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Learning More about about Promoting your Software through Affiliate Sales at SellShareware.com

What are Affiliate Sales for Software?

A new way to promote your software.

How do you promote your software today? You submit it to the shareware sites, you submit your website to the search engines, you look for link partners, maybe you even pay for some advertising. All of that is great. But how do you push your business to a new level? How many of the potential buyers of your software are you reaching today? A very small percentage I'm sure. The answer to growing your sales is using affiliates.

Amazon.com changes the Internet.

You've heard of Amazon.com, right? They've taken a few simple ideas and turned it into the Internet's fastest growing business. Those ideas are: There are hundreds of thousands of websites that need a way to make money. There are millions of people surfing these sites. People who surf the web sometimes buy books.

Rather than trying to advertise on enough sites to reach those people, Amazon.com created an affiliate sales program, where webmasters are invited to advertise for Amazon.com and earn a commission on any sales they help generate. The result of this is without paying a cent up front, Amazon.com has thousands of websites advertising for their books. When a user clicks through and buys something, Amazon.com is more than happy to pay a commission, which is often less than it would have cost to advertise.

Now, what about Software?

Take the same ideas from above: There are hundreds of thousands of websites that need a way to make money. There are millions of people surfing these sites. People who surf the web sometimes buy software.

See the similarity? By allowing other people to have an interest in you selling software, you get no-risk promotion for your product. It doesn't really cost you anything. By setting up an affiliate program for your software, you agree to pay a commission to webmasters for helping sell your software, and in turn, they will do their best to get people to try and buy your products.

Why Use SellShareware.com?

If affiliate sales is such a great idea for software, why isn't everyone doing it. Well, a few people are, and they are making a lot of money from it. The real barrier is that it is hard for a Software Author or Distributor to setup an affiliate program. If you are like most, you already have more to do than hours in a day. So most don't have the time to do the database and web programming required to manage an affiliates program. That is where SellShareware.com comes in. SellShareware.com is a complete affiliate management site for selling software over the internet. We allow you to control the programs you offer, the commission you want to pay, and even help find the affiliates for you. Read on to find out how it works and how to get started.

How does SellShareware.com work?

Tracking the Affiliates.

Each affiliate that will advertise your software has an affiliate account at SellShareware.com. For each of your products, we create a product page with descriptions and screenshots you provide. These are the pages affiliates will link to. Each time an affiliate sends a user to the SellShareware.com product page for your program, we record that in our database. As you see below, when the user buys your product, we match this back to the correct affiliate to make sure they get credit and commission for the sale.

Selling Software as "Buy Now".

There are two ways to distribute software over the Internet, "Buy Now" and "Try Before You Buy". First, let's deal with the simple case of "Buy Now". This is how most of the online stores work. The idea is that users see a description of a program and a screenshot, and can purchase it by clicking a button and paying by credit card. This is similar to online stores setup by Digital River or beyond.com. In fact, these online stores also have affiliate programs, but they are for the stores, not for your programs directly. In order to handle the actual order taking and credit card processing, SellShareware.com partners with RegSoft.com, one of the leading shareware registration services. SellShareware is a free service of RegSoft.com E-commerce Solutions. Since we use RegSoft.com to take the orders, you'll have to sign-up with them and give them details about your program, but don't worry, we'll guide you through that a little later, and there is no sign-up charge. So, a user will see an ad or link from an affiliate for your program. When they click that link, they come to a SellShareware.com page that includes a complete description of your product, along with a screen shot. When the user clicks to buy your program, we pass to RegSoft.com your programs ID, and the Account number of the affiliate who advertised for you. When the sale is completed, we give that affiliate credit for the sale in our database.

Selling Software as "Try Before You Buy".

