Affiliate Link 1.9 Administrator Reference

Contents

Overview

About Your Affiliate Link Account

Thank you for choosing Affiliate Link affiliate program management and tracking software! You've made an excellent choice! Affiliate Link software provides the reliability, features and capabilities that you need to make your affiliate program a substantial part of the income generated for your business.

When you ordered Affiliate Link software, a space was created for you on our servers and given an account name that you chose. Your tracking software is accessed from this server space, or account.

When your account set up was completed on our end, an important email was sent that we call the 'Welcome!' email.

Affiliate Link for your account includes:

Contact Us:

We are ready and willing to assist you in a timely manner with any questions you may have about your Affiliate Link account and/or your relationship with our company.

Our contact information is here, as well as on our website for your convenience:

Thank you for doing business with us!

About Affiliates

Affiliate Link software automates the sign-up procedure and provides affiliates with a unique ID and special link that we call an 'Affiliate Link'. Using this link, they'll advertise your site and send their visitors so that they may earn commissions for:

When an affiliate refers traffic to your site, that traffic must 'Click through' an affiliate's link that has been assigned by the software in order for the tracking process to begin. After this has occurred, Affiliate Link places a cookie in the visitor's browser. This is what we use to determine which affiliate's link, if any; a visitor has followed to get to your site.

Affiliate Link software is 'two tier' by default, but can easily be changed in the 'Options' menu to support a singe tier or three tier program. Affiliate Link supports up to three tiers of tracking only.

2nd and 3rd Tier Affiliates

Like any other affiliate, 2nd and 3rd Tier affiliates are automatically assigned a unique ID and affiliate link, and must complete the usual sign up process.

If your program is set to 'two tier', Affiliate Link will automatically look for a referring affiliate ID when the affiliate signs up, and will assign the correct 'Parent ID' (the ID of the affiliate that referred him to your program), for the second-tier affiliate.

If your program is set to 'three tier', Affiliate Link will automatically look for a referring affiliate ID when the affiliate signs up, and will assign the correct 'Parent ID' (the ID of the affiliate that referred him to your program).

As an administrator, you can add a new affiliate manually in the 'Affiliates' area of the Administrative panel, and place the referring affiliate ID into the parent ID box to create sub-affiliate relationships.

A description of one, two and three tier programs:

1-tier:

An affiliate 'A' joins your program,

refers visitors to your site via his affiliate link, and earns commissions for sales or some other action. If he refers affiliates to join your program, they will not be recognized by Affiliate Link.

In a one tier program, one commission per order is rewarded to one affiliate.

2-tier:

An affiliate 'A' joins your program, refers visitors to your site via his affiliate link, and earns commissions for sales or some other action. A visitor that he has referred joins your program. He is now affiliate 'A's sub-affiliate (affiliate 'B') because he's joined your program AFTER coming to your site through 'A's affiliate link.

In a two tier program, a commission from the same order may be rewarded to two affiliates.

3-tier:

An affiliate 'A' joins your program, refers visitors to your site via his affiliate link, and earns commissions for sales or some other action.

A visitor referred by affiliate 'A' joins your program. He becomes an affiliate 'B' and is now 'A's sub-affiliate because he's joined your program AFTER coming to your site via 'A's affiliate link. A visitor referred by affiliate 'B' also joins your program. He becomes an affiliate 'C' and is now 'A's and 'B's sub affiliate because he joined your program AFTER coming to your site via 'B's affiliate link and 'B' is a sub-affiliate of 'A'.

In a three tier program, a commission from the same order may be rewarded to three affiliates.

About Affiliate Sign up

Make a clear description of requirements your affiliate must satisfy.

The course and scope of your relationship with affiliates should be outlined specifically in an Affiliate Agreement. An agreement is provided for you in the 'Templates' section of Affiliate Link. You should modify this agreement to meet your needs. The Agreement will appear on the 'sign up' form for your program, and must be read, understood and accepted by any participants.

On your website, create a dedicated page to address affiliate issues and questions. (A Template Affiliate FAQ and NO SPAM policy are provided for you in the QuickStart.pdf. You'll find the link to your QuickStart.pdf in the 'Welcome!' Email you received when your account was created.)

Where your web page will say 'Click here to join my affiliate program!', add a link to the automatic affiliate sign up page at:

http://

Let affiliates sign up themselves using this page.

Important!

Options for Affiliate Sign Up:

Accept affiliates automatically:
After the sign up form is submitted, the affiliate will see a confirmation page, and then will receive an email notification that includes his unique ID, his affiliate link, and instructions to access the affiliate login area.
Require Signups Confirmation:
After the sign up form is submitted, the affiliate will see a confirmation page with instructions to check his email. He will receive an email with a unique confirmation link inside that he must click before he is accepted into your program. After the confirmation link is clicked, he will receive an email notification that includes his unique ID, his affiliate link and instructions to access the affiliate login area.
Defer Signups:
After the sign up form is submitted, the affiliate will see a notification page with a unique request ID and receive an email notification with the request ID and text that indicates 'Your request is being carefully reviewed'. This person will never become an affiliate of your program until you login, search for 'pending' affiliates, review them, and accept or decline their admission into your program. If you accept, the affiliate will be sent an email notification of acceptance that will include his unique ID, his affiliate link, and instructions to access the affiliate login area. If he is declined, he will receive an email saying that you were unable to accept him into your program at this time.

How Affiliate Link handles duplicate sign ups:

If an affiliate candidate submits the signup form from the same computer more than once in a certain period of time, it is considered a duplicate submission and a warning message is displayed. No new affiliate account is created. You can change the duplicate signup blocking period (or even disable this feature) by adjusting the Signup Persistence option in the options menu of the Administrative panel.

Important!

About Clickthroughs

A clickthrough is made when a visitor comes to your site from an affiliate's site. It is a very important action in the affiliate tracking process and most affiliate tracking is based on the clickthrough concept.

In order to get rewarded, affiliates should refer visitors to your site. Then, the referred visitor (hopefully) will perform some commissionable action on your website, like purchasing your products or services, joining your membership program, subscribing to online resources etc. Affiliate Link takes care of rewarding commissions to affiliates for those activities, but in order to do that, Affiliate Link must know that a visitor was referred by an affiliate. This information is created and stored when a visitor performs a clickthrough. Without that information, it is impossible to tell ordinary visitors from those referred by affiliates.

You may or may not reward affiliates for clickthroughs (read more about clickthrough commissions), but in either case, these steps must be done for Affiliate Link to perform correctly:

An affiliate refers visitors to your site using a special URL called an 'affiliate link'. This link is assigned to each affiliate after completing the sign up process, or banners may be obtained in the affiliate login area that are pre-coded with his unique affiliate link.

Important!

Notes

  1. Sometimes it is impossible to use cookies due to legal or technological restrictions. In such cases, Affiliate Link may be adjusted to perform affiliate tracking without cookies. Read more about this here. Please contact technical support to evaluate the possibility for successful cookie-less tracking, in your particular case.
  2. Please also note that it's not uncommon for people to have problems when testing Affiliate Link software to see if clickthroughs are being properly recorded. This is due to built-in anti-fraud features which block duplicate clicks from the same host. Don't worry, it's still logging clicks -- it's just doing so in a way that protects you from any cheating.

Clickthrough Tracking

A basic illustration of how Affiliate link most commonly handles sales and clickthrough tracking:


Affiliate's link
under banner 		— Visitor clicks —> Click is
logged [1] 		— Visitor is sent —>
to your site 		Your
Site 		Visitor negotiates
— shopping cart —>
or cc processor 		Order
Placed[2] 		—> Order is
logged [3]


Notes

  1. A visitor must "click through" an affiliate's link, which is assigned to them by the software, in order for the tracking process to begin. After this has occured our software, http:// script, places a cookie on the visitor's browser; this is what we use to determine which affiliate's link, if any, a visitor has followed to get to your site.
  2. It's almost always best if logging does not come into the picture until an order has been confirmed; however, if this is not possible, you can also either decide on the status of the order at the time a sale takes place, and/or choose to log only orders which send a special parameter to http:// .
    (This is explained in more detail below.)
  3. Order logging is handled by http:// . Basically, http:// looks for the cookie placed by http:// , and if it finds that the visitor has indeed been referred by an affiliate, records the sale amount, and calculates the affiliate's due commission.

    From this point, you may either:

    1. Display a receipt, or "thank you" page to your customer, in which case http:// will be embedded in the HTML as a 1x1 transparent image, invisible and harmless to your page's layout.
    2. Or you may choose to redirect the visitor to a page, site or script of your choosing, using the redirect parameter.

    How exactly the logging is handled depends on how it's called. Click here for a far more detailed explanation.

Clickthrough tracking is performed by an Affiliate Link site entrance script (that's a more technical name for your affiliate's links). These links are unique to your program, at: http://

In order to perform affiliate tracking correctly, all affiliates' links will point to this script. It accepts various parameters to adjust processing and perform tracking actions. (That means that you can add different parameters to the affiliate links to gather other pieces of information that you may need)

Important!

For Affiliate Link

The standard way to use the site entrance script is to provide the affiliate ID# as a single parameter to it, like this:

http:///AFFILIATE_ID

Where AFFILIATE_ID is substituted with the actual Affiliate ID#. For example, if the affiliate ID# is 4 then the link for this affiliate would be

http:///4

When this link is clicked, the system redirects visitors to the default location of your site. See the 'options' menu in the Administrative Panel to set 'Location'.

