Regnow affiliate discount problem

[arcadetown]

Apparently Regnow slipped in a feature where affiliates can provide a discount on products coming out of the affiliate percentage. See the google adwords on the right side of this google search results (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=puzzle+express&btnG=Google+Search). One author I spoke with said this feature was slipped in w/o his notice and can't see a way to disable it.

Looks like this affiliate discounts all sorts of products and seen others starting to adopt this approach. This has the potential to cause a lot of pricing problems for downloadable games and think is a huge problem. I don't think the affiliates are doing anything wrong, what's wrong is Regnow even allowing this feature. What do you all think?

[Jack Norton]

That's really absurd fom regnow. It seems that they want to encourage people not to use them anymore? :D

[Andy]

Immediately: Lower down the percent for that affiliate down to the minimum - 1$

Right after that: Contact to RegNow and ask them to disabble their contact with that affiliate as soon as possible. And explain why. James there very adaptive and understanding guy. (He was also promising me that they will make this affiliate discount feature optional for vendors - when you can allow it or not)

REM: This is at least what I did right after I got the answer from that idiots.
Hopefully their marketing politics is obvious for everybody here and this is not necessary to explain it.

[Diodor Bitan]

This is _now_ not a problem, and if it grows to be a minor annoyance (it won't - the affiliate discounts are nothing new), one can simply disable the affiliate relationship.

[Itsme]

And this is a problem ... why? Don't do the reasoning thing - this is bad because it may ... bla bla bla.
RegNow has been offerning this feature for at least 3 months, more like 6, but I am not quite sure. You can see if anybody is selling your products with a discount simply if you check out your e-mail notifications, because the total amount paid for your game will be lower. Don't like it - disable your affiliates. Case closed.
But seriously, discounters (regardless what you think of them) will gain ground and they already are. there are tons of sites, like www.sharewareplaza.com and such.
Google bidding sucks, that's true, but enter "bejeweled" and you will see how common bidding on game names is. All major portals and game sites do that. Nothing you can do about this. Just disable any company that you think does you wrong by selling your games at a discount.
See how math works out. It may very well be that in fact you are benefiting from this. Let's say the company bids on 50 game names and draws 250-1000 visitors a day. Your game may be not very popular in terms of bidding - only, say 3 clicks a day. Then, in fact, you do benefit, because people who search other games (your target audience) will get exposed to your game and you will get extra sales. If, on the other hand, your sales stay flat, you should disable such an affiliate.

[Itsme]

By the way - whoever that person is, he is a genius and you should copy his strategy. Consider yourself lucky, you stubled upon it. I totally agree, this is not a problem, this is a blessing.
As you know, working with PopCap, Real Arcade, Big Fish will get you only 30-40% off the revenue. But you can fight that if you do create your own discount that you will advertise only with AdWords and lead to a special landing place. Any person searching for your game will buy it for a discount - if a person was going to buy it to begin with. If you offer a discount, you offer a reason to buy from you. Thus, you will channel all Google traffic to your site, diverting sales from portals, affiliates and such (just the "my game name" search traffic).
Listing games with portals will make them popular. As they get popular, they get searched for. And that's where you come in and make money selling your own game at a discount.

[Jack Norton]

Sure, but I prefer to be the only one deciding the percentage of discount (and from what I see you can't with this system, or I am wrong?).
Considering the high regnow fees, with an additional discount I'd get a few $$ for each sale... hard to get more money unless you get 2x-3x quantity of sales... ;)

[Diodor Bitan]

Original post by Jack Norton
Sure, but I prefer to be the only one deciding the percentage of discount (and from what I see you can't with this system, or I am wrong?).
Considering the high regnow fees, with an additional discount I'd get a few $$ for each sale... hard to get more money unless you get 2x-3x quantity of sales...

Arcadetown said the discount comes from the affiliate percentage.

