Multiple affiliates/paying multiple people for one transaction

[deshgg]

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Hey everyone,

I have a site (written in php) which resells products on behalf of other people. As a result they specify the details and i carry out the payment processing (via php and the processing companies API) and take a cut. The only way i have managed to do this is to assign the product owner as an affiliate and forcibly set them as the current affiliate whenever a specific product that they own is sold (you can only buy from one person at a time). This happens by placing a cookie on the users machine for the current affiliate whenever a product is selected. This enables automatic payouts for the owners of the products at a set percentage with everything else coming to me.

The problem comes when i actually want to have real affiliates! I would obviously like the ability to have other people refer users to my site and then pay them commission on anything that was sold. I can't work out a way to make it work with referrers either as they will be tied in for the life of the referrer/affiliate.

I am stumped and was hoping somone here might be able to suggest a way i could do both, either within the current confines of what i'm doing, or a company that offers something that would make this possible. It is obviously crazy to not allow for affiliates, but if i can't pay the people selling their stuff, i won't have anything to sell in the first place!!

Thanks so much for any comments or thoughts anyone might have,

Dave

[Barry]

Hi and welcome to a4u

If you choose to use an external affiliate network you would have no problems as they would be using their own platform to track sales, leaving you to use your internal one for your own tracking purposes.

Ta

Baz

[deshgg]

Thanks very much for your response Baz, it really is appreciated. How do i use an external affiliate network if i'm running the credit card processing and sales on my site? Hopefully i have misunderstood how affilate networks work, but i thought you had to run all of the card processing through them and not on your own site. Is it actually possible to register with an affiliate network who will link in with your payment systems somehow, or am i misunderstanding what you mean?

Thanks so much for your help,

Dave

[Barry]

Hi

no you keep all your own processing methods.

When you sign-up to an affiliate network all your affiliates will be given a tracking link that goed through the network before going to your site. When a 'customer' clicks this link the affiliate network sets its own cookie on the users computer.

Then on your final payment page after the transaction is complete (the page that will update your inventory or billing system of a completed sale) you place a small piece of tracking code that the affiliate network will give. You then place certain parameters in this code from your own cart ie price, sale type, reference number etc etc. This 'network' code will read the 'network' cookie and assign the sale to the right affiliate (stored in the network cookie) along with the information that you pass too ie the price, sale type, reference number etc etc This information will then appear in your (network) account and your affiliates account for you to check and verify before committing to payment.

I hope this is clear enough to understand

Ta

Baz

[deshgg]

Baz you are an absolute star, i totally misunderstood what affiliate networks could do, that makes it much clearer and makes my life much easier, thanks so much for clearing that up. I think the reason i've always been so confused is i've found it hard to find much information about being a provider on a network and what the related detail/costs are, most of them seem to focus their info on getting new affiliates. Would you know of any good places with lists of good affliliate networks (or any specific ones you could recommend)? I am looking for one general affiliate network (for food related site that sells products and mails them out) and one for an adult site that sells online subscrptions (i'm assuming they will have to be different networks!). I assume, with most of them, you set your affiliate percentage and then the network takes a cut of that?

Thanks so much for your help,

Dave

[deshgg]

And can i also ask an additional question to my last post (sorry!)? At the moment i have messed around with the normal workings of an affiliate system to pay my product providers, so as i said originally i force them as the current affilate any time one of their products is purchased. This is obviously not what the affiliate scheme was created for and as a result i had to use it in a rather peculiar way. Do any affiliate networks or other companies offer a standard way of paying out multiple people for specified products (ie pay me and product provider A whenever product A is sold and pay me and product provider B whenever product B is sold)?

Once again thanks so much for your help,

Dave

[Barry]

It does sound like a wierd way of doing things but if it automates your processes and it works then why try and fix it.

However what I would do is just look at the product inventory at the end of the month and take it away from how many products you had since the last run then pay the particular person for the items sold.

As for network recommendations and help - I am surprised that no-one from any network has left their details in this thread today, they normally try to tout business pretty quick Maybe they will post soon.

Incidentally are you UK based/selling to the UK?

Ta

Baz

[deshgg]

It does work for my current site (which is online subscriptions/downloads worldwide) however it was quite a workaround to get it going. Now i want to do a similar thing for a new site (which is selling actual products to the UK market) and i'm going to end up using a different processor so will have to do the same b*stardisation again, so i'm just wondering if there's a better alternative?

You can, as you say, track it yourself based on sales etc, but that prevents automatic payments and automatic tracking of refunds/chargebacks etc. We used to do it so we tracked it ourself and then paid the people manually, but it was quite a headache.

Strange, still no networks have posted!

Thanks so much for your help,

Dave