I think this is going to change payment processing and affiliate promotions forever…
If you’ve been in affiliate marketing and/or product creation for any amount of time, you know that there are a myriad of ways that one can set up his affiliate program.
One of the most appealing options is instantaneous, direct to Paypal affiliate payments, right? This is for obvious reasons. The affiliate likes it because he does not need to wait to get paid out. The vendor likes it because he attracts more affiliates and doesn’t have to deal with tax forms.
But there are a couple of BIG inherant problems with RAP, 7DS, Payspree, and such…
1) If there is a refund request, it often goes to the affiliate, who is not really the appropriate person for handling refunds.
2) The affiliate needs to be trusted to send the refund (in a timely manner, too). Anything else could result in big problems for the seller.
3) Payments usually alternate between vendor and affiliate. This seems all good but when the amounts are big and the commission percentages are not 50 or 100, it can get pretty funky. I’ve gotten shafted by this a couple of times.
4) All of the current scripts use Paypal’s IPN system. This is known to be WIDELY unreliable as far as timing is concerned. I mean, it’s always sent, we just don’t know when sometimes. And that means, a supposed instant download could take hours. This results in headaches for the vendor and buyer, as well as in unnecessary refunds.
So up until RIGHT NOW, this is what we would have to compromise in order to have this payment solution. And vendors know that while having direct to paypal commissions is attractive, it’s not a good solution when you have an army of affiliates. Actually, it could be a disaster, especially if you don’t have a support team behind you (like maybe Sean Donahoe does).
Why do I say “right now”? Well, a buddy of mine has just come out with what I believe is the ULTIMATE SOLUTION. I’m dead serious. This is revolutionary when it comes to payment processing. It’s what we’ve all hoped for, but never really thought would happen - especially when Mike Filsaime promised to add it to PayDotCom after Paypal changed some of it’s IPN technical issues and his programmers couldn’t handle it and that never materialized.
So now I present to you, DigiResults! Click here to find out more.
What’s different?
1) Vendor-affiliate split is made on EVERY transaction. Commission %s can be set at any any amount (100% and under, of course).
2) Affiliates grant permission to DigiResults to handle refunds. Buyers will never know who the affiliate officially is and therefor affiliates will never have to handle refund requests or customer concerns.
3) Paypal’s IPN is a GONER! The system actually actively queries Paypal instead of your server waiting for a notification. This is revolutionary. Maybe Nanacast can figure this out someday!
4) DigiResults has a new marketplace, just like Payspree, where you can find and promote any offer. Very cool.
It’s basically the next best thing to come along in payment processing.
Is it perfect? No, of course not. It’s in its infant stages. I think at this point there may only be 5 products in the marketplace. But I remember when I signed up for Payspree there was only 1, and now there are thousands. And I liked Payspree at the time… but it has the same inherant problems as the other scripts and basically ONLY acts as a marketplace where as DigiResults is offering a payment solution AND a marketplace. It’s only going to get better from here.
THE BEST PART: There are no monthly fees or costs for signing up. However, DigiResults takes a commission for each transaction. At first, I gawked at the amounts and immediately went off to write the creator about it. But then I thought for a moment and headed over to Clickbank to check their fees. Actually, it seems as though DigiResults have taken a page out of Clickbank’s book, but ultimately their fees are lower! Considerably lower (especially if your product is priced $10 and over)! Where as Clickbank charges $1 + 7.5%, DigiResults charges $.50 + 5%. That’s BIG.
So long story short, this is a HUGE moment in Internet Marketing. I haven’t moved my products over there yet (I have some things to consider)… but I wouldn’t be surprised if you see at least one of them over there soon!
Go now to sign up at DigiResults and leave those nasty IPN scripts behind!
Hey David! What’s up! Sorry about your computer. I’ve been hearing about DigiResults for a long time now and I’m glad it’s finally here. Thanks for this post! Take care
I am a newbie when it comes to IM, (i’m actually in the dating niche) but I have a great product I am launching in December. Fortunately I came across DigiResults and so far the customer service has blew me away. They are great!
My product is a physical one, and the team behind DigiResults is actually working to integrate a CD and DVD fulfillment company as we speak (write)! – just because of my need. Now THAT is service!
I still haven’t had the launch yet, but so far I am SO grateful I found DigiResults.
It really shines through that you want your readers the best, David
Hi,
Great note, i appreciate the heads up about digiresults. I will head on over now and see what they got. Anything to not give more money to ebay/paypal.