[Jack Norton]

Ah ok, so I guess not a problem for vendors :)

[Dom]

I had a word with our solicitor regarding discounts from affiliates/portals a while ago, and this is what she said:

Legally, we are suppliers, and your affiliates are retailers.
Refusing to allow them to discount (i.e. forcing them sell at the same price as you) is called price fixing, and tends to be frowned upon.

Be careful.

[Andy]

Ah ok, so I guess not a problem for vendors :)

Jack, they will pull all your potential customers to their sites. Build recongnizable portals by usage of your product. And if you still consider to build your own visible around site you can forget about this.
That would mean price (discount) war between powerful affiliate based upon you products.

...I suppose so... ;)

[Itsme]

Yes, this is exactly the case, the commission comes out of the affiliate account.
This is a non-issue for vendors. But it certainly is an issue for affiliates who don't offer discounts. Essentially, any person who goes to www.sharewareplaza.com or www.discountshareware.com and makes a purchase is very likely to come back for another purchase to compare prices.
Over time discounters will win out - this is no brainer, just see how WalMart dominates retailers in US (and other parts of the world).
Basically, it's a three part issue
Discounts vs. no discounts
Staying with RegNow vs. Dumping it
AdWord Bidding.

Obviously, there are downward price pressures. Most games in Europe sell for 9.99 euros (shareware). Tom wrote in one of his www.asharewarelife.com
his analysis of eGames financial statement. Can't give you a link right now, but it's there. The main idea is - the prices for games are going lower and this is a huge issue. Obviously, traffic will migrate to discounters. This is where you have to look at your bottom line very closely. Obviously, the "bid and discount" strategy is not sustainable by itself. And if it eats in your profit, you should disable the discounter immediately. Then ask yourself a question - where is all that traffic is going to go now? Not sure that all the "game name" traffic will go to the developer's page. It's pretty safe to say that most shareware games would attract 100-400 visitors a month from the game name search engine match. It would probably convert to 1-4 sales at best.
If discounter generates more sales, it would be stupid to dump it. What would be smart is to keep the discounter AND create your own landing page and your own AdWords campaign with similar or better terms. This way you would not compromise your regular priced products sales at your website, compete with discounter for "game name" traffic and would get extra sales that discounters generate.
"Just dump WalMart" is not a strategy that will work - see what kind of a deal you are getting. I am 100% sure RegNow is not upfront and honest about giving vendors a choice how to deal with discounts. They won't do it and you'll have to suck it up.
Think about it - it you take the dumbest shareware maker in the world, take half of his or hers brains out, and give them a choice of registrators, they will pick Plimus (ShareIt, BT Micro) AND RegNow. RegNow is going to be used almost exclusively for affiliate marketing. RegNow makes MORE money each time a sale is generated by an affiliate. Discounts do exactly what cookies don't.

[Jack Norton]

RegNow makes MORE money each time a sale is generated by an affiliate. Discounts do exactly what cookies don't.
I am so dumb that I don't use Regnow to sell my games at all! :D
And I sell games to europe for more than 9.9 euros. I sell more to europe than USA. With Plimus I get no fraud sales...how disappointing!

I am really dumb! :rolleyes:

[Aldacron]

Legally, we are suppliers, and your affiliates are retailers.
Refusing to allow them to discount (i.e. forcing them sell at the same price as you) is called price fixing, and tends to be frowned upon.


I don't understand how affilates can be considered retailers. Retailers purchase goods in advance. They are free to resell at any price they wish to recoup their investment, make a profit, take a loss, or what have you. They legally own the goods that they are selling, so it makes sense that they are free to sell at any price they wish. Affiliates pay you nothing in advance for your product, and earn a percentage of total sales as a commission. You own the product, they do not. If there is no legal distinction between retailers and affiliates then there certainly should be. This warrants a little research or legal consultation, for sure.

