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Ask HN: Please Checkout My Startup: zferral.com (Custom Affiliate Programs)

20 points by jeffepp ↗ HN
Overview: Custom Affiliate and Referral programs for companies. Free to start, pay-as-you-grow. White-labeled panel included in free trial.

Create monetary (Affiliate) and non-monetary campaigns (like Dropbox). Manage, track and monitor affiliates, commissions, payouts and analytics.

Invite code: hackernews

Thanks!

33 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 68.4 ms ] thread
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toni
It looks good. Some quick observations:

- Help tooltips: It would be nice if you could provide more online explanation for every option/functionality in the form of tooltips or such.

- Internationalization: As you are eying for white-labeling your site, it will help if the interface was easily translatable to non-English languages.

- SSL: In Firefox, going to https://zferral.com/ gives a security warning, indicating that the certificate belongs to some other domains.

Good luck!

jeffepp
Thanks for the response Toni!

Working on all these items - asap!

toni
No problem, glad i could help! Also some security-by-obscurity tips: Minimize the "Server" signature and remove "X-Powered-By" from your response headers.
jeffepp
SSL is working again. Thanks for the feedback! https://zferral.com
toni
Great! Would it be possible to invite other people from within the interface? I have some non-techie friends who might be interested in the site, but I don't want to scare them off by giving them the "hackernews" invite code :)
jeffepp
Sure, please email me at: jeff@zferral.com and I will send you another code
kendubyou
Looks pretty good man. I'm not too big into the affiliate game anymore but if I was, it would definitely be something I'd give a try. The interface looks pretty simple and smooth which is nice cause the last thing I would want to deal with is learning some new platform while running my affiliates.
jeffepp
Hey thanks for the comments kendubyou!
l4u
URL invalid. in the signup form :( does it mean the name was taken? or do you have a special format?
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jeffepp
Yeah, right now it must be 5 characters. Thanks for the feedback!
Myrth
I'm using password manager in Opera, got "csrf token: CSRF attack detected." on autofilled login.

So no password managers?..

jeffepp
fixing right now - thanks for the feedback!
Vistico
This is great, really easy to get into.

Have you considered doing a demo video as an alternative to the "how it works" page? (like from beginning to affiliate success), and maybe suggestions/tips for users thinking about signing up?

jeffepp
Yeah, I am in the process of doing one -- just waiting to add the "non-monetary" campaigns into the mix.

Once we push that to production (tomorrow) I plan on creating one.

Thanks for the kind words and feedback.

sr3d
Just to let you know that the password email goes directly to my Yahoo Mail bulk folder. You should get this fixed before going live live.
jeffepp
sr3d - thanks! We just changed the DNS records (yesterday) and hopefully this will be updated today
iworkforthem
I like the design! Large, bright, positive. One change could be to have both right & left scrolling center image/text instead of just left. My mouse need to move a long way from the right sidebar, cause the page is quite long.

You could offer some form of help/guide much like how dropbox/zumedrive help new users on how to get started. It's a bit confusion with so many options.. Where do I begin.

Just wondering how is it better/simpler than DFP Small Business?

iworkforthem
Not sure if it's any useful... seems like the web app dun allow me to create an account prefix 'help', so I used 'login' instead. Once I encountered a web app which ask me to change because I shouldn't be using that specific prefix. Hope it won't be the case for your web app too.
jeffepp
Hey iworkforthem, thanks a lot for your feedback! Currently, only 5 + character urls are available on zferral
ScottWhigham
How do you handle payouts (or do you)? I see on the "How it works" page that I can "Manage commissions" but how? Let's say that I have customers in Brazil, China, the US, and Algeria that need to be paid - do I do it through the site? If so, how is payment sent (i.e. check, PayPal, etc)?
jeffepp
Currently, the site is integrated with Paypal and it works through the site.

We are also adding multi-currency capabilities, however, that is scheduled a bit down the road.

ScottWhigham
The main problem that I would have is that (a) I don't know you, (b) you don't have a track record, and (c) since my customers are my most important asset, I'm not about to turn them over to you easily. You just started - congrats - but that doesn't help me get "over the hump" of why I should use you. You will face this over and over: "How do I know you guys will still be around in a year? I'm not interested in doing a 'mea culpa' to my customers six months from now if you quit the business, get hacked, get acquired and the TOS changes, etc."

As such it isn't for me but I applaud you for getting it started - it looks nice. Stay focused on the small startups and you won't have to answer the above issues. After a year or so people will be more comfortable with you and hopefully there will be more substance about pricing/features/etc that will make larger companies more comfortable.

Best of luck!

jeffepp
Scott,

Good points. (a) I agree we don't know eachother, something that can generally be remedied during the sales cycle. (b) I guess I do not have a track record on here -- my co-founder is a core team member a piwik.org and I am pretty active in the startup community in Detroit (and Chicago). (c) You need not turn over any customers to zferral, actually we have very little, if anything about your customers. We help you track, manage and create affiliate programs.

Appreciate the insight, there are definitely items to think about -- I am glad to get your perspective!

ScottWhigham
I meant that I don't know "you" as in "your company", not necessarily you personally via HN :)

And those are good credentials for making someone like me more comfortable; I would suggest you not bury that info in the About page (or create a "Who's behind this?" page).

Lastly, when I browsed the site quickly, I didn't pick up on the fact that I wouldn't be turning my customers over to you. That's an important point to me. If I take a chance on something like this, then I'd like to know that if I change companies 6-12 months from now, the only impact is that I have to tell my affiliates, "Sorry guys - gotta have new URLs."

Follow-up question: if you don't know who my affiliates (my customers) are, how is the signup process for them to become an affiliate handled? Perhaps a demo site might answer some of this info for me.

jeffepp
Scott, excellent feedback -- that is why I posted this here -- so thank you.

We allow you (the company) to export all affiliate information.

Affiliates would log in via the Company White-Labeled Panel (such as http://partners.zferral.com or http://theory11.zferral.com -- they can create an account OR login via facebook, twitter, yahoo or gmail.

I guess I can create a demo site, do you think it is necessary if it is 100% free to start?

Thanks again Scott.

ScottWhigham
Now wait a minute - you said that I wouldn't be turning my customers over to you but now you're telling me they have to create accounts on your system. Isn't that exactly what "turning my customers over to you" is? The end result is that I have to tell my customers, "Hey - go create a new account/login here" and then you have all their details in your databases. Are your databases secure? Is your code secure? How do I know you won't sell my info? That's back to the "I don't know you" problem...

100% free to start isn't an exciting thing to me, actually. I'm dealing with something incredibly important for my business and I expect that any company will either have a free trial, a demo, or a 30-day money back guarantee. I'm less swayed by the "100% free to start" than others might be because I'm serious about wanting an affiliate management package... I'm not kicking tires, so to speak.

All in all, it seems like I'm not really the target market - which is fine.

jeffepp
We are web-hosted so affiliates create accounts on our system.

I define customers as 'not being turned over to us' by allowing the company to export all the information and handle all payments.

100% free was my answer to having a demo. You may realize the value of 'free to start' if you start an affiliate program --> pay upfront --> determine you want to customize something that fits your company.

Most other packages only offer "monetary" campaigns so any dropbox-like program won't fly with them. They will also charge about 30-40% of your payouts.

Thanks again for all insight, it definitely helps define our target demographic. Feel free to email me and let me know how your program shopping goes. Good luck!

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tarouter
One trivial suggestion - "Your existing customers may be your most effective salespeople." => "Your existing customers ARE your most effective salespeople." I'm sure you are sure, aren't you? Why not the world know that with confidence.
jeffepp
Good point! I think we will change this!