iDevAffiliate Review
I am working on a big new project, and one of the key areas is the affiliate management system. As you probably know affiliate marketing is a strong component of most promotional strategies these days, and making sure that you pick the right solution for your needs is vital.
After some an extensive online research comparing the bits and bytes of the available solutions, I decided to go with iDevAffiliate, and here is why:
1. Hosted software: There are hosted solutions out there that will handle your affiliate programs on their website. I used some in the past, and I they work fine if you are looking for a simple affiliate management system. When you want to have full control of the affiliate program, however, using a software that you can host on your own server is the best choice. It is liking hosting your own site versus using a free hosted service.
2. SEO Links: When you use a third party affiliate program, the links of your affiliates will point to that site, and you will not reap any SEO benefits. With iDevAffiliate you have an SEO module (requires the Platinum edition) that will make the links of your affiliates point to your website in a search engine friendly way. This was a big motivator for me.
3. Advanced features. The software is probably the most complete on the market. You will have the options to create several commission levels, customize the commission alerts, used second tier commissions and so on.
4. Integration capabilities. Your affiliate management system will inevitably need to be integrated to some other scripts or payment gateways like Paypal, so choosing one that is easy to be integrated will save you time and money. iDevAffiliate comes with an Integration Cart Wizard which pretty much does the job automatically if you are going to use a popular payment system.
I have been using the software for a couple of weeks, and I am pretty happy with it so far. Truth be told you will need to spend some time learning how to navigate the Admin control panel and how to configure all the different options and settings, but that is normal when you have a software with so many features.
The basic edition costs $99, and it gets the job done. If you need advanced features like Language Packs or Quickbooks integration, you will need the Platinum edition which costs $299.
Do I think it is worth it? Definitely, I will probably be using it for all my projects where I will have affiliate marketing involved.
Over to the readers: Have you tried any affiliate software or hosted solution in the past? How did it work out?
Daniel Scocco on December 2, 2008
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Got the Daily Blog Tips Newsletter?
- Tips and tricks to improve your site
- The latest trends and opportunities
- Useful online tools
- It's free!
Related Articles
Bookmark
17 Responses to “iDevAffiliate Review”
Got something to say?
Sponsors
Recent Articles
- Now You Can Use Dynamic Subject Lines for Your Feedburner Emails
- Free Report with 500 Internet Marketing Strategies
- Improve Your Search Rankings with Internal SEO
- Poll: Do You Auto-Follow Everyone Back on Twitter?
- BecomeABlogger.com Is Open Again (5 Days Only)
- I am Willing to Try Bing, But So Far It Sucks
- Watch 10+1 Free Videos on BecomeABlogger.com
- Google PageRank Updates Becoming More Frequent?
- 6 Steps To An Effective Guest Post
- Careful Bloggers, the FTC Might Start Watching You
You should join their Affiliate Program. I may sign up with their service and I will purchase the link through you. I do have a question since you use it and the Live Chat is unavailable. Can the users check their stats without the downloaded Windows program and what about Macs?
I have purchased and used many different types of programs and online services over the years. I have spent a ton of money through out the years on IT and the setup of these programs. Often the amount of support you receive post-sale has NO direct relationship to the purchase price of the program. You guys have a rock solid, well thought out program! The support and response time is the best I have received.
This is cool.. great affiliate stuff..
@JB, yeah you can check all the stuff online, there is no need to download anything on your PC, just on your server.
I use iDev to promote my bicycle touring store (http://bicycletouringpro.com/blog/affiliate-program/) for many of the reasons you mentioned here - mainly the fact that there was no monthly expense. Those monthly charges really add up over time! One time fees are always great! Now the trick is ust to get a bunch of affiliates to actively promote for you!
hmmm I was undecided with either idev or jrox jam and went with jrox jam - I really like jrox a lot - but i dont think idev can support multiple domains or am I wrong?
Affliate marketing’s a really new concept to me but I think iDevAffiliate’s sounds like a good bet. A little pricey though at 99 bucks.
http://www.newmanutd.com
New Fans, Seasoned Fans, We’re United Fans
I liked using clickbank because of the fact they take care of some of the money management issues and tax issues. However, I have used idevaffiliate as an affiliate and like it much better as an affiliate. Idevaffiliate is the software I would choose to run an affiliate program if I needed more functionality than clickbank provides.
@Ian Fernando, that is correct you would need one license for each website, or you could handle all your product purchases from a single website, even if you would promote them on other sites and channels.
I agree, that idev has many features, but from my experiences it is not best buy for that money. Take a look e.g. on Post Affiliate Pro (they have new version PAP4 now)
With Starter edition for $49 you can make a lot of “affiliate music”.
Specially gadgets in multi window mode I like in PAP4, because I don’t need to use netvibes or igoogle anymore - I have all my gadgets on my PAP4 desktop.
@Ian Fernando, actually you can use multiple sites, here is a quote from an email I got from their support:
“You can connect unlimited websites to one installation of iDevAffiliate through the use of Marketing Groups. Create a marketing group for each website and set each marketing group to have it’s own defined incoming traffic page. Now upload marketing materials to each group. When affiliates login to get banners, links, etc., they will choose which marketing group to get the banner, link, etc. from. Traffic they deliver will be routed according to the incoming traffic page defined for that marketing group.
If this is not how you want to setup your program, you will need a seperate installation of iDevAffiliate for each of your websites and you will need to manage these websites independently from each other. ie. Each installation will have it’s own admin center.”
Thanks for the great article I am seriously considering using idevaffiliate for one of my clients it is very interesting Daniel that you say you can use this for unlimited websites that sounds very attractive to me. Being an agency it would mean having one set-up that all my clients can use.
