| Zugg Software Affiliate System | |
| [Main Menu] | |
The Zugg Software Affiliate Program allows you to earn money from advertising Zuggsoft products on your own web site. If someone clicks on one of the affiliate links on your web site and later buys the software, then you will receive a commission from this sale. No JavaScript is required...just a simple URL that you can use with any text or image hyperlink.
Anyone who has a web site can become a Zuggsoft Affiliate. To sign up for the affiliate program, go to the Zugg Software Affiliate system, create a login account, then click on the Affiliate Status link along the top of the page and fill in the required information. Applications are usually approved within a couple of days. The Affiliate account is the same as the account used for the yearly Icon Bidding program. So if you already have an account from icon bidding, use it to log into the system.
You must meet the following requirements for your affiliate application to be approved:
You must enter the valid URL of your web site. Your web site will be checked to see if it is appropriate for selling Zuggsoft products. Sites cannot contains any pornography or any links to adult sites, nor can they contain any links to cracked software. If your web site fails to meet these conditions at any time, your affiliate status can be revoked without payment.
You must enter a valid PayPal address. We can only pay affiliates via PayPal. If your PayPal account is locked or cancelled or we are not able to successfully make a payment to your PayPal account, we will notify you to receive updated payment information.
You must enter a valid email address for your Affiliate account. If we are not able to contact you via email after several attempts, then your affiliate status will be suspended.
When your affiliate status is approved, you will receive an email message and you can start accumulating sales via the links on your web site.
The commission rate starts at 3.5% for new affiliates. Over time, if you generate a large amount of sales, your commission rate can be increased. Zugg Software might also increase your commission rate if you add more sales information to your web site, such as reviews of our products, or if you make Zuggsoft products "exclusive" and do not advertise competing products. Decisions on commission rates are subjective and completely up to Zugg Software. You will always be notified within 30 days if your commission rate will be changed.
For zMUD and CMUD, you can receive a higher commission by making zMUD/CMUD the "official" client for your MUD (assuming you own a MUD site), and by not advertising other MUD clients for Windows. You can still recommend other MUD clients for other operating systems (linux, Mac, etc).
Compared to commission rates from dedicated Affiliate sites, you might think our commission is too small. However, keep in mind that many commercial affiliate sites raise the price of the product to compensate for large commission rates. We don't play those kind of games as Zugg Software. The price for our software is the same no matter what site you buy it from. The price that you quote on your web site is the same price the customer would pay if they purchased directly from Zugg Software. We have not increased any of our prices to compensate for affiliate commissions.
We submit payment to your PayPal account every quarter (roughly every three months). Payment will only be submitted if your commission is more than $25.00 US. If you have earned less than $25, your commission will roll-over into the next quarter.
Once your affiliate status has been approved, you can log into the Affiliate system and click on the Affiliate Status link along the top of the page to view your account. The top part of the page will show your sales statistics, including the last time you were paid, the current commission that you have earned, and your total all-time sales.
Towards the bottom of the Affiliate Status page, affiliate links for various Zuggsoft products are shown. For each product, you have three links: Buy, Download, and Information. The Buy link will take the customer directly to our online store and automatically add the product to their shopping cart. The Download link will take them to our Download page and will immediately begin the download of the product file. The Information link will take the customer to a page on the Zugg Software site that gives more information about the product.
These different links each have a different "priority". The Buy link has the highest priority, and your affiliate ID in the Buy link will override any other affiliate information that might be stored for the customer. The Download link has the next highest priority. The Information link has the lowest priority. The priority is used if the customer has multiple affiliate "cookies" stored within their web browser. If a customer used Affiliate "A" to view an Information link, but then used Affiliate "B" to Buy the product, then Affiliate "B" would get the commission for the sale.
To add these links to your web site, just copy and paste the URL given on this page for the product and type of link that you want. This URL can be used with any HTML text link, or image link. You are welcome to use any of the graphic images shown on the Affiliate Status page, or use any other graphics from the Zugg Software web site. It is completely up to you how you want to integrate these links into your own web site. You might use large graphical banners, or you might have a product review with all three links (Info, Download, Buy).
The Zugg Software Affiliate program works by setting "cookies" in the customers web browser. When the customer clicks on a Buy, Download, or Information link on your web site, your affiliate ID value is stored in the customers web browser. If the customer buys a Zugg Software product, this cookie value is checked to see who should receive a commission. If the customer has cookies turned off, or deletes their cookies, then you might not get credit for a sale.
The Buy and Download links set cookies that are specific to a single product. You will only receive a commission if the customer purchases the same product as your Buy or Download link. However, the Information link is more generic and applies to all Zuggsoft products. For example, if a customer clicks on your Information link for CMUD, but then purchases zMUD instead, you still get a commission for this sale. Just keep in mind that if the customer uses a Buy or Download link on another affiliate site, then it will override your lower-priority Information link and the other site will get the commission instead.
All affiliate cookies are only valid for 40 days. So, in order to get credit for a sale, the customer must buy a product within 40 days of using one of your affiliate links. This gives the customer enough time for the 30-day free trial, but allows cookies to expire after that period.