Are you already a member of the Avangate Affiliate Network? Then consider this post as “What’s New” type information. If you aren’t convinced yet, I hope you will become an affiliate after reading this post. :)

The beginning of this long awaited spring of 2010 came with a an important update to our Affiliate system – the new version of the management interface for affiliates. Its aim is to maximize the revenue generating opportunities both for affiliates and software vendors.

Affiliates Save Time and Effort

Enough with the big words – let’s see the highlights of this update:

- redesigned dashboard with essential information at your fingertips, including sales statistics and featured products

If you ever wondered what our team does when it leaves the office and hangs out together for a weekend, well… I have some information for you in this post:). However, I don’t want to just give this away for free, so let’s play a game:

I’ll only show you the pictures from the team-building we’ve been to in the beginning of this month (from our Extravaganza Party) and you must name the persons behind the characters, if you recognize them. Comment with at least 3 correct answers and receive the “Avangate Spring Buddy” title:).

If you win, we will proudly present on our blog, in the Avangate Spring Buddy badge your blog/website and will send you a surprise gift. Ready or not, here are the questions:

I am happy to announce a great update @Avangate: we’ve just launched network cross-selling that allows Avangate software vendors to sell each other’s products, to increase revenues and gain access to extra niches and new or larger markets.

In just a few words, network cross-selling means that all software publishers part of the Avangate network can offer other vendors’ products as cross selling options in their very own shopping cart and get a commission for the sale.

Here’s how a shopping cart would look like:

We identified via our Support center that some people were asking about an unknown “charge” in their Paypal from Avangate. It seems they received a deceitful email trying to trick them into giving away their PayPal information.

The email came from a yahoo.com address acting as the “Fraud Department” of PayPal and contained a false notification that Avangate BV charged their accounts and a link “Click HERE TO REFUND“, leading them to a forged to look like PayPal website.

Phishing Attempt PayPal / Avangate BV

The fake website has already been banned (reported for web forgery).

When you receive PayPal phishing attempt you can report it to spoof@paypal.com and also delete it from your inbox.

To make sure you are never the victim of a phishing attack, always check the URL and the security elements like HTTPS before entering login information to any website.

If you want to further prepare for coping with phishing emails, we recommend reading on the PayPal website about ways to recognize fake emails.

Please comment below if you need more details or advice on this issue.

Here we are, in the end of 2009, patiently waiting for the New Year party and thinking about 2009, about the good and the bad and the next year :). We are all proud to have been able to enrich our software selling platforms with plenty of features, basically meant to help more vendors reach more clients.

And we were very happy to be rated as top eCommerce provider by our clients, in the survey made by Andy Brice.

We are particularly happy with the progress made with the Avangate shopping cart’s conversion rates. Using advanced analytics applications such as Omniture and extensive A/B testing, we obtained control over every tiny detail of the shopping cart – and this flexibility translated into higher conversion rates.

Want to sell software in China?

I bet you do. It’s a multi-billion dollar market (packaged software accounted for US$4.7 billion in 2008) that has seen positive growth even through the recession. Admittedly, there is a software piracy issue that shadows the country, still it’s a huge market and provides sales opportunities, especially in the B2B area.

A good enough reason for Avangate to partner with AliPay, China’s leading online payment service and part of giant Alibaba Group, so Avangate vendors can accept Alipay for China domestic payments in Chinese Renminbi (RMB or CNY).