[Itsme]

Well, no I did not mean it like that. Certainly not to question your intelligence.
I could say something like "you would be dumb not to sell through BigFish, GameHouse, PopCap and RealArcade". Certainly, there would be a successful developer who does not work with Real Arcade, but makes a bunch of money.
I'd like to hear your reasoning for not using RegNow as an affiliate sales channel, but I think that it's safe to say that most have developers keep their RegNow accounts exactly for this reason. YOu don't really need to have a RegNow account if you don't have affiliate sales. May be that's exactly your case.

[cliffski]

Heh don't worry jack I'm with you! I use Plimus, and I don't want anybody selling ym games at a discount. I think it devalues stuff. Years ago I signed some bad retail deals, some guy even told me he got asteroid miner in a store for $1. Thats insane.
Others might argue about it, but my policy is that my games are worth X and if people want them they can pay X, else no game.
I haven't accepted an affiliate request in at least 6 months, although I get tons. I reckon 90% of my sales come from my site, where I take 90% of the revenue.
This works just fine.
I don't intend to have ANY affiliates for democracy, at least on a trial basis.

[Jack Norton]

Lol was a joke post, don't worry ;)
I don't use regnow because I have my affiliate with Plimus. Surely isn't so popular as regnow but still works well.
I don't like to see my game sold in another site for lower price. A guy come to another site and see the same game for 17$ instead of 19$. Of course he buy in that site and I lose a customer. He won't come anymore to my site to buy a game if I allow all my game to be distributed at lower price in other sites... at least this is what I think.

[Jack Norton]

some guy even told me he got asteroid miner in a store for $1. Thats insane.
Woah!! really :D
I am not against affiliates at all, but still I prefer to hand-pick them :)

[Itsme]

Lol was a joke post, don't worry ;)
I don't use regnow because I have my affiliate with Plimus. Surely isn't so popular as regnow but still works well.
I don't like to see my game sold in another site for lower price. A guy come to another site and see the same game for 17$ instead of 19$. Of course he buy in that site and I lose a customer. He won't come anymore to my site to buy a game if I allow all my game to be distributed at lower price in other sites... at least this is what I think.

Well, exactly, this really sums up the discounting strategy. Obviously, they don't want you to lose the customer, but they want to make sure the customer comes back to them over and over again. They care less about your customers, they want to build their own base and I am willing to bet my money it will work, and this will be in a way a game portal dejavu.
Sounds like a smart strategy not to work discounters if you get 90% sales from your site. At least right now. But what happens when WalMart comes to town? 50% of smaller retailers go out of business in 12 months.
Now imaging that there is a game discounter with marketing muscle of Big Fish or Real Arcade. Would not worry about little guys right now, but what if one of the portal starts the price war?

[patrox]

Now imaging that there is a game discounter with marketing muscle of Big Fish or Real Arcade. Would not worry about little guys right now, but what if one of the portal starts the price war?

They already do, when you subscribe to the Real Game pass, they sell your game for 6.95$. ( well in fact it's free for a 6.95 subscription... )

pat.

[Jack Norton]

Well everybody has its own strategy.
Honestly if I don't think my games are worth at least 19.95$, better stop making games at all...!
Maybe also because I am not really targeting the casual audience and I don't make small puzzle games, like Cliffsky ;)

[cliffski]

Would not worry about little guys right now, but what if one of the portal starts the price war?


Easy. The portal won't have Democracy or Starship Tycoon. They will just have 2,546 color matching puzzle games. They can't undercut me because they don't have games like mine, and certainyl don't have MY game. Would you not buy Half Lfie 2 from valve because you've seen lemoda tycoon cheaper on Realgames?
Its a different market, and always will be.

[Andy]

Oll korrect cliffski,

But the question really mostly devoted to newbies who just comes to area. And I suppose this is very important for them to not understimate their value from the very beginning and not be catched by such proposals. Even if they just doing good match-3-in-row games for start.