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Advanced Syntax of http:// Calling Parameters

http:// script supports traditional name=value parameters as opposed to single affiliate ID# parameter described above. This is useful if you want to pass more than one parameter or if you want to have finer control over affiliates entrance.

aid
Use mandatory aid parameter to set affiliate ID#. Example: ?aid=28 http://?aid=28 where 28 refers to affiliate with ID #28. Alternative way of passing this parameter is adding /a/AFFILIATE_ID as show in example below for affiliate #28:
http:///28
mid
If your affiliates are running membership programs at their sites and want to track how much each member of their site spends on your site, they may set unique member ID# as optional mid parameter to distinguish members from each other. Affiliate Link will track sales by member statistics and display it in Sales by Member affiliate report section (if it's enabled by corresponding report option). mid should be unique for each member of one affiliate (but it is allowed to have members with the same member ID# if they belong to different affiliates). mid must not contain spaces and must be 25 characters maximum. Alternatively, you can pass mid parameter as shown in example below for affiliate # 28 and member id member14
http:///28/m/member14
Please read "Tracking Sales by Members" chapter for application example of mid parameter.
redirect
To redirect visitors to specific location other than default location set by Location option, use redirect parameter with value set to URL-encoded target location. This feature works only if Strict Entrance Mode option is disabled. Example: affiliate #135 wants to redirect visitors to trackingsoft.com. To implement this, http:// must be called with additional 'redirect' parameter:
http:///135?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Ftrackinsoft.com
ent
Sometimes it impossible to use redirect parameter described above because of limitations for URL length to be submitted to search engine, email message and so on. Explicit redirection via redirect tends to produce long URLs because target URL may be long and URL-encoding makes it even longer. To solve this problem, Affiliate Link allows admin to specify a set of custom entrances and assigns unique number to each of them. To redirect visitor to one of those predefined entrances, pass entrance number as ent parameter. This produces short entrance URLs and works even if Strict Entrance Mode option is on.
You can also pass ent parameter another way, as shown in example below for entrance #3 and affiliate id #28
http:///28/e/3

Important

Notes

Tracking Sales by Members

Let's say you have an affiliate that has a membership site. He is advertising your products to his members, of course, using his affiliate link. In reports, the affiliate is able to see total sales that result from his efforts. If he would like to see which MEMBER is responsible for the most sales, you can add a member id parameter to his affiliate link, and this information will be reported in the 'Sales by Members' report. (Make sure you make this report available by checking the 'Sales by Members' box in the 'options' menu of the Administrative panel). Adding this parameter simply lets your affiliate distinguish his members from one another.

Your affiliate can also make use of this parameter if he is using the same banner to advertise in several different places. For example: to an email list, on his website, and on a search engine. By adding the member id parameter, he can tell which advertising generated the most sales or clickthrough results, even though he's using the same banner.

To add the Member ID Parameter:

  1. You'll need a valid (correctly formatted) tracking url for the affiliate. Get one in the Entrances Section of Affiliate link. Login to your Administrative Panel, and choose 'Entrances' from the Main Menu. If you do not have any entrances created, create one now for the default location for your program. To see instructions about creating entrances, click here.
  2. After you've created the entrance, at the bottom of the entrances page, 'Get Affiliate Entrances' for your affiliate with the membership program.
  3. Affiliate Link will generate a tracking url for your affiliate that is correctly formatted, like this:
    http:///2/e/1

    This tracking url is for Affiliate #2 and Entrance #1. Your numbers will be different for different affiliates and entrances.

  4. Copy and paste the entrance url to Notepad, Word, to an email: anywhere that you can make changes will do.

    Then, change this: http:///2/e/1

    To this: http:///2/e/1/m/member1

    The only thing that has changed is that '/m/member1' has been appended to the url.

    You can use any string that you'd like, but they must be unique for each member ID, and the member ID must be appended in the correct format! Like this:

    http:///2/e/1/m/mm1

    http:///2/e/1/m/mm2

    http:///2/e/1/m/mm3

    http:///2/e/1/m/mm4

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Sales Tracking and Integration

Important!

E-Commerce integration:

This is when our programmers make your e-commerce software (shopping cart/cc processor) work together with Affiliate Link to track and report information about your sales/orders. Without integration, Affiliate Link could tell you that any affiliate has sent a visitor to your website (clickthrough), but could not tell you if that visitor purchased, or attribute the sale to any affiliate. Therefore, you have e-commerce integration with Affiliate Link if you are rewarding commissions for sales.

Most on-line shopping carts and order processing applications have a page that appears immediately after the order processing is successfully completed. This page usually includes something like "thank you for purchasing" so we will refer to this page as the "thank you" page.

Affiliate Link needs to be notified when the order is completed so that the order can be logged, and a commission can be rewarded. To get and send this information to Affiliate Link, a small snippet of HTML code is placed on the "thank you" page (this is sometimes called "pixel tracking"):

<img src="http://?amount=ORDER_AMOUNT;orderid=ORDER_ID" width="1" height="1" />

Where ORDER_AMOUNT is populated with order amount and ORDER_ID with its unique number. This information is sent from your shopping cart or cc processor. The snippet of html code will 'look' for a variable to be passed from your shopping cart that represents the real order amount.

Note

Testing your E-Commerce Integration

In order to test your integration with Affiliate Link, you'll need to follow these few simple steps. Please see below for notes about repetitive tests.

  1. Create an Affiliate: First, you'll need to create an affiliate within your program. There are two methods which you may use in order to accomplish this: The first is by signing up in the exact way which an affiliate would - by going to your Signup URL given to you in the Welcome! e-mail that was sent to you when your account was created, and filling out the form there. This will provide you with an affiliate ID, linking code, and a good idea of what your affiliates will see when they sign up.
    Alternatively, you may log into your Admin Panel, and use it's built-in interface to create a test affiliate. For instructions on this second method, please click here.
    Note: you'll only need to follow this particular step once, for your first test.
  2. Clicking Through: Place the affiliate link for the affiliate you created directly into your web browser's location bar, or create a small HTML page with the linking code provided on that page. This should take you to your website.
  3. Make a purchase: Place an order with your shopping cart / credit card processor as a normal customer would. Depending on which e-commerce solution you're using, there may or may not be a test mode to use, which does not actually bill for a card for transactions.
  4. Check the Orders: Log back into (or leave a separate window logged into) your admin panel, and click on "Orders". Enter your Affiliate ID (or, if you've made multiple test orders, you may wish to search by "OrderID"), and click "List Orders". If your transaction appears in the screen that immediately follows, then the test transaction has been successful! Make sure that the commission assigned to an affiliate is correct, according to the desired commission structure.

These steps should be followed precisely for each and every test order made to Affiliate Link, else our anti-fraud features may create incorrect or undesired results.

Clear your Cookie File: By default, Affiliate Link uses cookies in order to track affiliate sales, signups, and clickthroughs. There are many instances where the software will either ignore an instance, or warn of duplicate submissions if it detects a cookie which it has placed from an earlier session. It may be necessary to restart your browser for this to take effect.

Clear your Browser's Disk Cache: Often, if you're making multiple changes to a site, you can wind up loading old data which is outdated. For some browsers, you can simply hold your shift key while clicking the reload button; however it is safest to clear your cache between each test, to avoid sending or receiving out of date information.

Form Integration:

This is when information about form submissions that occur on your website is logged by Affiliate Link, instead of sales. Your website may focus on obtaining qualified lead information that is submitted to a form. Your goal for affiliates would then be to generate as many qualified leads as possible, in return for a commission.

Another kind of form integration will allow us to pass information about the affiliate that referred the order to you via email. For example, if you receive orders via email that are not processed online in real time, you would need to know who referred the order, along with any other order information. You would simply login to Affiliate Link and add the order information manually to track and report sales for affiliates.

Integration of your tracking account with form submission is very similar to e-commerce integration explained about. The only differenece in tracking code would be absence of amount parameter:

<img src="http://?orderid=SUBMISSION_ID" width="1" height="1" />

Where SUBMISSION_ID should be replaced with unique string each time form is submitted. It can be subscriber id assigned by your form submission processing script or subscriber email address.

Important!

Admin Interface

Affiliate Management

An affiliate is a person that partners with your business, and refers customers to that business. On the Internet, this is typically accomplished using hyperlinks, or references to other sites. These are often simply called "links" We call them 'affiliate links', ergo, the name of our software. The affiliate can place a link to your site, effectively advertising your business from their own website. When a visitor clicks on this link, and follows it to your business' site - he or she has now been referred - this is known as a "click through".

Finally, if and when the visitor decides to buy something, submit their information to your form, join your affiliate program, or some other action that you desire, the affiliate may be assigned a reward, either a fixed amount (say, $2 per lead or order), or based upon a percentage of the sale (e.g., 5%).

Affiliates in your program are handled in the Affiliate Management area of Affiliate Link.

To enter affiliate management panel, from the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Affiliates'.

In this area you are able to:
Search, List, Add, Remove, Approve (confirm) pending affiliates, and email all affiliates, a single affiliate or categories of affiliates.

