Affiliates: Promotion Behaviour - Need clarification on another aspect.

[jols]

We have configured affiliates with banners, etc. and with the following benefits:

 

A - Receiving a one-time $20 commission on new account signup (i.e. when someone clicks on the Affiliate's banner).

 

B - Receives 20% commission on the lifetime of the account thereafter.

 

 

But after setting this up, I see that it is easy for any account holder using WHMCS to simply do the following:

 

1 - Click to become an affiliate.

 

2 - Grab their affiliate URL.

 

3 - Enter their affiliate URL in a browser, hit return and sign up for a hosting account, i.e. using their own affiliate cookie to get a 20% discount.

 

The good thing --- The WHMCS system will not allow a self-payout of the one-time common, back to the Affiliate.

 

The bad thing --- The WHMCS system DOES allow that self-signed account to go for a lifetime 20% discount, i.e. for the Affiliate who is signed up their own account.

 

So of course this becomes a problem because the system can quite easily be gamed. That is, a new signup can just click to be an affiliate, and use the cooked code to sign up accounts for himself at a 20% discount, with no intention of actually selling affiliate accounts.

 

So my question is, how can we configure this system so that affiliates can not simply click their own banners for instant self-made discounts?

 

I know there must be some way of imposing such a limit, but after searching all evening, I am just not finding one.

 

Thank you.

[jols]

Okay, I think I have figured out how to avoid system gaming by the following settings:

 

General Settings --> Other --> Allow Client Registration ---> UNcheck

General Settings --> Invoices ---> Disable Auto Credit Applying

 

This is good, but, my basic question at this time is this - How can we prevent multiple/overlapping discounts, that is, when someone uses a coupon/promo code, but also has clicked an affiliate banner. How can we have one type of promotion cancel the other in an "either/or, but not both" process?

[othellotech]

You could add something to the after checkout hook to remove the affiliate if coupon has been used - not sure I'd recommend that, but it's possible.

[Damo]

If an affiliate is using their own link to create new accounts what does it actually matter? You are receiving the payment from the new account anyway (even if it is the original affiliate paying for it). The idea of an affiliate program is that you get additional income for the additional accounts created.

 

If the affiliate chooses to create additional accounts (and pay for them) then you still have the additional income.

 

I don't really understand what the issue is that you're trying to avoid.

[jols]

So, when you say, "I don't really understand what the issue is that you're trying to avoid." The answer is, "We are trying to avoid massive abuse."

 

Damo, I hope the following will help you to understand the nature of my questions in this regard:

 

If we offer our affiliates a 20% commission on the lifetime of the affiliate signed account. So if the WHMCS system freely allows affiliate self-referral as you describe, then anyone could simply click the "activate affiliate" button, enter their own affiliate URL in their browser, then sign up a new hosting account for themselves i.e. 20% off, and more to the point ---> with zero intention of actually becoming an affiliate, but rather just as a way to get a single, cheap hosting account.

 

Now, take the above and add the fact that we are also planing to offer a $20 cash bonus to our affiliates on every signup... See what I mean?

 

So without any self-referral prohibitions built into the system this could rapidly become a kind of a "Clicks for Cash" deal for any abuser who happens along, and a real looser for our company, that is, unless we are very careful.

 

With all of the above in mind, we've finally got it worked out to where we can secure the affiliate system against abuse only if we set a high dollar limit before payouts and put all payouts out past the six month mark, but that's a little on the extreme side IMHO.

 

All that said, I am still trying to verify that the WHMCS system really does not have any prohibitions against affiliate self-referral. Everyone here in the forum seems to think this is the case (that there are no self-referral prohibitions), but a response to my ticket that WHMCS just gave me, indicates otherwise. So I suppose it's back to the testing phase with everything.

Edited October 10, 2012 by jols