I'd like to know if anyone had a GOOD affiliate system working for him. I am currently using esellerate, and so far (only 1 month since the game is out though) had only 2 affiliates and of course no sales.

I was contacted by RegNow, they said they have over 8,000 active affiliates, and they assured me they can promote better my game ;) I'm thinking about it.

I've also seen around the net services like www.shareasale.com and I am wondering if the 150$ setup fee they require is really worth it!!!

So anyone has good thing to report, or any suggestions? I think that this could be a useful information for anyone, either the one who just started like me and also the pros :P

I use the RegNow affiliate scheme (both for my own games and now also just starting as a "provider" with www.pcaction.com and www.pcpuzzle.com) and am happy with the results.

Affiliate sales from Regnow alone have amounted to anywhere between 30 and 100 extra sales per month for Wonderland alone. Pcaction/pcpuzzle are currently much lower, but that means there's lots of room for improvement. :)

The nice thing about affiliation schemes in either direction is that they do not require any extra costs, very little work (usually a custom demo with changed order links), and add customers to your base, who then might go on and buy other games from you as well.

One word of caution: Regnow does take quite a chunk away... each $20 sale of Wonderland brings a net profit of just over $9 (this is with a standard 30% affiliation commission). BMT-Micro also has an affiliation scheme which I haven't used for Wonderland, but others seem to have used quite successfully (see Mike at Retro64 for example) - their "cut" might be lower.

Then there are companies such as shockwave, real, bigfish, etc, which some might consider "affiliates", but I would really put into the category of distributors/publishers (since, e.g., they get customer info for each sale rather than you and generally have more control over your product) - not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Hope this helps. In a word (or a few): Thumbs up on affiliation - definitely worth exploring.

Cheers,
Patrick

Affiliate sales from Regnow alone have amounted to anywhere between 30 and 100 extra sales per month for Wonderland alone.
That's good, but what is the average sale per month? :)
Since with my game I barely reach 10 sales/month for now, I guess those number would be smaller...?

You're using regnow to sell also from your other two sites.
Probably regnow is so good because it works without the need of custom build...?

Both esellerate and regnow make it difficult for people like me who only want to select and promote very specific games instead of setting up a whole affiliate portal... it's hard to get good information on the titles with the built-in listings, things show up multiple places or not at all...

But then, perhaps it's just hard to find the sort of games I want *at all*. :) Still, their interfaces really don't help.

Since with my game I barely reach 10 sales/month for now, I guess those number would be smaller...?


Not necessarily, it depends on how heavily you use affiliation and how much you promote on your own. I see some games out there that are pretty much featured on every affiliation portal I see - I'm sure the combined effort of all those marketing efforts might even equal or surpass the "home" game sales.



Both esellerate and regnow make it difficult for people like me who only want to select and promote very specific games instead of setting up a whole affiliate portal... it's hard to get good information on the titles with the built-in listings, things show up multiple places or not at all...


I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. If you get a custom-build from a developer it's quite easy to include individual games and make them fit your site. Some developers have been using that to include more games in their line-up, see e.g. www.screamingduck.com (maker of Fitznik, but with many other games listed on that site) or our own Wonderland included in the line-up at www.mad-data.com.

Cheers,
Patrick

No, I mean finding the games in the first place. Regnow wouldn't even let me see a product listing without signing up... and now when I look at their list of titles, they provide the name, a *brief* description, and the profit cut I'll get, but they don't provide any pictures or greater detail within their own listings. And everything has a link to the creator's website, but at least half of the ones I've clicked on have been either dead links (server not found) or linked to a site where I was completely unable to find the product in question.

I don't want to promote a game based on a vague description. I want to know that what I'm recommending is quality. :) And are those games where the creator's website is now dead even still for sale?

Originally posted by Midnight
Some developers have been using that to include more games in their line-up, see e.g. www.screamingduck.com (maker of Fitznik, but with many other games listed on that site)The maker of Fitznik and Drippy. You can't forget Drippy ;) .

Got my first sale of Drippy today. :) The fist sale is always the best.

I haven't even sent it out to the download sites yet.

First sale, First sale Tra-la-la-lala.

I haven't even sent it out to the download sites yet.

grr... think about poor guys like me that submitted the game to over 300 sites and waited 2700 download before getting a sale!!! :P

RegSoft's SellShareware.com (http://www.sellshareware.com) has done OK as an affiliate sales system for The Journal (http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal/). It's generated only about 10 sales over the last 6 months, though. Hardly great, but I don't mind having set it up, though. Who knows if I would've picked up the sales without them?

Something to consider when recruiting affiliates is making the commission worth their while. That may mean raising the price of your game/product. Affiliate commissions on a $20 game are going to be well below $10. Hardly enough to get anyone excited. But if you have a $30 price tag, or higher, then a 40%-50% affiliate commission might win you some converts.

-David

As for finding games, I don't really use the Regnow list. But since I test out as many indie game demos as I can (as I'm sure most people here do), you can easily find the ones that you think would fit well with your site and contact the authors directly.

The other point that should be made (although it's been made by others implicitly) is that each single affiliate doesn't necessarily bring in many sales - some bring in absolutely none. So it's good to have your game on a number of sites, so that many little sales numbers trickle in to make a nice whole for your affiliate program.

(oh and Lerc - congrats on the sale! Sorry that I didn't mention Drippy - I just know you from Fitznik, which I bought, played, and really enjoyed!)

Cheers,
Patrick

What are your main affiliates? While searching sites to submit my game to, i found quite a lot of these sites that offer shareware games. You know sites like this for example:
http://www.arcadestudio.com
Are they all affiliate based and do they bring in a lot of sales?

I see clearly now why Regnow is better than others: since they're using cookies to get affiliates referrals, you don't even need to host special build versions... and that means virtually NO BANDWIDTH extra costs!

It is a great advantage over other payment systems...

Arcade studio is using Reflexive Arcade as their backend.

Regarding using cookies for an affiliate system: It's severely flawed as so many basic consumer-level software products erase cookies on a regular basis. Not good for the affiliate.

Well then the only safe way is to have custom-builds :rolleyes:
But it's not easy to get them, you have to contact the author, convince him to do one, ecc.

I'll do you one :) I honestly think the key factor to growth is to get affiliate builds out there to as many obscure little sites as possible now. I used to think otherwise but I want to be free of download.com...

Cas :)

eheh ok :)
as soon as I have time (argh) to finish my "gaming portal" site I'll recontact you. I hope to be able to work on it soon (eg next week).