Best affiliate program for new merchant

Hey everyone,

I am currently exploring the best affiliate program to register with to allow affiliates to resell our products. We just launched a new system allowing users to get their own flash website with their own domain name and 5 email addresses for £20/month, they can customise the site in a number of different ways and update it whenever they want.

I am ideally looking for a network which doesn't charge a huge upfront fee (Google Affiliate Network's fees seem excessive) and allows us to specify a recurring affiliate payment (ideally lifetime) that is paid to the user. We are currently using Google Checkout to process payments and could obviously write an affiliate system ourselves and then make payments via PayPal MassPay or something similar but I was interested in the opportunities (a) whereby the affiliate network pays the affiliates on our behalf so we don't have to do it and (b) where there is already an existing network of affiliates to resell the products. I have looked at people like ClickBank however they charge 7.5% plus $1 for each initial payment and 9.9% for each rebill, which is quite a lot if you consider customers who we get ourselves and don't come through Click Bank (we use Google Checkout at the moment).

I would be most interested if anyone has any suggestions and also whether anyone knows if it's allowed to setup with an affiliate network (such as clickbank) and then only process sales through them if it's a referral from one of their affiliates, otherwise use someone like Google Checkout?

Thanks so much for your help,

Dave

 

Dave,

visit 2checkout.com = payment processor + affiliate network

 

Thanks very much for your response, i have looked at 2checkout and they do indeed appear to offer all that i need at a much cheaper price than other providers. My only concern is there are quite a lot of articles on the net about their customer service being awful (i emailed them this morning and am still awaiting a response and it's 6pm) and also about a number of people being scammed (although i think most of them were exaggerating or being stupid). Does anyone have any experience with 2checkout, would you recommend them?

Thanks so much for your help,

Dave

 

Have you tried Amazon Associates?

 

Isn't amazon associates an affiliate program for amazon products (where you act as an affiliate for their or other amazon seller products)? Or are you talking about selling through amazon and then using amazon associates to enable an affiliate program for my products that i'm selling through them? Or am i missing something?

 

Yes, that's right.

 

Yes thats probably the best idea.

 

I signed up to sell digital products via subscription on amazon simple pay then it would only let me put in US details (i'm in the UK). Then i tried to do the same using the UK site and they don't appear to have anywhere near the same options, just options to sell through amazon market place which is obviously different. Does anyone know if i can do this in the UK,i can't see why it wouldn't be allowed but i literally can't find the options. Similarly does anyone know how much amazon charges as i can't fnd the prices (but i guess that's because i can't find the right program either!)

Thanks so much for your help guys.

 

Hey everyone,

Amazon simple pay (allowing the sale of digital subscriptions) only seems to be valid for US businesses, so this is a no go unfortunately (i'm UK based). As a result i wondered if anyone had any other ideas as to who would be good to use. I send 2checkout some queries on Friday morning (it's now 4.30pm on Monday) and am yet to hear back so am slightly concerned about their efficiency and support (which is obviously essential for a payment processor in case customers have concerns).

I would be most interested to know if anyone can suggest any other providers who offer payment processing for digital subscriptions with an affiliate scheme included.

Thanks,

Dave