Those who regularly keep an eye on their Big Fish Games’ accounts might have noted that the statistics for July 12, which show their daily income and the quantity of newbie customers, are much lower than usual. As for July 13, there is no statistics at all. However, there is no way to despair and you needn’t try to search any issues on your website.

According to the news-fees of this affiliate program, there are some issues within the system:

KNOWN REPORTING ISSUE

We are currently experience a reporting issue within the affiliate system. Please note this does not impact your earnings.

In fact, this type of issues is rather a rare case for Big Fish Games. Let’s hope that this problem will be solved in the nearest future and won’t have any impact on affiliates’ earnings.

This type of block lets you mark out the best content among the mass of all modern games, and makes the searching of top-rated and high-quality games much more effective. As you can see, it increases the chance of a new purchase, and as a result you will have more customers that will bring you benefits during the whole year and increase your earnings.

If you haven’t dealt with this tool yet, we would like to add that Featured Games XML is a special XML-feed containing 5 best exclusive games which are offered according to Affiliate Program terms. According to Big Fish Games managers’ words, this type of XML involves only the bestseller games. News feed of the Affiliate Program runs on information that “these games are handpicked by us because we know from experience that they sell well”. There is a ring of truth about it as the use of Featured Games XML during several moths shows that visitors prefer to play and purchase the games chosen by Big Fish Games.

You can find the link to your Featured Games XML at your control panel board, Tools > XML. Today this tool is available for all 10 Content-Languages offered by Big Fish Games Affiliate Program. You can get the hot list of bestseller games for PC or MacOS. This XML-feed is updated everyday at 1AM – PST.

As we have already mentioned, Featured Games XML has become much more useful. Now each featured game has a big flash-banner (<hasdwfeature>yes</hasdwfeature>). Links to swf-files of these flash-banners are built by the following template:

http://games.bigfishgames.com/{foldername}/{assetname}_{dwwidth}x{dwheight}.swf

N.B! The {assetname} element can be derived by parsing {foldername} and stripping off the locale and underscore. So if foldername=”en_yard-sale-hidden-treasures-sunnyville”, then assetname=”yard-sale-hidden-treasures-sunnyville”.

By the way, if you don’t like these flash-banners, you can use big promo-pictures instead, which are also available when a game has <hasdwfeature>yes</hasdwfeature>. Links to these promo-pictures are built by the following template:

http://games.bigfishgames.com/{foldername}/{assetname}_{dwwidth}x{dwheight}.jpg

You can find more useful information about different XML-feeds of Big Fish Games Affiliate Program in the Web Services Documentation.

Thus, Big Fish Games gives us a really great tool but its effectiveness depends of our knowledge, experience and enthusiasm. To our mind, the best example of Featured Games XML usage is shown on the main page of BigFishGames. Of course, the developing of this type of promo-block requires some programming skills. Probably you will invent something new and easier.

Those, who deals with BFG Affiliate Program, know that every customer which makes his purchase by affiliate link becomes a child of the affiliate at once and brings it benefits during the whole year. Upon the expiration of one year from the day of starting new BFGAP most of you can see customers drop off, mainly your active customers. This is a result of customers migration from old PNP to the new BFGAP.

During customers migration from the old affiliate program to the new one as the starting point of the binding period they used the customers’ most recent activity time.
For example:

——–Р—————————Р———————————————————–Р—–|migration|
02-03-2009             12-07-2009                                          24-12-2009

So, if your customer makes his last purchase on 24-12-2009, when his is migrated, this very date will be used as a starting of the binding period during of which he will bring his affiliate a benefit. Consequently, on 24-12-2010 this customer loses its active customers status and gets expired customers. You are able to follow all these process in Customer Reports.

Thus, the closer we get to the one-year anniversary of BFGAP, the more customers will be excluded. Another words, the more customers pass to Big Fish Games, the more Big Fish Games will get benefits from them.

The stark realities of life is: you attract a customer, you have been getting benefits from him for a year, but now all benefits will go to Big Fish Games.

