Affiliate software for merchant affiliates

For a successful affiliate program, the right and best suited affiliate software is extremely vital.  An affiliate software takes on a the burden of variety of roles such as affiliate link generation, cookie setting, commission calculation, banner link display, administration reporting, affiliate reporting, payment processing, multi-tier calculations, anti-fraud functions and mailing functions.

There are several affiliate management and tracking software products that easily available. These software are categorized as follows –

·         Third party affiliate management and tracking

·         Locally hosted software

·         Remotely hosted software

Third party affiliate management – This type of affiliate software will undertake creative storage, payment processing, fraud control and majority of the affiliate communication. So, in this way, it alleviates your burden letting you focus on the core business. Though these types of affiliate software are comparatively costlier, they can prove to be highly beneficial for you.

Locally hosted affiliate software – Having your own affiliate software can prove to be highly advantageous in that you can make alteration to the code so that it suits and serves your purposes. A major advantage is that any affiliate link that is generated will be directed directly to you without any intervention of a third party. And you do not have to worry about the monthly charges. Locally hosted affiliate software will especially benefit you when it comes to link popularity on search engines. Ideally a locally hosted affiliate software should boast of the following features –

·         Should provide with several commission options – per click, referral, per lead and per sale, custom commissions

·         Automated protection against fraud

·         Should offer split commission services

·         Should be able to set the required cookie duration

·         The affiliate communication system should come with several email template

·         Should be able to perform extensive reporting in different formats like pie charts and excel export

·         Should come with interfaces that are customizable

·         Should support payment services such as MoneyBookers, PayPal, Check and Bank Wire and various other payment and custom methods

·         Should be able to generate search engine links

·         Should consist of chargeback and refund management service

·         Should support rich media, standard and the rotating banners

·         Should extend support for popup and popunder

·         Should also provide a facility of featuring affiliate interface news that relay announcements to the publishers

·         Should approve of affiliate and sale signup and manual approval

These are some of the basic features that an affiliate program should be equipped with. Other extra features that would do well are –

§  Should have a facility for providing graphical representation of various referrals and commissions

§  Should have payment schedules that are customizable

§  Should also be equipped with several date export features

§  Should have an interface that is user friendly

§  Should have an option of printable reports

§  They should be able to track commission up to 100 levels

§  Should be very easy and convenient to set up

§  Should be compatible with majority of the merchant accounts, membership/content management systems and shopping carts

§  Should have an excellent sales tracking service