Options

Setting options for your program will be one of the most important things you will do. Literally every aspect of how Affiliate Link software will manage your affiliate program information is decided by adjusting settings in the 'Options' area. Affiliate Link has many options, divided into five groups:

These groups themselves are divided by two modes, Advanced and Simple. In order to access an option that's marked as "[advanced view]", you'll need to click '[Switch to Advanced Mode]', at the top of your options menu. If you'd like to switch back to simple mode, just click on '[Switch to Simple Mode]'.

To enter the 'Options' area, choose 'Options' from the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel.

General Settings

Administrator Email
The email adtress of the Affiliate Link administrator or Affiliate Program Manager. The email adtress you enter here will be included in automatic email notifications generated by Affiliate Link, including affiliate sign up information, notice of affiliate edits, and is the email adtress that affiliates will access for the 'email administrator' feature, available in the affiliate login area.
Site Name
The name of your site (not the URL). The name you enter here will be the 'name' for your program. Your program name is included automatically in the email correspondence received by affiliates, will be visible in the 'instructions' for affiliates when they login, and will be inlcuded on the sign up form for your program.
Location
This is the URL of the webpage where ALL affiliate links will redirect their visitors by default. If you'd like for affiliates to send visitors to any other pages of your site (or to another domain for your business)simply create an 'entrance' with Affiliate Link in the 'entrances' section.
Default Language [advanced view]
By default, the system uses templates for the language selected here. However, each affiliate has the option to change their viewed language from within their affiliate management panel.
Currency Symbol
The symbol or short name of the currency you operate in.
Currency Decimals [advanced view]
Number of digits after the decimal point in printed currency values.
Warning: If you've had integration, think twice before changing this. Default value is 2 and it should be acceptable in most cases.
Calculation Precision [advanced view]
Number of decimal digits used for internal calculations.
Warning: Think twice before changing this. Default value is equal to Currency Decimals setting but not less than 2 and it should be acceptable in most cases. Change this only if you are going to credit affiliates with very small commissions, such as 1% of .01 worth sales.

Note!

Admin Inactivity auto-logout [advanced view]
Auto-logout period, minutes (1-60). If there is no admin activity within this given period of time, Affiliate Link will ask you to login again for increased security.
Allow Secondary Administrator [advanced view]
If turned on (checked) the system allows a secondary (read-only) administrator who can read data but cannot modify it. Use secondary adminstrator user name and secondary adminstrator password fields below to setup this administrator.
Secondary Administrator User Name (Login) [advanced view]
User name which the secondary administrator must use to login into the system.
Secondary Administrator Password [advanced view]
This is where you change the password, which the secondary administrator must use to login into the system.
Custom Top Banner Location [advanced view]
This is where you will enter the URL of the banner that you'd like to use in the Affiliate Link interface, instead of our default banner.
Custom Style Sheet (CSS) Location [advanced view]
Location (url) of the custom cascading style sheet (CSS) to use instead of Affiliate Link's default one. Use this to change fonts and colors in the Affiliate Link interface. Please specify an absolute URL starting with http://

Affiliate Signup

Require Signups Confirmation (via email)
If you check the box to 'turn on' this option, Affiliate Link will send a confirmation email to each affiliate candidate and will require them to follow a link in that email before they can be recognized as an affiliate of your program. Otherwise (not checked) Affiliate Link will always process signups directly.
Defer Signups
Turn this option on by checking the box if you'd like to approve affiliates, before they are accepted into your program. With this option turned on, Affiliate Link will assign a 'pending affiliate' ID to the potential affiliate. You may accept or decline this affiliate based on your own criteria. Not checked, Affiliate Link will accept signups into your program automatically.
Signup Persistence [advanced view]
The number of days the last signup is kept in the memory of the visitor's browser (cookies) after he signs up. Within this period new signups will not be accepted. Set this value to 0 (zero) if you want to block duplicate signups in the same browser session only. Set this value to single dash '-' (without quotes) if you want to disable this feature completely.
Company is Required
If turned on affiliates must fill in 'Company' field in the signup form.
Block Duplicate Emails [advanced view]
If turned on (checked) any new affiliate won't be allowed to signup if his email address is already used by another affiliate.
Custom Fields (#1, #2 #3, #4) [advanced view]
Use these four 'Custom fields' to ask for or require specific information from potential affiliates. These fields, if used, will appear on your sign up form. They will be reported to you when the affiliate signs up via e-mail, as well as listed in the affiliate search section of the admin panel. Custom fields that say 'do not use' will not appear on your sign up form.
Max Categories per Affiliate
Maximum number of categories that an affiliate is allowed to select, if categories have been created.

Affiliate Tools

Allow Affiliates to Unsubscribe [advanced view]
If enabled (checked) affiliates will be able to unsubscribe themselves from your affiliate program via their affiliate stats panel.
Affiliate Editing Options [advanced view]
Contains several on/off items. If enabled, affiliates will be able to edit the respective item from their affiliate panel.
Notify Admin on Affiliate's Editing [advanced view]
If turned on every change that affiliates make in their account data will be emailed to the program admin.
Notify Affiliates on Editing [advanced view]
If turned on every change that affiliates make in their data will be emailed to them.
Report Options
Contains several suboptions. If any suboption is turned on, affiliate's detailed report will include the corresponding section.

Note!

3rd Tier Stats
If enabled, the affiliates' statistics panel will display sections for a 3rd tier of affiliate tracking. This should probably be turned off unless you have the tracking tiers option above set to '3'.
Emails Sent
If turned on, Affiliate Link displays the list of paid emails sent on behalf of an affiliate, i.e. if the affiliate is advertiser. For each paid email the number of clicks made will be displayed. You may want to enable this only if your affiliate program utilizes paid email ads commissions, and some of your affiliates are advertisers.
Emails Read
If turned on, Affiliate Link will display the number of paid email ads the affiliate has clicked on, and any commission earned.
Emails Read by Sub-Affiliates
If turned on, Affiliate Link displays for each sub-affiliate the number of paid email ads the "child" has clicked on, and "parent" commission earned. Turn it off to avoid confusing affiliates if you do not use 2nd tier tracking.
Emails by Referred Advertiser
If turned on, displays for each advertiser referred by affiliate the number of paid email ads the "child" has sent, and 2nd Tier Email Ad Referral commission earned.

Note!

  • You may want to enable this only if your affiliate program utilizes paid email ads commissions, uses 2nd tier tracking and some of your affiliates are advertisers.
Sub-Affiliates Signups
If turned on, displays the list of sub-affiliate's sign ups with commission earned. You may want to enable this only if 2nd Tier Per Signup Commission is non-zero.
ClickThroughs
If turned on, displays the number of clickthroughs with commission earned. You may want to enable this only if 1st Tier Per Click Commission is non-zero.
ClickThroughs by Sub-Affiliates
If turned on, displays the list of sub-affiliates with the number of clickthroughs and commission earned for each sub-affiliate. You may want to enable this only if 2nd Tier Per Click Commission is non-zero.
Sales
If turned on, displays the list of the orders referred by affiliate with Order ID#, amount and commission for each order. You may want to enable this only if you reward affiliates for sales and 1st Tier Per Sale Commission is non-zero.
Sales by Sub-Affiliates
If turned on, displays the list of sub-affiliates with the number of orders, total sales amount and commission earned for each sub-affiliate. You may want to enable this only if 2ndTier Per Sale Commission is non-zero.
Sales by Members
If turned on, displays the list of members with total amount of sales for each member. You may want to enable this only if your affiliates are running membership programs at their sites and want to track how much each member of their site spends on your site.
Grand Totals
If turned on, displays the total amount of commission earned by affiliate, including even those commissions that aren't displayed in detailed sections above.
Affiliate Inactivity auto-logout [advanced view]
Auto-logout period, minutes (1-60). If there was no affiliate activity within given period of time since the page of affiliate interface had been loaded, the system will ask affiliate to relogin (increases security).

Clickthrough Tracking

Persistence
The number of days the affiliate ID is kept in the memory of the visitor's browser (cookies) after visitor follows the link from the affiliate site. Once this period has expired the orders placed by the visitor will no longer be bound to any affiliate. Set this value to 0 (zero) if you want to reward affiliates for only the orders placed during the initial visit when the visitor first followed the link from the affiliate's site. Note: each time the visitor follows the link from the same affiliate's site or from another affiliate site the "timer" will reset and the Affiliate ID will be updated.
Clickthrough Persistence [advanced view]
The number of days the last clickthrough is kept in the memory of the visitor's browser (cookies) after visitor follows the link from the affiliate's site. Within this period new clickthroughs will not be logged and commission for them will not be calculated. Set this value to 0 (zero) if you want to block duplicate clickthroughs in the same browser session only. Set this value to single dash '-' (without quotes) if you want to disable this feature completely.
Block ClickThroughs from unknown affiliates
If turned on, the clickthroughs from unknown affiliates will not go through and a warning page will appear instead. Either way this page will include a standard link to the URL set in the Location option.
Strict Clickthrough Mode [advanced view]
If turned on, Affiliate Link will accept to log clickthroughs only if the referring page URL is listed in the Allowed Clickthrough Referring Pages option, otherwise it will always accept to log clickthroughs.
Allowed Clickthrough Referring Pages [advanced view]
If Strict Clickthrough Mode is turned on, Affiliate Link will log clicks only from the pages with URLs that begin with one of the paths listed here. Put each path on separate line or delimit paths with semicolon (;). Every path must begin with http:// or https://. You can put as many paths as required.
Strict Entrance Mode [advanced view]
If turned on Affiliate Link will always redirect visitors coming from the affiliates' sites to the default entrance page (see the Location option), otherwise it will redirect to the entrance page that the affiliates set, or the default one if no preferred page is chosen.
Forward Clickthrough Parameters [advanced view]
If turned on (checked), Affiliate Link will forward all additional parameters received by clickthrough processing script to the target URL by appending them to the URL. Warning: Think twice before changing this option, it may break clickthrough processing queue.

