(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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Automatic Affiliate Login Accounts
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Minimum Payout Option
Commissions that do not meet a minimum specified by you will just carry over
to the next month.
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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.
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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.
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