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For the past year I’ve had a private affiliate program running, which allows my Elite Members to refer new members to my Private Brainstorming Group. My group meets in an online community, using the vBulletin forum software.

I chose iDevAffiliate to manage my affiliate program, because it integrates with vBulletin. Or so I was lead to believe, after finding the vBulletin and iDevAffiliate Integration thread on the “official vBulletin modifications site”. So I purchased vBulletin, purchased iDevAffiliate, and hired a programmer to install the mod.

Often we assume the code will just work, especially if you don’t know code yourself and have no way to analyze or validate it. Obviously you do your homework and research the web for reviews or discussions. But what else can you do, right?

After a full year of running my private affiliate program, and over $10,000 worth of commission tracking, I discovered that this particular set-up was not working properly at all. It wasn’t until the 2nd quarter that the discrepancies started to show up, due to the nature of the tracking issue.

It became nothing short of a support nightmare.

I’ll spare you the geeky technical details, and just say that I lost thousands of dollars in overpaid commissions. Not to mention countless hours on support & troubleshooting between both my assistant and myself.

For the past 2 months I’ve been working nonstop at unraveling the mess, tracking down every single un-tracked commission, and making sure those commissions were paid. Unfortunately the mod did not pass the referring member data to iDev, so every single “order number” had to be assigned to an actual member in order to do this. Which was painful, to say the least. I used time stamps down to the second to make the associations, and created a detailed spreadsheet of affiliate and member activity. NOT ideal, and NOT the best use of my time, obviously.

After that I closed the affiliate program with a final reconciliation payment – and a heavy sigh. As a full-time affiliate marketer myself, it pained me to do it. I know firsthand how frustrating that is as an affiliate. But the system simply wasn’t working, and there was no way to repair it as-is.

I had no choice but to shut it down, rather than let the inaccuracies continue.

I would have never caught the issue if a few affiliates hadn’t noticed the discrepancies and inquired about them (thank you for that!). As an affiliate myself, I keep track of commissions owed and commissions paid too – which is something everyone should do. Never just assume a system is working.

I chose the set-up I did for a reason. There are other options, and I am looking into them as we speak. But that’s not what I wanted to address in this particular post…

What really blows my mind is that there are NO complaints or questions about this vBulletin Modification. And MY reply to the mod thread, where I mentioned the issues I was having and asked if others were experiencing the same… has not seen a single response in almost a week.

This means there are others out there running the Mod, that have no idea it’s not working properly. Honestly, the way it’s set up, there’s no way for them to know – unless someone does a painstakingly detailed audit (like I did), or unless someone speaks up about it. Like I am now.

I am sharing this with you for 3 reasons

To remind you to:

1. Keep track of your affiliate commissions & payments.
2. Test & analyze your installations to make sure they work properly.
3. Report things that do or do not work so that others will know.

I also hope that others who are using or considering this particular ‘mod’ will find this review and find it helpful in making their own decisions.

A few points before I wrap this up…

vBulletin hosts the modification in question, but it is marked as “not supported”. It is also not supported by iDevAffiliate. Obvious note: this leaves users out in the cold for any kind of help or technical support. Something I will definitely keep in mind with any future mods or plugins or updates of any kind.

Speaking of, iDevAffiliate went out of their way to assist me while I was dealing with this situation. The developer himself emailed back and forth with me, and even called me on the phone to discuss the issue and the options.

iDevAffiliate was nothing short of amazing on their end, and they have top notch software for managing an affiliate program. I highly recommend them for anyone looking to host an affiliate program: iDevAffiliate.

vBulletin is also an exceptional product, which I am very happy with.

I will continue to use iDev as it works across multiple domains and for a variety of product types. I plan to get it back up & running for my hundreds of affiliates in the 4th quarter, with other products & structures. Of course, it will remain a private members-only program. I have no desire to run a public affiliate program at this point, or anytime in the near future.

While this particular set-up may not be relative to you or your business model specifically, there is definitely something to be learned here. I can boil it down to: test, track, talk. We all have a responsibility to the ever-evolving web, and to the growth and betterment of the space.

Best,

p.s. If you’re interested in joining my Private Brainstorming Group, simply register at the SSWT Forum. You can upgrade to Elite Member through the UserCP at any time to join the group and gain access to our private community.

Original post by Lynn Terry and software by Elliott Back