Joel Spolsky's interview in Founders at work mentions that fogcreek spent time on building out an affiliates program that didn't amount to much.
6 to 12 months from now I would like to know what % of sales for 37 signals comes from this program, and if it was actually worth their time building it.
It only took us about a month to build so we're feeling pretty good about the investment.
We've had an affiliate program for a few years now, but we only paid credit towards your own Basecamp/Backpack account, we didn't pay cash. It's been successful for us so we're bullish about this system.
I'm interesting in seeing how aggressive they are at preventing spammers (and similar) from using their program. If they're not willing to turn away revenue generated by spammers that could be some pretty ugly PR.
Spammers are one worry. They'll get people spamming their affiliate links in all sorts of dodgy places.
Fraud is another! I've been running an affiliate site for some time. Expect many 37Signals blog posts about how to filter out philipinos and indonesians from accessing their apps. It seems like it's a cottage industry over there.
I hope they have good anti-fraud detection systems for their credit card transactions too.
I wonder if it would be smart to build a small product on top of Basecamp or other 37Signals products and collect small revenue from their affiliate program.
A few people who've build products that hook up with Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com/extras) or Backpack or Highrise via our API have a referral link inside their products. I know some of them have generated a lot of affiliate credit that way under the old system.
6 to 12 months from now I would like to know what % of sales for 37 signals comes from this program, and if it was actually worth their time building it.