LeadDyno, OmniStar OSI Affiliate, and AffiliateWP are affiliate manager programs that integrate with WooCommerce stores. They each have the features a merchant needs to run an affiliate program. So which one is the best?
OmniStar OSI Affiliate is best for complicated products such as those requiring a phone call to close the sale. LeadDyno is better for capturing emails to drive sales.
The Best WooCommerce Affiliate Program for Commodity Merchants
For a commodity business, OmniStar OSI Affiliate has some automation and sales tools that put it slightly ahead of LeadDyno and AffiliateWP. LeadDyno is the best affiliate manager for a merchant who sells products that are more complicated. Potential customers need questions answered and human conversation to be comfortable purchasing the merchant’s product.
Skip the Explanation, Just Take Me to the Affiliate Program Websites
Go to AffiliateWP
Go to LeadDyno Go to OSI Affiliate
The Best WooCommerce Affiliate Program for More Complicated Product Sales
LeadDyno is best for more complicated product sales because it compensates affiliates for driving lead signups. The customer is not ready to purchase the product but would like some questions answered. The affiliate sends the potential customer to a landing page, also called a “lead generation” page. The customer enters email or phone information. The merchant contacts the potential customer to answer questions and potentially close the sale.
LeadDyno, AffiliateWP and OmniStar OSI Affiliate Pricing Comparisons
OSI Affiliate pricing starts at $47/month. The price goes up if the merchant’s affiliates drive more than 25,000 clicks per month.
AffiliateWP pricing starts at $149/year ($12.41/mo.) for 3,000 affiliate clicks per month. More clicks bumps the merchant to $199 or $299 per year pricing ($16.58/mo or $24.90/mo).
LeadDyno pricing starts at $49/month for 3,000 affiliate clicks per month. The bump to 4,500 clicks is $59/month, and 7,500 clicks is $79 per month.
To understand the effect of affiliate click limits, look at a theoretical example. A merchant’s affiliates drive 3,000 clicks to the merchant site during one month. The traffic has a 1% conversion rate, meaning that 1% of those clicks results in a sale, or 30 sales per month.
At a 1% conversion rate, the OSI Affiliate program’s 25,000-click limit would result in 250 sales.
Where is the Merchant’s Store?
LeadDyno, OSI Affiliate and AffiliateWP work with WooCommerce stores. They also work with other ecommerce solutions, but this is an article about WooCommerce, so for the sake of this example, these three solutions assume that the store is a WooCommerce plugin on a self-hosted WordPress website.
How Does the Affiliate Manager Connect to the Merchant’s Store?
LeadDyno and OSI Affiliate are Software as a Service affiliate programs. They are hosted on different websites than the merchant’s store. These affiliate managers come with WordPress plugins that allow the WordPress WooCommerce store to communicate with the affiliate management software on the SaaS sites.
AffiliateWP is a WooCommerce plugin. The affiliate manager (AffiliateWP) communicates with the store (WooCommerce) using WordPress protocols.
How Does the Merchant Access the Affiliate Program Interface?
LeadDyno and OSI Affiliate are Software as a Service (SaaS) affiliate managers. This means that the merchant and publishers log into the LeadDyno.com and osiaffiliate.com affiliate management portals.
The AffiliateWP manager is in the merchant’s WordPress admin area. The merchant logs into the WordPress admin to access affiliate functionality. The affiliate’s logs into a special area on the WordPress front end.
Which Affiliate Managers Include Anti-Fraud Detection?
Affiliate fraud occurs when hackers or dishonest affiliates generate commissions they don’t deserve. For example, a hacker can use a stolen credit card to make a purchase. The hacker gets the product for free (i.e., steals it using a stolen card) and the merchant pays the commission to the hacker as well.
Another trick is to “stuff” web browser cookies to trick the affiliate manager into crediting the affiliate rather than the actual traffic referrer.
