my little dating project..few Q's

Hi guys!

Ok so here is the dealio..im looking to start a site with dolphin, playing around with 6 right now and waiting for 7 to launch (looks very sexy)

I want to have an affiliate program for my site and looking at affilate softwares now.

Is this possible with dolphin 6 or 7?

Is there any mods for free members to upgrade into paid members using a biller page that will post back into the dolphin database...authenticate them and give them access to unrestricted areas of the site set by me using the dolphin admin. if this makes sense...

ANy feedback is greatly appreciated!

Look forward to your responses.

Thanks!

I asked this on the D7 forum as well (you might want to read/post there if you're considering using it instead of 6).  D6 has (from what I understand) a very simplified affiliate system that (from what I hear) doens't work very well.  The affiliate program has been removed from D7 (probably because it needs a lot of work to improve it).

An affiliate system is a requirement for my site so I will be hiring someone to bulid a link between D7 and an affiliate network.

If you aren't set on D7, one alternative could be to get the points mod for D6 and when people refer others they'll get points.  They can then trade those points for cash.  But, I think this would be clumsy and harder to manage.

Have you figured out what affiliate network you want to use?  Perhaps we could team up on paying for the development of the link and share costs...

Hey vega, thanks for the reply..

Do you have any links to your previous thread I can check out?

Im looking more to using a third-party software that works with dolphin rather than a network. It will be geared towards webmasters and not really to my members, so the point system mod wouldn't really work.

I want them to have capabilities of using ad tools such banners, geo-ip tools, etc.. (handled by the aff. software)

This does seem like it may involve new custom work, I will let you know what I hear from some programmers i know.

No one ever responded to my post so there's really no need to link it.  I would probably choose to hire a dolphin coder to do the link rather than an outside coder to make sure it's done right.

Not sure what exactly your goals are for your affiliate program but you want to make it available to both your members and affiliate marketers.  Your members will be your best promoters and giving them an incentive to invite their friends is crucial.  As far as the general AM population goes they'll be much more likely to find you if your site is part of an affiliate network than if it's stand-alone.  If it's stand-alone and you don't intend to ask your members to help you promote then you should expect to be doing a LOT of marketing to get the attention of AMs.

I will probably be looking at paygear to manage my program.  It's relaively new but it's gotten great reivews on the prime AM forums (warrior, etc.) and the services it offers are the best I've seen for the price.  I particularly like that you can have a mult-tier payout (with different payouts for different people) and it's a 2-tier system which will motivate your affiliates to promote it even more.  The clincher is that it offers multiple payment options not just paypal as many do.

So anyway, that's my $.02 about why a network is better than stand-alone but it's your program so your call.  I just know that as an affiliate marketer I go to my networks first to find new products to promo.  I would only find you if i happened to stumble across your site.  Something to think about...