[Itsme]

Well, if you ask me, there is no way the "Google Adwords - Discounts" model can be profitable by itself. I mean, do the math: the average commission is 30%, the average game price is 15-20 dollars, the average discount is 10-15%.
It means that any person advertising discounts gets 3-4 dollars from each game. The click costs at least 5 cents. That buys you 60-80 clicks. You have to have an extremely good conversion rate just to break even. If you ask me, it's not profitable. Why are these guys doing it then? Are they stupid? Are they throwing their money away? Not so sure. Like Jack said, any sane person would rather pay 17 bucks than 19. I bet that discounters lose money on each sale initially. But their customer return rate has to be hell of a lot sky high, for them to be able to do that. And I bet ya it is, otherwise they'll go out of business by tommorrow morning. Now, if this is the case (which is not obvious right now), than in a short while we will have discounters getting most of the buyers (rather than "visitors"). And if the discounted game websites where the buyers are, this is the way to go. Obviously this is totally a non-issue right now, but it would be interesting to hear the feedback from folks who sell their games through discounters in, say, 6 months. Particularly, the sales dynamics.

[arcadetown]

Would not worry about little guys right now, but what if one of the portal starts the price war?
That's the trick. Think we all enjoy shareware games pricing power versus retail bargain bins. If discounter schemes become more popular I see pricing pressures from all levels (affiliates, developers, portals) and everyone being affected even if you don't have affiliates or are not Regnow enabled. I certainly don't want to see shareware pricing power eroded to the level of retail.

[luggage]

I think it could be a problem.

I sell a game for $20 on our site. Someone else sells it on their site for $15. I'd rather they came to our site to buy the game. Why would they when they can get it cheaper elsewhere?

It's fine if you don't sell it from your own site though but I would have a guess that most of us here do.

[Itsme]

That's the trick. Think we all enjoy shareware games pricing power versus retail bargain bins. If discounter schemes become more popular I see pricing pressures from all levels (affiliates, developers, portals) and everyone being affected even if you don't have affiliates or are not Regnow enabled. I certainly don't want to see shareware pricing power eroded to the level of retail.

RegNow affilates can't start a price war. They can only give 10-15% discount, because the typical comission is 30%. Plus, game developers aren't at risk - under current conditions they still take same cut from the discounters and regular affiliates alike. Only two entities can start a price war - large game portals/e-tailers or ... registrators. I know this sounds way wacky, but I do think that it's very possible. No, I don't think that RegNow or Plimus might turn into a discounter. I think a discounter might turn into one. Processing payment's is not a very complicated technical issue. It you sell at a discount and you sell a lot, it's very tempting not to approach a game developer and say - hey fella, my sense is that you don't like losing five bucks in RegNow comission on a twenty dollar game. Let me process the payments. I will charge you a nominal fee (I belive it costs less than 80 cents to process a 20 dollar payment), and we'll lower the price by $4.20. Would you not agree? Sure you would. Discounters operate on large volume and slim margings. Some game developers will likely be caught in the "hell no, I ain't gonna let ya sell my twenty dollar game for a lousy seventeen bucks" mentality, and offering them "free" payment processing might be an argument that one can't refuse. Most moderately successful game developers fork out 200-500 bucks in RegNow fees. Free payment processing that would save $6000 a year sounds very attractive. Once again, this is all my imagination, but like I said, in order to start a price war, you have to have a payment processing unit, because this is where you can easily cut the cost. Why isn't anybody doing this already?

[Itsme]

I think it could be a problem.
I'd rather they came to our site to buy the game. Why would they when they can get it cheaper elsewhere?


Sure you would. So would farmers. They'd rather you come to their organic farmer market and pay them directly, where they can get more then a few cents a pound they get from supermarket. But this is life. Few folks go to farmer markets, unless this is Berkley or some other town with a large liberal-minded populus.
Why are game portals so successful? They sell exactly the same games for exactly the same price. From the consumer point of view, it's better to go to game portal, because the choice is greater. This "I will do fine without RealArcade" bravada sounds cool, we all would pick David over Goliath, but then you will corner yourself to a small niche.
There are a lot of small niche developers (especially here) and it's really cool. Except for one thing - they will always stay pretty much the way they are right now, in terms of money and distribution.