Michele
This website will not change how much money Paypal gets per transaction. In fact, by using it, you are using Paypal exlusively for that promotion. If you don’t want to “give more money to Paypal” (I happen to think they are providing an excellent service and as such, should receive compensation), then you can open a merchant account with a different bank – still a bank, though. And of course, none of this has anything to do with ebay (another great site, wholeheartedly deserving of compensation).
Well David,
Thanks, but that site is not ready for business. There is no link to the product so I can see what it is all about. One of the listings in the marketplace has zero commission and I am sure they don’t mean that.
So I have bookmarked but I did not sign up and give my paypal account hook up until they are closer to their launch.
Michele
Yep, I hear you on that one. There are links to learn about it, though the link I gave you is just to sign up.
It’s not that the owners of the site don’t mean for there to be a product with 0% commission, it’s that the vendor obviously listed a product with 0%. So in the future, I’m sure they will program in a contigency that does not allow people to list products with 0% commission. Or maybe not… because it still may be worth promoting if you think it’s good… just a thought.
Sounds like a great system. Hopefully it wont get bogged down with the blind offers that have given clickbank such a bad reputation with buyers.
I look forward to trying digiresults out.
- Tony
It’s my prediction that no matter what networks spring up, DR included, affiliates will need to wade through a river of crap to find good offers. I don’t think the payment processing change alone will improve the quality of the offers in the marketplace because, why would it? There needs to be some kind of incentive or negative consequence that will drive the products and offers to be better. For example, the ability to leave permanent comments/testimonials on the Warrior Forum raises the quality of offers in general (IMO), because of the potential consequences for the seller.
Hi David,
Sorry to hear about your computer being stolen. Hell there is some low life people around.
This has just come at the right time as I will be wanting a merchant account very shortly for a new product I am creating. Ok it’s still in its early stages and there is so much more to do.
But now I can add DR to my list of possibilities, so which one to choose is making it harder.
Clickbank
Paypal
PayDoyCom
Nanacast
DigiResults
Will have to put it on my to do list.
Cheers
Craig
Sorry to hear about your computer.
Ok i need this now when will it be ready?
Thanks
Gina
It’s ready. I’m already using it. If you go to the marketplace, you can see my Octopus Blog Method on there. Everything has been tested and it works. And if you wait a week or so, more features are going to be added. But the payment processor alone works… and works well!
Nanacast offers integration with PayPal Standard (IPN), Website Payments Pro (instant response), Pay Flow Pro (instant response), and dozens of merchant account gateways (also instant response)…
Not sure how your article relates to what we offer?
I can see the value of a feature like split commissions in certain niches… but most people do not hang their hats on that feature when seeking a solution to automate their entire business.
Sincerely,
Josh Anderson
Nanacast.com
Josh, nice to see you on here bud. Yes, I am a Nanacast customer… not sure if you know that. Paypal’s IPN is such a problem that you guys go as far as to put a red notice below the payment options box to make sure that vendors know how unreliable it can be before they use it. DR has found a way around the paypal IPN, so it’s no longer a problem area. THAT’S what I want you guys to “figure out.” And in general, this article relates to Nanacast and every other payment processing system because DR is a payment processor.
I’m still looking for the ultimate payment processing solution. I talk with many of the developers of the most popular ones. None of them are perfect and none of them have all the features I want. In the end, I’ve chosen Nanacast as my “main” payment processor, while I still use 3 others, including DR for some projects. If you’d like to talk to me more about adding features I’m looking for, I’d love to do that.
I definitely agree on the IPN comments… just was unsure how it related to Nanacast because we are not a payment processor but integrate with many others including merchant gateways that do create the same concerns that IPN does.
We recently reviewed all options that PayPal offers including their API, which we review on a constant basis because IPN is not perfect, what we have found is that any new change that PayPal issues is typically buggy so just like with say a Windows operating system beta or release candidate we view any “improvements” that PayPal makes with with healthy skepticism.
Believe me if there were better options for PayPal standard we would already have implemented them…
But that is not to say that they may make the improvements that all PayPal merchants want so we always keep a close eye on the stuff they come out with for developers.
In the mean time Merchant Gateway integration and Integration with PayPal Pay Flow Pro and Website Payments pro completely eliminate any of these issues and we offer all those options at nanacast.
