BE FAIR TO YOURSELF AND YOUR AFFILIATES

BE FAIR TO YOURSELF AND YOUR AFFILIATES.

You have an existing relationship with an e-commerce supplier and you don't want to jeopardise that? You also want to get involved in RegNow's well respected affiliate program? Is this possible, without being unfair to any one?

The short answer is "YES, but you have to careful how you do it". If you don't take steps to ensure that when an affiliate introduces your product to a potential buyer, THAT affiliate gets credit for the sale then word will get around that you aren't being fair to your affiliates.

A RegNow affiliate gets commission in one of two ways.

The buyer comes to the RegNow order page with the affiliate commission embedded in the URL. For example, if the buyer comes to
https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8627-1&affiliate=20109
the purchase will be of the Guy Software product PlanBee Pro (product 8627-1) and the commission will go to affiliate 20109 (that's also Guy Software - which is an affiliate as well as a vendor).
The buyer comes to https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8627-1 with a "cookie" set on his computer which shows that he or she was introduced to the products of vendor 8627 by an affiliate. That affiliate then gets the commission due.

The "embedded in the URL" technique is more rugged - for one thing, some users turn off cookies. When an affiliate site carries a "Buy Now" link it will almost always do it this way. The problem is that the customer may download from a link on the affiliate site but then not come back to use that site's "BuyNow" link to make the purchase.

One solution to this is to provide the affiliate with a "custom build" in which the in-product BuyNow links send the customer to the appropriate URL for the affiliate. This doesn't have to be as hard as it sounds. You don't have to recompile your application for every affiliate - just have it pull the buy-now URL from a location in the customer's system registry and then have your installer put the specific URL into that place in the registry. For example, with the popular "INNO Setup" installer maker you can do it like this:

[Registry]

Root: HKLM; Subkey: Software\Guy\PlanBee\2.0; ValueType: string; ValueName: BuyPro; ValueData: https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8627-1&affiliate=20109; Flags: noerror

Root: HKCU; Subkey: Software\Guy\PlanBee\2.0; ValueType: string; ValueName: BuyPro; ValueData: https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8627-1&affiliate=20109

The reason for putting in two places (and checking both in your program) is to ensure that the installer can set it and the program can find it (in some systems users cannot write to the HKLM "tree").

Using this method, you need only to recompile the installer for each custom build.

There's another method which doesn't involve any recompilation at all. You can embed the affiliate number in the file name of the installer, so all you have to do is rename the file and you've got a new custom build. For example, the file at http://www.guysoftware.com/plnb20109.exe will install a program where the internal BuyNow link has the affiliate number 20109 embedded in the URL. If the file name is changed to plnb1234.exe it will install a program which embeds affiliate number1234. Your affiliates can even create their OWN custom builds this way.

Here's how INNO can do this:

Insert into your INNO script the section:

[Code]

program Setup;

function RNAffil(Default: String): String;

var namestring: String;

begin

namestring:= ExpandConstant('{srcexe}');

namestring:=ExtractFileName(namestring);

namestring:=Copy(namestring, 5,99);

Result:=Copy(namestring, 1, Pos('.', namestring)-1);

end;

and then use the following in the registry section:

[Registry]

Root: HKLM; Subkey: Software\Guy\PlanBee\2.0; ValueType: string; ValueName: BuyPro; ValueData: https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8627-1&affiliate={code:RNAffil|20109}; Flags: noerror

Root: HKCU; Subkey: Software\Guy\PlanBee\2.0; ValueType: string; ValueName: BuyPro; ValueData: https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=8627-1&affiliate={code:RNAffil|20109}

(the |20109 in the field is the default in case the code fails for some reason)

So much for using the "embedded" in the URL method, so how does the "cookie" method work?

Most browsers are set to allow a site access only to the cookies which it has set, so the RegNow site must do all of the cookie manipulation. This means that the affiliate must use code like the following to link to the vendor's web page (Guy Software's PlanBee page in the example):

<A HREF="http://www.regnow.com/softsell/visitor.cgi?affiliate=20109&action=site&vendor=8627&ref=http://www.guysoftware.com/planbee.htm"><SMALL>Click here for the full product information page for PlanBee Critical Path Project Management.</SMALL></A>

In other words, the visitor is directed to the RegNow site, which sets a cookie and then forwards the visitor to the vendor's site. This happens in the blink of an eye, too fast for the visitor to notice.

Download links are handled in a similar manner:

<TD><a href="http://www.regnow.com/softsell/visitor.cgi?affiliate=20109&action=site&vendor=8627&ref=http://www.guysoftware.com/plnbinst.exe">Click here to download a free trial copy of PlanBee Critical Path Project Management</a></TD>

Now, whenever this visitor comes to the RegNow site to buy a product which vendor 8627 has placed in the affiliate program, affiliate 20109 will get the credit.

The big question usually asked is "What if the vendor uses more than one e commerce service" and it's a valid one. If the buyer purchases the product from some other e-commerce site, the affiliate won't get a commission - and that isn't fair.

Fortunately, there is a way around that too. RegNow provides a redirector function. The vendor uses something like the following as the link to his/her buy now page:

http://www.regnow.com/softsell/affiliateCheck?vendor=8627&primary=http://www.guysoftware.com/orderplanbee1.shtml&secondary=http://www.guysoftware.com/regnowplanbee.shtml">

When this is executed, the visitor is directed first to the RegNow site, where he/she is checked to see if an affiliate cookie is set for this vendor. If there is no such cookie, the visitor is sent to the "primary" URL and if there is such a cookie he/she is sent to the "secondary" URL.

Since the full URL is very long it is usually convenient to create a simple BuyNow page with the following between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags.

Give this page the same name as your already published "BuyNow" page, if you have one, and all of your existing links will work properly and your affiliates will be paid what they are due.