I thought I'd give some perspective on what it is like to be an affiliate. There are multiple companies out there such as RegNow, Plimus, ShareIt and BMT Micro that you can use to help sell your games. This forum has multiple times helped developers determine what is the best service for them by which one costs the least and provides the most services.

As a website that exists primarly due to affiliate sales at this point I have a couple thoughts about affiliate programs. I am only one guy running one website, so anything I suggest comes from a single experience that in and of itself it not noteworthy enough to suggest any matter of change for anyone. However, I thought a couple of things might at the least be useful so here it is... :)

Since December of 2003 Game Tunnel has seen nearly 60 affiliate sales. That number is obviously much lower than you would find on very large portals but I think is a fairly respectable number considering the size of the site. (I've never been shy to share exact figures with anyone in regards to finances and visitors)

There are a couple of breakdowns that I think are useful in giving that number. Just over 40 of those sales came through RegNow, just under 20 came through Reflexive Arcade.

Just over 60% of the sales come from the combination of just 4 titles [Crimsonland, Smugglers3, Dungeon Scroll, and Alien Shooter].

I have partnered with most of the companies that have affiliate programs, including all of the programs that I listed above and esellerate, RegSoft, and probably some others that escape me at the moment. However, only RegNow and the affiliate program through Reflexive Arcade have created any revenue. Since Reflexive Arcade isn't a typical selling service, we would then limit this to just RegNow as being a successful service in regards to what I've had success with that an indie developer could sign up for.

I find that interesting for a few reasons. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that a couple of the major players in Indie games, Retro64 and Mountain King both use BMT Micro. However I've not seen a single affiliate sale through BMT Micro, which strikes me as odd due to the quality of their games (mostly due to my first thought down below).

So some of my thoughts on this:
1 - The quality of the game makes the biggest difference on how many copies will sell through affiliate programs. Though I have affiliate links set-up through probably 30% of the games I've reviewed on Game Tunnel, the same games sell time and time again with little variation. Certain games just don't sell.

2 - Not all affiliate programs help sellers convert interested customers into buying customers. I like RegNow b/c it allows me to create a link to the home page of the developer who is selling the game. This has been more helpful in selling the games than either a) having the customer download the game or b) having the customer be sent to an order form (this option is all but useless) Most of the affiliate programs don't make it easy to set-up the link to your webpage (such as esellerate and BMT Micro), so I don't spend the time to use their affiliate links. Since my time is worth something, all things being equal I'm typically more motivated to review a game that might sell a couple of affiliate copies than one where I can't. (Yes I have done some reviews specifically b/c of this and skipped some other games directly due to this fact)

3 - Not all affiliate programs are easy to join. Getting into the affiliate program is only step one. You have to sign up with most developers individually after signing up with the affiliate program. Doing this runs from easy with RegNow to near impossible with Plimus. All of the other programs fall in the middle somewhere.

If a seller has to email you directly to figure out if you have an affiliate program, then you are less likely to have affiliates b/c the question of it being worth the seller's time to contact you and hash things out comes into play. (however for someone wanting to get into a more exclusive feeling affiliate situation this negative actually is a positive)

4 - Lower percentages don't make working with the affiliate program worth my time. This is an instance where you are definately looking ONLY at what I think. The majority of the Advertisements on the side of my website were created by me. Why would I take the time to create an ad for somebody's game? Obviously I would do so if I thought that the turn around investment for my time was worthy of investing it. If I'm going to get 10% of a $20 sale, then I would need to see 10 copies sold to pay me back for the hour I spent making the ad...that is only break even and not very inviting. At 30%, after 4 sales my time was well spent. NOW, rarely does a site make banners like I do, but I think the general concept of people will do more if given more monetary reason to do so rings true. (which incidently should be the reason you do affiliate sales...to increase the number of your sales, if you don't get more sales out of affiliate sales then it doesn't matter what company you go through to sell your games)

5 - ...? I had another point but it totally escapes me at the moment, I'll post it later if I remember...