Does anyone think that this would cause a problem running iDevaffiliate in this way?
Peter (4th December) recommends Post Affiliate Pro over iDev. I have to say that I disagree.
I found the user manual for PAP very hard going. And the support forum, extremely lacking - although to be fair they do try hard. I don’t think English is their native language and I think that leads to some difficulties in translation.
I much prefer iDev.
I may have to eat my words.
iDev, is great where you work with one commission rate only, but it looks like it gets a tad complicated with different commission rates. Which is what I need to start working with now. I think I was able to do that in PAP.
Internet Marketing Agency - you may find that a stumbling block; as I’m not sure that you can easily assign different commission rates to sales from different websites. It looks as though you have to manually adjust the php coding in the shopping carts.
I have a number of different websites and was looking to add them in to the iDev Marketing Groups. I have done that, but I just can’t see how to set different commission rates based on the website or the product. It seems that you have to set the commission rate to the affiliate. That has been fine for me so far, but won’t be in the future.
There may well be a solution, but I just haven’t found it yet.
I guess it depends what you want to do, and no out of the box system can second guess an individual’s quirky requirements. I’m going to have to revisit PAP (which looks improved with the latest release).
Oh well, back to comparing the two products again. Oh, and if anyone has a solution within iDev, please post it because I really don’t want to change systems unless I really have to.
Great thread! I have been looking at several affiliate solutions recently. I am very close to hitting the Buy Now button on iDev6 - The main thing that sells it to me is the training videos for affiliates.. this is a great feature. They actually teach your affiliates how to be most effective on and offline!
Question: Do you guys know of any other affiliate solutions that offer some kind of training for affiliates?
Thanks Seb
Seb,
I’m the guy the created the 39 (soon to be 40) training videos that work seamlessly in the iDev system. Obviously I agree with you that these videos are fantastic.
What hasn’t been announced, but soon will be, is that we’re going to be doing a live training event in Feb or March that is invite only for the folks subscribed to that service. The first one will be a teletraining event and if that’s a success, I’ll probably do a webinar at a later date, and come out with a schedule of training.
This is a surprise bonus… it’s never mentioned presales and no one knows about it… yet.
You asked if there are any other affiliate solutions that offer training for affiliates.
Actually, there is. If you follow the link in my comment you’ll reach a web based service where I have a suite of tools and videos you can plug into almost any affiliate platform.
If any of you have any questions about the video service addon for iDevAffiliate then ask away. I’d be glad to answer.
Customer Service Horrid! Stay AWAY!
I sent ticket after ticket in to these people after they shut down my admin site (all thetime dontinuing to pay) They will not get you the technical support number unless you enter in a ticket. I got so angry today and finly sent in a rude one and that’s the one they finally replied too, but did they help me – NO! they just wanted to lecture me – here is the thread:
Brittni,
I received this in our support desk this morning.
–
How many damn tickets do i have to submit? Its been 6 frigin months!!! Answer me!
–
This type of ticket is really unnecessary and actual unacceptable. That comment was opened with the following email (and bounced).
bltle@xxx.com
So I wrote a reply and changed the email to have a .com extension and it still bounced. So I looked in your hosting account and found (blittle@xxx.com) which is what I’m writing to now (hopefully it won’t bounce).
Now I’ve looked in our support database and find no other tickets from you prior to the one above.
If you’re having a problem or need help with something, please open a new ticket with a valid email address and someone will get back to you as quickly as possible.
Sincerely,
Jim Webster
http://www.idevdirect.com
And Here is my response to them:
Jim,
I am sorry that you feel it is unacceptable, but I have submitted 6 other tickets and have not gotten a response. I have diligently left voicemails and repeatedly paid my invoices. So I find the lack of customer service unacceptable. I also find the fact that the only ticket yall have responded to was this one – so while you find it unacceptable, it was obviously necessary.
You have turned off our admin page – it has been down for at least 6 months, possibly longer, and I can’t seem to get anyone to help us out. Taking our payments and ignoring our pleas for help is fraudulent. I was much more willing to be at your mercy for help when I first started asking for it. You know have a very angry and dissatisfied customer on your hands and that is not due to lack of trying on my part but lack of response on yours.
If you are being truthful about not being able to find anymore tickets then you really need to check your ticketing system and stop blocking people from reaching customer service if your ticketing system is unreliable.
I want the access restored to the site immediately. I would also appreciate if you would refrain from deciding what is acceptable or unacceptable when your company is the one at fault.
PS. Once you find the other tickets I have submitted you will see just how willing I was to follow your rules in the beginning. As a person in Customer Service myself it takes a lot of ignoring to get me this angry. That is a true reflection of how poorly your customer service has responded. Even know you still have not provided me with the number to call Support. You are too busy trying to decide if my ticket is acceptable and obviously have no concern whatsoever for helping resolve my problem.
Also, I am sure you know that “damn” and “friggin” are much more tame words of what I should have used. I am greatly offended that that first communication from your company is you lecturing me, instead of a gushing apology for pushing me to this point. I would appreciate an apology.
One last thing – as you can tell form my email address input (this time) that I was extremely upset after being forced to submit yet another ticket. I am sure they were all correct on the previous ones. But if for some insane reason I managed to enter the wring email address multiple times, you have made it very clear just how easy it was to locate my real one. I am sure there is even a phone number in my account to reach me with. Amazing how your company avoids helping its clients. I am sure there are many review sites that would benefit from an honest post about the customer services of your company. I would think you would be more concerned about the name and reputation of your company than the superiority complex that you have to tell me my email was “really unnecessary and actual unacceptable”
Congratulations – the first person I get to talk to from your company has successfully made me even more angry than before, and not a single thing has related to the product.