Ok, well this post is now 3 years old and we're 1/3 way through 2010 so I don't understand how this can be a top 10 rock? There's no mention of it for the next release so we're going to get to June/July 2010 and still no affiliate program.

What gives?

It is indeed.

Shame.

Well I hope this is one of your top 10 rocks for 2010.

If we get more members you get more money from us, simple as.

Sorry, but our own referral program is a different thing altogether. There is no way to map/port it.

Ok, so you guys have managed to get an affiliate scheme up and running for yourselves:

http://www.wildapricot.com/referrals-commissions-terms.aspx

Is your membership management program not the same as the one you provide us? (Wild APricot)

ie, can it not be ported over so we can all use it?

This has been listed as one of our Top 50 projects - the 50 issues we plan to complete in 2010.

We will let you know as we get closer and closer to our solution and release date, and as always appreciate your feedback and suggestions.

In my case, at least at the moment, I just need to track the referral source of online membership payments made and the amount of the transaction. I have a short application that gets turned into me for any manual payments. 90% of my memberships are online through Paypal processing.

I also have a one-time annual non-refundable membership fee, refunds are not a concern. As you say, this can be address in future updates.

I would have to look closer at Google e-commerce code, but if I understand it correctly, you can configure the script to call whichever details of the transaction you wish. The page I was looking at. http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55528

It would be great if there was a built in affiliate feature that allowed tracking, but if we can access a page where we can insert javascript I think it would be a good first step. This for me is a high priority, I need to track before I can setup other marketing groups to push for memberships.

Rob,

Correct, it is not possible now to insert any code into this page - because this is really just an on-the-fly generated message, not a real page.

This does look like the best way first step for us: implement a way to call a specified page (or run a custom javascript) upon the succcessful transaction. This should work for Google Analytics as well as for many external affiliate systems.

I guess we will have to do this for membership applications, event registrations and donations.

One question we still have to figure out is what to do for manual transactions. What comes to mind is to call the same piece of code/web page when payment is manually confirmed. Anything else? Should this be automatic or optional?

And if a transaction is canceled/changed/refunded later on, I suspect we ideally need to provide another "hook" at this step - but I think we will have to skip this in the initial implementation.

Finally there is a question of parameters - are there any special parameters that might have to be passed in this call, e.g. contact name, date, amount, transaction type?

I just called support requesting help on this same topic. I have individuals and companies marketing my website to generate memberships and I need to track that to pay commissions.

Google Analytics tracks the sources of visitors to my website along with a huge gambit of other information. I was attempting to find a way to implement Google e-commerce and conversion codes to the 'Thank you' page (was told it is a system page and code cannot be inserted) to provide the information I need. Not sure if it is feasible to find a way to integrate with the features from Google, but is possible to insert code at some point after a completed transaction to track sales and the amount of the sale?

Corey, this is a very different matter so I will split your post into a new thread. And I would like to hear your thoughts on how this would work regarding payments (because members can successfully pay online, pay online and fail, pay manually)

Actually, the one thing I would like to beg for is that a NEW SIGNUP go to a special page that is different than a person that is already a member and just signs in. I'd like to be able to put tracking on that page so that I would know when a new user signs up and track it back to how he got to the site originally. Google Analytics does this. We just need a unique page for the NEW SIGNUP, not just a login. Corey

Kim,

So far our thinking about the affiliate functionality has been to have WA integrate with a third-party affiliate program (vs. trying to build one within WA itself). The issue is that we do not have much experience with affiliate programs and what we have researched seems all over the map in terms of what they need/how to integrate with them.

So we have not figured out yet a way to implement this without huge volume of development work to make it customizable for any program.

Another complication is dealing with manual pending and aborted online payments

In other words, we are having trouble so far translating 'we need affiliate integration' with what specifically we need to add/change in Wild Apricot for that.

I would love to hear more details and ideas from you and everybody - what exactly would you propose to have in the WA system to address your needs?

Well I started this question/wish list about affliates and I am just reading all the feedback. It does on one level dissapoint me that it has been 2 years and still no solution or at least recommendation but then again WA has done many other request on my wish list over those two years lets not forget.

