Professional Cart Solutions
PCS Home
Sign Up For Free 30 Day Trial
Shopping Cart Login
Features
Price List
Teleclasses
Demos
FAQs
Testimonials
Contact Us
Practice Pay Solutions
PPS Home
Services
menu 15
Merchant Login













 

Affiliate Module Features:   

(All of these features are available in the Pro package.)

Affiliate Program

Custom Commission Levels

Two Tier Pay Structure


Default and Affiliate Specific Referral Destination URLs

Automatic Affiliate Login Accounts


Customize Signup Form Welcome Message


Welcome Page

Automatic and Custom Affiliate Instructions

Refer A Friend Form


Commission Payout Report


Minimum Payout Option
Affiliate Order Records

Affiliate Cookies


Affiliate Program

A potential customer comes to your site. Looks around, and likes what they're seeing. Maybe the purchase something, maybe not.  Then they see your "Join Our Associates Program!" link.  They click on it, get more info and fill out a quick form, and then they are given a username and password.  They receive an email with instructions and a referral URL.  They then send prospects to this URL, which sends the prospects to your site but they get tagged as having been referred by the affiliate (unbeknownst to the customer).  When they become customers and make a purchase, the affiliate is credited with the sale.  You can see this in the order record, and the affiliate can view his/her order record using a unique login page with a history of all their commissions. At the end of the month you can run a commission report, which gives you the monthly totals for all your affiliates along with their commission amounts.

Affiliates are, simply, a self-hired commission-only sales force.  The Professional Cart Solutions Pro package gives you all the tools and automation necessary to effectively establish and utilize such a powerful resource.  One of the biggest challenges for a new Internet business is how to drive traffic to your site.  Affiliates send traffic your way, and you only pay them for paid customers.  This is one of the best marketing tools available anywhere!  Setting up your affiliate program is quite easy. 

Go to top

Custom Commission Levels

You set a default commission level for all affiliates.  But if you want to give some of your affiliates a higher (or lower) commission rate, you can change that by editing the affiliate record for that affiliate.  For example, if your husband is doing sales for you, you might give him a higher commission than Joe User who comes to your website and joins your affiliate program.  

Professional Cart Solutions does not support item specific affiliate commissions.  If you absolutely require this ability, you might be interested to know that you can integrate AssocTrac, an affiliate-tracking system that does support item specific commissions.  All you have to do in Professional Cart Solutions is enter your AssocTrac User ID, and we setup everything else for your account with us. Click here for information about their product.

Go to top


Two Tier Pay Structure

You can have your Affiliates get a second-level commission if you like. This way, if a customer whom an Affiliate originally referred decides to themselves become an Affiliate, the first Affiliate gets a residual commission.

For example, Bob signs up as an affiliate with you.  Bob refers Michiko to your site, and she makes a purchase.  Bob gets the first level commission on this sale.  Later, Bob refers Carol to your site, and she also becomes an affiliate.  Carol then refers another customer to your site; Carol would get the first level commission, and Bob would get the second level commission.  Professional Cart Solutions automatically keeps track of who gets a first level commission and a second level commission for every purchase automatically.  This is network marketing in overdrive!

Go to top

Default and Affiliate Specific Referral Destination URLs


If you want your affiliates' referrals to come to your site via a certain page, you can set that page as the default for all affiliates.  If you want to use your affiliates to promote a particular group of products, you can create a page for just those products and have affiliate referrals to go there. 

If you would like a particular affiliate to direct prospects to a page specific to that affiliate or to a certain product, you can also configure the system that way.  For example, if you make a special arrangement with a power seller to concentrate on a single item for a higher commission rate, this feature would is invaluable.

Go to top


Automatic Affiliate Login Accounts

 

Go to top

All affiliates get a username and password automatically, which allows them to login to a system-generated page that allows any affiliate to view the commissions for the past month and a history of all their commissions as well as giving them their referral URL.

Customize Signup Form Welcome Message


You can add custom HTML to your affiliate signup page to include additional info such as a simple welcome not, your commissions pay structure, your terms of service, or whatever you like.

Go to top

Welcome Page

An affiliate welcome page is where a new affiliate will end up after signing up.  This is a fantastic opportunity to welcome your new 'Business Partner.'  It may also explain or reiterate how your affiliate program works.

Go to top

Automatic and Custom Affiliate Instructions

You can opt to have the system send instructions with the various code for links to your affiliates, and/or you can include a custom autoresponder that also includes the affiliate's username, password info, referral URL and how they can make referrals to your site.  If you use an autoresponder, you can then set follow up messages to train the new affiliates in the features of your products or further encourage them in one way or another with news of product improvements, or announcements of special offers.

Go to top


Refer A Friend Form

Your affiliates also get the use of a special tell a friend form, called refer a friend, that gives them the ability to tell their friends and family about your site.  The email that this form sends out includes the Affiliate's referral URL automatically.

Go to top

Commission Payout Report

When you setup your affiliate pay day, you are also setting up the day that your affiliates will receive notice of their commission amounts for the past month.  On that day, you will also get an email for each affiliate and commission due. You might also do a commission payout report, and import the results into a spreadsheet or database.  This will include those who do not make the minimum payment amount for the month, so that you may keep complete records of the month's activity.  Professional Cart Solutions does not issue affiliate commission checks on your behalf - that is totally under your control.

All commissions are dated, and the affiliate can see what commissions they have accumulated for the month by simply logging into their Affiliate Login page. Thus, it is not necessary to reset the commission amount to zero.

Go to top


Minimum Payout Option

Commissions that do not meet a minimum specified by you will just carry over to the next month.

Go to top


Affiliate Order Records

The order record for an affiliate will include affiliate account info, contact info, and most importantly histories of the affiliate's first and second level commissions.  You can also view a history of all the orders referred by this affiliate.  The order history can be exported just like any other search of your orders.

Go to top


Affiliate Cookies

When a prospect clicks on an affiliate's referral URL, the system places a cookie on the prospect's computer.  When the customer makes a purchase from you via our shopping cart, the system looks for an affiliate's cookie.  When it finds one, the customer's order is marked as having been referred by that affiliate, and the affiliate's record is credited with the commission amount specified by you.  If the system does not find an affiliate's cookie, the order is considered to be 'direct.'   The only way an affiliate might miss a commission is if the customer deletes their cookie file (pretty rare) before coming to your order form, or if the original cookie gets overwritten by another of your affiliates.

By default, the system is setup to give affiliates commissions on 'their' customers for the life of that customer.  This is the most common model for an affiliate program, but you may want to give commissions only on customers who were directly referred to your site.  There is a way to essentially overwrite an affiliate's cookie after a purchase so that subsequent purchases by that customer will be 'direct'.  This way, affiliates will only earn a commission when a customer actually clicks through the affiliate's referral URL.

Go to top

 

                          

spacer