I think there is no need to make a mystery of the fact that BigFishGames is the leading casual game portal. Not long ago, in July 2010, BigFishGames announced that  1 billion games had been downloaded from its content. Today BigFishGames is successfully expanding its presence on casual game market launching new portals in 5 different languages – Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, and Swedish.

These five new game portals contains only localized games and provide players with native language support. According to Affiliate News feed, now all partners of BigFishGames’ Affiliate Program are able to attract their users to these new game portals and get sale commissions. But BigFishGames does not hurry to provide its affiliates with game xml feeds in Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, and Swedish.

These new game portals begin their first days (till November, 26) with a great sale – 50% discounts on all games. To draw more clients to BigFishGames’ new game portals, you are able use its banners, which you can find on affiliate news feed .

Halloween is one of the popular holidays in America and Europe. People dressed up as witches, ghosts and goblins, are wandering about the streets. They decorate their houses with funny pumpkins. So, if you decorate your website with different Halloween things, it will attract more visitor as well.

In this connection BigFishGames’ Affiliate Program offers us a very good deal. If you use its special banners, you will not only add much on Halloween mood but have a good chance to attract more customers according to the affiliate program.

BigFishGames offers us The Great Pumpkin Sale. This stock will be actual from Friday, October, 29 to Sunday, October, 31 inclusive. During this period of time all games for PC and Mac will be cost only $4.99 !

If you want to make benefit from this sale, just place this banner on your website with the link to BigFishGames.com . Do not forget to point your affiliate code: http://www.bigfishgames.com?channel=affiliates&identifier=YOUR AFCODE

Trick or Treat!

Unfortunately, our great expectations about new useful statistics still do not come true. It is rather strange that such leader of selling casual games as BigFishGames, which can really show off its rich resources, is unable to provide its affiliates with a fine reporting system.

Not long ago we wrote about bringing into service of Campaign Reports, reports that let us keep track of separate statics of sales for each of several web sites. The theory was so simple that we could not expect so many problems with it. The problems began when in the report itself appeared a series of unplanned campaigns. On the other hand, the campaigns that had to track sales did not appeared at all on the end of the month.

In this connection we had a lot of questions to the support service. To our surprise, the specialists of affiliate program are not able to solve this problem. Instead of it they call for access of affiliate’s control panel. It is not quite clear what for they need this access. As a result, they took away our password, they did not solve the problem and answer our letters only a few days later.

Sadly, one of the greatest affiliate programs on casual games market, which has really great resources, is not able to organize it work in a proper way and solve problems quickly. Another words, BigFishGames, which pretend to be the first among other games affiliate programs, cannot provide their partners with proper reporting system.

For the moment, the affiliates have three new types of reports:

1. Campaign Reports. It’s the most interesting type of reports. Affiliates are able to create their own campaign codes and track the traffic that runs through each. For example, it allows you to keep track of separate statics of sales for each of several web sites. It also give a possibility to track the effectiveness of one or another banner that are at your site. In order to do the Campaign Codes should be implemented on your links:

http://PLACE URL HERE?channel=affiliates&identifier=YOURAFCODE&cid=PLACE THE UNIQUE CID HERE

Draw your attention to some campaign creation rules:

• the Campaign Code (CID) is case sensitive so it’s better to use lower case characters. The campaign name in the reports will be shown just so you spelled it out in the links;
• the system may not recognize special characters in CID’s, so don’t use them;
• CID should not contain more than 45 symbols;
• CID that are not fixed in the link will get into the section “Unknown”;
• Campaign Codes are kept in the cookies until they are substituted or removed by the user;
• Campaign Code should be added to any link that leads to BigFishGames.

You can create as many campaigns as you want but on the page of report will be shown only  100 best compaigns.

You can view statistics of campaigns by days or by months and save the reports’ data as CSV file. Click on the name of campaign in the report and you will able to look through titles of sold games, their genre, a number of purchases and total sales.

2. Game Sales Reports is an information about sold games: their title, genre, quantity, Site game was purchased on (i.e US, DE, ES, etc.).

The report includes 100 best seller games for a certain period of time: day, month or year. Unfortunately, you can’t choose a custom time period. The report can also be export to CSV file.