Sales Tracking

Default Status for New Orders
If default status is "pending", new orders are deferred and they aren't displayed in report until confirmed. To appear in affiliate and admin reports and calculate commissions, these orders should be confirmed by admin via Orders panel.
Allow a Different Order Status [advanced view]
If enabled (checked), order status may be specified via parameter (i.e. status=pending or status=approved) and passed to the order logging script.
Log Unreferred Orders
If turned on, even the orders not referred by any affiliate will be logged. For better performance it's recommended to set this option off.
Block Duplicate Orders with Same ID [advanced view]
If turned on, orders with an Order ID that was used for any previous order will not be logged. It is recommended to turn this option on if your shopping cart provides unique order IDs.
Order Log Redirection [advanced view]
If turned on, Affiliate Link redirects order logging request instead of displaying transparent 1x1 image. This redirection behavior is required for some online billing systems, such as Netbilling.com. Warning: Think twice before changing this option, it may break order processing queue.
Order Log Redirection URL [advanced view]
The URL where order logging request is redirected if the Order Log Redirection option above is turned on.
Forward Order Log Parameters on Redirection [advanced view]
If turned on (checked), Affiliate Link will forward all parameters received by the order logging script to the order log redirection URL by appending them to the URL. Warning: Think twice before changing this option, it may break order processing queue.
Order Recipient Email
The email address(es) that will receive Order Notifications. If empty, Affiliate Link will send these notifications to the Administrator email address instead. You may enter more than one address here, separating them with commas (,).
Strict Log Mode [advanced view]
If turned on, Affiliate Link will only log orders if the orders page URL or the referring page URL is listed in the Allowed Order Referring Pages option.
Allowed Order Referring Pages [advanced view]
If Strict Log Mode is turned on, Affiliate Link will log orders only from the pages with URLs that begin with one of the paths listed here. Put each path on separate line or delimit paths with semicolon (;). Every path must begin with http:// or https://. You can put as many paths as required.
Order Log Filter Param [advanced view]
If set, only orders with this parameter having one of given values (specified in Order Log Filter Values) will be logged.
Order Log Filter Values [advanced view]
If "Order Log Filter Param" is set, Affiliate Link will log orders only with that param having one of the values specified here. Put each value on separate line or delimit them with semicolon (;). You can put as many values as required.
Order Notification to Admin
If turned on, you will be notified via email each time a new order is logged.
Order Notification to Affiliates
If turned on, the referring Affiliate (if any) will be notified via email each time a new order is logged.
Allow Online Status Update [advanced view]
If turned on (checked), Affiliate Link will allow you to change the order status by calling the status.cgi script from another system. This requires that calling system URL (the page which refers to status.cgi) is listed in the allowed online status update pages box below.
Allowed Online Status Update Pages [advanced view]
If Allow Online Status Update is turned on, Affiliate Link will update order status only if called from pages with URLs that begin from one of the paths listed here. Put each path on separate line or delimit paths with semicolon (;). Every path must begin with http:// or https://. You can put as many paths as required.

Commission Settings

When you adjust commissions' settings in Affiliate Link, you are deciding the amount that an affiliate will be rewarded for a commissionable action, like a sale, order or completed lead form. Affiliate Link will assign your commission setting to affiliates when they are added to your program by submitting the sign up form, or when you ad an affiliate manually.

When you access the Commissions Settings menu of Affiliate Link and adjust the commissions, these settings are applied to your entire program. You may adjust individual affiliate commissions so that they are different than the commissions for the rest of your program by editing the individual affiliate's information. For instructions about editing an affiliate's individual information, click here.

Important!

Settings for 1st , 2nd and 3rd tiers:
Per Sale Commission (%):
Set this commission to reward a percentage of the sales/order amount.
The percentage of the order you want to pay to the affiliate whose site the buyer came from (1st Tier affiliate) each time a visitor makes a purchase on your site. Commission % is calculated from sale/order amount logged by Affiliate Link software. Choose to reward % of the sale commissions by selecting this option from the drop down box, where prompted in the 'Commissions Settings' menu.

Note!

  • If your shopping cart or cc processor does not provide 'Subtotal' (before taxes, shipping, etc) and only provides 'Total' (including taxes, shipping, etc), you may want to take this into consideration before setting your commissions amounts.
Per Sale Commission (fixed $ amount):
Set this commission to reward a flat rate per sale/order.
This is the fixed commission amount you'll pay, if you've selected 'fixed $ amount' from the 1st tier commission drop-down menu.
Which per Sale Commission to Use:
Drop down menu provided for 1st tier so that you can choose to award affiliates either a percentage of a sale, or a fixed dollar amount for each order.
Per Click Commission
Setting this amount will pay the affiliate each time a visitor clicks on the affiliate's link and comes to your site.
Per Email Ad Commission
Setting this amount will pay the affiliate for clicking on an imbedded, paid email advertising link.
Per Signup Commission (second and third tiers only)
Setting this amount will pay the affiliate when he refers a visitor to your sign up form and the visitor joins your program, becoming an affiliate. This option should only be set if you have a two tier or three tier program. Setting this option for a one-tier program will not result in any rewards to the affiliate, even if he refers members to your program.

Note!

  • Commission settings (except for 'Per Email Ad' commissions) apply only to new affiliates. Changes made in the commission settings panel do not affect existing affiliates unless the 'Reset for all existing affiliates' box is checked. Return to Contents...
To Change Commission Settings
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Options', then from the 'Options' menu, choose 'Commission Settings'. Set your commission settings to the appropriate values. For any settings that you are not going to use, set the value to zero. Check 'Reset for all existing affiliates' boxes next to all commission settings you want to apply to existing affiliates, not only to new affiliates. Be careful, this change cannot be undone! Confirm your action by checking the box next to the 'Update Commissions' button. Click 'Update Commissions'. Affiliate Link will display a results page with your updated commissions settings summarized.

Important!

Gradual Reduction of Commission for Each Additional Order
This option allows you to reduce the per-sale commission awarded to an affiliate each time a sale is made by the same customer, by a percentage. You may this feature by filling out the following fields:
Maximum Period
This setting defines the number of days between two orders to log the next order with the commission reduced by the values that you will decide for each tier.

Note!

1st tier Commission by
This setting tells Affiliate Link how much reduction should happen in the commission amounts for first tier affiliates on the second, and following orders from the same customer, if the order is placed within the time allotted in the Maximum period.
2nd Tier Commission by
This setting tells Affiliate Link how much reduction should happen in the commission amounts for 2nd tier affiliates on the second, and following orders from the same customer, if the order is placed within the time allotted in the Maximum period.
3rd Tier Commission by
This setting tells Affiliate Link how much reduction should happen in the commission amounts for 3rd tier affiliates on the second, and following orders from the same customer, if the order is placed within the time allotted in the Maximum period.

Orders Management

Use this panel to search, list, add and remove orders. Usually, orders are added via integration with an on-line order processing system or shopping cart. You can also add orders manually, using the 'Add a New Order' panel, for example, to credit an affiliate for an order that has taken place offline.

To Search Orders
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Orders'. Select one of the following from the drop down box:
Approved (default) :
Will display all approved Orders logged by Affiliate Link
Pending:
Will display all pending orders captured by Affiliate Link, but not yet logged
Deleted:
Will display orders that you have deleted.
Use any of the following information to find orders: Results of your Orders Search can be output according to your selection. To change the output destination for your Orders Search, use the drop down box to select one of the following:
Browser
This is default output for your Orders Search results
Microsoft Excel
Results will be exported to Microsoft Excel format. If Microsoft Excel is properly installed on your computer, your Order Search results will be loaded directly into an Excel spreadsheet.
Delimited Text
Search results will be exported into a tab-delimited text file, suitable for import into a database and/or accounting software. After submitting the search form you will be prompted to save the file. To compress results on-the-fly, check 'Compress with gzip' box. This significantly decreases network traffic by packing results with gzip compression utility. Modern browsers will unpack output automatically. However, if you need to do those manually please use any archiver utility that supports gzip format, e.g. WinZIP.
To change the number of result rows per page, use the 'Results per Page' selection box. Switching output to Excel or Delimited Text formats automatically selects All results. Click 'List Orders' to get your Order Search results.

Note!

Return to Contents...

Order Search Results
After submitting the order search form with output format set to browser, you will see the search results panel with an Orders table. For each order found, the system will display one table row with these fields:

Additionally, a check box to select the order for removal will be displayed on the right side of each table row.

To display affiliate details, click on the Affiliate ID#. To display another results page, use the 'Next/Previous' links at the top and bottom of the results page.

To Approve Orders

If you have the default status of orders set to Pending, you'll need to follow these instructions in order to approve the orders, before an affiliate can claim commissions for the sales, and see them in their statistics panel. Affiliates may be able to see their pending orders, if you have this report option turned on in the 'Options' area of Affiliate Link.

Using the Order Search Form, select Pending from drop down box labeled 'type', and enter your search criteria.

