PayDotCom - Good or Bad?

[Blackman]

Recently because of Clickbank "problems", which actually happen almost always, I've been thinking to quit using them, and find something else, like PayDotCom.

It looks very similar to Clickbank in terms of the marketplace and the products there, plus they pay the commissions straight to your Paypal account, which is really nice.

So I just wanted to know your opinions about PDC and anything, which you don't like about it...

Thanks

[xentech]

I belong to many aff networks but I earn the most with ShareASale by far. Their reporting sucks but they have very good merchants.

PayDotCom are pretty good.

[kingwallace]

lol @ the aff link

[Blackman]

Guys keep on topic. I want to know as much as possible about PDC...

[seregap]

they are good indeed. good tracking system, friendly support.
the only problem with them is there product selection. for me at least.
you won't be able to pick a brand new product with zero competition, do a quick keyword research and start making sales the next day before everyone else joins in (like you do with clickbank).
most of there products are in competitive niches.
so they are a good choice if you have a good established website with steady traffic in some competitive niche.

[Blackman]

they are good indeed. good tracking system, friendly support.
the only problem with them is there product selection. for me at least.
you won't be able to pick a brand new product with zero competition, do a quick keyword research and start making sales the next day before everyone else joins in (like you do with clickbank).
most of there products are in competitive niches.
so they are a good choice if you have a good established website with steady traffic in some competitive niche.

What about the payouts, refunds? How does that stuff work?

[seregap]

depends on the vendor. i think they are given up to one month to pay there affiliates.
mine paid me with a 20 day delay to see if any refunds come in.
so, for example, for the august sales i was paid on the 20th of september.
however, im not sure what happens if there are any refunds after the payout, i never had any.

[Blackman]

Looks like in terms of payments Clickbank is much better...

[NCMedia]

Here is my assessment from a while back that I posted on their forum. Since posting they actually made some changes listed...

________________________________________________
Hi gang, Just spent 3 hours analyzing PDC and want to share details/ask questions, this will be a long read but a good read.

I'm going to compare this grid to ClickBank as that is the closest one to PDC in my opinion re the overall picture of the networks...

Affiliate Links:
PDC: https://paydotcom.com/r/41165/your_p...rname/2949539/
CB: would be FAQ Hoplink - ClickBank
The pid works pretty much the same too
Questions: What if I don't put an account number and just leave PDC: https://paydotcom.com/r/41165/your_pdc_username/

Does This Happen Here>>oes someone own an account name 'your_pdc_username' and maybe an account names 'pdcusername' or 'yournamehere'? MANY hops/links and affiliates forget to change them and or don't understand yet, and I KNOW they make sales on them. It happens with every network. As a vendor this upsets me to know that most networks keep that money or allow internal teams/leaks get those usernames...

With CB and others you simply make up whatever nick you want, I like this method because you can have a numeric value like 23531 which doesn't look like an ugly affiliate link, or you can be sneaky and make your nickname 'secure_page' or 'front_page' so the link looks more legit.

Also side note: Can I hide the aff link as a merchant? I know I can redirect my home page so it won't show the ?=.... however is there other methods for affiliates? I don't mean cloaking your aff link, I mean so I can promote xx.com and only see xx.com not xx.com?=affid? I don't want to cookie stuff the surfer either, nor would i employ my aff's to do that so is there a legal and easy PDC way to hide it?


Purchase links:Also pretty simple, plugging the PDC paypal buttons
CB: A little different, the whole checkout process happens via ClickBank branded pages.
Questions: So if I'm with PDC, I obviously cannot connect another aff program to this as it require the PDC payment gateway. I dislike this for both PDC and CB. Why? Because now if I want to offer my site via another network to reach other affiliate pools, I have to duplicate the site. Some networks do this to make your site exclusive to them, others simply give you code to plug in on thank you page and you can use your own payment gateway(s), thus enabling using the same site with multiple networks. A few of my clients are multi-networked, and now that I'm here (luckily I build all my own sites) I will be duplicating and offering both aff pools the same products to two seperate versions of the site just to enable the separate payment and tracking gateways... ugh.

Management & Tools: I gotta say, even though its free, the management tools here are quite vast (re adding your promo tools and marketing assets for aff's to use, love the {command} shortcuts.

Affiliates: Haven't done much research yet to know what the affiliate base is like here, can anyone (merchants) enlighten me? CB Has TONS of affiliates and TONS coming on board daily, however don't let this fool you. I'd rather have 10 super affiliates than 100 CB newbies to my products and my clients products.

