I'm a ClickBanker for my own product line (and now a PDC'er as of tonight), and have clients in MANY different networks, i'm not a network but work with them all, and they love to hate me They hate me because I stand between them and merchants as a standalone guide before a network can get them exclusively and potentially ruin them (this is for bigger and more commercial networks that take big monthly management fee's etc.). However they love me because I DO have to pick one or two for each client to go through with their product/service, so in essence I am recruiting and adding value to the ones I/we choose, and so they love me because I bring them both merchants, affiliates, and money.
Onto the Juice: I've been playing with wrapping one of the networks around a membership site I've been running since 2002, after some inspection and just wanting to test the waters I decided to log into my PDC account tonight for the first time since I made my account a while back and really take a deep tour through the system. Along the way I found myself upgrade, and list my membership site and start learning about the PDC structure/rules/etc. Though it's my first night I've absorbed a lot and here is my feedback and questions: I'm going to compare this grid to ClickBank as that is the closest one to PDC in my opinion re the overall picture of the
networks... The pid works pretty much the same too
Questions: What if I don't put an account number and just leave PDC paydotcom
Does This Happen Here>>
oes someone own an account name 'your_pdc_username' and maybe an account names 'pdcusername' or 'yournamehere'? MANY hops/links and affiliates forget to change them and or don't understand yet, and I KNOW they make sales on them. It happens with every network. As a vendor this upsets me to know that most networks keep that money or allow internal teams/leaks get those usernames...
With CB and others you simply make up whatever nick you want, I like this method because you can have a numeric value like 23531 which doesn't look like an ugly affiliate link, or you can be sneaky and make your nickname 'secure_page' or 'front_page' so the link looks more legit.
Also side note: Can I hide the aff link as a merchant? I know I can redirect my home page so it won't show the ?=.... however is there other methods for affiliates? I don't mean cloaking your aff link, I mean so I can promote xx.com and only see xx.com not xx.com?=affid? I don't want to cookie stuff the surfer either, nor would i employ my aff's to do that so is there a legal and easy PDC way to hide it?
Purchase links:Also pretty simple, plugging the PDC paypal buttons
CB: A little different, the whole checkout process happens via ClickBank branded pages.
Questions: So if I'm with PDC, I obviously cannot connect another aff program to this as it require the PDC payment gateway. I dislike this for both PDC and CB. Why? Because now if I want to offer my site via another network to reach other affiliate pools, I have to duplicate the site. Some networks do this to make your site exclusive to them, others simply give you code to plug in on thank you page and you can use your own payment gateway(s), thus enabling using the same site with multiple networks. A few of my clients are multi-networked, and now that I'm here (luckily I build all my own sites) I will be duplicating and offering both aff pools the same products to two seperate versions of the site just to enable the separate payment and tracking gateways... ugh.
Management & Tools: I gotta say, even though its free, the management tools here are quite vast (re adding your promo tools and marketing assets for aff's to use, love the {command} shortcuts.
Affiliates: Haven't done much research yet to know what the affiliate base is like here, can anyone (merchants) enlighten me? CB Has TONS of affiliates and TONS coming on board daily, however don't let this fool you. I'd rather have 10 super affiliates than 100 CB newbies to my products and my clients products.
Now, for recruitment, I don't mind utilizing the page that PDC puts in the marketplace, but I'd much rather the option to point them to my own affiliate recruitment site - i.e. I set this up for my program with PDC paydot - Now all is fine however I cannot seem to get a 'PDC affiliates login here' button working, I can only send them to my PDC made page and instruct them to scroll to the bottom (very looong scroll too) and login there. That should be optimized, put that button above the fold as well as where it sits, the more merchants add assets, the longer that scroll is. So: How can I let my affiliates login to PDC directly from my own page in the above link?
Buying with your own link: PDC Seems to frown on it
CB: Allows you to do it a few times, the TOS is grey, they say you cannot continually abuse it, but a few times is ok. In fact this is a tactic many merchants use to both 'up' their listings quality score, get their affiliates to do the same and reimburse them on the side, and it is somewhat of a win/win for both vendors and aff's. Personally, I wouldn't mind one bit if 1000 affiliates wanted to buy my product with their own links, i'm still making money, affiliates are happy customers, and PDC is making more money. Simply regulate it and throw a script together that checks for transaction intervals, or perhaps allow 'up to 5' purchases with your own ID - smart marketing and business if you ask me. Seems the programmer here knows what h/she is doing so this should be easy technically speaking...
