I know I’m a little crazy sometimes and I do change my mind about things, and if you’ve noticed this about me, this next bit should come as no surprise.
Right after getting the unified affiliate scheme all installed, configured and ready to announce to the world…
I decided I didn’t like it.
I’d used a third party script which is quite good (and certainly does what it says on the tin and I know is used by some marketers I’ve purchased from), but me being me, I started to spot holes in it and areas for improvement. And some other bits which I thought were pointless or could be done in a different way as to make more sense.
So… Dum-de-dum-de-dum…
I made a list of improvements, created a first rough outline of what I wanted and asked one of my developers to go do some work on it. Since then it’s gotten a bit big and feature rich and still isn’t finished yet. It’s not a plugin, it’s a standalone script, but we’ll be making sure it will talk to any related plugins such as Affiliate LINK Pal and the Promo Tools plugin.
In fact I’ve now realised that it will eventually become my flagship product and possibly replace SmartDD at some point. There’s no PayPal support in there at the moment – just ClickBank – but PayPal could be added later.
This new product is going to be called Affiliate CLICK Pal (ACP), and while I’ve already taken out the domain, there’s nothing there yet.
The script itself does something which I think is quite clever with CB accounts.
As a CB vendor yourself, you’ll know that CB only allow one landing page per CB vendor account, which I’ve always thought really sucks.
Especially as they now let you have up to 500 products in your vendor account.
It seems they want to make a bit of money selling you new vendor accounts ($50 first one, $30 additional accounts) for every single site you create. And that they expect you to run each site you want multiple products on with that single landing page I mentioned.
So under normal circumstances, an affiliate may want to promote a product on one of your multi-product sites, but all they can do is direct traffic to your main landing page. And if the prospect then buys something on another of your sites, the affiliate gets nothing as it’s done through another CB vendor account.
As you can imagine, this is quite unattractive to affiliates.
What ACP will do is allow you to run ALL your sites through a single CB account saving you a pile of cash on multiple CB vendor accounts, and enabling your affiliates to get links for any of them that will direct their traffic to the correct landing page. If a prospect then later buys one of your other products on another site, they earn commission for that too.
Doing it that way makes it VERY attractive to affiliates.
And what we’re also hoping to do as a side-bonus is, if you already have multiple CB accounts (and we’re able do this), you’ll be able to merge them all into a single affiliate scheme. In theory it should work, but in the real world it may be impractical. We’ll see.
What I’ll need soon is a couple of beta testers as this will be quite a big product and I don’t think I can test it totally in-house.
Are you interested?
You will need to have a ClickBank vendor account in use on a live site and be willing to use ACP on your live site to manage affiliate link generation.
You’ll also need to set up at least one other site to test out the redirection and some other things.
The reward is a free copy of the script, plus some other bonuses. 😉
If you think you have time to test this out and you have at least one sales site and CB vendor account, and you want to give it a whirl to look for bugs and try to break it, just leave a comment below.
-Frank Haywood
Hi Frank,
I’d like to be one of the beta testers please.
Please let me know how to proceed.
Many thanks.
Best regards,
John
Frank
I wonder what you would be like if you slept at night?
There is no question it’s needed I used Adrea’s script for a wile. Work good but hard to install and change, Thats why I bought Smartdd
Regards
Ron
PS I will help you test it
Frank, sounds like a great script. I would like to suggest that you add Paypal support similar to the new WP InstantPay plugin from Incansoft which can handle split Paypal affiliate payments.
HR
Frank,
I have been looking for something like this for quite a while that would combine ClickBank, multiple landing pages, and also PayPal support all in one package. I think the benefits would be many and the opportuntiy amazing.
I would like to be one of the beta testers and would use it on a couple of my sites and many of my products.
Frank,
I’m also excited about your new script. Have several products I’m about to add to clickbank so your timing couldn’t be more perfect. I also agree with Harold that it would be great if you add Paypal support for split payments.
John
Hi Frank,
I too would like to be a beta tester of your new script.
Hello Frank,
I’m not in a position to test your software but I just had to write and commend you on actually meaning “Beta Test” instead of the recent marketing scam phrase beta test that I have been receiving over the last several months where they use that as a headline and then want you to pay them to be a “Beta tester”.
I’m glad to see that there are still some people with integrity in marketing.
My highest regards,
Hi James,
Yeah, I’ve long known that software that’s in beta is more attractive to people for some reason, and I also know that some products remain (falsely) in beta for a very long time. See most Google stuff, and also the great game Minecraft which has been in beta for several months if not a year or so now.
Beta is an excuse to release software that’s riddled with bugs and get away with it. “Yeah, well it’s because it’s still in beta.”
If that’s the case, don’t release it to the public until it’s at RC1. 🙂
All software has bugs – using “beta” as an excuse for them is lame.