[Andy]

The idea starts to sound more and more positive for me - that discounters will kill all that one day games around, make the portals more productive in their discussions with us and later kill itselves after all.

And we will survive staying away from all this BS with our original games and even will start to feel better after all.

Aren't you too optimistics in your guesses Itsme? I'd like to know for sure!.. :D

[stay]

This thread is very interesting to me because the exact same thing happened to us a couple of weeks ago. We're selling Outpost Kaloki (http://www.ninjabee.com/outpostkaloki.html) through several portals and an affiliate for one of them started advertising the game for 10% off on Google AdWords.

It felt a little shady because the link went to a very generic regnow account with no information about who the actual seller was. We had to dig a bit to find out which portal it was coming through. We were concerned and frustrated because our contract with this portal specifically stated the resell price. We contacted them and they were very responsive and active about resolving the problem, but it still took a couple of weeks for the ad to finally come down from google.

I know you've hit this back and forth for 30 posts at this point, but I wanted to chime in with my similar story. It was a problem for us because the only ads on Google AdWords were ours and the discount ad, so it essentially invalidated ours.

Also, you guys talk too fast. I apparently have to check the forums every 2 hours if I want to get into a conversation before it's two pages old... :)

[luggage]

Sure you would. So would farmers. They'd rather you come to their organic farmer market and pay them directly, where they can get more then a few cents a pound they get from supermarket. But this is life. Few folks go to farmer markets, unless this is Berkley or some other town with a large liberal-minded populus.
Why are game portals so successful? They sell exactly the same games for exactly the same price. From the consumer point of view, it's better to go to game portal, because the choice is greater. This "I will do fine without RealArcade" bravada sounds cool, we all would pick David over Goliath, but then you will corner yourself to a small niche.
There are a lot of small niche developers (especially here) and it's really cool. Except for one thing - they will always stay pretty much the way they are right now, in terms of money and distribution.
It isn't a "I will do fine without RealArcade" that's the issue here. It's hard enough as it is now to get people to your site and to buy your games without everyone being able to undercut you at will.

At the very least you should be notified if someone is offering your product at a discount. Really they should be asking permission to.

It's fine talking about portals now - but imagine Joe Spod's Discount Portal starts up and everyone goes there because they sell exactly the same games but at a lower price. How will the other portals react?

[cliffski]

the analogy with farmers markets is interesting. I go to them all the time and I'm amazed at actually how competitive they are. They are also very very busy here in the UK.
The thing is, customers who go to a farmers market are worth more than supermarket guys, because not only are we enthusiastic about the product and likely to spend more, but also price is less of an issue for us.
Maybe the people surfing to my site are like the hardcore gamer/farmers market customer, but thats cool with me, they are the sort of people who will buy my next game and also evangelise my games to others. They are more likely to buy expansion packs too.
People talk about 'niche' games as though a 'niche' product is'nt enough to live off, but in a world of 4 billion people and hundreds of millions of gamers, its likely that some niche markets have easily 30-50,000 customers for you if the product is right.
Thats not pocket money, thats new house money :D

[Jack Norton]

Thats not pocket money, thats new house money :D
LOL! You are my hero of the month! :D

About Itsme... perhaps you own one of those sites who offer discounted sofware? ;) hehehehhe

[Andy]

Thats not pocket money, thats new house money :D

Yeah. Only the question left how to collect them from that guys and gals. But we already discuss this in all another threads here. :D

[Itsme]

No, I don't but I don't think that niche is all that great. I happen to read a lot of Steve Pavlina. My understanding is that he is considered "success" in indie gaming world. But if you look what others have done during the same time span
(i.e. Reflexive, Real Arcade, GameHouse), it's pretty clear to me Steve did not achieve much. I mean, if you going to go for it, why not maximize? That's my "not so sure about the niche thing" approach.

