Home Reviews Business ideasReview of JAM affiliate tracking system

Review of JAM affiliate tracking system

07 January 2009
Posted in Reviews - Business opportunity reviews

Before we get into JAM in great detail, lets first talk about why you might want to consider a product of this type at all? Obviously the best type of web site traffic is free traffic. That is the articles, reviews and product descriptions on your web sites cause the search engines to send loads of ready to buy customers to you. If you have not prepared your store for selling effectively to customers or you have not yet fully implemented an ongoing SEO program then you should probably do that first.

So now that we have perfect content and we are getting lots of free customers what next? Most people turn to pay per click, especially small businesses. The problem with PPC is that you have to pay upfront and there is no guarantee on your return. And most first time users of PPC either get their fingers burned or have to pay a professional, which amounts to the same thing!

Immediately you might dream of a system that allows you to pay web sites that send you customers, but only when you make money as well. Affiliate programs are just that. Check out Commission Junction or . The problem with these companies is that they want their piece of the pie, you guessed it, even if you don't sell anything! So in many ways it might not work out any better than PPC.

So what is the solution? Why not run your own affiliate scheme? But surely the software required is extremely expensive and hard to use? Well, no, not necessarily. The JAM Affiliate Manager from JROX.com might be the solution. If you want to get referrals to your web site but only want to pay when they spend money then JAM might be for you.

JROX, the makers of JAM offer a whole range of web hosting products and services. And I know from experience they are good. However, what sets them apart from other companies is there JAM Affiliate Manager. So this is what it does and how it works.

What JAM does

Once you have installed JROX JAM (more in a minute) you can get to work recruiting affiliates. Simply by putting a link on your regular website pointing to your JAM installation and the affiliate manager will do the rest. It handle sign ups, welcome emails as well as letting you know you have recruited an affiliate.

The affiliate can log into their account, view statistics, payments and number of clicks etc. They can choose from your marketing material, created by you and at the click of a button create the code to copy and paste to their web site.

When your affiliate team makes a sale, they need to be paid. JAM will allow you to clearly define payment parameters. Monthly, weekly, etc. As well as payment method, cheque, bank transfer or automatically by PayPal.

The manner in which JAM presents information to your affiliates is highly professional and visually pleasing. Your affiliates can switch between a cool 3d view or a simple but smartly presented 2d look. You can even customise JAM to look like your web site, more on this later.

So you might be wondering how easy, or not, is JAM to administer? I will cover installation as a separate matter, but once installed, JAM is a breeze. After the initial post install configuration, like setting commission rates, payment schedules, payment tiers so affiliates can recruit affiliates for you then you are ready to do the fun stuff.

Creating banners, text links, even whole pages of content to be used on the web sites of your affiliates is as simple as copying and pasting or browsing to the graphic to be used.

For me the coolest bit is looking at the performance of your recruits. How many clicks have people sent you etc. There is certainly a cheap thrill to be had looking at a 3d graph of all the free traffic you are receiving.

JAM can be configured to be fully automatic or as manual as you like where payments are concerned.What I mean is that you could set it up so that all commissions are automatically authorised and paid via PayPal for example. Or you could set it up so that one or both stages require your approval.

How JAM works

JAM is written in PHP and the files are precompiled so they work super smooth. This requires the use of the Zend Optimiser on your web space but this isnt an issue it is nice and simple to setup. It can work in a subdomain affiliate.yoursite.com or a sub folder yoursite.com/affiliate. It works almost entirely as a separate entity, which is how it is so fully featured without lots of modifications being done to your web store. The only changes to your store is the addition of between 3 & 8 lines of code to 1 file! And amazingly, you can log into your JAM admin control panel, tell JAM what sort of store you have and JAM will generate the code and tell you how to install it. So far I have successfully installed JAM on Zen Cart, osCommerce and Joomla (Virtue Mart) with no problems. Sorry, almost no problems. JAM supports every shopping cart I have ever heard of and a good few more as well. It also has some straight forward PHP and Java Script integration options. So unless you have a really unusual web store it should work for you.

Help & Support

During the installation process, as I have hinted at already, there where some issues. Roughly speaking 80% of these where due to my lack of knowledge and I would like to praise JAM for answering my question ASAP. Over the course of 3 JAM installations I probably sent about 6 emails. And I got a reply within about half a working day for each of them. No mean feat, especially when you consider that the JAM guys and girls are in a different time zone to me!

I said 80% of the problems where caused by me. JROX could argue it was all down to me, but I am trying to be objective here and tell you the bad as well as the good. There was an out of date tutorial on the JAM web site with regard to integrating JAM with PayPal buttons, but again they cleared this up quickly by email. Also, in my view the coverage of installing the Zend Optimiser was ambiguous. Let me explain. JAM tell you to refer to your web host. Fair enough, they all have a slightly different set up. Yet in their forums there are loads of posts, not fully answered about pages not working because the 'Zend Optimiser might not be present'. As it turns out the solution is incredibly easy but trawling the JAM site and many hours googleing did NOT solve the problem. The solution came down to something so simple you could argue it was my ignorance to blame. So you don't have the same grief as me, read my JAM installation tutorial in conjunction with the JAM instructions for a smooth trouble free day!

Where I thought the support was above and beyond was the after install help. JROX send regular communications advising on the next stages of developing a sales force. Free PDF manuals (written by them), free subscription to sites that promote your web site and plain good advice.

How much!!

The basic package costs $250. Not only is that a snip in my view but you have the option to pay in installments as well. JROX also give you the option to try a fully functioning FREE version where the only restriction is a maximum of 50 affiliates! Pretty good. Consider this option if you are not sure if JAM is for you.

In addition JROX offer an installation service for only $25. This in my view is a blinking BARGAIN!! They also offer install with integration for $99. This is less of a good deal, because in my view the integration is the easy part. But if you don't want the hastle why not. If you want to save money JAM integration for osCommerce and JAM integration for Zen Cart are covered on this web site or in the DIY Ecommerce manual.

Also what seems good value is the 'Theme Customisation Service'. The stylesheets are fairly complex and I wouldn't want to mess with them. The cost of this is $50.

JAM Affiliate Manager conclusion

If you are a small to medium business looking for traffic where you only pay after you have been paid, then consider JAM Affiliate Manager. If you have installed your own shopping cart you will probably have no bother installing JAM on your own. If installing your own shopping cart scares you then it is probably worth getting JROX to install JAM for you for $50 or install & integration for $99.

Praise for JAM - Brilliant support, cool product at very good price.

Criticism - Some annoying niggles during install. However these are easily overcome by paying for install, reading my guide, or just being a bit smarter than I am! Why not join BusinessDreams.net today and get the JROX 'Guide To Affiliate Marketing' in our members free downloads area.

To check out JAM vist the Affiliate Manager homepage.