To approve selected orders:
In the search results table, check the box at the right of the order row for each order you want to approve. Select the 'Confirm Only Selected Orders' item from the drop down box at the bottom of the results table. Check the box to confirm your action, and then click the 'GO' Button to approve the order.
To approve all listed orders on the page:
Select the Confirm All Listed Orders item in the action selection box at the bottom of the results table. Confirm approval by checking the box near the GO button. Click the GO button to approve the orders. The system will display a prompt with the total number of orders approved.
Return to Contents...
To Add a New Order Manually
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Orders'. From the 'Orders' menu, choose 'Add a New Order'. Enter your order information in the form provided: Click Proceed. Affiliate Link will display a prompt about the new order added, including any commission that resulted from the order.

Note!

Important!

Note!

To Remove Orders
Using the Order Search Form, search for the orders you want to remove.
To remove selected orders
In the search results table, check the box at the right of for each order you want to remove.

Select 'Remove Only Selected Orders 'from the drop down box at the bottom of the page. Confirm your action by checking the box, then click the 'Go' Button to remove the selected orders. Affiliate Link will display a prompt with the number of orders removed.

To remove all listed orders
Select 'Remove All Listed Orders' from the drop down box at the bottom of the page. Confirm your action by checking the box, and then click the 'GO' Button to remove all listed orders. Affiliate Link will display a prompt with the total number of orders removed.
To Restore Removed Orders
If you've deleted an order, and wish to restore (i.e., undelete) it, simply follow these instructions. At the top of the Order Search Form, select 'Deleted' from the drop down box. Enter your search criteria.
To restore selected removed orders
In the search results table, check the box at the right of the order row for each deleted order you would like to restore.

Select the 'Restore Only Selected Orders' item from the drop down box at the bottom of the page. Confirm your action by checking the box, then click the 'Restore' Button to restore the orders.

To restore all removed orders listed on the page:
Select the 'Restore All Listed Orders' item from the drop down box at the bottom of the page. Confirm your action by checking the box, and then click the 'GO' Button to restore the orders listed on that page. Affiliate Link will display a prompt with the total number of orders restored.
To defer orders
Deferred (or Pending orders) are orders that are recognized by Affiliate Link, but Affiliate Link will not take any action regarding the order until it has been Approved or Removed. In other words, even though the order may have occurred, administrative reports and affiliate reports will not log a commission or sale for Deferred orders, but will show them in Affiliate's reports as 'pending orders', if you have this report option turned on for affiliates from the 'Options' panel. If you do not have 'pending orders' reports turned on for affiliates, Affiliate Link will simply not display any information about the pending order.

Affiliate Link will allow you to manually change order status for Approved Orders, just in case you need to double-check the order, or have doubts about the success of the transaction.

To defer selected approved orders:
From the Main menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Orders'. Choose 'approved' from the drop down box, then enter any other search criteria you choose, or click 'List Orders' at the bottom of the search box to list ALL approved orders. Locate the order whose status you'd like to change. To its right, check the box to select the order. At the bottom of the page, choose 'Defer Selected Orders' from the drop down box. Check the box to confirm your action and then click the 'GO' Button. Affiliate Link will display a prompt with the total number of orders successfully deferred.
To defer all orders listed:
From the Main menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Orders'. Choose 'approved' from the drop down box, then enter any other search criteria you choose, or click 'List Orders' at the bottom of the search box to list ALL approved orders. At the bottom of the page, choose 'Defer All Listed Orders' from the drop down box. Check the box to confirm your action and then click the 'GO' Button. Affiliate Link will display a prompt with the total number of orders successfully deferred.

Reports

Use reports to view commissions due to affiliates, sales and other information. In Affiliate Link, reports are generated in real-time and they always reflect the latest state of your Affiliate Link database.

To Generate Reports
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'View Reports'. Affiliate Link will display a settings box where you will enter your criteria for the reports that will be displayed. You are able to select reports according to the following criteria:
Choose Time Frame:
Affiliate Link will generate reports for commissions that were earned inside this period of time. This box will be populated by default with the first day of the current month with the end day defaulting to the current day of the month. If you want to see commissions generated from the beginning of tracking activity, set the begin date to the distant past.
Commission Filter
If set, the report will list only affiliates whose commission amounts are within the given bounds. You may set higher and/or lower bounds.
Greater Than
Includes affiliates with due commissions that are greater than the given value. For example, if you want to list affiliates with commissions of $20.00 and more, set 'Greater Than' to 19.99.
Less Than
Includes affiliates with due commissions that are less than the given value. For example, if you want to list affiliates with commissions of $20.00 or less, set 'Less Than' to $20.01
Ignore Rewards?
If checked, the software ignores any reward date set so that the report will include all commissions, even those already paid.
Affiliate Filter
Allows you to submit searches based upon information about your affiliates. Leave these fields blank to match all affiliates. You may search by:
  • Affiliate ID (This may be a comma (,) or space delimited list)
  • Parent ID
  • Company
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Email
  • City
  • State/Province
  • Country
  • Tax ID
  • Social Security #
  • Custom Fields (1,2,3,4)

Note!

  • For the fields that have a check box labeled to the right of them, you may click this to narrow that search down to exactly what you specify. For example, if you have two affiliates, Don and Donald, and you click exact, and enter 'Don' into the field, it will bring up the record for 'Don', but not 'Donald'.
Detailed Report Sections
After the report is generated, you will be able to display a detailed report for any affiliate listed. This set of check boxes controls what detailed report sections you want to include there. By default, selections correspond to the Report Options set in the 'Options' area. Use these settings to exclude sections for commissions that aren't used in your affiliate program or to exclude those report sections that may be too long (e.g., if there is a large number of orders logged it may be better to exclude Sales to make detailed report smaller).
Output
Adjust output format using the 'Output' section of the search form. To change the output destination, use the 'To' selection box and select any of the following options:
Browser:
This is default.
Microsoft Excel
Results will be exported in Microsoft Excel format and, if Microsoft Excel is properly installed on your computer, your report will be loaded directly into an Excel spreadsheet.
Delimited Text
Search results will be exported into a tab-delimited text file, suitable for import into another database and/or accounting software. After submitting the search form you will be prompted to save the file.
Microsoft Excel (all data)
The same as Microsoft Excel option above, but results will include additional details about every affiliate listed, including email, postal address, phone & fax numbers, SSN or Tax ID# (if any). These additional fields may be used to write checks with affiliates' commissions, make off-line backups of system database etc.
Delimited Text (all data)
The same as Microsoft Excel (all data) option above, but in tab-delimited text file format. To compress results on-the-fly, check the 'Compress with gzip' box. This significantly decreases network traffic by packing your results with a gzip compression utility. Modern browsers will unpack output automatically. However, if you need to do it manually, please use any archiver utility that supports gzip format, e.g. WinZIP.

To change number of result rows per page, use Results per Page selection box. Note that switching to Excel or Delimited Text output formats automatically selects All results.

To change sorting of output rows, use Sort by selection box where you can select field to sort search results by.

To change sort order from ascending (default) to descending, check the Descending box.

Click the 'Show Reports' button to generate and load your report.

Important!

  • If your database is large, report generation may take some time to complete and your browser may seem frozen. Please be patient and avoid clicking Show Reports button multiple times because it may cause serious system overload.
Your Affiliate Reports
After submitting the report settings form with output format set to browser, you will see a 'Commissions by Affiliate' Report table. Above the report table Affiliate Link displays the period for which the report has been generated.

For each affiliate matching the report generation criteria, Affiliate Link will display one table row with these fields:

Additionally, a bar graph on the right of each affiliate's row may help you to estimate commission distribution quickly.

At the bottom of results table Affiliate Link displays two additional rows:

To sort search results by any column except Ads, click on that column header or footer. Click on the same column to change sort order from ascending to descending and vice versa. Current sort column is marked by small arrow pointing down if direction is ascending and up if direction is descending. To display another results page, use the 'Next/Previous' links at the top and bottom of the results page, or enter a page number into the Page box and click 'Go!'

Important!

Detailed Affiliate Commission Reports
To get any detailed affiliate's commissions report, generate a commissions report for a selected period, and then click on the affiliate's commission amount shown in the report table. Affiliate Link will display a detailed report for that affiliate.

At the top of the page, Affiliate Link will display the period of time for which the report is generated, the Affiliate's ID# (If you click on it, Affiliate Link will display search results for that affiliate) and the last reward date or a message saying that reward date is not set. .

Detailed report sections, in order of appearance

Important!

Emails Sent
Statistics for paid emails sent on behalf of this affiliate if the affiliate is an advertiser. Affiliate Link displays all paid emails sent for the affiliate, not only those sent within a specified period.

For each paid email section, Affiliate Link displays:

  • Date when the email was sent
  • Subject of the email
  • Total number of affiliates who read the email (i.e., clicked on link embedded into it) within report period

Note!

  • If a paid email has more than one paid link embedded, each link is listed on a separate row in this section, thus displaying the read counts for that link, but all links have the same date and email subject.
Commission on Read Emails:
Affiliate Link displays a single row with total number of paid emails read (i.e., paid links in affiliate emails clicked) and total commission earned within the report period.
Commission on Emails Read by Sub-Affiliate
Affiliate Link displays a list of 2nd tier affiliates with paid email commissions earned on behalf of each sub affiliate within the report period.