Now, for recruitment, I don't mind utilizing the page that PDC puts in the marketplace, but I'd much rather the option to point them to my own affiliate recruitment site - i.e. I set this up for my program with PDC Niche Choppers | Make Money With Niche Products | Affiliate Marketing & Webmaster Forums - Now all is fine however I cannot seem to get a 'PDC affiliates login here' button working, I can only send them to my PDC made page and instruct them to scroll to the bottom (very looong scroll too) and login there. That should be optimized, put that button above the fold as well as where it sits, the more merchants add assets, the longer that scroll is. So: How can I let my affiliates login to PDC directly from my own page in the above link?

Buying with your own link: PDC Seems to frown on it
CB: Allows you to do it a few times, the TOS is grey, they say you cannot continually abuse it, but a few times is ok. In fact this is a tactic many merchants use to both 'up' their listings quality score, get their affiliates to do the same and reimburse them on the side, and it is somewhat of a win/win for both vendors and aff's. Personally, I wouldn't mind one bit if 1000 affiliates wanted to buy my product with their own links, i'm still making money, affiliates are happy customers, and PDC is making more money. Simply regulate it and throw a script together that checks for transaction intervals, or perhaps allow 'up to 5' purchases with your own ID - smart marketing and business if you ask me. Seems the programmer here knows what h/she is doing so this should be easy technically speaking...

Landing Pages: Since I'm not how the rules are set for landing pages, Scenarios are: 1. I build 5 landing pages, I .zip them and offer my affiliates to download and unzip, change aff id and SEO tactics, h/she uploads to their server and sends the traffic from the lander to my main site with aff id link. This is the standard however there is also this method: I upload the landers to MY server with my affiliates links embedded, the landers have BUY NOW buttons, the affiliate sends traffic to the lander, and customer can buy without having to go to the main site, purchase right from the lander. Is the latter method possible here? And if so can I also give my affiliates that standalone lander for them to use on their own?

Conversion tracking: Since I have no data here yet, and nothing to quantify: Can anyone tell me the perks and weaknesses of the PDC tracking vs. others? No tracking is perfect but I'm sure some of you experienced folks can enlighten me on what some of the odd scenarios are or fake conversions or or or...

Affiliate Pools: I'm on 20 or so forums and see PDC here and there, however can you all please tell me where the popular hangouts are for you guys? Where the big players make their announcements? In fact if there are any big players that see value in my slate so far, please reach out I'm always up to learn more and connect with others when entering a new network. Thank you in advance for this one.

***Conversions ON PDC payment pages: I'm sorry if this hurts, but your payment pages MUST MUST MUST be upgraded. Merchants spend so much time and effort on mastering their pages and websites to be beautiful through and through, to then take the customer to a very outdated and poorly made payment page - i almost got suspicious myself looking at it for the first time. If the developer or designer is here - PLEASE GET IN TOUCH AND LET ME HELP! I thinks THIS is the most important part of the customer journey and your whole operation could drastically improve conversion ratios if you make your payment pages look more professional and secure/safe/easy/branded to the end user. Please let me know if you would consider my help with this. Compared to the other networks not just CB, I think this one is the poorest quality so far (hey I'm still here Smile and wil use the system, however please consider this request I'm sure other experienced merchants will agree). In fact, do you have an advisory board with some of your top earners/members yet? Would love to discuss...

To Add to the above: Customizing your checkout page is of no use - you're on an SSL (https) and if you plug and HTML i.e. Pictures on anything other than text, you get a nasty error/popup message "This page has both secure and non secure items..." User must pick yes or no, I can guarantee that at least half of our shoppers don't have a clue what that means, they just know something is unsafe - and they are on a payment page so this is bad, so they click 'no', when they click no all the images on the page do not show up, instead missing image icons show up... so let's review, customer comes from your beautiful site, to an ugly unsecure looking checkpoint, it's customized/branded to some degree but errors popup and images are missing - the average user is GONE and won't return... Can you not have that as an i-frame or include file that won't affect your SSL? Or perhaps just build in a little tool with a few wysiwyg features for users to upload their own pics/text and you host it? I think allowing your merchants to customize the checkout process is a huge mistake - keeping continuity in your design/branding and eliminating your customers fear for their credit card safety should be priority #1. I would eliminate the HTML branding options, and really let me (Razz) or another experienced guru help you create a beautiful Conversion Mastered checkpoint that is strict with style guide and no customization past text... This is essentially a large part of your marketing going to waste as well by not having that page PROUDLY branded (unless there are political or other unknown reasons why something so obvious is not optimized/done professionaly like the rest of the site)...