Affiliate yes is still big on our list, and just about the last thing on our list we wished for not done but in reality I dont feel its a make or break thing.

We do it manually, ask our members etc. Its the old fashion way but still do-able.

I am still very happy with WA and their support. Friendly and hardworking!

Its hard to please everyone, and even I cant sometimes....can you?

If you need a affiliate program please do comment, please to let WA know, once a priority again perhaps we will see it but in the mean time....relax :-)

Wow, I'm really glad I googled this... I was all set to sign up, but this is a must have on my list. I looked at the version history http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Release+history and the Sept/Oct release doesn't include it either. Wow, 2 years it's been on the plate? Disappointed in support's lack of vision to implement this (and I'm not even a customer). Sigh, the search continues, I now know to ask this question earlier in the process. I've wasted hours looking at WA.

I had assumed they had one - they obviously know the value of it as they have an affiliate program http://www.wildapricot.com/partner-program-referrals-affiliates themselves.

Hi England

You say...

"This new package is a full blown member management system just like WA..."

I looked at it. In my opinion...Not by any stretch of the imagination.

The sellers do not claim that it is a member management system, they talk in terms of it being an Ecommerce Manager. Yes, the software does allow members to sign up - but it is a minor feature with little functionality.

I am sorry to say that I have had to move my website to another platform purely because there is No affiliate integration available for me to use.

I was one of the first to ask for this over 1 year ago, but will now close my account which is a shame because I really think this is wonderful software to work with in sooo many ways.!

But I need affiliates to survive.

I will check back in the future to see if something has been accomplished in this area.

http://www.rideontheweb.com

Sorry but I do not expect us to make any progress on this at least for a few months - too much other stuff we need to address.

It's appalling that you're two years down the line and you still haven't integrated any type of affiliate program.

It wouldn't be so bad if it had been a user request and if demand for this type of function was low, but it's something YOU said you wanted to do!

I'm using your $25 package at the moment but will soon have over 250 active members which means I'll have to upgrade to the $50 package.

At that price per month it's now decision time for me and here's why.

I need a member management system that has an affiliate system built in or that can be bolted on and after reading this thread I'm thinking I'm gonna be waiting a long time for a feature like that with WA.

Waiting indefinitely is just not an option for me today.

So I start looking elsewhere and what do I find?

I find that jrox, who at the time this thread was started offered a little package called JAM (see earlier posts in this thread) have now come up with another package called JEM.

This new package is a full blown member management system just like WA, but the affiliate feature (their old JAM) is already built in. Furthermore you can either download the package and host it yourself for $29 per month or they host it for you at $49 per month and as far as I can tell there is no limit to the number of members you can have, the cost stays the same.

I'd love to stay with WA because it works great as a member management system but JEM looks so tempting as it seems like a win - win situation, same price (hosted) or cheaper if you have 500+ members with the same payment processing features but with this crucial (for me) added feature of affiliate management, again, with automatic payment processing if desired.

So WA, while I start to test JEM and it's features compared to WA (it's free for up to 50 members, so there's nothing to lose for me except my time) I ask you:

Can you incorporate an affiliate module before the end of this month so I can avoid the pain of porting to a new system?

We have just discussed this today.

There are still a number of challenges we have to solve before we can proceed:

1) Processing workflow for each online payment processor is different so we need to determine the best point when transaction is considered successfully completed for each one

2) Sometimes confirmation from payment processor can take minutes or even hours (!) so user will never stay to see the success screen. So we need a different mechanism for this situation

3) We need to handle manual transactions - when people pay by check etc.

So we will keep working on this but it will be a while before we can address this.

This is incredibly important on so many levels.

Knowing how effective your promotions are helps you fine tune your efforts and justify any expenses you incur -- providing ROI. Small organizations need to justify each dollar spent, and without some way of measuring efforts -- the exercise is futile.

I'm most concerned at being able to put google code on/after the transaction is complete (in a shopping cart) so that I can determine which of my Google AdWords campaigns are delivering and which should be retired. I do agree that even other actions (such as the download of a white paper) or some other "call to action" would benefit greatly from an ability to incorporate a tracking mechanism.

Many thanks for your efforts on incorporating these suggestions!

Wendy