User feedback can be enlightening, frustrating, wrong-headed, vindictive, and elusive. My sample of completed user surveys of affiliate software is much too small to make any scientific evaluation of the programs. The evidence is at best anecdotal. In many cases the users know the software's advantages and disadvantages well, but in others their complaints have already been solved by software fixes. If you're considering programming your own in-house affiliate program, first read the feedback from those who have done so. It may cause you to rethink this -- or not.
I'm sure that vendors will love some of the response and hate others. But this book is to help readers sort through conflicting claims about affiliate management software and come to some conclusions. I hope that this reader feedback is helpful to you as you are forming judgments about software.
Don't choose for or against a program just on the basis of these reader comments. They are only a signpost.
Whenever I ask for user feedback, there's always the possibility that some vindictive person will try to dump on a company he doesn't like. However, since these people are apparently current users of the software, that is less likely. I know that the marketing director of My Affiliate Program (MyAP) asked users to fill out the survey, so you'll see a lot of responses for that software, though I don't think the responses are unduly biased.
For each of the responses I have given the first name of the respondent and their country or region. I included information on sales volume and how much of their traffic is driven by affiliate sales to help you judge the appropriateness of the respondent to his or her responses. In a couple of instances I have altered the first name so that the respondent cannot be identified by a vendor. I've tried to clean up the spelling and grammar a bit, but the style is pretty rough -- the way it came to me.
Here are the programs about which we received feedback.
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