Merchants can scan statistics for unusual patterns to find potential fraud. The most obvious of these is repeat purchases from a single IP address. Other patterns include very large orders, orders from foreign countries, and affiliates who generate orders that customers dispute using their credit card company’s resolution service.
AffiliateWP and LeadDyno do not have an automated affiliate detection feature. OSI Affiliate has some fraud detection features, but this is not a robust feature in the system. OSI Affiliate allows the merchant to block suspect IP addresses.
Which Affiliate Managers Reward Affiliates for Recruiting Affiliates?
Rewarding an affiliate for recruiting affiliates is also known as multi-level marketing (MLM). For all of its bad reputation as a pyramid scheme, the practice actually makes sense in online affiliate recruitment.
This is because online affiliate marketing does not require that affiliates bring on new affiliates to be paid. An affiliate can never recruit other affiliates and still enjoy a profitable relationship with the merchant.
The MLM feature allows the merchant to assign a reward commission to the sales the affiliate’s recruit generates. For example, the affiliate makes 10% per sale, and a 1% commission per sale its recruits generate.
LeadDyno, OSI Affiliate and AffiliateWP all have MLM features that reward affiliates for recruiting affiliates.
Which WooCommerce Affiliate Managers Have Currency Switchers?
A currency switcher allows merchants and affiliates to view money in different currencies. A real-time currency switcher calculates exchange rates when switching from one currency to another.
None of the affiliate managers featured in this article has currency switching. LeadDyno, OSI Affiliate and AffiliateWP store money as floating point (decimal) numbers. The merchant sets the currency to display along with money values. The currency is just a monetary symbol such as a dollar sign. The affiliate manager doesn’t perform conversions from one currency to another.
What Payment Methods do these WooCommerce Affiliate Managers Provide?
A payment manager is the mechanism the merchant uses to pay affiliates. The merchant always has the choice of making offline payments via check, bank transfer, or any other arrangement, but these are not recorded in the affiliate manager.
OSI Affiliate and AffiliateWP allow merchants to pay affiliates over PayPal and Stripe.
LeadDyno allows merchants to pay affiliates over PayPal, CoinBase, and as a store credit.
Which WooCommerce Affiliate Programs Allow Merchants to Test During a Free Trial?
LeadDyno, OSI Affiliate and AffiliateWP have 30-day free trials. Credit card is required, and the merchant has to cancel the subscription.
Which Tracking Methods do these WooCommerce Affiliate Programs Use?
Unique URL Codes
LeadDyno, AffiliateWP and OSI Affiliate allow merchants to assign URL tracking codes to affiliates. An affiliate uses that unique code in their links pointing to the merchant’s store. The affiliate manager credits the associated affiliate for sales emanating from that uniquely coded link.
Coupon Codes for Affiliate Customers
LeadDyno, AffiliateWP and OSI Affiliate allow affiliates to create coupon codes. The merchant controls the coupon restrictions. The affiliate gives the unique coupon codes to potential customers. When sales are made using the coupon code the affiliate manager credits the associated affiliate with the sale. The affiliate’s commission is based on the product price reduced by the coupon amount.
Which WooCommerce Affiliate Programs Allow Merchants to Compensate Affiliates for Other Items Besides Sales
Some affiliate programs allow merchants to compensate affiliates for actions other than driving sales.
LeadDyno and AffiliateWP enable merchants to compensate affiliates for leads. These are visitors to the merchant’s site. They enter their contact information into a form to request the merchant contact them. AffiliateWP does not have this feature.
LeadDyno allows the following affiliate compensation, but OSI Affiliate and AffiliateWP do not have these features.
- A “visitor” is an anonymous merchant site visitor.
- A “line-item” is a merchant product for sale.
- A “new customer bounty” is an affiliate compensation for bringing in new customers (as opposed to repeat buyers)
- “Affiliate specific products” are a subset of merchant products for which the affiliate may earn commissions. This means there are non-affiliate products that are excluded from the affiliation and don’t earn the affiliate a commission.