Landing Pages: Since I'm not how the rules are set for landing pages, Scenarios are: 1. I build 5 landing pages, I .zip them and offer my affiliates to download and unzip, change aff id and SEO tactics, h/she uploads to their server and sends the traffic from the lander to my main site with aff id link. This is the standard however there is also this method: I upload the landers to MY server with my affiliates links embedded, the landers have BUY NOW buttons, the affiliate sends traffic to the lander, and customer can buy without having to go to the main site, purchase right from the lander. Is the latter method possible here? And if so can I also give my affiliates that standalone lander for them to use on their own?
Conversion tracking: Since I have no data here yet, and nothing to quantify: Can anyone tell me the perks and weaknesses of the PDC tracking vs. others? No tracking is perfect but I'm sure some of you experienced folks can enlighten me on what some of the odd scenarios are or fake conversions or or or...
Affiliate Pools: I'm on 20 or so forums and see PDC here and there, however can you all please tell me where the popular hangouts are for you guys? Where the big players make their announcements? In fact if there are any big players that see value in my slate so far, please reach out I'm always up to learn more and connect with others when entering a new network. Thank you in advance for this one.
***Conversions ON PDC payment pages: I'm sorry if this hurts, but your payment pages MUST MUST MUST be upgraded. Merchants spend so much time and effort on mastering their pages and websites to be beautiful through and through, to then take the customer to a very outdated and poorly made payment page - i almost got suspicious myself looking at it for the first time. If the developer or designer is here - PLEASE GET IN TOUCH AND LET ME HELP! I thinks THIS is the most important part of the customer journey and your whole operation could drastically improve conversion ratios if you make your payment pages look more professional and secure/safe/easy/branded to the end user. Please let me know if you would consider my help with this. Compared to the other networks not just CB, I think this one is the poorest quality so far (hey I'm still here and wil use the system, however please consider this request I'm sure other experienced merchants will agree). In fact, do you have an advisory board with some of your top earners/members yet? Would love to discuss...
To Add to the above: Customizing your checkout page is of no use - you're on an SSL (https) and if you plug and HTML i.e. Pictures on anything other than text, you get a nasty error/popup message "This page has both secure and non secure items..." User must pick yes or no, I can guarantee that at least half of our shoppers don't have a clue what that means, they just know something is unsafe - and they are on a payment page so this is bad, so they click 'no', when they click no all the images on the page do not show up, instead missing image icons show up... so let's review, customer comes from your beautiful site, to an ugly unsecure looking checkpoint, it's customized/branded to some degree but errors popup and images are missing - the average user is GONE and won't return... Can you not have that as an i-frame or include file that won't affect your SSL? Or perhaps just build in a little tool with a few wysiwyg features for users to upload their own pics/text and you host it? I think allowing your merchants to customize the checkout process is a huge mistake - keeping continuity in your design/branding and eliminating your customers fear for their credit card safety should be priority #1. I would eliminate the HTML branding options, and really let me () or another experienced guru help you create a beautiful Conversion Mastered checkpoint that is strict with style guide and no customization past text... This is essentially a large part of your marketing going to waste as well by not having that page PROUDLY branded (unless there are political or other unknown reasons why something so obvious is not optimized/done professionaly like the rest of the site)...
Paying Affiliates: Can someone with over 250 orders to their product or service please contact me or post here if you feel ok with disclosing this: Due to PDC being on a paypal structure, their refund policy is 56 days and or 8 weeks. Since you pay affiliates on your own here, and you need to pay them in a much shorter time period as I read 30 days or middle of the following month? If that is correct, that leaves a lot of room for mass fraud and refunds once you've paid your affiliates, what do you do in this case? is there an allowance set somewhere to buffer you? I think that even though there is mass payment, it wasn't thought out well, feel a little uneasy for volume sales with this intel. Your thoughts/stories would be greatly appreciated with this one.
On CB and others, they take a 7%-30% commission from either you the aff or from the merchant or sometimes both - I truly think it is A WONDERFUL sacrifice to make - i.e. CB is 7% from either party+$1 per transaction. They look after everything from refunds to allowance to sending you and your affiliates checks every 2 weeks, and they've thought of every crack and protected every weakness re timing/credit cards to sales (you need 5 orders on 5 different cards, at least 3 different cards i.e. one Visa one Mastercard one Amex, paypal/echeck don't count... Anyway, when you make 100+ sales a day and have to payout 100's of affiliates a month - THIS becomes a real hassle (however good problem to have to begin with ).
Multiple Products: This one seems to be in PDC's favor - I can have as many products and sites and payment emails as I want as a VIP/paid member? Really? Up to how many products/sites? CB is 500 under one account - BUT to have different marketplace listings it's $50 per listing/product.
Ok I think that will be all for me for now. If you can decipher the questions in my book above and get back to me it would be greatly appreciated.
join here..!!
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