=======
So the take home here is... I have a single site that does not represent the market. In order to figure out what works best for you there are MANY other factors to take into consideration. For example, if you lose 20% of your sale to ShareIt anyway, and another 30% for an affiliate sale are you better off using ShareIt and selling those extra 20 games or using Plimus, getting no affiliate sales, but only lose 10% on the games that you do sell.

Again there are a lot of factors to look into this, but I thought I'd bring in my personal experience even though the sales through my site could be considered fairly low. (And then there are of course the many games that are advertised where I have no idea how many games have been sold due to advertising)

Anyway hope it was at least an intersting look from a different angle than most of you have on your own. What I look for is probably completely different than what you look for. For me, I look for something that is A) easy to sign up with B) easy to create links C) creates links to developer webpages (though there are some lost sales there it is probably the best way to go)

Enjoy :)

Want to try sell Christmas Tree and INVASION and check if your review was correct cyrus_zuo? :D :D :D

Well i have the same experience as you do.

About plimus , for their defense i'd like to mention that their cookies are set globally, basically if customer downloads game A from game tunnel and buys game B from developper you still get credited, which is not the case with most of the other vendors exept regnow ( correct me if i'm wrong, i'm no expert in the domain... )
Esellerate is probably the worse since there is no cookies :( ( a reason why i left them, my affiliates got really frustrated seeing no sales )
I also stopped using regnow, too expensive and very poor service ( almost *all* of my customers via regnow complain that they can't download the full version because the link is down... i've heard similar and even worse stories from other developpers )

I know that plimus are working on the affiliate panel to make it more accessible ( they are a young company ). I can only say good things about them so far ( they even added some customisation i asked, and in a timely manner ).

I also think there is a compatibility audience issue, most of my affiliate sales come from games that nobody sells. you have to find games that fit your audience, not games that you think are good...

pat.

cyrus_zuo,

Based on what I have been reading the magic ratio for downloads to purchases is around 1%? Reflexive Arcade provides staticis to their affiliates on the following:

- complete downloads
- attempted downloads
- purchases (games sold)

If memory seves you have 20 Reflexive Arcade sales; are they hitting the magic conversion number of 1%?

Also, I am a Reflexive Arcade affiliate and I notice a large difference between the attempted downloads and the completed downloads? People seem to be 3 times more likley to start to download?

Regards

Is there a summary of the affiliate process? I kinda get a drift of what it means, but the mechanics of how it works escapes me.

henning

I didn't even know GameTunnel sells games? Where are those buy links? heh

Good question really.

And where are the games by the way? Our games I mean... :)

Originally posted by z3lda
I didn't even know GameTunnel sells games? Where are those buy links? heh

Game Tunnel doesn't sell games; the banner ads link to the affiliate sites who sell the games. For example, Freelance Games is a Reflexive Arcade affiliate; which mean that if someone purchase a game using a banner add from Freelance Games there is a small commision paid.

Yep, we use the ads which I make mostly.

We also will do links inside the individual reviews...but only if the review wasn't paid for (and of course only if we can create an affiliate link...and yes it is more likely to get a review if we can all other things being equal (as mentioned above)). We actually link back to the developer site (if possible) with a regnow or other affiliate link that leads to us getting the sale if the person then buys the game (as long as they buy it on the same computer, which is probably less often than you think).

On Reflexive statistics are you ready for this?
5,445 Completed Downloads
9,288 Requested Downloads
20 purchases....
Which comes in at under .4% conversion...we could go into individual games (such as Think Tanks have 384 downloads and narry a sale) but we'll leave the numbers to ponder as is.

Again I tend to be liberal in giving out any information requested. These numbers of course are very poor in buying percentage, especially since Reflexive arcade does a better job of tracking customer purchases than any system I know of (I just don't like the individual pages for each of the games that they use)

cyrus_zuo,

Looks like you also have a big disconnect between the number of attempted downloads and the number of downloads completed?

Very Stange!

Looks like you also have a big disconnect between the number of attempted downloads and the number of downloads completed?