Analyzing the statistics of this report you will be able to make a clear idea of which games your users are mostly interested in.

3. Customer Reports. These reports give you a possibility to view three types of the information:

• New Customer Report allows you to keep track of how many new buyers were attached to your account;
• Net Customer Report shows a number of new buyers less “expired” buyers. “Expired” buyers were attached to your account during last 365 days but don’t carry you a commission fee anymore.
• Active Customer Report gives an information about active buyers that are attached to your account and carry you a commission fee.

Any of these three types of reports can be organized by days, months or years. They can also be export to CSV file.

BigFishGames.com tops ONE Billion downloads and to celebrate this milestone, Big Fish Games Collection is on SALE for a limited time (Saturday, Sunday and Monday – July 24,25,26). Have your customers choose from our Collections for only $2.99 each!

Coupon Code: ONEBILLION

To  see the PC games available for discount:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/genres/122/felixs-favorites.html?channel=
affiliates&identifier=YOUR AFCODE  (please remember to plug in your AFCODE).

To  see the Mac games available for discount:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/mac/genres/122/felixs-favorites.html?channel=
affiliates&identifier=YOUR AFCODE  (please remember to plug in your AFCODE).

Or you can target the individual games and add your AFCODE.

All regular price games are 40% off on BigFishGames.jp portal for Summer Customer Appreciation.

The following coupon code will officially be valid from July 23 at 12AM to July 27 at 11:59PM (JP Time).

THANKYOU10

This can be used by entering it in the “Have a Coupon Code?” box in the Shopping Cart.

BFG Affiliate Program provides its affiliates with ads in different sizes to advertise this promotion on your website, social media site, and newsletters.
We recommend that you link the graphics to BigFishGames.jp. Please insert your afcode at the end to track your referrals:
http://www.bigfishgames.jp/?channel=affiliates&identifier=YOUR AFCODE

Graphic materials can be found at affiliate program’s news feed.

Take 40% off any 7.99 € game on BigFishGames.de portal to celebrate Summer Festival

The following coupon code will officially be valid from July 21st to July 25th

SOMMER2010

This can be used by entering it in the “Have a Coupon Code?” box in the Shopping Cart.

BFGAP offers ads in different sizes to advertise this promotion on your website, social media site, and newsletters.

We recommend that you link the graphics to BigFishGames.de . Please insert your afcode at the end to track your referrals:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/de?channel=affiliates&identifier=YOUR AFCODE

Inform your users about these discounts, get more customers and earn more commissions!

BigFishGames promotions have already became regular: 4 July, Spring Fever, Easter Sale and others.

This week BigFishGames lets encourage your users to take 40% off all 7.99 € games on BigFishGames.com/ES and BigFishGames.com/FR portals to celebrate Bastille Day and Spain’s World Cup Victory.

The following coupons codes will officially be valid from July 14th to Sunday July 18th:

For the BigFishGames.com/ES site please use CAMPEONES ;

For the BigFishGames.com/FR site please use 14JUILLET .

These can be used by entering them in the “Have a Coupon Code?” box in the Shopping Cart.

BigFishGames also offer ads in different sizes to advertise this promotion on your website, social media site, and newsletters.

We recommend that you link the graphics to BigFishGames.com/es or BigFishGames/fr – please insert your afcode at the end to track your referrals:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/es?channel=affiliates&identifier=YOUR AFCODE
http://www.bigfishgames.com/fr?channel=affiliates&identifier=YOUR AFCODE

Banners can be found in BFGAP news feed.

Encourage your visitors to take advantage of this discount at BigFishGames.com. They only need to enter the coupon JULY4THSALE in the “Have a Coupon Code?” box in the Shopping Cart.

The promotion starts on Friday, July 2, at 00:01 AM PST and runs through Monday, July, 4, 11:59 PM PST. The offer applies only to BigFishGames English site. Make sure to remove the graphics at or before Monday midnight when the promotion expires.

Unfortunately BigFishGames doesn’t care about its affiliates and does not offer any promo materials.