However, I’m very surprised that some people are selling business software that you have to pay to be a beta tester for – that does sound a bit iffy to me.
As I mentioned above, Minecraft is a game and has been in beta for a long time, but that hasn’t stopped them selling it “at a reduced price” for 15Euros ($22) during that time.
I just checked and according to their own stats they’re currently selling 10,000 copies a day – that’s a lot of revenue for a “beta”. 😉
-Frank
Thanks for all the replies.
I’ve just had the latest copy for beta testing. It’s missing a lot of features from where I want it to eventually be, and we’ll add them as soon as we can, but it should all work as it is now and you may not notice the missing stuff. I should say though that I haven’t tested myself that any of it works as I expect it to, following the pile of changes we’ve just made. I’ll do that properly later today – installation was a breeze although I spotted a couple of things that need tweaks.
If it looks okay then with any luck I’ll get copies out to you guys at the weekend, so watch out for an email from this domain. 😉
You may find that later versions aren’t compatible with these earlier ones, and you *might* have to do complete re-installs. I don’t want that to happen and I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t (because I’ll have to do it too and I intend to make the scheme live ASAP so I don’t want that headache), but I thought it worth a mention now.
I might post a few screenshots later today too…
-Frank
Hello Frank,
I would be honored to beta test please.
Maureen, my wife, suggested ( forced, threatened with no dinner, ) to write You
about this super idea for affiliates.
Without kidding,
nobody needs to force me to get convinced this is a great idea and incentive
for both seller and affiliate to reward people that do the job.
No confusion for the affiliate if they are in or out of your next product.
This will bring the fun back to affiliate managers too !
Getting affiliates into an affiliate program is hard, keeping them interested to do the signup
for the next one is even harder ( and be honest not logical ) to ask
affiliate members to signup again, special if these are good workers in your team it is
un-believable to ask them, like they are not a part of that team.
Actually it will bring CB more sales too.
Affiliates do not mind if it is from CB or whatever,
they want to be sure they get paid and not ripped from their efforts.
Affiliates want a good looking keywordrich link with stats
to be in control to a squeeze page that converts to payments they can rely on.
Affiliates prefer a landing page that is almost white label to
be adopted into their marketing.
Affiliates like to build a list too, big affiliates are called JV partners.
both parties are used to get different % commission links.
Everybody bringing in an amount of sales (thus food to the table of my family) is
considered a JV partner in my eyes.
Affiliates respond to contests with extra bonus / and or physic rewards on
a leadersboard, and to public recognition of their efforts in social media.
hope my little story is helpful for the development of Your script Sir.
Warm regards and respect,
Themelis Cuiper
Hi Themelis,
I’m sorry, I was just checking through my comment spam and spotted yours in there, so you may have upset someone at some point. 😉 You’re not the first person this has happened to, and you won’t be the last. With any luck now I’ve unspammed you, and the central db has been updated, that should fix it for you hopefully. (I always look for Gravatar photos as spammers never use those, that’s how I spotted your comments.)
Thanks for all your comments, you’re spot on, and yes of course I’ll add you to the list of beta testers.
I was hoping to have a working version this time last week, but when I had a play with it at the weekend, there were a number of small issues with it. I’m hoping they’ve been fixed by today and that I’ll be able to issue a first beta, so watch this space.
(I also asked for a small change to the script to add a PayPal short code tag so that links can be generated within the system to fire off to a PayPal only script I’m having developed. This will mean that affiliates using ACP links to a PayPal only site will get the benefit of cookieing the prospect via CB, and then forward them onto the PayPal affiliate site too. I don’t think there’s any affiliate software out there that will do this. It will all become clearer at a later date.)
-Frank
Hi there Frank, not sure how I missed this post. Frank this sounds like it is going to be a fantastic product and if SmartDD is anything to go by, ACP is going to be a product that will be at the top of my toolbox of IM tools.
I love all your products and have to just say that you and your team of workers are such geniuses!!
Take care
Valda
Hey Frank,
i have just see this post, and maybe i am too late for this, but i want still ask you to be some beta tester for you, for this product,
i think you now me, because i have take a lot of stuff from you 😉
and it will be fine too be one of the tester
best regards
Olaf
Hi Olaf,
I’ve added you and just sent you an email with the details.
I’ve left the first beta in place on the test site for you to download, but I’ve also just received a new version which I haven’t tested myself yet. There’s no upgrade routine for this new version, but I’ve been told one is being worked on and all future releases will have the upgrader as part of the bundle.
-Frank
Frank if your still look for bate testers count me in.
I just (7days ago) completed my cataract surgery. The results are amazing, and I got 2 week to go before the settle in.
Best regards
Ron