Post Affiliate Pro Review - Legit OR Scam - True review

by Mohammed Karam E Marketing Consultant

Post Affiliate Pro is an affiliate tracking/affiliate program software developed by Quality Unit. It is one of the most popular choices for establishing self-hosted/managed affiliate program

If you reading this than you probably already know that affiliate business model has been proven to be effective in generating sales and revenue, it is one of the most effective ways to generate passive income from your product or service – affiliates drive targeted traffic to your sales funnel and you pay them commission on referred sales or for predefined actions - sign up for email list, watch webinar, request a quote etc

I wanted to scale one of projects and affiliate program that belong to one of our client that i purchased it to him. It was the easiest, cheapest and fastest ways to To manage all the affiliates and do the tracking something robust, flexible

Below I will explain how we use certain features of Post Affiliate Pro so you can decide for yourself if they worth paying for

Note: Long Review

Hosted vs. Self-Managed Affiliate Programs

There are affiliate tracking solutions that will host your affiliate program on their website and they are fine if you’re looking for simple affiliate management system but if you need full control and plan to pump massive amounts of traffic through your system they become too expensive even in the mid-term range. I prefer to go with self-managed solutions because I like to control and handle things myself. BTW Post Affiliate Pro has hosted version that you can check out here

User Interface

Post Affiliate Pro utilizes themes so you can change its look and feel with a click of a button – themes are somewhat similar to Windows and Mac themes on your desktop – you can customize sidebar widgets to display vital metrics and see performance of your affiliate program at a glance. While it is not highly important to success of your affiliate program, it is nice option to have slick user interface at a click of a button. Click here to see some of the Post Affiliate Pro themes

Multilingual Support

Post Affiliate Pro has been translated into 25 languages, while it may not be highly important to you if majority of your business is within English speaking countries but it becomes huge time saver if you need to have affiliate program in local language and the software supports that language out of the box instead of manually translating whole user interface and all the messages yourself

AffiliateTtracking

Affiliates want reliable tracking and credit for all the sales that they have referred, you as a merchant want quality traffic and fraud protection. If you have been in the affiliate game long enough than you probably know that you might be losing 10-20% of your affiliate commissions due to improper tracking, adware, spyware, people cleaning up their browser cookies, cookie stuffing… This is especially true for large affiliate programs like Amazon, eBay because they are often targets for affiliate hijackers. Just Google affiliate link hijacking or affiliate commission hijacking

Post Affiliate Pro relies on 3 different methods for tracking sales and commissions – flash cookies, browser cookies and IP tracking, resulting in fewer untracked sales and more accurate reporting. Flash cookies (LSO cookies) are so called “super cookies” they are harder to delete and are browser independent so if visitor clicks your affiliate link in Firefox and then visits website and buys in Internet Explorer you still get credit for a sale. Reliable and accurate tracking is the cornerstone of any affiliate program, no matter if you’re an affiliate or offer owner, look for software that offers multiple levels of tracking because this means more money to you as an affiliate and more sales if you’re owner of the offer. Click here to learn more about advanced tracking methods implemented by Post Affiliate Pro

Tracking Integration

Sales and orders need to be tracked and fulfilled, affiliates need to be paid on time therefore your affiliate tracking software need to be integrated with some third party services like shopping cart, membership software, billing and payment processing system, email autoresponder etc. Post Affiliate Pro supports great variety of third party services

Fraud Protection

Unfortunately there are always dishonest affiliates that are looking for a quick buck and will try to cheat you for the sake of commissions – that’s why you need affiliate fraud protection. Affiliate fraud protection is especially important if you have CPA affiliate program, where you pay commissions for actions (sign up for webinar, download report, visit specific page etc…) because it is harder to detect fraud when you’re paying for actions

As far as automated fraud protection Post Affiliate Pro offers click, sales and affiliate signup protection – you can recognize and void repeated sales and clicks or ban traffic from certain IP addresses and countries. If you want to minimize fraud – watch your affiliates closely and investigate ones that have extremely high conversion rates, unusual spikes of traffic, abnormal cancellation rates. You might be dealing with super affiliate or fraudster – if after closer investigation everything looks legitimate you may offer them exclusive terms, if they don’t pass your investigation – ban them and void the commissions

Affiliate Commissions

Post Affiliate Pro supports all kinds of affiliate commissions so you would have plenty of options to choose how to reward your affiliates. I don’t see myself using more than two in single affiliate program