[Andy]

I suppose that every game works in the niche and every developer targets his game to some niche. The differense only that some niches are wider than another. :)

This is impossible for single developer to stay in row with Real or Big Fish - it should become and develop itself as a publisher at first.
But this is very reasonable and achievable to get your own niche. Cliffski and another guys from here are direct examples of this.

[Itsme]

But this is very reasonable and achievable to get your own niche. Cliffski and another guys from here are direct examples of this.

Very true. But, what happens when you outgrow the niche? This is what I mean. I certainly do enjoy reading Steve Pavlina, but the question I ask myself is "is this guy for real or is he a fake". He always tries to give off an impression like he is well off, and I assume that he is one of the game developers that has passed the 50K a year benchmark a while ago. So the question is, if one is successful in his niche, why not go for a bigger piece of the pie? Steve is smart, Steve has experience, why isn't his name associated with any of the pig publishing/game portal websites? Is it possible that he turned to motivational speaking, because deep inside he understood that what Dexterity has acheived is not something to brag about? Surely he got bored doing the same thing over and over, but perhaps his real problem what that he got stuck in the same niche, there were a lot of folks who were getting much better results. This is not something an ambitious person would be thrilled about. When do you go from saying "I am a success because my games pay for my mortgage, car and groceries" and start asking "Am I a failure because there has been no progress for the last two years"? Is this an issue at all?

[luggage]

what's all that got to do with regnow and discounts though? :confused:

[Ricardo C]

No, I don't but I don't think that niche is all that great. I happen to read a lot of Steve Pavlina. My understanding is that he is considered "success" in indie gaming world. But if you look what others have done during the same time span
(i.e. Reflexive, Real Arcade, GameHouse), it's pretty clear to me Steve did not achieve much. I mean, if you going to go for it, why not maximize? That's my "not so sure about the niche thing" approach.

Because for some of us, "maximizing" is not worth it. I'd much rather earn $50k a year while mainting complete ownership of my IP, and sticking to hiring contract artists as needed, than making "the big bucks", but having to run a company with 10 employees with full benefits, or a publisher breathing down my neck, or investors demanding results. Independence, as you can probably imagine, is a very big deal for most indies ;) I'd love to make seven figures a year, but I'm not willing to sacrifice the pleasure of being my own boss and not having to answer to anyonem, in order to do it.

For people who think like me, it comes down to this: We're not against money and success, we're against replicating the corporate environments we left behind and getting trapped once again.

[Ricardo C]

Very true. But, what happens when you outgrow the niche? This is what I mean. I certainly do enjoy reading Steve Pavlina, but the question I ask myself is "is this guy for real or is he a fake". He always tries to give off an impression like he is well off, and I assume that he is one of the game developers that has passed the 50K a year benchmark a while ago. So the question is, if one is successful in his niche, why not go for a bigger piece of the pie? Steve is smart, Steve has experience, why isn't his name associated with any of the pig publishing/game portal websites? Is it possible that he turned to motivational speaking, because deep inside he understood that what Dexterity has acheived is not something to brag about? Surely he got bored doing the same thing over and over, but perhaps his real problem what that he got stuck in the same niche, there were a lot of folks who were getting much better results. This is not something an ambitious person would be thrilled about. When do you go from saying "I am a success because my games pay for my mortgage, car and groceries" and start asking "Am I a failure because there has been no progress for the last two years"? Is this an issue at all?

Two things come to mind here:

1) You're trying to measure the success of an indie developer, a one-man operation, by corporate standards. Which is ridiculous. What Steve accomplished with Dexterity, starting it from scratch, is far more impressive than what Real and Yahoo have accomplished by throwing millions of dollars behind their own gaming branches.

2) Your obsession with the man's career move is slightly disturbing.

