Steal this idea: A simple affiliate system for Stripe-powered saas apps | Hacker News Reader

Steal this idea: A simple affiliate system for Stripe-powered saas apps

11 pointscasjam10 comments

I'm amazed that such a service doesn't exist yet (at least I haven't found it yet). If you build such a service, I'll be your first customer.

I run a saas service with Stripe handling my subscriptions. I want to launch an affiliate program, where anyone can register as an affiliate, and I will pay 20% recurring commissions for the lifetime of the referred customer.

Here's what it should do (MVP features):

- Allow affiliates to sign up and get a unique referral URL - Track subscription payments and award a % commission to the referring affiliate for all payments from this customer (bonus if I can limit it to just the first year) - Allow me to export a paypal masspay.txt, which I will use to pay all affiliates once per month, via PayPal.

There are a few affiliate services out there, but the ones I've found either don't easily integrate with Stripe, or their pricing model just doesn't make sense for bootstrapped saas startups.

If someone is building this, please let me know. I'd love to talk to you and be your first beta user :)

So if you lose your Stripe account, you lose your entire network of affiliates and all the marketing they're doing for you too? It's generally bad business to tie yourself to single providers like that. Write the few lines of code it takes to integrate with one of the affiliate networks that already exist.

The good affiliates know these networks, they know that they track accurately and they get paid on time. They don't know that about you or some new software you plug in to your site and promise to send PayPal payments with. For a few hundred bucks you can get on one of the first-tier networks with access to thousands of existing marketers. Integration is dead simple (put one piece of code on your "thank you" page to track the new signups, write a few lines of code to POST a commission through an API each month for the recurring part).

Any affiliate network suggestions?

Suggestions?

What I'm talking about is an app that will handle the registration of affiliates, tracking saas payments (<-- this part would talk to Stripe), and calculating commissions on an ongoing basis. The database of affiliates wouldn't be lost if I were to switch payment processors (this app should integrate with others too, like recurly, etc.. I say Stripe because I haven't seen any affiliate systems that have stripe integration).

"write a few lines of code to POST a commission through an API each month for the recurring part"

As you can probably tell from my original post, I'm not a developer and I'm unable to do this myself. Sure, I could hire a dev to build one custom just for me, but wouldn't it be better if someone released an affiliate management app that is designed for saas sales and integrates with the popular saas payment processors like Stripe and Recurly?

I actually had this idea while back and was testing the water to see if there was movement. Most people think poorly of affiliate/performance marketing but if you think of it in terms of customers (e.g. paying customers to spread the word) win/win - why not. I ended up not pursing it as my votes were tied (3 to 3) - Take a look

http://checkthis.com/pl2l

Above is the outline of the concept (as well as another concept - kickstart SAAS)

Are you really interested? Prove it! Taking a step from the Lean Startup - Let's see if anyone signups - 50% off $49/month - 30 day free trial - if less than 10 people signup I will refund the $

Presignup now at the 50% reduced rate and I will have it built within 1 month http://he2.co/ZB7R4M3I2I4

I've actually thought about building something like this for a while now -- might just do it now. If you want to chat shoot me an email henry.khachatryan@gmail

I have a PHP SaaS app using Stripe and I need to develop an affiliate system for it. I'd be happy to collaborate.

Saasquatch kind of does this.

We're focusing on the customer referral program, but affiliates programs are also on our roadmap. The biggest difference is that right now we target your existing customers and we don't do cash payouts.

referralsaasquatch.com

We do both Stripe and Recurly.

Awesome. Can't wait to see the affiliate tracking system. Customer referrals are nice, but we get more requests from people who wish to be affiliates for our saas product.

This is what I originally thought referly was offering. How many others thought this?

FYI - Refer.ly is pivoting

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