A lot of opinions (and controversy) exist about what makes up the best kind of affiliate program. What I have learned over the last several years doing this is that there is no one perfect affiliate program.
A while back, I created a document called “10 Ways to Recognize a Good Affiliate Program.” You can read and/or download it here. It is not PLR, and you cannot alter it, but you are free to give it away to your list if you like.
I recommend that you read it first, and then return here to read the rest of my post so that it makes more sense.
So, as I previously mentioned….there is a lot of controversy as to what affiliate program is best. As I mentioned in that document, you have to consider “first click” and “last click” scenarios.
That is why I wrote this snippet in the document:
As I mentioned in the snippet above, Amember is one shopping cart/affiliate program that ensures that you get credited for introducing a potential customer to someone else’s website. It means you are being rewarded for either introducing someone to the site for the first time, and/or turning that prospect into a customer, as long as they sign up into the database. Amember is what I use on my BuyHealthPLR.com site, and what many other people use, as it has so many features that work so well whether for a-la-carte purchases or if you have membership sites too.
The way Amember has traditionally been set up is so that once you have referred a NEW customer who has signed up for a free product or purchased a product because of clicking on your affiliate link, that customer is then tied to you forever. That means that when that same customer purchases anything in the future, you automatically get a commission, even if you never promote that website/future products again.
On one hand, this can be a nice, passive income for that affiliate whose customer is tied to him forever. HOWEVER, there have also been some drawbacks. The main drawback has been that if you promote a product (from a site that uses Amember set up this way) to a customer who is already tied to a different affiliate within that same Amember system, then you will not get the commission. The original affiliate will get the commission.
Personally, the other problem I would run into is that I would spend a long time putting together an email to tell my customers about someone’s great new product, but I never could tell how well my email had REALLY done. If the email didn’t get a good response, I did not know if purchases had actually occurred and been credited to an original affiliate OR if the email I sent out was of really no interest. The only way I could try to guess would be to look at my GetResponse stats, to determine how many people opened and clicked on the link.
I am sure that many of you understand exactly what I am saying, especially if you have promoted an Amember site in the past. In fact, some affiliates prefer not to promote Amember sites if possible, because of the very drawbacks I have described above. That is why platforms like JV Zoo have become so popular. A customer is not tied to the original affiliate forever and ever. It is based on “last click” results. So if you promote a JV Zoo product, you are more likely to be rewarded for your efforts, if your link is the last one that someone clicks on before completing the purchase.
Fortunately, there is a solution for Amember! This has got several of us excited, and I’m not quite sure why we didn’t know about it before. Perhaps, it only works on the most recent version of Amember. Anyway, I never can say enough good things about Amember (you can find previous posts on this website about Amember by doing a search).
I have implemented some code, courtesy of the generous and wise, Alice Seba, who gave several of us the heads-up about this.
So what does this mean?
This is good news for you and for me! This means that if you promote an Amember site’s products (such as mine) and EVEN IF the customer who clicks and purchases through your affiliate link (B) is tied to another affiliate (A), YOU (B) will now get credit for that sale. In fact, anytime that customer clicks and purchases through other affiliate links (B) that you send him, you will get credit.
But what happens to the original affiliate (A), you may be asking yourself?
Fortunately, not all is lost for the original affiliate (A). After all, the original affiliate (A) still deserves credit for introducing a customer to a website in the first place. This means that when the customer returns to the website to purchase something, but is not using an affiliate link at all, credit for affiliate sales revert to affiliate (A).
And what happens with subscription payments?
If you refer a customer, who is already tied to a previous affiliate (A), and this customer signs up to a subscription (membership) payment because of your affiliate link (B), you will be rewarded with the monthly affiliate sales. So, technically, you could have one affiliate (B) getting the subscription affiliate sales, and the original (A) affiliate getting sales that are not related to that subscription. All other rules, as described earlier, apply.
So, if you already own Amember, and you want to add this feature, you need to contact their Customer Desk to ask them for the code to make this happen. It’s very easy to install within a matter of a few minutes, if you understand the back part of your Cpanel.
If you do not own Amember yet, it is just one more reason to use it. It just keeps getting better all the time.
You can purchase Amember here.
And remember that if you need extra help with installing Amember, this course can help you. If you are a total newbie, save your time and hire someone who can set it up for you quickly. Just email me if you are serious, and need the name of someone who can help you.
If you need even more information about Amember, check out my other posts here.