We tend to see this ratio across the board. All games and all affiliates have only about half of their attempted downloads completed. Usually the download is canceled before even 1% of the file is downloaded. I think people just click the wrong link accidentally or give up when the see the file size or decide the want to “save” rather than “open” the link so they cancel it and try again. Or it could also be cause by download managers such as GetRight doing some funny stuff like trying to start a second simulations download of the same file to download the second half of the file at the same time as the first half. Our server does not allow this.

I would love to know if other services experience a similar ratio. Most don’t seem to track such things.

Cyrus_zuo, what do you mean when you say “Since Reflexive Arcade isn't a typical selling service”? Could you be more specifc?

Since you brought it up (sorta), I would like to mention how Reflexive Arcade compares on some of the points you mentioned.

Cookies
Reflexive Arcade tracks which affiliate referred the user to download the trial version by recording the affiliate ID in the EXE that gets downloaded. This is more reliable than cookies and work even for affiliates who distribute game demos on CD-ROM. And as others have pointed out, we give affiliates and developers access to real time reports showing sales and downloads.

Individual Sign up
There is no need for affiliates to sign up with each developer. If you are an affiliate of Reflexive Arcade you get the whole catalog of games. And if you are a developer putting your game in Reflexive Arcade you get all the affiliates working for you.

Revenue sharing %
We give affiliates and developers what I consider to be very competitive percentages with our default agreement and everything is negotiable.

Conversion %
Some people have observed that some games convert downloads to sales at better rates than others. Also, some selling services tend to convert better than others. I wanted to point out that I see very different conversion rates for different affiliates with the same game with the same selling service (Reflexive Arcade). In other words, Crimsonland sold through Reflexive Arcade converts at a rate of 0.4% for affiliates. But other affiliates get closer to 2.0% for the same game in their channel. Some of it has to do with the type of games people on that affiliates site are looking for. For example, Game Tunnel might attract a “casual” crowed and “hard core” game won’t sell as well to that audience (or visa versa). But some affiliates seem to have trouble converting any game at a good rate. They drive tones of downloads of every game we offer and get hardly any sales compared to average affiliates. I believe it is because some affiliates attract traffic of people looking for FREE games. They use the word FREE all over the place including in the domain name. They get tones of people to download the free trials. But people who thought they were downloading something free are less likely to pay for the game in the end. Its all about attracting customers who will buy rather than just attracting as many downloads as possible. Buying the keywords “free game” in a search engine generates a lot of downloads but not many sales.

Please don’t misunderstand. I am not saying your web site does this. I am just pointing out that I see a great fluctuation in the conversion percentage across different affiliates selling the same games.

James,

It would be nice if we could link to the developers sites. Also, is Alien Shooter on Reflexive Arcade?

Oops! :)

I thought that we'll receive at least some additional exposure at the site as affiliates. But looks like we should wait the sales ONLY from peoples who build their opinion about our game based upon ABSOLUTELY SUBJECTIVE AND INCORRECT REVIEW...

Well, we'll check the month or so and later consider what to do with all this stuff :)

Originally posted by Sean Doherty
It would be nice if we could link to the developers sites.

Good point. It would be nice to link to the developer’s site. Instead, Reflexive Arcade affiliates have to link that the game’s page within Reflexive Arcade or make their own page(s) about the game. Linkers to the developers site is a problem for us because we don’t use cookies, and even if we did, developers typically have a different version available for download on their site. Not just one with a different channel ID but a whole different purchasing system such as RegNow.

We find that most affiliates do not want links to the developer’s site. If the game itself has links back to the developer, the affiliates get upset. This is because affiliates don’t want the developer to “steal customers” away from the affiliate. This is not an issue specific to Reflexive Arcade. In general, no matter what purchasing system or affiliate program is being used, many affiliates do not want customers to have a direct relationship with the developer.

At Jason
I totally agree that Reflexive's system is great. In fact if you read my post it says:

"Reflexive arcade does a better job of tracking customer purchases than any system I know of"

So getting that out of the way I think Reflexive is solid. The reason I don't count it as a typical selling service is that you don't offer the services that RegNow, ShareIT, SWReg, Plimus and all the others do. You are more of a system like REAL arcade, but with an affiliate program. There is nothing wrong with that at all, but developers who sign up with a company to process their orders don't sign up with you, they sign up with a company like RegNow, and then they may also sign up with you as a distribution channel.

