Setting up a back-up processor
 

How you can employ a secondary payment provider in such a way that you don?t get accused of shaving by your affiliates


When chatting with prospective clients, I often hear the expression ?but my affiliates will kill me? or similar, with webmasters fearful of a backlash from disgruntled affiliates who view the implementation of our solution as leakage.

The websites that power your programme are yours, and it is your responsibility to maximise the revenues of the traffic that flows to them.

Ideally, you should cut your affiliates in on the action. In our case, they will be grateful for the extra cash from countries like Brazil, Russia, India & China, where regular credit card billing is counterproductive, and will delight in seeing passwords sold in real-time from all over the world.

If you do not use an affiliate management tool like NATS or MPA3, your secondary processor should be able to provide you with a script via their API.

Alternatively, you can simply add more tours:

1. Your main tour ? this is the one you send traffic to and all primary and secondary processors are included. You can also have a links/friends page for trading traffic. Leaks and shaving don?t count since affiliates are not sending traffic to this tour.
2. Tour two ? affiliate tour with processor A, minus any other processing options
3. Tour three ? affiliate tour with processor B, again without alternatives

This way, your affiliates cannot complain of shaving. And whilst you are losing out on the opportunity to secondary process your affiliate traffic, at least half the traffic should be your own for which you will now have all processing options.

It seems that many smaller independent webmasters do not even consider the possibility of employing multiple tours.

Not processing SWITCH or DELTA cards in the UK? Then you are a fool, since practically all UK adults have one. Not accepting German bank transfers? This is the preferred method of payment in Europe?s largest market. Not accepting Premium SMS for trials? Do you know anyone who does NOT have a cellphone?!

Last but not least there is phone billing which is a ?must?, not least since it is so ubiquitous and practically everyone, including those in developing markets, has access to one.

You have worked hard in developing your programme. You owe it to yourself to prevent the worst leakage of all ? money, from surfers who would like to pay you, but are not given the opportunity to do so.

Processors are the collectors of your money. As a webmaster, you should cherry pick the best in their respective field and offer them all. :pimp