You've seen them... Websites like FatWallet or eBates. You sign up, and then click on the affiliate links. If you purchase something, they split the commission they earn with the registered users in the form of a cash-back rebate.

I was checking out one of those websites (Very obscure one) and it appears that it's powered by a third party tracking system.

Something like this was in the “About Us” section of the coupon website.

"We use a third party tracking system to record all buying transactions that were made through us so that we know if a purchase was completed and how much the purchase was for. For every offer that you complete, we get paid a commission from the advertisers. We pass a generous portion of this commission to you, the consumer."

Does anyone know who or what service this might be? How do they handle the rebate fulfillment?

I'm sure the commission is a three way split between the tracking company, website and consumer. Does anyone know what the usual split would be?

Thanks.

It really depends on the particular network they are using and many of the deal sites such as the ones you mentioned above, use more than one network, so it is hard to completely answer your question.

The big three are: Commision Junction, Linkshare, and BeFree. (which recently merged with CJ) Some others are ShareaSale, Performics, Clickbank, Kolimbo, ShareResults, and there are more.

So how does the webmaster know which order is attributed to which consumer?

How do they know how much in the way of a rebate has accumulated per consumer? (They only send the consumers a check once the account reaches a certain level.) This would need to be tracked across all Affiliate networks.

I'm reasonably sure there is a third party service that tracks this type of stuff as well as cuts the checks. Any ideas?

YES, the networks that the deal sites use, do all the tracking for them. Some networks do it all - the tracking, the payment to affiliates, etc. It is all very high tech and tracked quite thoroughly.

That's Great!

I'm most familiar with LinkShare. Can you show me where in the LinkShare affiliate interface, that I can set it up so I split my commission payment with my registered users and then have LinkShare send my users a check?

Thanks.

Well... It looks like aceshopper doesn't actually know how this is done as he claimed. (Oh well)

If anyone knows a third party that does this kind of tracking and rebate fulfillment, please let me know.

Sorry i didn't answer the question to your liking. I'm not an expert in affiliate tracking software. I also might have misunderstood your question. In any case, i don't think i ever claimed to know who specifically does the tracking for the deal sites you mentioned. If you search enough, i am sure you could find the answer you're looking for, try googling "affiliate forums", then ask one of the experts there. When you get an answer, please come back to EF and let us know.

I went to EBATES and read all their FAQ's and About Us section, and it appears to me, they send out the rebate checks quarterly to their members and it is a percentage of the amount the customer has spent, but how exactly they fulfill this "with software", i cannot answer.

p.s. i am a she, not a he. (lol)

Thanks anyway! - It's a complicated question.

Ebates and FatWallet do it all in-house but I'm discovering that there are thousands of these websites out there. Most seem to be done by Mom & Pop webmasters and not large corporations with professional software engineers and graphic designers.

This is what leads me to believe that some sort of automated third party system might be available to help track and fulfill the rebates and payments across multiple affiliate platforms.

If I find something, I'll let you know.

The Who, What, When, Where, Why and How's of the Member ID Field ?

Who is a Signature affiliate? A Signature affiliate is an affiliate with a much broader base than the average affiliate (i.e. - fatwallet or ebates). They have numerous members or sub sites and need their activity to be tracked on an individual basis. All Signature affiliates are not the same, but they do share a common trait - tracking to that next level. For example, many Signature affiliates are philanthropic. They use the member ID Field to determine which organization receives which donation. Other Signature affiliates have loyalty program sites with member logins. These members are typically compensated for their purchases in some way. SIGNATURE affiliates need the member ID Field to accurately compensate these members.

What is the member ID Field? The member ID Field is set up so that Signature affiliates, once enabled, can append a simple code to the Merchant link code found within their personal LinkShare account to track the individual activity of their sub affiliates. When a user clicks through on the link, the contents of the Member ID Field are passed to LinkShare. LinkShare simply collects this data. LinkShare does not alter the contents of the Member ID Field in any way. The data that is sent to LinkShare in the Member ID Field is simply reported back to the appropriate affiliate. The Member ID Field Report provides Signature affiliates with Member ID Field data, merchant name, order ID, date of purchase, time of purchase, total amount of purchase, and sales commissions generated by each sub affiliate. You can access your data in near real time within your LinkShare account. The data can be exported directly in tab delimited format. - (you could then pull this into a database program such as MS Access, or even a spreadsheet such as MS Excel)

Affiliates who wish to use the Member ID Field must register an account with LinkShare. As soon as you have been enabled with the Member ID Field you can start appending the Member ID unique identifier. The simplest method, if you only have a few codes to edit, would be to do so manually. For those employing a login for their site's services, a unique identifier can be passed to the link code via any number of methods (java, cookies, etc.). The population of the Member ID Field within the link code is a responsibility of the affiliate using the Member ID Field.