Paying Affiliates: Can someone with over 250 orders to their product or service please contact me or post here if you feel ok with disclosing this: Due to PDC being on a paypal structure, their refund policy is 56 days and or 8 weeks. Since you pay affiliates on your own here, and you need to pay them in a much shorter time period as I read 30 days or middle of the following month? If that is correct, that leaves a lot of room for mass fraud and refunds once you've paid your affiliates, what do you do in this case? is there an allowance set somewhere to buffer you? I think that even though there is mass payment, it wasn't thought out well, feel a little uneasy for volume sales with this intel. Your thoughts/stories would be greatly appreciated with this one.

On CB and others, they take a 7%-30% commission from either you the aff or from the merchant or sometimes both - I truly think it is A WONDERFUL sacrifice to make - i.e. CB is 7% from either party+$1 per transaction. They look after everything from refunds to allowance to sending you and your affiliates checks every 2 weeks, and they've thought of every crack and protected every weakness re timing/credit cards to sales (you need 5 orders on 5 different cards, at least 3 different cards i.e. one Visa one Mastercard one Amex, paypal/echeck don't count... Anyway, when you make 100+ sales a day and have to payout 100's of affiliates a month - THIS becomes a real hassle (however good problem to have to begin with Wink).

Multiple Products: This one seems to be in PDC's favor - I can have as many products and sites and payment emails as I want as a VIP/paid member? Really? Up to how many products/sites? CB is 500 under one account - BUT to have different marketplace listings it's $50 per listing/product.

Ok I think that will be all for me for now. If you can decipher the questions in my book above and get back to me it would be greatly appreciated.
_________________
To Your Success This Year!
NicheChoppers.com - 75% - premium affiliate products made to sell.
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Response:

PostPosted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:21 am
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Hello Norb,

I will try to touch on most of what you said...

Questions: What if I don't put an account number and just leave PDC: https://paydotcom.com/r/41165/your_pdc_username/

yes, that will work.

As a vendor this upsets me to know that most networks keep that money or allow internal teams/leaks get those usernames...

It can't happen like that with PDC...If I understand your question correctly.

I mean so I can promote xx.com and only see xx.com not xx.com?=affid?

This is a configuration on your own server. I don't know how the different settings work, but I know that some vendors' servers strip off the parts after .com


I upload the landers to MY server with my affiliates links embedded, the landers have BUY NOW buttons, the affiliate sends traffic to the lander, and customer can buy without having to go to the main site, purchase right from the lander. Is the latter method possible here? And if so can I also give my affiliates that standalone lander for them to use on their own?

Yes, that will both work as long as you have your PDC buy button on it and the visitor arrives to the page via an affiliate URL.


but your payment pages MUST MUST MUST be upgraded.

You can modify that payment page with your own HTML. You will need a secure server (pretty cheap now days) to store the pics (just like you would have to do with a custom header image for PP checkout.) I think this option is better for vendors than to just have a "canned" semi-custom check out page as with something like 1shoppingcart. Sure, you don't need a secure server for 1shoppingcart to just have your image there, but you are very limited in how it is presented.

Refunds:

You must pay your vendors 30 days after the close of the month the sale was made. Honestly, and I have to brag here I guess, I have almost no experience with refunds. I would tell you what my refund rate is but you wouldn't believe me probably.

Multiple products: Yes, for the 29 dollars (one time fee) you can list unlimited products.

Ok, I think I covered it; if you have more questions, just let me know.

Best Regards,
_________________
Steve Weber

[Blackman]

Wow, huge post and quite useful stuff...

I have to say here that I'm 100% happy with Clickbank, but the only reason I want to find something else is because of those "strange" sales fluctuations...

It just doesn't fit in my brain, that those are normal sales ups and downs, and Clickbank has nothing to do with it....Plus it happens regularly...

[Smitty]

I'm kind of scurd to right now with clickbank. I am about to launch a big product along with several small projects and I don't think I'm going to use CB. Since the CB fluctuations I have spent most of my time list building; its a long term investment so when things come back together I'll sell to them. Why do something that is obviously not working?

[Blackman]

I'm kind of scurd to right now with clickbank. I am about to launch a big product along with several small projects and I don't think I'm going to use CB. Since the CB fluctuations I have spent most of my time list building; its a long term investment so when things come back together I'll sell to them. Why do something that is obviously not working?

Why are you saying "obviously"?

There are no 100% facts that Clickbank is having problems or something....

[mikey1090]

The evidence is there though Steve, check the graph on cb analytics. It's dropped tonnes!

[Blackman]

The evidence is there though Steve, check the graph on cb analytics. It's dropped tonnes!

Well, at the moment graph is going up, while everyone is still having problems....Especially the last few weeks.