Only paypal Website Payments Pro, PayFlow Pro and Express use access to the API… So really what you are discussing does not apply to PayPal standard users. But since we already offer PayPal Website Payments Pro and Pay Flow Pro integration then those users of PayPal who have access to those PayPal account types don’t use IPN with Nanacast.
Those particular solutions work in our system just like a merchant account gateway does… they are instant and do not rely on IPN.
The key is that the solution you are discussing is a third party processor… much like paypal. They charge a premium for their services which is nearly twice the base cost of a PayPal transaction.
PayPal charges 2.99% +.30 base but can go as low as 1.99% While the service you are comparing charges 5%.
So essentially you are paying 2%+ of your net revenue for this third party processor. Clickbank, the most expensive processor charges a base of 7% which goes up to 9.9% for recurring + $1 per transaction and 2checkout, another third party processor charges 5%.
Merchant accounts, which you can use multiple in Nanacast charge varying rates depending on your agreements with them which can range from 1.7% to 2.3% on average + a .30 cent transaction fee. Again you pay double the fees with the processor you are mentioning.
Also certain features such as one click upsells, trials, recurring billing etc. are handled much better with solutions such as merchant gateways etc.
Then you have the challenge of the APIs that various gateways and third party payment providers offer which can limit their ability to integrate well with various affiliate, subscriber, and content management systems such as Nanacast.
I am always interested in new innovations in merchant processing and payment gateways etc. We look to integrate with as many flexible and desirable processors as possible.
There are just so many variables and possible missing features and API functions to consider before you can really proclaim one payment processor a game changer
I was taking a look and considering the concept a little more…
Since we already offer non IPN type integration the remaining desirable functions appear to be:
1. Instant split payment – ie. merchant and affiliate get paid immediately with only one paypal transaction taking place from the customer at point of sale.
2. Refund management being controlled from one location so that even if the payment is split all parties who were paid have funds withdrawn from their accounts and returned to the customer.
I was not aware that was possible.
So…
Quick question:
Would it be MORE desirable to you if you were to be able to:
A. Handle the refund requests and process them your self as the merchant? Ie. not have a third party processor be the only one who decides.
B. Not have to pay a higher transaction fee than the base paypal transaction fee? Ie. Not go through a third party processor and pay only the base paypal fees instead of the additional 2%+ of net fee on top of the paypal fees.
The reason I ask this is because I will have my development team look at the adaptive payment API and see what the requirements would be to provide this type of integration at the merchant level instead of having to go through a third party processor.
Let me know if I am missing anything and feel free to contact my team privately through the support desk at Nanacast.
I can’t make any promises on an ETA but it sounds interesting enough to send to our dev team.
Josh,
Yes, those are 2 of the main desirable functions. The other is a functional and user-friendly marketplace where key statistics for promotion are displayed.
For your questions…
A. I haven’t really thought of that and haven’t had a problem with refunds in that area. Disputes are few and far between and I can always just issue a refund and move on. The problem is with having the affiliate handle the refund. It’s generally not an appropriate thing to ask an affiliate to do. I do this A LOT because I do a lot of promotions with alternating sales directly to Paypal. It’s not a good use of anybody’s time.
B. Yes, if you use DigiResults, you pay per transaction, just like Clickbank. Except CB is $50 per listing as well and charges higher fees. I would love not to pay those fees, but then how would the gateway make money? In Nanacast’s case, it’s a monthly subscription. Yes, I would like them as low as possible, but I also want the gateway to have a viable way to stay in business, especially if I’m relying on them.
I’d love to see this at Nanacast. And I’d love to see it as another option, keeping the existing options. It would also be nice if you could give the affiliate the option as well. Maybe let the vendor choose what he is allowing and then from those options, the affiliate can choose. Just an idea.
Hiya guys,
An interesting discussion going on here. Hope you guys don’t mind I hijack it a little with a bold question..?
I’ll come straight to the point. I am also planning on creating a affiliate network system of sorts, similar to Digiresults and clickbank. Spoken to a developer, who claimed she could do everything except the payment processing part..
I noticed Digiresults’ payment processor actually integrates with Paypal. As such, I suspect it has something to do with paypal developer kit or something?
Please pardon me, I am rather ignorant in this deep coding level.
My next question is this: is it very difficult to code a payment processor AND how much would it roughly cost?
Sorry if my questions sound rather amateur.
Cheers
Jeff