Each sub affiliate section displays:

  • Affiliate ID#
  • Affiliate name (first and last name)
  • Number of emails read
  • 2nd tier commission earned
  • A bar graph reflecting commission distribution among sub affiliates.
Affiliate Link also displays the total number of sub affiliates, total number of paid emails read by them and commission earned within report period.
Commission on Emails by Referred Advertiser
Affiliate Link will display a list of advertisers referred by an affiliate. Remember that advertisers are affiliates with one difference: paid emails may be sent on their behalf. Thus, some of an affiliate's sub affiliates may be advertisers. If the 2nd Tier Email Ad Referral Commission is NOT zero, an affiliate earns commissions for each click in the paid email sent on behalf of the referred advertiser. For each referred advertiser the section shows: This section also displays total number of referred advertisers, total number of paid emails read for them and any commission earned.
Commissions on Sub-Affiliates Signups
Affiliate Link displays a list of 2nd tier affiliates signed up within the report period, with commissions earned on their signups (if 2nd Tier Per Signup Commission is NOT zero).

Each sub affiliate section shows:

This section also displays total number of sub affiliates signed up within the report period and total commission earned.
Commission on Direct ClickThroughs
Affiliate Link displays a single row with the total number of paid clickthroughs made within the report period and total commission earned.
Commission on Sub-Affiliates ClickThroughs
Affiliate Link displays a list of 2nd tier affiliates with clickthrough commissions earned on behalf of each sub affiliate within the report period.

Each sub affiliate section shows:

This section also displays the total number of sub affiliates, total number of paid clickthroughs made by them and commission earned within the report period.
Commissions on Direct Sales
Affiliate Link displays a list of orders made by visitors referred by an affiliate within the report period.

For each order listed, Affiliate Link shows:

This section also displays the total number of orders referred and commission earned.
Commissions on Sub-Affiliate Sales
Affiliate Link displays a list of 2nd tier affiliates with sales commissions earned on behalf of each sub affiliate within the report period.

Each sub affiliate section shows:

This section also displays total number of sub affiliates, total number of orders and commission earned within the report period.
Grand Totals
Affiliate Link summarizes an affiliate's commissions earned within the report period and displays totals from all report sections, even if corresponding section is disabled by report options: This section also includes any additional commissions stored in the system database but not related to any standard report sections.
Sales by Member Report
If an affiliate is running a membership program, Affiliate Link displays a list of members who have at least one order logged within the report period. For each member listed, the following information is shown:

Important!

Rewards

Use rewards management to clear accumulated affiliates' commissions up to a certain date in the past. For example, you will need to do this when you send a commission check to any affiliate. Setting a reward date tells Affiliate Link that commission up to that date are "paid" and must not be included in reports anymore. Note that Affiliate Link never pays commissions directly to affiliates. Instead, it allows you to find how much you owe to each affiliate, and then cut a check, make a wire transfer or do anything you consider suitable for paying affiliate commissions, e.g. PayPal, QuickBooks, etc.

Additionally, Affiliate Link provides a convenient way to simplify paying affiliate commissions. You may generate a commission report in a format that is ready for upload to a 3rd party online payment processing system.

Commission reports may be generated in the following formats, after a reward date has been set for the affiliate(s) that you will pay:

Each and every time you set a reward date for either a single affiliate or group of affiliates, Affiliate Link stores the information so that you may pay them. The results are called 'Reward Sessions'. Reward Sessions can always be accessed from Affiliate Link; however it is strongly recommended that you save the results of Reward Sessions on your PC. Summarily, to pay affiliates, you must:
  1. Set a reward date
  2. Get the results of your Reward Session from the corresponding menu
  3. Using your Reward Session results, you may cut checks for affiliates by hand, export to QuickBooks, export to PayPal, or to some other third party payment system.

Important!

To Set a Reward date

Check reports and find the affiliates you want to reward.

Request a report for the entire period covering all the time since the setup of your affiliate program. Write down or download (using the export feature) the commissions you owe to the affiliates that you want to reward. Always do this before setting rewards because commissions won't be available after the reward date is set.

From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Rewards'.

Set your desired reward date.

Select the affiliate(s) you would like to reward based on the following criteria:

You may specify that the search information you've provided be acted upon literally, by checking the selection box labeled exact, to the right of the respective item. For example, if you have two affiliates, "Don" and "Donald", and you enter "Don" into the First Name box, then "Don" will be rewarded, but "Donald" will not.

For the 'Greater Than' and 'Less Than' fields, you can reward based on how much or how little commission a set of affiliates has made. Simply input a dollar amount into the appropriate field, and Affiliate Link will reward only those affiliates that match the given criteria.

Click the 'Set Reward' button.

Important!

Note!

Reward Sessions

Now that you've set a reward date, you'll need the information from the Reward Session to pay affiliates.

From the Rewards menu, choose 'View Reward Sessions'. Your reward session will appear with a download button to its right. In order to get the results in the correct format, choose the format you'd like from the drop down box below your reward session. Your choices are:

Now that you have this information, use it appropriately to pay affiliates. Regarding Export to PayPal and QuickBooks: please read your manual or access online support for specific instructions about how to upload your commission information.

Categories

Affiliate Link provides category management that allows affiliates to select their interests and the administrator to narrow mass emailing, by emailing each 'category' or 'sub category' of affiliates specially. Affiliates may select categories on your sign up form and modify their selection(s) later in their affiliate panel.

Important!

Categories and sub-categories
There are main categories and sub categories. Usually top level categories are general areas of interest, and sub-categories specify them more precisely. When email is being sent, the Administrator may choose to target an entire category (or sub-category), thus including any affiliates that selected the category (or subcategory) and excluding any affiliates who do NOT belong to the category (or subcategory).

Important!

Return to Contents...
To Add Category or Subcategory

From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel choose 'Categories'.

To add a category, scroll to the bottom of the categories tree and click the 'Create a New Category' link. Affiliate Link will prompt you for a category name. Enter the category name of your choice, then click 'update' to add your category. To add a subcategory, find its category and underneath it, click the 'create new subcategory' link.

Enter the sub-category name, and then click 'update' Affiliate Link will display your updated category/subcategories list.

Note!

To Edit a Category or Subcategory
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Categories'. From the category tree that is displayed, find the category or sub category that you would like to change. Click the red 'Edit' button to its right. Make any changes, then click the 'update' button. Affiliate Link will display the category tree with your updated information.
To Remove a Category or Subcategory

Note!

If you want to remove some of the categories or sub categories:
In the categories tree, check the box at the right of row for each category or subcategory you want to remove.

Select 'Remove Only Selected (Sub) Categories' from the drop down box at the bottom of the page. Check the box to confirm your action, and then click the 'GO' Button.

If you want to remove all categories:
At the bottom of the page, select the 'Remove All Categories' option from the drop down box. Confirm your action by checking the box near the 'GO' Button. Click the 'GO' Button to remove the categories. Affiliate Link will display a prompt with the total number of categories removed.

Entrances and Entrance Categories

Entrances

Use 'entrances' to provide affiliates a list of short URLs to predefined locations at your site(s). In more layman's terms, if you would like for affiliate's to be able to send their referred visitors to pages on your website or sites, other than the default location, create an entrance for that page.

For example, the affiliate program for our website, affiliatetracking.net, has the default location set to the home page (http://www.affiliatetracking.net). I have a particular affiliate that advertises our online demo on his website, so I need his affiliate link to go to our demo page (http://www.affiliatetracking.net/demo/). To accomplish this, I simply created an entrance for that page in my program, and now he's able to login to the affiliate side of the software, get the entrance I've created, and advertise it on his site.

Your affiliates are also able to create entrances to your website(s) in the Affiliate Login area, as well as access the pre-defined entrances that you have already created.

Entrances are implicit redirection links to be used in conjunction with affiliate's links. You register the URL in the database and the system assigns a unique ID# which is a short replacement for a possibly very long custom entrance URL. If ID# is passed to the affiliate entrance script as ent=ID parameter, Affiliate Link retrieves URL from database by its ID# and redirects visitor to it implicitly. Typical affiliate entrance link with predefined entrance ID# looks like:

http:///affiliate_id/e/entrance_id

As you can see, the link above is short enough but still functional.

Important!

Entrance Categories

For the easiest management of entrances, Affiliate Link will place them in categories that you create. For example, if you have an online pet store that sells cat, dog, bird and fish products and information. Create categories that correspond with these areas of your website, like:

Under each of these categories, you would create the entrances for the corresponding pages of your website.

To Edit Entrance Categories and Entrances
To Edit an Entrance Category:
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, click the 'Entrances' button. Affiliate Link will display a list of existing entrance categories. Choose the category that you would like to edit. To its right, click the red 'edit' button. Make any necessary changes and click 'update'. Affiliate Link will display an updated list of entrance categories.
To Edit an Entrance:

From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, click the 'Entrances' button. Affiliate Link will display a list of existing entrances categories. Choose the category that contains the entrance you'd like to edit. Affiliate Link will display a list of entrances for that category. Scroll the list to find the entrance you want to edit. When you find it, click the 'edit' button on the right hand side.

Edit your entrance URL in the 'URL' field, and a short description of the URL in the 'Description' field (this will be displayed to your affiliates from their affiliate panel) and click Update. Affiliate Link will update the entrance and display the list of entrances, again.

NOTE!

