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I'm looking for a 3rd party payment handling site to sell my software. Currently I have shortlisted Avangate (www.avangate.com) and Fastspring (www.fastspring.com). Fastspring seems to have the advantage for me on price and customer service.

However something I cannot understand is how to create an affiliate program using these sites, and which would be more effective for my affiliate program? Has anybody had any experience with creating an affiliate program with the above two sites, or any similar 3rd party payment sites?

Thanks,

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Some interesting comments about different providers here: answers.onstartups.com/questions/615/… – Steve Wilkinson Jul 31 '10 at 10:47

4 Answers

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I don't want to rain on your parade, but unless your app is very, very special with millions of downloads, an affiliate program is unlikely to do anything other than to waste your time.

You would be much better off finishing your software, building a great web site,getting your e-commerce up and running, and marketing your product. Once you are successfully selling your software you can try affiliate programs.

The basic premise of affiliate marketing, (that someone else is going to market your software for you), is just plain wrong. A better way to think of it is, affiliate programs can increase my existing sales by 1% - 5%.

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Gary, great advice. My app is special :), but sadly i don't foresee millions of downloads. An affiliate program is only a part of our marketing strategy, and probably wont be explored until 2-3 months after we have launched. However it's a question I need answered before I select a Merchant service. – Tanvir Chowdhury Jul 31 '10 at 16:24
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This blog post about affiliate programs and digital good e-commerce services may help you:

http://www.fastspring.com/blog/2010/03/an-affiliate-program-experience/

It's quite easy to plug a top tier 3rd party affiliate network into a service like FastSpring.

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up vote 0 down vote

However something I cannot understand is how to create an affiliate program using these sites

It is called programming. As in: Normally it is not the job of a merchant service to do affiliate stuff automagically in the background.

Check about adding Paypal to your list. Many good and bad things, but las time I checked they were quite cheap, too.

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We use Avangate for Resolver Systems, and they're pretty good. Their affiliate scheme is pretty much transparent to you as a vendor; once you're using them to sell our software, people can sign up as affiliates from the Avangate site, and you get an email asking you to approve them or not. I believe it's pretty easy to generate your own "sign up as an affiliate" link to put on your site, too.

However, +1 to what Gary E says. The only affiliate that has sent any business our way has been Bits du Jour, with whom we do one-day discount sales. Perhaps if we actively worked with other affiliates we'd get more through them, but certainly the various random people who own "Best Software Download" sites and want to sell our software on them don't send anything serious our way.

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