As far as an affiliate solution I make less money off of more traffic through the Reflexive arcade links than my RegNow, but it still ranks a solid second and I love the fact that the system tracks well.

I had intended this thread as helpful for developers in choosing their credit card processing partner by providing a different angle than they normally see. I hadn't intended to have it be about what is the best affiliate program for websites that want to set up affiliate partnerships, though certainly there could be ample discussion on the subject. (Probably worth its own thread, but maybe not as much an indie gaming issue that applies to developers)

At WildSnake
Sorry you disagreed with our review. You got a 6 from Game Tunnel and 70% from Bytten. Of course we only did one of those, so your frustrations are probably poured out on Bytten as well. It's interesting that all developers feel their game is perfect, and I'm sure that some of the audience agrees. Just remember that rarely do people agree upon what they like in Movies and that includes critics. Games are much the same way, and there are both poorly rated games and movies that out-sell ones that were rated higher. Blaming our review for your poor sales is not the right place to put the blame in my estimation.

Another couple of thoughts on ReflexiveArcade...

I just checked on Crimsonland and we are at 10 sales and 898 downloads which checks in at 1.1% (very solid).

I agree with not having you link back to the developer, that is just lost money. I also agree with the website audience making a big difference on what sells. I would like to point out, as I have done previously in email, that the Reflexive Arcade seems to be more aimed at the casual gamer, but my audience seems to be a bit less casual as shown by the Crimsonland numbers. It would be good for the "Action" category of Reflexive arcade to only include action games...instead of card games and puzzle games that don't remotely fall into this category. When I have to present readers with this it turns them away having to plod through listings of games that they wouldn't consider to be action games.

Cyrus_zuo, I understood that you liked Reflexive Arcade. I was just wondering what made it different in your mind. You still didn’t really mention anything other that “you don't offer the services that RegNow, ShareIT, SWReg, Plimus”. But what services are you talking about? Do we just do those services differently or not offer them at all?

Since the title of this thread is “Being an Affiliate” I assumed you were talking about services offered to the affiliate. Now that I see you are trying to speak from a developer’s perspective, I can see why you might think Reflexive Arcade is not in the same category as RegNow. For the most part, you are correct. We don’t focus on the part of the business that RegNow does. But we do offer to provide payment processing services without “publishing” a game. Developers can use the Reflexive Arcade payment processing system and DRM without having their game “published” by Reflexive or posted to our web site or distributed by our affiliates. You can use your SDK to enable integrated payment processing in your games and then post your games on your own web site or wherever you want. We will process the payments and send you most of the money. This is what we do for gamerival.com. Their games Gold Miner, Nook and Cranny, HangStan, and Tower Blaster are all sold on their website using the Reflexive Arcade SDK and back end servers but none of those games are available from www.ReflexiveAracde.com or our affiliates. We do not publish their games we simply process payments for them.

I am sorry to nearly hijack this thread. I don’t mean to sound like a sales pitch for Reflexive Arcade. I do think it is useful to discus all the different types of system available and the tradeoffs of each one.

Interesting, I didn't know that, thanks!

(does this mean that my thoughts about the action listings is being "considered" again?...)

[quote]Original post by cyrus_zuo
Just over 60% of the sales come from the combination of just 4 titles [Crimsonland, Smugglers3, Dungeon Scroll, and Alien Shooter]

What is the visibility those games get as opposed to other reviewed games?

Pax Solaris was reviewed and the review got about 600 hits (but no affiliated sales) - do you have any idea how many downloads that would yield?

I don't track all the numbers so I don't know on that one (Pax Solaris) specifically, Reflexive has some pretty good tracking tools that I don't have elsewhere.

