Chris @ Olstrom (.com)

When a client signs up for service without a referral, it’s more profitable. Whatever would have been paid out in incentive pay stays in the company’s pockets.

Affiliate programs provide a fair mechanism for profit-sharing, to the benefit of all. Referrers and the company itself benefit in the most direct sense: revenue; and the benefit extends beyond that. Increased income means more reliability for the users. It facilitates the purchase of new hardware, covers unexpected expenses, and allows for growth benefitting every client, regardless of their involvement in referring new signups.

At EclipseHosters.com, we’re taking that added revenue, and giving it back to the community. Effective immediately, every new client that signs up without a referral will have that referral randomly assigned to someone on the same plan that they are signing up for.

Example

Lisa is looking for hosting, and finds EclipseHosters.com on Google. After reviewing the available options, she picks out a Full plan ($15.00/mo, referal credit of $1.50). Since the referral is not assigned, the system selects someone else with a Full plan, and attributes the credit to Dave. He now earns $1.50 monthly for that referral.

In this example, Dave was not required to do any work. He was rewarded (on an ongoing basis, no less) simply for having chosen EclipseHosters.com as his hosting provider.

That is the EclipseHosters difference.

The topic of copy protection, and how much is too much was raised on Marc’s blog today.

Where is the line drawn, then? He asks about software phoning home, and the sorts of data that are appropriate to report, specifically inquiring about license keys, version reporting, and installation identifiers. Responding to each…

License Keys

A license key would be perfectly acceptable by my standards. It isn’t personally identifiable information that the content owner doesn’t already have. Any information a license key can provide was likely provided in order to get said key, right?

Software Version

A software version is non-intrusive as well, since the same information is reported by most updating systems, to ensure patches get distributed to those who need them, unless the updater just queries the current version number, and compares it locally against your installed version. (On a side note, I would be interested to know how prevalent these methods are.)

Unique Installation Identifiers

A unique installation ID, though… since that information serves to identify the user (or the installation), and isn’t directly provided to the content author, and serves minimal benefit (if any) to the end user… it just feels like data mining.

How to respond in the event of more active installs than issued keys?

Regarding a threshold for disabling license keys, that really depends on how the disabling occurs. If it’s automatic, then it is probably too aggressive to disable the keys for limited apparent piracy. Especially if your software is targeted at a corporate audience. Anything that slams the brakes on productivity is a good reason to start looking for another product.

Track the number of active installs for a given key, yes. Flag the key, absolutely. Disable it… manually?

Even better, locate the contact info for the offending keys, and send a friendly notification to them, offering the purchase of additional keys at a volume discount appropriate to the number of excess installations. This turns piracy into a potential sale.

The majority of this post (excepting the introduction and headings) was originally featured here as a comment on Marc’s Musings.