Affiliates

[EpicBoy]

Should I expect much out of affiliates? I set up a RegNow account a while back for the hell of it, and since that time I've received maybe 20 requests for affiliates. I've accepted them all, set them up on 50% commissions and not a single one has ever generated a sale.

Is this the norm? Do people just collect affiliates like sea shells ... not really caring who or what they, just as long as they get another name on their list?

Am I expecting too much? Am I offering too little commission? Anyone have any input?

[Jason Colman]

I don't know how much this will help you, but...
I had quite a number of affliate requests too, and sure enough, there have been no sales. I'm a little worried that this will discourage them from affliliating any more of my games in future, and so will have a long term negative effect. Let's hope not!

[EpicBoy]

Well, as far as I know, it's really up to them how much money they make. They need to promote my game to get people to buy it from their site. But from what I can gather (just based on observing performance), they aren't doing anything except activating the "Buy Now!" button on my product description pages.

Should I expect more or is this par for the course with affiliates?

[svero]

Like all things affiliates is something where you get out of it as much as you put in. If you just add your game to some affiliate list and leave it at that then you'll get back equal return on your time. If you spend months targeting and finding the ideal affiliates and convincing them to sell your title you could get a lot more out of it.

[patrox]

Well it's not all about setting up a regnow account.

I see that on your site you use shareit :) basically affiliates never got their commission if they generated a sale ( if they don't have a custom build ) . Most serious affiliates will check that on your site before affiliating your products and will definitely go away...

Regnow offers a test url to know if there is a regnow cookie installed

http://www.regnow.com/softsell/affiliateCheck?vendor=1234&primary=https://www.shareit.com/yourstuff&secondary=https://www.regnow.com/yourstuff

pat.
ps : can't get rid of the url generation for the url

[papillon]

IIRC, it can be confusing when browsing RegNow to find much information on a title... or even be sure if the developer is still in business! ... so this does encourage some people to just click blindly and then ignore the whole thing.

It's been a while since I looked at their affiliate catalog, so I could be misremembering, but... do they have any built in way for you to offer an "info pack" for the new affiliate to download? With perhaps a sample blurb page / advertising? The easier it is for them, the more likely they are to do it. Of course, that might not be the kind of affiliate you want... the lazy ones probably won't bring you much sales unless they have a ton of traffic they don't know what to do with. :)

[EpicBoy]

Why do the links on my site matter? If someone clicks the "Buy Now" button on the affilates site, they are taken to the RegNow purchase form which records their affiliate id and gives them credit for the sale ... right?

Or am I missing some major piece of the puzzle here?

[papillon]

I think what he was saying was that if you don't have a custom build, then after they play the demo, they're likely to end up at *your* site to buy the game, and will buy through *your* buy-now button instead, thus leaving the affiliate to get nothing.

[Sillysoft]

My view is that affiliates can not make or break your business. It may be worth it to deal with affiliates after you have polished your game and website to perfection and have started to see some sales. Before that happens I think your time is better elsewhere.

[EpicBoy]

Well, at the moment it's a matter of two mouse clicks to approve them so no real time or money spent yet...

As for custom builds - well, nobody has approached me asking for one to be made, so really they only have themselves to blame.

[Bluecat]

Well, at the moment it's a matter of two mouse clicks to approve them so no real time or money spent yet...


I'm not sure if it really applies in this case, but I'd be concerned about brand dilution. (I think that is the correct term.) If your game is out and about on a bunch of crappy affiliate sites, it could harm your sales if customers start associating the game with other crappy games or poorly made websites.

I tend to believe that affiliation, like any other partnership, should not be entered into lightly. It deserves a reasonable amount of research and performance of a due diligence. If you don't take care about who is representing your game, you may be doing yourself a great disservice.

So even though those couple of clicks aren't costing you anything, not finding out who is representing you could cost you a lot of lost sales.

[EpicBoy]

The games are there anyway for downloading. All that's new is there's a "Buy Now!" button appearing on their page.

[FlySim]

I had the same experience (4 affilates/0 sales) but I expected it given the niche market for our game (fly fishermen). One unexpected benny was the improved google ranking - worth the trouble just for that.

-J.R.
www.flysim.com

[Dan MacDonald]

here's sort of a classic thread (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3499) from the old dex forums about esellerate and affiliates.

[Red Marble Games]

In addition to the concern about brand dilution mentioned above, you also water down the impact of your own web site. If your site hosts only games that (even if you wrote them) are all over a million other crummy sites, then what sets yours apart? And since few people buy through a crummy site, you're not getting any revenue for your trouble. I think svero has it right -- you've got to use the affiliate system as a mechanism for compensating the affiliates that you go out and target because they are likely to drive revenue, not as a way to get access to a bunch of affiliate sites.

[EpicBoy]

But ... aren't you supposed to be submitting your game to as many sites as possible? Isn't that a large part of driving traffic? Am I breaking some cardinal rule?

[terin]

I'm currently doing what I call traffic analysis (whose title would only be funny if you were a traffic engineer or at least had someone from the traffic engineering department in your family like I do.)

What I am finding is that the number of useful download sites are countable on one (two at most) hand. There are what I am calling "secondary" download sites which appear to get some traffic and generate some downloads, which combined may lead to something.

As far as page rank and links in goes, due to the high volume of links contained at download sites, so far its a zero sum game in that regard.

Im doing this to revise the download submission system we are offering at VGsmart. Hopefully I can target the top 25 sites and frankly get the same result as targetting 100, and do it at a quarter of the price.

In general, I agree with what was said above. Affiliate sales are based on the amount of work you put into them. If you aren't going to agressively seek top placement on the sites that are your affiliates OR seek placement on sites that dont KNOW that you are offering it, you won't get top results!

Sincerely,