This guide offers the information you need to get up and running with the Big Fish Affiliate Program.
- How the program works
- Tools to help you acquire more customers and make more money
- Reporting to track your referrals, campaigns and earnings
- Affiliate News Blog and Weekly Newsletter to stay up to date
- Free Online Games to attract visitors
How the Program Works
You can earn money by introducing new customers to Big Fish by promoting our games on your blog, social media page, email, and/or website. As an Affiliate with Big Fish, we pay you 40.6% of the net revenue generated by qualifying sales from your referred customer for an entire year. Refer a new customer just once and you will earn from their subsequent purchases whether or not they are made through your site! A qualifying customer is anyone you bring to our site that makes a game purchase, has not made a purchase on www.BigFishGames.com in the last 365 days, and is not bound to any other Affiliate. How do we track this? Once you become an Affiliate, we will issue you an Affiliate Code (AFCODE). When this AFCODE is used in the links you use to draw potential customers to our products, a cookie is placed on the potential customer's computer. If this customer is eligible for referral and makes a qualifying purchase, our system recognizes the cookie with your AFCODE, and this customer is then bound to your Affiliate account for 365 days. A qualifying purchase is a valid purchase of a game that is either directly charged and greater than $0, or by redeeming a Game Club credit.
Example:
Here is a simple link that you could use to drive a potential customer to our home page and place the cookie: < a href="http://www.bigfishgames.com/?channel=affiliates&identifier=YOUR AFCODE" target="_blank">Big Fish Homepage < /a> The cookie that is placed on the potential customer's computer is good for 90 days unless the customer clears their cookies. Our program also offers a "last touch" cookie model: the last Affiliate to drive the customer to our products is the cookie our system will track if the customer makes a purchase.
Example:
Affiliate X drives a customer to our site and a cookie is placed. The potential customer doesn't make a purchase. On another day, that customer gets referred by Affiliate Y and makes a purchase. The customer will then be bound to Affiliate Y because they were the last to refer the customer. The 90 days will start over for each Affiliate that is to "last touch" the potential customer. Commissions are paid only when a qualifying game purchase is made by your bound customer. Game Club credits are paid upon redemption.
Commissions that accrue on your behalf in any calendar month are payable to you 45 calendar days or later after the end of such month. Payments are processed on the 15th of every month, so payment requests will need to be submitted by the end of the day on the 14th.
Tools to help you acquire more customers and make money
Our program offers a wide range of tools designed for every level of expertise. You can choose the technology that works best for you and your goals. The tools described below range from easiest to use to those that take a little more technical experience. Check out out Tools page for more information: https://affiliates.bigfishgames.com/tools
Links & Graphics -EASY
You can create links to specific web pages or games for use on your website, social media page, or blog. Our Links & Graphics tools are easy to use and require no special coding knowledge. Choose the web page or game link you want to link to and the corresponding HTML link, with your tracking code, will appear. Click on Select Code and then copy and paste this code into your content. When your potential customer clicks this link, a cookie will be placed. If the customer is eligible to be referred and makes a qualifying purchase, that customer will be bound to your account for 365 days.
Satellite Gamesite System (SGS) -MODERATE
Our Satellite Gamesite System is a powerful content management system that automatically fetches, caches, parses, and presents XML content. This program comes with several stock templates, and you can also create your own. Basic SGS installation and use requires no coding knowledge. For full installation instructions, download the SGS .zip, navigate to the docs folder, and then double click the install.htm file. Please be sure that your hosting service meets the requirements listed in the installation instructions.
RSS Feeds -MODERATE
You can use RSS feeds of Big Fish content on your blog or website. Choose from over 20 RSS feeds, including new releases, top games, and specific genres such as Puzzle and Hidden Object. Build your own aggregator or use a pre-built widget.
XML -EXPERIENCED
Use our XML feeds to build dynamic game websites with up-to-date game content. Our XML feeds contain everything you need to build a custom web presence. For further information on how the XML feeds are constructed, please see the Web Services Documentation .zip file located on the top of the XML tool page.
Reporting to track your referrals and earnings
Our reporting tools help you track how much commission you've earned and how these earnings are coming in. Check out your Reports page for more information.
Earnings Report
Our Earnings Report will show you how much commission you've accrued from your bound customers. You can track this by day, month, or year. https://affiliates.bigfishgames.com/reports/earnings/monthly.php
Customers Reports
Your New Customers Report will show you how many new customers you've acquired. New Customers can be tracked by day, by month, or by year.
https://affiliates.bigfishgames.com/reports/customers/new/monthly.php
Your Net Customers Report will show your new customers less your expired. Expired customers were bound to your account 365 days ago and no longer generate commission for you. This report will show you if your rate of customer acquisition is increasing or decreasing over a specific time period.
https://affiliates.bigfishgames.com/reports/customers/net/monthly.php
Your active customers are the customers that are bound to your account and eligible to yield commissions. Your Active Customers report shows you how many customers you have acquired over time and gives you an overall business picture.
https://affiliates.bigfishgames.com/reports/customers/active/monthly.php
Game Sales Reports
In your Game Sales Report, you can see the top 100 games that have been purchased by your customers. Your Games Report will provide you with game information, genre, platform (PC vs. Mac), the Site the game was purchased on (i.e. US, DE, ES, etc.), Units Sold, First Time Purchase (whether this game was included in the first purchase of a new customer, which tells you whether the game is effective in acquiring new customers), and Total Sales. You can track by day, month, or year.
https://affiliates.bigfishgames.com/reports/games/sales/monthly.php
Campaign Reports
Your Campaign Reports allow you to measure the effectiveness of your individual marketing efforts. You can create your own campaign codes and track the traffic that runs through each code. Our system will show you the top 350 campaigns, and New Customers, Units Sold, and Total Commission for each campaign. You can drill down in each campaign to get more information about the game sales per campaign.