Affiliate Program / Hop Links: Novice/Beginner Questions

[jimburson]

Another company (legitimate/credible) wants to sell my products (I have 3 digital products) through their website to their audience in an affiliate relationship with me. I would like to do that, but I'm not understanding how to set up an eJunkie affiliate relationship with just one affiliate.

I'm following your steps here: https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/admin/#affiliate. But that seems to create a general affiliate recruiting process for my website, which isn't what I want. It also appears that I am supposed to invent a URL hop link, but how can I do that? Doesn't eJunkie need to generate a trackable URL which I then give to my affiliate partner?

What am I missing? How do I get this done? Thanks for any help!

[E-junkie_Guru]

In your case I think Direct Links would be preferable, rather than Hop Links. This provides your affiliate with code for a direct purchase button they can copy and paste into their own site, where they earn a commission on each order placed through that button. Buyers who use that button would still be purchasing directly from you and paying you in full, then you would pay out commission earnings to the affiliate, typically as a monthly lump-sum via PayPal.

In your E-junkie Seller Admin > Affiliate Program Settings, you can leave blank the Common Affiliate Share, the Common Hop Link Landing Page URL, and the More Information URL fields, and also untick the box for List affiliate program details in E-junkie Marketplace and your E-junkie Shop, then click Apply in that section to save changes.

Further down, under the Product-specific Affiliate Settings section, select a product that the affiliate will sell for you. You can leave Product Hop Link Landing Page URL blank, but do enter a Product Share % which that affiliate will earn on their referred sales, and tick the box Enable Product Direct Link, then click Apply in that section to save changes. Repeat this for each product the affiliate will sell.

Scroll back up to the Affiliate Sign-Up Link Code section and copy just the URL portion of that code, which looks like this example (the XXX and YYY parts will be unique to you):
https://www.e-junkie.com/affiliates/?cl=XXXXXX&ev=YYYYYYYYYY

Then paste that link into a personal email to your affiliate, so they can use it to register for E-junkie and join your program. This help page for affiliates explains how they can use our system to join your program and obtain their Direct Link button code:
https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.for-affiliates.htm

[jimburson]

Thank you so much for your really specific help and information.

My affiliate partner told me this: "what works best for us is if we have a link just sends our customers to your page. We would rather do that than send them to our store first".

After I posted in this forum I also heard back from E-junkie support and their suggestion, once the affiliate partner gave me that info, was this: "That does let me know enough to give you steps to setup the affiliate program:
1) Login to your E-junkie account, this will take you to the Seller Admin page;
2) On the Seller Admin page click on the Affiliate Program Settings option;
3) Scroll down to the Common Affiliate Share field;
4) In that field enter in the percentage you want to pay the affiliate;
5) In the Common Hop Link Landing Page URL field, enter in this URL - [I removed that URL from this message for privacy]
6) Remove the check mark from the List affiliate program details in E-junkie Marketplace and your E-junkie Shop option;
7) Click the Apply button to save the settings.

There is not a way for you to give him the link. He will need to signup for an E-junkie account."

And that once the affiliate is signed up with E-junkie I am to send him a link to join my affiliate program. The support contact gave me the URL in the support email.

Although I now understand the steps I'm to take and will go ahead with my affiliate partner, I'm still not quite clear on what takes place in the "hop link" process versus the "direct link" process, nor why the affiliate prefers to "go to" my page rather than have a "button on their site." Maybe once the operation begins this will become clear.

At any rate, I think I can go ahead without understanding absolutely everything. I really appreciate this forum and your assistance, Mr. E-junkie Guru. Thank you.

[E-junkie_Guru]

To clarify:

A Direct Link is a purchase button the affiliate can place on their own site, so buyers can purchase the product directly from there without visiting your own sales page at all. That buyer is still purchasing directly from you and paying you in full, but the affiliate earns a commission on each purchase made through their Direct Link(s).

A Hop Link is a referral link that buyers can click to be redirected to your sales page. Clicking a Hop Link also sets a referral cookie in their browser that expires in 6 months. Anything that buyer purchases from you during the lifespan of that cookie would track the affiliate's referral and earn the referring affiliate your Common Share % on each item they purchase. You can also override that Common % with a Product Share % for purchases of a specific item.

Note that we do not pay any commission earnings to your affiliates. Rather, after the end of each calendar month, you can use the Pay Your Affiliates link in your E-junkie Seller Admin to obtain an earnings report that lists lump-sum commission earnings for each affiliate in that month. You can use that report as a reference to pay earnings to each affiliate manually, or if you have a lot of affiliates you can simply upload that file to PayPal Mass Payment to pay all affiliates in one, big, automated batch at once.