[Itsme]

Two things come to mind here:

1) You're trying to measure the success of an indie developer, a one-man operation, by corporate standards. Which is ridiculous. What Steve accomplished with Dexterity, starting it from scratch, is far more impressive than what Real and Yahoo have accomplished by throwing millions of dollars behind their own gaming branches.

2) Your obsession with the man's career move is slightly disturbing.

No, I am not obsessed. I am curious. I am not trying to measure a person by corporate standards. Take Steve Jobs (yikes, another Steve). The guys has been successful. He is not an indie by your standards, but he attracts a lot of indie-oriented corporate bashing crowd. I just don't see how Dexterity is an impressive achievement compared to what others have done in the other time span. Surely it's a success. But when compared to other self-made indies, is it really all that impressive? I mean folks who created Crimsonland or Reflexive, a company that "discovered" them (though they are not indies by their own admission).

[Ricardo C]

Apple was grown on investor money, not just their own profits. And they're now a gigantic corporation, who only appeals to anti-corporate types by sheer marketing genius, not their actual business practices. They were only indies at the very beginning, and it doesn't seem as though they ever had any intention of staying that way. I like them better than Microsoft, but only slightly. Jobs at the helm of Microsoft would be far more frightening than Gates.

Show me a one-man operation that overshadows Dexterity's success, and we'll have a more valid comparison to go on.

[Mark Fassett]

Hey guys - can you drag this back on topic? If you want to yap about Steve P and whether or not he's really successful, start another thread, please.

[Andy]

what's all that got to do with regnow and discounts though? :confused:

Err... Yeah. :confused:
:D

edit
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Yes! Say them Mark! :D

[george]

if your product is pretty cheap, let's say $14.95, and you give 30% affiliate commision, you make about $10 from each affiliate sale (not counting your ecommerce service's commision for simplicitie's sake). If an affiliate gets more attention to your product by advertising "10% discount on Arkanoid game" on google adwords, you will make more money than you will lose (most likely).

but if you are selling a product for $39.95, you will make about $28 from each affiliate sale. If they advertise discounts on google, they will be taking over $10 from you on each potential sale that you could have made from your site (especially if you have a good search engine ranking).

i say f*ck that. i am in control of my products. it is a privilege for you that i allow you to make money off of my work. i decide the pricing, not you. i hate that shit. you might as well start selling your stuff to real arcade if you start giving third parties pricing power over your products.

screw regnow. remind me again why some of you still use them, when they charge 16%-20% commision, and charge for download bandwidth also? i don't think it's because of the affiliate program, other ecommerce services have one too... is it because of their nice logo? ;-)

[Andy]

remind me again why some of you still use them, when they charge 16%-20% commision, and charge for download bandwidth also?... is it because of their nice logo? ;-)

Because:
1. We had very bad experiense with our previous RegSoft - brrr... :mad:
2. We are lazy;
3. We still got no time on the movement;
4. We are not delivering the separated versions.

But we are going to move soon and our the best and only one real affiliate agreed with this our decision. Meaning he will catch us at Plimus as well.
So, promise George. :)

[merovingian]

So as I get this, Regnow is allowing affiliates to charge whatever they feel like for a product, and reduce the developer's percentage accoridingly?

I frown upon that. Yes, I plan on price fixing my products. And that's just tough nookie.

Now if they wanted to compete with each other and cut their overall take, or work out special deals with developers in exchange for enhanced visibility, that's a whole different matter. It seems like RegNow is experiencing some confusion over the matter of buy low/sell high.

[mkovacic]

So as I get this, Regnow is allowing affiliates to charge whatever they feel like for a product, and reduce the developer's percentage accoridingly?
No, they give the discount out of their cut.

[merovingian]

No, they give the discount out of their cut.

Oh, cool. I don't see a problem here then unless you're trying to drive your own 100% profit sales from your web site. I doubt I'll use affiliates to drive sales, but it's no skin off my back that they exist.