What is an Affiliate
The RPGShop.com Affiliate Program is an easy and exciting way for you to work with us to enhance your site
and to sell products from your site. By simply linking to RPGShop.com, you can earn generous referral fees
simply by having visitors click from your site to RPGShop.com to purchase items. RPGShop.com handles all
of the customer service, billing, fulfillment, shipping, and tracking of sales generated from your site.
On the Soap Box:
As you all probably know, an Affiliate program is a method used to get
you (a webmaster) to send customers to a store. In return you
typically get 5-15% commission paid quarterly if over a
minimum amount... The "trick" that most other sites keep from telling
you is that once someone visitors your site to finds out about a place
to buy their stuff, they rarely come back to your site to use the same
link though to the store. Usually, they will just bookmark the store
and return directly. Most of the time people don't make a purchase
during their first visit to an online store. So you are out the
commission. Worse still, if someone becomes a member of this online
store, they usually get their own discount and bypass your earning
anything off the referral.
Another big problem with affiliate programs is that unless you are
actively displaying new and current products for sale on your site
(with an image), most people just plain don't click on the affiliate
link anyway. If you are using very popular associate program (such
as the big online book stores) not only do you get poor referral fees
unless you directly link to specific product, but everyone else in the
world is also lining to them. Therefore you offer the shopper nothing
that they can't get at 100 other sites.
Some of our largest direct RPG competitors have affiliate programs...
but they rarely actually send checks out on time, or at all, or worse
still even bounce them. These companies are having problems mainly
because of their deep discounting business model. The margins just
aren't there and their funding is running out. Add to this, a typical
customer service department that takes days to answer your questions
or that won't even tell you that something you ordered is on backorder
(until you call a month later).
Why we are better:
RPGShop.com makes you a few simple promises:
- Customer service is our number one concern. We'll
answer most mail sent to us within a few hours - never more than
12 hours.
- Your account will have instant access to your order status,
24 hours a day. You'll also be provided with an order and affiliate
history report.
- We will make it very easy to promote sales through your affiliate
links. We know your time is valuable, so why should you be expected to
constantly update your page links just to get some commission?
- While wanting to offer an effective affiliate program for
marketing, we don't want to get into the same deep discount black hole
as our competitors. We would prefer to offer a more "fair" commission
awarding system.
How we are better:
- Affiliates are given a link through to the main
catalog site that tracks where a customer comes from. We'll use a
combination of session variables and cookies to store this information
for
7 days.
If that customer returns/buys any time during that 7 days
since the initial link through, you will be awarded full credit for
their purchases. Even if they become a member or return another day
without using your affiliate link.
- We will provide you with a sophisticated random product/icon display
link as well as a random product/review link to place on your site.
It is as simple as adding an image to your page!
See the right side of our sister site
RPG Host.
These programs will display an ICON of a of a random product on your
site and if the user clicks on it, they'll be taking to more information
about that product. If they buy that or any other item in the next 7 days,
you get credit! The images displayed can be tailored to your site
by setting the category of product you want to display.
- Only qualified webmasters will be allowed to join
the affiliate program. This isn't going to be "hard" to join, just
requires you to have a site we don't mind displaying our products on.
We will thus verify that affiliates HAVE a website and have posted
the link. There will be a separate sign for this, it is not automatic
for every member like some other sites who dilute your referrals.
- Affiliates will earn a 10% commission on all sales tagged to their
link through (up to 7 days after). This commission will only be paid
in the form of CREDIT in the on-line store. This is completely automatic
on every sale that is shipped and 30 days old. Ok, store credit isn't
as good as cash, but you can use your store credit at any time and don't
have to wait to get paid (no minimums). Store credit is used for many
reasons, mainly to keep us from the headaches of send you a check (and
thus we would obviously never bounce one) and because the profit margins
in this industry are so low, we have to do this to award you with a decent
referral fee percentage. At a later date we my consider sending a cash
payment at a reduced percentage.
Interested in being a part of this great deal?
Example Affiliate Info Page:
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My Affiliate History (#1) |
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