Upon approval into any merchant affiliate program managed by LinkShare, the affiliate will generate the appropriate linking code per the system. The field can be up to 72 alphanumeric characters long. The linking URL in this code must be appended with "&u1=xxxxxx" and should be inserted directly after "&subid=0". A lowercase "u" must be used or it will not be tracked. For example:

The Member ID Field was designed specifically for affiliates who require more extensive and reporting capabilities. ¿Affiliates with a pool of sub affiliates have utilized the Member ID Field to leverage their client's buying power to generate revenue. Some pass all the revenue from a sale referred by a sub affiliate onto that sub affiliate while others retain a management fee and pass a portion of the revenue onto the sub affiliate. It is a very flexible system that allows you to track sales leads from your clients. All commission checks will be sent to you from the merchant. The affiliate using the Member ID Field is responsible for disbursements of fees to the sub affiliate.

Please contact signature@linkshare.com if you are interested and put u1 in the subject of the email. ? A Signature affiliate support representative will email you a request form that you will be required to fax back to LinkShare in order to become enabled with the Signature technology.� ???? ?

- This is all great and something I would love to do. BTW - the above information is from Linkshare. I'm sure performics, commissionjunction, etc... have similar programs. However, having to update all the links on my site with this new identifier doesn't sound like fun... I'm very good with databases, think I could handle compiling commissions. Probably would want to dispense them through Paypal, I shall check into that. The one I'm interested in is how can I get the cookies to send to linkshare in the first place? This is what I'm looking for now. Anyone have any idea on a good program? I need something that would allow for people to register at my site. My website provider thought maybe something at OSCommerce would work, but I don't know... I'll let you know what I decide anyways...

Thank you so much for finding and posting that! Very useful information. At least I know what it's called now.

If it was only a few big guns with slick, well designed websites like Fat Wallet and eBates doing it, I would likely believe this tactic would be somewhat out of reach for the average affiliate marketer.

For some reason I'm still under the impression (probably false) that a company likely exists that specializes in implementing that sort of thing on websites. The reason I suspect this is because I've seen so many lame websites out there that can do this across multiple affiliate platforms.

If I learn anything new I'll be sure to post it.

Thanks again,
Dave.

No problem, I came across the answer just before I came across your post (in a search engine, dogpile I think) looking for what sort of software do fatwallet and ebates use... I've been a member of linkshare for a longtime and am only recently resuscitating a domain I purchased a long time ago. Its all a mess now, but hopefully soon I'll have it sorted out.

You've got a great blog by the way! Interesting thoughts on affiliate marketing with multiple, very targeted websites (what me and my husband would like to do on the side of my monster mega-shopping site). I'll be sure to post here as well as soon as I find out what membership program is a good one to use to collect cookies that can then be processed for that member id field. I know it'll be PHP, but exact program I'm not sure. I asked Linkshare for their recommendation, maybe they'll provide some information.

Regards,
Laura

We allow you to track each individual click/user from your website and get reports on who ordered what. As a result you can pay a part of your commission to your users. This is done very simply by adding YOUR code to our link -- all this requires is a few lines of code. Let me know if you're interested. I'd be willing to help

Originally Posted by Hawaii SEO

I'm sure the commission is a three way split between the tracking company, website and consumer. Does anyone know what the usual split would be?

Thanks.

Some coupon sites don't offer anything extra to the consumer other than a convenient list of deals and coupons. Oh, well, rss feeds and stuff.
The reason to that is that most retailers don't pay enough to the tracking company and eventually to the site owner to make it worth sharing anything with the consumer.
Also, if you want to pay anything to the consumer you have to maintain the users database, motivate visitors to register, then track their session id or something in order to append it to each affiliate link and pass that id to the tracking company like Linkshare or CJ. Besides that, you may need to answer some tough questions like 'i bought a computer through your link - where is my cashback?'. I personally think that's a lot of hassle.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Still in the process of creating my site - came up with a fluid css design, most pages are valid html.... Need to optimize things still. Haven't implemented the cookie tracking system yet... BUT -

I can think of a reason to give a percentage of your commission back (in addition to be competitive to sites like fatwallet and ebates and give customers a reason to buy from you rather than someone else. There are many things that will disqualify a 'sale': if you can get your site's visitors as interested in the commission going to you as you are interested in being credited with the commission, what a plus! That way, you can literally tell your site's visitors: don't do this, don't do that, be sure that I get the commission....

thank for all of this tips