"Buy Now" sales are OK, and many people buy software that way, but the Shareware concept is built on the idea of letting users try it first. In fact, Internet users have come to expect to be able to try software before they buy it. If you only do affiliate sales with "Buy Now", you are probably ignoring a large percentage of possible sales. Every author knows, more people trying a program translates to more people buying a program. SellShareware.com also provides and recommends the option of doing affiliate sales where the visitor has the option to download and try the program first. This means that at the bottom of your SellShareware.com product page, the user can "Buy Now" or download your program and try it first. This has couple benefits over "Buy Now" alone. First, more users will give your program a good look. Second, more affiliates will sign-up to advertise your program, since they are offering their visitors the chance to try something for free. Having a "Try Before You Buy" affiliate program opens your product up to tons of affiliates that otherwise wouldn't be able to promote you. For example, there are nearly 200 "large" shareware sites, many of them struggling to make money. If they can advertise for a program that users still get to download and try, it's easy to imagine them running banner ads exclusively for SellShareware.com "Try Before You Buy" programs. The real challenge technically, is the following: How can you give an affiliate credit for a sale that could happen days or weeks later than the click-through that sent the user to your page? In order to solve this problem, SellShareware.com has to place one restriction on programs with "Try Before You Buy" accounts. This requirement is that downloaders of your program must order it exclusively from RegSoft.com. This means that while you are free to have other resellers or providers selling your program on other online stores, any purchase links within the program or from your web site MUST point to RegSoft.com. We save a cookie on their system with the details needed to track the affiliate info correctly. Days, weeks, or months later, when the user buys your product, all purchase links will lead them to RegSoft. As part of the RegSoft purchase process, we receive program ID's and email addresses of all buyers. If a buyer of your program originally downloaded it via an affiliate, that affiliate will get credit for the sale by matching the email address. Also, during the purchase process, cookies are checked for affiliate information.  So using cookies gives SellShareware high probability of crediting affiliates when they deserve. You can see, that if you used other registration/ecommerce services from your website, we would be unable to credit the proper affiliates. Affiliates would recognize this hole in the system, and would chose products that they are sure to get credit for.

Costs, Features, and Getting Started.

What will doing affiliate sales cost?

Using SellShareware.com costs you nothing if you look at it correctly. If someone walked up to you on the street and said "I'll give you ten bucks if you'll give me $3 back", what would you say? This is the same thing. It costs nothing to add your program to SellShareware.com and get affiliates started. You can offer affiliates anywhere from 10% to 50% of the programs purchase price as a commission. The more you offer, the more affiliates will sign-up and work hard to sell your product. As with all order taking services, RegSoft.com will take a fee for processing the transaction.  RegSoft.com is among the best and lowest cost providers in the market..  The SellShareware.com service of tracking and paying affiliates is completely free to you.  We take on the complete responsibility for that, leaving you time to do what you know best, creating great products.. Some authors are a little short-sighted and complain about giving up even a dollar of a sale. This type of thinking will hold back the growth of your business. What does each new sale really cost you? Nothing. Your product has already been created, so it costs you nothing to have another user with it. If you can make anything off an additional sale, it is worth doing. SellShareware.com and it's affiliates are bringing you users and buyers you wouldn't otherwise reach. Also keep in mind, your affiliates program doesn't affect any of your other distribution or sales, so affiliate sales will be in addition to your normal sales. It is a no lose proposition.

How does everyone get paid?

RegSoft pays it's authors 30 days after the close of each month. Their normal fees, which are the lowest around, apply to all purchases. For any affiliate generated sales, payments due to affiliates will be deducted automatically from your check. You will receive a detailed report of all affiliate sales and the commissions withheld.

Recruiting Affiliates to promote your software?

SellShareware.com will be actively recruiting great web sites to promote software with affiliate programs. These sites will likely be general interest sites and software/shareware sites. The most valuable affiliates will be those you can contact directly because they closely relate to your software. For example, ClipArt sites would make great affiliates for Graphics programs. There are sites that fit well with almost any type of software you sell. As part of the Setup procedure, we'll give you advice on how to contact and signup affiliates for your program.

Starting your Affiliate Sales Account.

By now you should be convinced that you have nothing to lose, and a ton of sales to gain. Click below to Sign Up to sell your software with SellShareware.com Affiliate Sales. Sign Up Now! Check out our Authors FAQ. If you have any questions about SellShareware.com, please email us at sellshareware@regsoft.com.