

I’m not sure if iDev stores affiliates IP addresses when they register? (I can’t find it in the control panel of iDev if it does).

S2 is great in that it displays the IP of members in the backend of WP.

If I could cross reference the new member’s IP from S2, with the referring affiliate’s IP and they matched, I just wouldn’t allow the commisson.

Do you now if iDev stores affiliates IP addresses anywhere?

Would be great if the affiliate’s IP could be displayed in the email an admin gets when a commission has been generated. It shows the affiliates username, but I don’t think there is a shortcode in the email templates to display IP.

Thanks for all of your help so far guys! I’m still amazed each day by S2Member. What it allows me to accomplish is phenomenal!

hmm. Sometimes I wonder if S2member is going to get so complicated that the average person will no longer be able to learn how to use it effectively. Is there a price for adding so many new features?

We’re actually doing what we can to make it simpler to use than the current one, even thought it’ll do way more. :)