$7 Script Vs Rap Vs Paypal- Warriors, Please Contribute

Normally, one would try to draw a comparison between two similar objects. When the two things being compared are as dissimilar as RAP and ClickBank, you wind up with a very lop-sided list.

...but here goes.
ClickBank is a service to implement one small part or your sales system, including:

• payment processing
• merchant listing of products (for a fee)
• an affiliate network to promote those products
• up to 75% commissions to affiliates
• payment to the merchant and affiliates on a bi-monthly basis

These services are provided at a cost of $49.95 to the merchant as an "activation fee" for each product listed, plus a per transaction processing fee equivalent to $1.00 PLUS 7.5% of the selling selling price.

RAP is a complete, self-hosted sales system that provides:

• payment processing
• up to 100% commissions to affiliates
• management of discount coupons
• optional split-testing of multiple sales pages per product
• sales page conversion statistics
• management of multiple pre-launch pages
• affiliate management system with:
  • "instant" payment to both merchant, affiliates, and/or JV partners
  • different commission rates for JV Partners
  • optional 2nd tier commission rates
  • optional automatic affiliate/JV optin to any autoresponder service
  • affiliate center with click/sales stats, product commission rates
  • affiliate tools page
• optional support for equity partners (allowing for instant distribution of profits as sales occur)
• complete mailing system with support for HTML or text emails, and support for SMTP mailings
• segmented customer mailing lists (per product, front end sales, and/or oto purchasers only)
• affiliate mailing list (w/ separate mailings for JV partners)
• optional automatic customer opt-in to any autoresponder list
• fraud detection to identify/report fraudulent sales and restrict access to downloads
• protected download pages
• banning of affiliates who have violated your terms
• ...and much more

These features are provided at a one-time cost, that includes a multi-site license, and life-time updates.

To make it easy for affiliates to find/promote your product(s), there are also two free affiliate networks available exclusively for RAP-driven products at iDAVI - THE Digital Product Marketplace and at RAP Bank*Instant Commissions Vault

Rather than collecting fees per transaction, these sites function as super affiliates, recruiting affiliates on your behalf, and providing them a central place to find instant commission products to promote.

Oh... and if you need a longer list of "differences", RAP's unique Add On Architecture allows you to purchase RAP-certified Add Ons (similar to WordPress plug-ins) to extend your RAP sales system with even more functionality.

In short, RAP is a sales/affiliate management system, rather than just a payment processor.

Hope this helps,

Hi Tim,

Because we've been on the market for 4 years, we've been able to identify numerous methods that others try to "game" the system, and refine our fraud detection/control routines, accordingly.

There are a number of things that come into play here. Without disclosing too much:

• affiliates can be forced to register with your affiliate center before promoting
• we use rotating payments, and the merchant is always paid first, so the affiliate doesn't receive any money until the second sale
• we can detect/block sales where the "buyer" has altered the buy button fields before being sent to Paypal
• we have the ability to ban an affiliate

Any chargeback is to the account that was paid. If the affiliate is paid (as would be the case on a 100% commission product), the chargeback is levied against the affiliate's Paypal account.

No. With DigiResults (or any affiliate network), the affiliate has some anonymity, as they are DigiResults' affiliate - not yours. With RAP, you can force them to register with YOUR affiliate program. This puts the effort on them, rather than on you.

You can also ban affiliates, without having to raise a support ticket with a 3rd party (DigiResults, ClickBank, etc). You are in control.

That's certainly a large piece of the puzzle.

RAP Bank is not my service, but yes. You can pay them an upgrade fee to have your products rotated in the featured ads.

The same featured ads are available with iDavi - but there is no upgraded member fee to do so.

BTW - it's not an either/or decision. Both RAP Bank and iDavi are essentially free listing services, so you should list your products in both places.

There is another option too which is something of a hidden gem at RAP Bank, namely, our List-N-Earn service. It enables you to setup your product on your site using either a stand-alone script or a WordPress plugin, offer instant commissions, and list on RAP Bank (or even a WSO). You can either pay a nominal fee per product or create unlimited LnE products for free as one of the many perks of the VendorPlus membership.

HI Christophe,

Actually, RAP has been a pretty powerful affiliate management solution since the day it was first released. We just didn't bother to tell anyone here at the WF about it, right away.

This has just been brought up at the RAP Forum, in the past week. Here's my take:

What this adds in the way of securing your pdf file (stamping with the customer's info), is really very little protection. It might deter someone from sharing the downloaded file, but I seriously doubt it. Let's face it, if a customer's personal ethics don't deter him, what more deterrence is gained by having it "personalized"?

On top of that, it's almost impossible to keep Google from indexing pdf files (let's face it, there's not a brander written - that will brand it AFTER it's been zipped), thereby sharing the actual URL of your download file... with the world!

I've seen one other PDF brander (a WP plugin), that would love you to believe that this is a great benefit, but...
they require that you use their IPN notification script, and that you specify the download URL in the custom field of the Paypal order button.

RAP already uses the custom field of the Paypal order button to pass 12 different variables between your RAP system and Paypal (including some encrypted fields) for the purpose of ensuring that your download page is protected. There is no provision for the addition of the download URL (i.e. the pdf file) in that custom field, and even if we did - it would be too vulnerable. All it would take is a "View Source" on your sales page, to see that URL.

In short, they have addressed ONE need with their Paypal interface, but do not address all of the other info needed to handle accrediting the sale to the affiliate, ensuring against fraudulent transactions, etc.

Their solution may be desirable for someone who is NOT using affiliates, and who has no other download protection or anti-fraud measures in place, but I don't see it being an effective addition (in the way it is currently implemented) to what we already have.

Hope this helps,

Hi Christophe,

The most comprehensive service I've found for stamping a pdf file, involves "wrapping" the pdf inside an .exe file, and providing (separately) a license key for the .exe file.

The .exe file can then "call home" to check that the license key is valid, and verify the IP address of the local machine that is opening the book. Without that last step, anyone wanting to share the file, could just share the license key, as well.

Besides the fact that this method really affords very little deterrence (and virtually no protection), it also requires that your customer be comfortable with downloading an .exe file to his/her local hard drive, and it requires that your customer be online in order to read your pdf file.

Not a very "portable" document format.

If you've seen a more workable solution, I'm all ears... but for a solution to be viable, it must also be acceptable to a vast majority of your customers, in order not to impact sales levels.