  • Affiliates do not need to update their links when you have updated an entrance. Affiliate links contain only the entrance ID#, and the ID# does not change when you edit the entrance url or description.
To Remove Entrance Categories and Entrances
To Remove an Entrance Category
  1. From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, click the 'Entrances' button. Affiliate Link will display a list of existing entrances categories. Find the category you'd like to remove. To its right hand side, you'll see a check box beside the word 'edit'. Check the box (es) of the category (ies) you'd like to remove. Then, scroll to the bottom of the page. Choose the 'Remove Only Selected Categories' item from the drop down box.
  2. Confirm removal by checking the box near the GO Button.
  3. Click the GO button to remove the Entrance Category (ies). Affiliate Link will display a prompt with the total number of categories removed.

IMPORTANT!

  • Removing an entrance category does not invalidate affiliate's links using it. Since the entrance was removed, all links with it's entrance ID# will redirect visitors to the default location set by the Location Option.
To Remove An Entrance:
  1. From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, click the 'Entrances' button. Affiliate Link will display a list of existing entrances categories. Choose the category that contains the entrance you'd like to remove. Affiliate Link will display a list of entrances for that category. Scroll the list to find the entrance you want to remove.
  2. When you find the entrance you'd like to remove, check the box to the right hand side. You can select only one, or you can select as many as you'd like. After making your selection(s), scroll to the bottom of the page. Choose the 'Remove only selected entrances' item from the drop down box.
  3. Confirm removal by checking the box near the GO button.
  4. Click the GO button to remove the entrances. Affiliate Link will display a prompt with the total number of entrances removed.

IMPORTANT!

  • Removing an entrance does not invalidate affiliate links using it. But since the entrance was removed, all links with it's ID# will redirect visitors to the default location set by the Location option.
To Get Entrances for any Affiliate:

Note!

Banners and Banner Categories

Use Affiliate Link's Banner Management section to provide affiliates with an easy, canned method of utilizing your own banners with their affiliate links. Together with predefined entrances, you can further automate and customize how your affiliates can use your program.

Manage banners with Affiliate Link by creating your own 'banner categories' and then adding your banners to their corresponding category. You can add as many banners as you'd like.

Affiliates are able to access your text and graphical banners when they login to their Affiliate Panel and choose 'Instructions' from the Main Menu. Your banner categories will appear, the affiliate will click on any category that he chooses, and the banners in that category will be listed, along with the html that the affiliate should cut and paste to his webpage, email ad, or wherever he will be promoting your products/services. Because the affiliate login process is unique for each affiliate (they must login with their Affiliate ID and Password) the banners that appear will be pre-coded with the necessary information for the right affiliate. This is the best way for affiliates to get the correct information they need to promote your program, in the correct format.

Banners may be text or graphical, meaning you can enter a banner image, or you can simply type text to create a text banner. For example, if you want only a text banner to say:

'For the best products in the Universe, click here'

You would simply type that text, instead of entering an image/banner URL.

Creating Banner Categories and Banners

To Create Banner Categories
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Banners'. Affiliate Link will display an existing list of Banner Categories, including the default category called 'other'. Scroll to the bottom of the 'banner categories list and click the 'Create New Category' link. Enter a description for your new banner category. Click the 'update' button. Affiliate Link will display an updated list, including your new category.
To Create Banners
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Banners'. Affiliate Link wil display an existing list of Banner Categories. Click on the category for the banner. Affiliate Link will display an existing list of banners in that category, if any. Scroll to the bottom of the list and click the 'Create New Banner' link.

Enter the following information:

To Edit Banner Categories and Banners
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Banners'. Affiliate Link will display your list of Banner Categories.
To Edit a Banner Category:
Find the Category that you would like to edit. Click the Red 'Edit' Button to its left. Make any necessary changes, and then click the 'Update' Button. Affiliate Link will display your updated list of Banner Categories.
To Edit a Banner:
Find the Category that contains the banner you'd like to edit. Click on the category. Affiliate Link will display all banners belonging to the category. Scroll to the banner you'd like to edit. Click the Red 'Edit' Button to it's right.

Make any of the following changes here:

  • Category: When editing a banner, you can change it's category.
  • Image: Change the image URL for any banner. Affiliate's links will automatically be updated with the new image.
  • Description: Change the description of the banner
  • Entrance: Change the 'landing page' for any banner. Visitors that click on this banner will 'land on' the entrance you choose.
  • Active: This feature controls if affiliates are able to 'see' or 'not see' this banner when they login. If the box is checked, the banner is active, and affiliates will see it in the list of banners you've entered for them. If the box is NOT checked, affiliates will NOT see this banner.
To Remove Banners and Banner Categories
From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Banners'. Affiliate Link will display your list of banner categories.
To Remove a Category:
Remove ALL categories by scrolling to the bottom of the page and selecting 'Remove All Categories' from the drop down box. Check the confirmation box, and then click the 'GO' Button. Affiliate Link will display update your categories list and only the default category called 'other' will remain. OR Find the cateogory(s) you'd like to remove. Check the box to its right. At the bottom of the page, prompt Affiliate Link to 'Remove Only Selected Categories', check the confirmation box, then click the 'GO' button. Affiliate Link will display an updated list of categories.
To Remove a Banner:
Remove ALL banners in any category by clicking on the category to display it's list of banners, then, at the bottom of the page, choose 'Remove ALL Banners' from the drop down box. Check the confirmation box, and then click the 'GO' Button. OR Click on the category that contains the banner you'd like to remove, and select the banner(s) you'd like to remove by checking the box to their right. At the bottom of the page, prompt Affiliate Link to 'Remove only Selected Banners. Check the confirmation box, and then click the 'GO' Button. Affiliate Link will display an updated list of banners.

Templates

You can easily edit the content for each page view of Affiliate Link software, using the built-in template editor. Please remember that in order to take full advantage of this feature, you will need to have either some knowledge of HTML yourself, or have someone available who does.

All template files are accessable from the main admin panel entry 'Templates', and are categorized by where you would see each corresponding page, as follows:

Administration Panel Templates
The main Affiliate Link Admin Panel. These templates control what you see when maintaining your affiliate program.
Affiliate Panel Templates
The panel which your affiliates will use to view their stats, recieve predefined links, and possibly review the instructions page that is presented to them when they Sign up.
Signup Panel Templates
The pages which involve your affiliates' signup process, including the 'welcome email' and 'welcome' page, the latter of which can be viewed by affiliates at a later date from the Instructions link in their Affiliate Panel.
Common Templates
These are templates that don't really have a definable category of their own, but are used with varying frequency for utility and integration purposes.

It's also worthy to note that the templates are named accordingly with their function. For example, the affiliate_list template found in the admin section is shown when listing affiliates.

In addition to English templates, you also have the choice of Italian and Spanish localizations.

Template Variables

Templates include special elements called variables, which are processed when any page of your Affiliate Link software is loaded. Variables represent some real pieces of information in the software that are entered by yourself or your affiliates. Not all information entered in the software is supported by variables, but MOST of it is.

For example, a variable exists for the 'Site Name' for your program. The variable for 'Site Name' looks like this:
\!$site_name\

Because there is a variable for this peice of information, Affiliate Link can populate your real Site Name any place this variable appears in the software. When an affiliate receives his 'Welcome!' email, after having joined your program, the email will say:

Thank you for joining the \!$site_name\ program, only the variable will be replaced with your real site name.

It's important for you to know about variables, even if you do only minor editing to templates. Deleting or otherwise breaking these variables can cause incomplete and/or incorrect data to be displayes. Additionally, most WYSIWYG HTML editors will break these variables, as they tend confuse the special characters in them for malformed HTML code, and attempt to 'fix' the 'error'. Due to this it's recommended to use care with this kind of software. It's usually safest to hand code anything within the vicinity the variables.
\!$variable\

This is a template variable and will be replaced with a real variable value. All template variables begin with '\!$' and end with '\'. The variable name is written between these markers and the whole variable must be written in the same line, without spaces between '\!$' and '\'.

Some Typical variables are \!$variable_name\ where variable_name may be replaced with:
affiliate_id, affiliate_member_id, affiliate_persale_commission, affiliate_name, affiliate_email, affiliate_company, affiliate_address, affiliate_postal_code, affiliate_city, affiliate_state, affiliate_country, affiliate_phone, affiliate_fax

For examples of any variables, simply view the different templates. Any time you see something written in the \!$variable_name\ format, it's a variable!
<!-- begin ..... -->

Loop begin marker. There are several places in templates where single part of template should be used to format and output many instances of similar data. For example, template for affiliate search results page is used to display many affiliates in table, one affiliate per row. It is impossible to predict how many rows will be needed because search criteria and number of affiliates may vary. Thus, template itself contains only one row to display affiliate but that row is used many times when actual page is generated. This is called "loop" because the system loops over the data and displays each data instance using the same template part. However, in order to find such loops in template the system needs special markers and these markers are written as special HTML comments to avoid displaying them in output.

Loop marker HTML comment must occupy single line and must begin from the first column of that line. It must not be split across several lines. Lines with the loop marker must not contain anything except that marker.
<!-- end ..... -->

Loop end marker. Terminates template loop construct. It must occupy single line and must begin from the first column of that line. It must not be split across several lines. Line with loop marker must not contain anything except that marker.
<!--??variable?--> true-part <!--?else?--> false-part <!--?end?-->

Conditional construct. Used to display different part of template according to variable value. If variable is true (not empty) then true part is displayed else false part is displayed, but never both of them. Conditional constructs cannot be nested. True and false parts may be split across several lines.