Multi-Tier Commissions

In a two-tier affiliate program, or a multi-tier program (two or more levels) affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program. With Post Affiliate Pro you can setup unlimited number of tiers. I never use more than 2 tiers and unless you’re into MLM marketing I don’t think your affiliate program should have more than 2 tiers because it shifts focus from generating sales to referring new members

Split Commissions

With standard commission structure, affiliate whose link was clicked the last is credited for the sale, even dough other affiliates may helped to shape that buying decision. With Post Affiliate Pro you can split commissions between up to 5 affiliates with first and last referrers getting major share – first for introducing to the product, last for influencing buying decision and up to 3 affiliates in between may get reward for helping to shape that buying decision. It is up to you on whatever or not “commission split”, “last click should always win” or “first session cookie” rule should apply but I think it is debatable feature because from one side nothing motivates new affiliates more than return on their investment of time and effort in a form of money; but from the standpoint of experienced and successful affiliate this payout sucks. If I drive constant stream of high converting traffic why should I have to share my commissions with affiliates that doesn’t know how to sell? You have to look at your numbers and decide who you going to favor as a merchant – newcomers or veterans. Your mileage may vary but from my experience 5% of your affiliates will drive 50% of your sales and you should think twice before implementing this feature

lifetime commissions

Lifetime commission means, that the affiliate who referred your customer will get commissions for all the future sales of this customer, even if the customer is later referred by any other affiliate on another computer, the commission will be still assigned to the first affiliate. I prefer to use Recurring Commissions instead of Lifetime commissions

CPA Commissions

Action or CPA commissions are a powerful tool in driving leads and sales if you have established sales funnel. I wouldn’t recommend it to brand new merchants because if you don’t know exact numbers – cost per lead, lead to customer conversion rate, refund and cancellation rate it is hard to define how much you should pay for certain action. But as far as technology wise with Post Affiliate Pro you can track and pay commissions per any action on your website – form submission, email list sign up, downloads, certain page visits etc. It is a good idea to allow access to CPA campaigns only for trusted affiliates to minimize affiliate fraud, it is easily done with Private Campaigns where you can accept affiliates with proven track of quality traffic

Recurring Commissions

From the affiliate standpoint recurring commissions are my favorite type – I get paid share of the revenue for as long as the customer stays active. From the merchant standpoint recurring commissions is the best way to attract affiliates because they know, if your product or service is good – customer will stay for a long time and they get nice stream of residual income. You can find recurring commissions in many subscription services and membership sites, the key for affiliates to maximizing revenue from such affiliate programs is to promote high quality products and services that solve a real need, so make sure your product is topnotch and then recurring commissions could be great leverage in attracting high quality affiliates

Reports

Reports are an effective way to see performance of your affiliate program and should be part of your daily/weekly routine to spot any problems early and find new sales opportunities. Post Affiliate Pro offers all kinds of reports so you can compare and analyze performance of your campaigns, affiliates, banners and keep ones that are working and bringing you sales and revenue

Trends– show you overall performance of your affiliate program

Online Users– see geo location of users logged in into your installation of Post Affiliate Pro

Top Affiliates – list of all your affiliates ordered by their performance, great way to find performing affiliates and super affiliates, a lot of super affiliates sell their own products and have targeted and responsive lists, by developing relationship with them you could find amazing opportunities for selling and cross-selling

Top URLs – identify sources of best converting traffic

Quick Report – snapshot of most important metrics - impressions, clicks, sales, commissions

Campaign/Banner/Affiliate Report – drill down and compare campaigns, affiliates and banners, see what’s working and what’s not. Focus on those that are bringing you the most revenue and your business will soar

Map Overlay – see where sales and traffic are coming from

Post Affiliate Pro offers free Android application for both affiliates and merchants; together with real-time reporting it allows you to see and analyze performance anytime and anywhere

Conclusion

Post Affiliate Pro is flexible and robust solution for affiliate tracking and in my opinion is the best option on the market right now for managing international affiliate programs as it supports 25 languages and multiple currencies out of the box. You can install Post Affiliate Pro on a separate domain and track affiliate sales on all your websites which is great for merchants that have several products. Another powerful feature that comes by default with ALL editions of Post Affiliate Pro is built in SEO module that allows you get SEO credit and therefore higher rankings in Search Engines from affiliate links. If you’re looking for powerful and accurate affiliate tracking software that will support all the needs of your affiliate program as you grow you should take a look at Post Affiliate Pro