The other games you mention I've created ads for, so their visibility is MUCH higher than a typical game that only gets a review. I typically create an ad for a game if after running the review it has been selling copies just based on the review (for example Smugglers sold 8 copies the week after I posted the review). That shows that there is enough interest that the game will likely pay for my time to create an ad to increase the visibility. The bonus to some of those, such as Smugglers3, has been selling copies of games that we weren't advertising. In the case of Smugglers3, we've also sold a few copies of TV Manager as we are specifically linking to the website with cookies not to any one specific game.

cyrus_zuo,

No. I don't disagree with review.

I suppose it unprofessional, incorrect and absolutely subjective.
Addressing the last one you are welcome to compare for example these two reviews from the same person:

http://www.gametunnel.com/html/reviews-75.html
http://www.gametunnel.com/html/reviews-88.html

.. and let me know - are you able to accept Arkanoid clones only?

Thanks,

Original post by cyrus_zuo
The other games you mention I've created ads for, so their visibility is MUCH higher than a typical game that only gets a review. I typically create an ad for a game if after running the review it has been selling copies just based on the review (for example Smugglers sold 8 copies the week after I posted the review). That shows that there is enough interest that the game will likely pay for my time to create an ad to increase the visibility. The bonus to some of those, such as Smugglers3, has been selling copies of games that we weren't advertising. In the case of Smugglers3, we've also sold a few copies of TV Manager as we are specifically linking to the website with cookies not to any one specific game.

That's OK - if you got 8 sales after an article, you have a good enough hint on which games sell and which don't.

I suppose the article must have some influence on how many downloads and sales a game gets, but then again, the game has an influence on the article too :)

>At Diodor

I'd say yes and yes :) I appreciate you being candid I know some developers cannot handle anyone saying anything negative about their games... :)

>At WildSnake

Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't actually review each of the games, and I corrected the fact that your game was reviewed by someone else though it incorrectly showed it as being attributed to my writing. I'm not sure I understand your snide remark about accepting Arkanoid clones entirely, but I do play a lot of Arkanoid games as there is a market for them, and I have probably more exprience playing the different ones available than anyone else I've talked to (many consider this to be a punishment I seem to enjoy :) )

As for the review itself it is subjective...after all it was a review by a person. As for being incorrect, the review on Bytten was scored very similarly. And unprofessional...? I would welcome you creating your own review website to get a better understanding of what is professional.



At this point I think that this thread is not being helpful at all and will suggest that a moderator lock it.

"not being helpful at all " - isn't that too subjective again?

It was really helpful for me. At least to measure how affiliates build their politics and accept the results of this politics. Place Reflexive (nothing personal against the company!!!) eveywhere on site and later wonder - wow it sells pretty great in comparison with another ones! :D

Why to lock the thread? I suppose it will die itself if nobody would care to write here - no?

WildSnake,

Why don't you post your game to my site and see how they does head to head against other games. I will even break all the rules for you and put your game up against Ricochet Lost Worlds?

Sean,

Please pardon me my stupidity but I suppose this absolutely dumb idea to have this kind of competition between different games... Nothing personal Sean OK? - Seriosly!

But to stand against the Ricochet!!! Wow! You make me Wild (as Snake)! :D

Sean, please!!! Book this place for us!!! Please!!! We are finishing our Arkanoid dumb clone in the next two weeks. Let us to compete against the Ricochet!!! Please Sean!!!

It wouldn't be bad even to loose with such a great competitor btw ;)

Sean!!! We want to compete!!!

Originally posted by WildSnake
Sean,

Please pardon me my stupidity but I suppose this absolutely dumb idea to have this kind of competition between different games... Nothing personal Sean OK? - Seriosly!

But to stand against the Ricochet!!! Wow! You make me Wild (as Snake)! :D

Sean, please!!! Book this place for us!!! Please!!! We are finishing our Arkanoid dumb clone in the next two weeks. Let us to compete against the Ricochet!!! Please Sean!!!

It wouldn't be bad even to loose with such a great competitor btw ;)

Sean!!! We want to compete!!!


WildSnake,

Sorry, I thought your game was an Arkanoid game. Also, I apologies if I misunderstood your post; but your a pretty rude guy. Good luck...