Editing Templates
To edit a template, simply follow these 3 steps:
  1. Click on the Templates link from the Main Menu of the Administrative panel.
  2. Find the template section you would like to edit from (sections are listed above), and then click on the corresponding template name.
  3. Use the text area that's displayed to edit your text or HTML, and then click "Submit".

Note

Mass Email

Use the mass email feature to send email messages to some or all of your affiliates. You may want to inform affiliates about new incentives, updates in your site content, affiliate program configuration (e.g., commissions, new entrances, etc) changes or about anything you may think is important to your affiliates. You have the choice to send the emails in either plain text, or in HTML (MIME encoded) format; or both. This allows you much greater flexibility as to how your messages will appear to the affiliates.

The system allows you to email a large number of recipients in a short amount of time, but it will send email to registered affiliates only and there is no way to email people outside your affiliate program. Affiliate Link provides limited ability to personalize your mass emails by automatic insertion of affiliate name, email, and ID# into each message.

You may target your e-mailings by category, country, state and zip code so that only affiliates matching your target criteria, or the number of affiliates that you specify, will receive your mailing. If the number of affiliates selected by your targeting criteria is greater than the number of recipients requested, only the given number of recipients will be emailed.

The next time affiliates are selected for emailing with a limited number of recipients, Affiliate Link will select the least recently emailed affiliates first (i.e., Affiliate Link always tries to select affiliates who weren't emailed for a longer period of time than other affiliates). If the number of candidates to be emailed is still greater than needed (if your target criteria results in 2000 affiliates, but you only need to send 600 emails), recipients are selected in a round-robin manner. The goal is that Affiliate Link will help control the frequency of emails to the same affiliate, making email less annoying, while reaching a broader base of your affiliates.

Paid Emails

Affiliate Link may be used to run "Get Paid to Read Email" affiliate programs where you pay your affiliates for reading emails that you send. This is done by embedding one or more paid links into the email. When affiliates click on the embedded link, the system rewards them whatever commission is assigned to that link, and takes care about paying each affiliate only once for each paid link. Paid email statistics and commissions are displayed in administrator and affiliate reports.

Another interesting concept related to paid emails is "Advertisers". Affiliate Link allows you to mark some affiliates as advertisers (using affiliate management) and later send paid emails on behalf of any advertiser. Note that the advertiser never sends email directly, instead he should ask you to do that and you may ask the advertiser to pay for sending mass email. The system allows many advertisers among affiliates and this allows the implementation of peer-to-peer paid email programs. In affiliate reports, Advertisers can see how many emails were sent on their behalf and how many paid clickthroughs were made for each email.

Affiliate Link also supports modification of the 3-tier affiliate program, regarding advertisers. If your advertiser pays you to send a mass mailing, and this advertiser was referred by an affiliate, you may want to credit the affiliate who referred the advertiser with a commission for each paid email click. This encourages affiliates to refer advertisers who then pay you money to send emails to other affiliates.

To Email Affiliates

From the Main Menu of the Administrative Panel, choose 'Affiliates'. From the 'Affiliates' menu, choose 'Email Affiliates'.

There are two sections to the Mass Mail Panel:

The Affiliate Filter
Affiliate Link will email only the affiliates that meet the criteria that you enter in the Affiliate Filter. For example, if you choose a category in the Affiliate Filter, only affiliates in that category will receive your mail.

Important!

  • To include ALL affiliates in your selection criteria, leave the Affiliate Filter BLANK!
Email Settings
Where you enter the actual content of your html or text email, and imbed links. In this section of the Mass Mail module, you will also choose if the email is sent on behalf of an Advertiser, or not. Then, you will enter the number of recipients you'd like to mail. To email ALL affiliates, enter 'all'.

Note!

  • It's not necessary to imbed links that you'd like to track. You can simply include a tracking url in the email that you compose, or any other url if you don't want to track it's results. If you intend to reward commissions for having clicked the link, you should always imbed the links. Imbedded links do NOT have to be tracking URLs that are generated by your affiliate program!
To imbed links:
In the Email Settings Section of the Mass Mail module, there is a very obvious place to enter the URLs that you would like to track. URLs must be valid, and begin with http://. When you create the email that you will eventually send, use the link variables assigned in the URLs that look like this: [link-1], [link-2], [link-3], etc. You can imbed up to 9 links in any email. Each link variable will correspond directly with a link.

Note!

Commissions for Imbedded Links
There is also a very obvious place to set the commissions for each link that you will imbed in an email. These commissions will be populated by default with the 'Per Email Ad' Commissions Settings that you may have already entered in the Affiliate Link in the 'Commissions Settings' area. Changing the commission settings here will override your default setting for 'Per Email Ad' commissions.
Subject
Enter email subject here. Please make it short, concrete and self-explanatory.

Note!

  • Paid emails will be identified by subject in detailed affiliate reports!
Body

You can send email in either (or both) plain text or HTML (MIME encoded) format, by entering your message in the respectively labeled text box. The email message will contain this body exactly as you write it, with a small header with affiliate program identification added automatically. For HTML formatted emails, only include what would be inside of the <body> ... </body> tags of an HTML document; the software handles the rest for you.

Email body supports special variable to be replaced with actual values for each affiliate in your email. These variables are:

[name]
Optional. Will be replaced with the affiliate's name (first and last names) for each recipient.
[id]
Optional. Will be replaced with affiliate ID# for each recipient.
[email]
Optional. Will be replaced with the affiliate's e-mail address.
[link-1] .. [link-9]
Mandatory for each link that you would like to track in the email. This variable is automatically replaced with an encrypted clickthrough link for each affiliate. The actual link that you entered will be invisible, preventing affiliates from clicking directly and bypassing affiliate tracking. Instead, the embedded link will point to the Affiliate Link paid email clickthrough tracking script which ensures that the affiliate is credited only once for clicking the link, even if he clicks many times. Redirection to the target URL always occurs for multiple clickthroughs, even though the clicks are counted only once.

Check the box receive to receive a copy of the message, if you want to send a copy of the email to yourself, e.g. for verification or accounting purposes. Confirm the emailing by checking the box near the 'Send Affiliates This Message' Button. Then, Click the 'Send Affiliates This Message' Button to launch the mailing. Affiliate Link will display a notification page with the mass email session ID. When the session is completed, Affiliate Link will email the administrator with session statistics that include: Time Elapsed: how long it took to complete the mailing Number of Recipients Emailed: self explanatory If there was an Advertiser selected for the emailing, Affiliate Link will notify the advertiser, too. (Time elapsed, number of recipients emailed etc.). If the emailing session failed or was interrupted for some reason, an error message is emailed to the Program Administrator. It will include the session ID# and short problem description. Please include that email in any request to technical support about incomplete email session.

Important!

Note!

Database Export

Affiliate Link provides database export from the Affiliate Panel, Orders Management Panel, and Reports management panels. The Data being exported is always generated in real time and downloaded to your computer completely. Database export allows you to store off-line snapshots of database content, advanced analysis and reporting in desktop accounting and spreadsheet applications etc. Therefore, exports are a useful and convenient way to perform database backups and to integrate Affiliate Link with your accounting tools.

To export a database, you have to fill in the search/report query form on one of the corresponding panels (Affiliate, Order or Report), and set the 'Output' option to one of the following:

Microsoft Excel
Ready for automatic loading into Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Use this format if Excel is installed on your computer.
Delimited Text
Text containing data in lines with columns delimited by 'tab' character (ASCII code 9). Most databases and desktop spreadsheet/accounting systems understand this format as standard for data interchange.
Microsoft Excel (all data)
Just like the Microsoft Excel option, only ALL information is downloaded
Delimited Text (all data)
Just like the delimited text option above, but ALL information is downloaded.

Note!

  • By default, Affiliate Link output is set to 'Browser' and query results are displayed in your browser window.

Due to limited screen width, browser output includes only the most important fields from your database. Other fields aren't displayed. Because of this, Affiliate Link provides two export modes, one which outputs the same fields as in browser output, and another which includes all the fields stored in the system database.

In export modes, 'output per page' isn't available because the complete results are always generated and downloaded.

'All data' export isn't available in the 'Orders Management' panel because the order report always includes all available fields in browser and default export modes.

All data exports may take significant time to complete and download due to their potentially large size. 'All data' sizes sometimes exceed standard export size by twice, or more.

Note that both formats contain the same data represented in textual form. However, when the Microsoft Excel format is generated, Affiliate Link provides additional information that enables the automatic invocation of Microsoft Excel on your desktop computer (if it is installed there). Then, Excel imports the data right into its spreadsheet, making the database export procedure essentially automatic.

The first row of the data file always contains column names (the actual number of columns and their names depends on the type of data being exported). Column names are always written in lower case and consist of letters, underscores '_' and digits beginning with a letter. This allows you to import the data into almost any database.

The second row, and all additional rows contain data. Each row contains the same number of columns that correspond to names in the first row.

The last row is the same as the first one and contains column names. Thus, it is easy to detect incomplete or broken downloads.

Example of database export file:

order_id order_date order_time order_amount order_affiliate order_commission
7Z-514 05/20/2001 09:29:48 3.00 5 0.18
3A-789 05/21/2001 17:54:13 21.95 2 0.88
order_id order_date order_time order_amount order_affiliate order_commission

Important!