One of my most successful promotions lately has been Kim Roach’s Traffic Dashboard product. An interesting aspect about promoting it is the fact that it uses Rapid Action Profits for it’s affiliate system. I didn’t know much about RAP previously, but I really liked how Kim was using it for her launch so I decided to do some more research about it.
Rapid Action Profits is basically a complete sales system, and it competes with other popular shopping cart solutions like InfusionSoft, Clickbank and Nanacast. So what does Rapid Action Profits bring to the table?
The first thing I like is – Instant Commissions via Paypal. This is really nice! Don’t you hate the fact that when you promote most affiliate products, it usually takes 30 days or longer to receive payment for your sales? With Rapid Action Profits, you get paid instantly, because the buyer of the product pays you directly via Paypal. This is a great incentive for me, because I can use my sales right away to fund other aspects of my business.
Rapid Action Profits handles this in a pretty unique way. Let’s say you are promoting a product paying 50% commission. The first sale you make will go 100% to the vendor. Then your second sale will go 100% to you, the affiliate. It then continues to alternate in this fashion for each subsequent sale you make.
Using this system provides several advantages. The big thing for me is that it prevents affiliates from buying products using their own link. This is because the first sale always goes 100% to the vendor, plus RAP has a mechanism self purchases as well. This is great for both vendors AND affiliates.
If you promote Clickbank products, you know this is a huge problem. How many Clickbank sales do you think you have lost because someone decided to buy an affiliate product using their own link, even though you were the first to cookie them? I’m guessing A LOT, since it’s so easy and tempting to do.
This system also makes things much easier for the vendor as well. Since they are not paying affiliates directly, they don’t have to deal with cutting checks and sending out 1099s and things like that. They also save on fees as well. Clickbank has an almost 9% processing fee while going through Paypal is about 3% per transaction.
Other Rapid Action Profits Benefits
- Easy Affiliate Management System – Affiliates sign up using their Paypal and they have access to a full featured affiliate area with stats tracking, tools, and banners.
- Easily create One Time Offers (OTOs), Upsells and Downsells – Using Rapid Action Profits, it’s easy to create a complete sales funnel for your products.
- One Year Cookie – This is a great incentive for affiliates to refer visitors to your product as they’ll get credit for any purchases their leads make within a year.
- Give Affiliates credit for backend sales – This is optional, but RAP allows vendors to do this with their products. This is one of the things I talk about in my best affiliate program post.
- RAP Plugins – If you want to expand upon the core Rapid Action Profits system, there are tons of plugins that you can purchase for additional functionality.
- One time price – Unlike InfusionSoft and Nanacast with their monthly fees, Rapid Action Profits can be purchased for a one time price of $197 and you can use it on unlimited domains.
The only downside I see of using Rapid Action Profits is the handling of refunds, since it requires affiliates to pay back customers themselves. So far, while promoting Traffic Dashboard, I’ve luckily only had one refund so far. When that happened, Kim sent me an email telling me which of my sales was requesting a refund. Of course I did, but what happens when you have affiliates that refuse to do so? I’m really not sure what happens there.
All in all, Rapid Action Profits provides many benefits to both Vendors and Affiliates. If you’re a vendor looking for a good shopping cart and affiliate system, then you should definitely give RAP a look. And if you’re an affiliate, don’t be afraid to promote products that are using Rapid Action Profits.
You can find additional RAP products to sell over at RAP Bank.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Josh,
Good review.
To answer your one question…
when an affiliate issues a refund, directly, it’s really no different than if the merchant had made the refund, deducted the sale from the affiliate’s sales total, and then paid reduced commissions for that month. A small price for an affiliate to pay for instant commissions – wouldn’t you say?
If an affiliate ignores the request to refund the customer, the merchant could do the refund if it is a big concern, but… he can also just inform the customer that he/she should file a dispute with Paypal, and send them the affiliate’s Paypal address. After all, it’s the affiliate’s Paypal transaction that is being disputed, and there is NO adverse effect on the merchant’s account (it isn’t even involved in the transaction).
Hope this helps
Thanks for clarifying Sid! Makes sense.
Hello,
I’m looking at RAP and am wondering how it integrates with WP sites.
This tech part confuses me. RAP is a script which runs on html sites, but can also be used to protect WP blogs?
I’m interested in building a few WP sales sites and a couple WP type membership sales sites. Can RAP be integrated in that regard?
Any illumination you could provide is very much appreciated.
Robin
Hi Robin,
The easy answer is a resounding “YES”.
Core RAP handles the most common sales system functions, with optional one-time offers, affiliate management, affiliate center, broadcast mailings (or, if you prefer, interface to your auto-responder service). See Josh’s write-up in the original post, and the sales page features.
By limiting the functionality, we keep the price down.
Then, if you need more (i.e WP integration, membership site, etc.) there are addons that have been certified for use with RAP.
There are two addons that were written specifically to provide for RAP-driven memberships (1 is WordPress based, the other is standard HTML). There are also RAP-certified addons for integration of Wishlist Member and Memberwing (both WP-based membership solutions) with a RAP-driven sales system.
You could go crazy (and broke) implementing all the possible addons – but that’s one of the big pluses. Beyond the pre-requisite need for RAP… there is no dependency between addons.
You only get (and pay for) the addons that meet your needs, so you don’t wind up paying for any features that you don’t need. There’s no “bloat” in the code, or in the cost.
this sounds like what I have been looking for but do you have a team who can set this up for me as I have no tech experience nor do I have the time.
Where can I see a site in action.
is it easy to add pages and to manage themes and styles?