I am so confused about the affiliate program

[angela]

I've been looking at this thing all day and I can't figure it out!



As I understand it for an affiliate program, one common hoplink is supposed to cover multiple products?



I don't understand how.



It looks to me like you can only have an affiliate code for one product at one landing page. I'm utterly baffled. I MUST be missing something big.



Shouldn't there be a distinctive affiliate hop link for every individual product?



Also, how is this secured. What is to keep someone from cheating - ? It seems I've read about people abusing these affiliate links. What safeguards are in place?



I don't understand the paying of the affiliates thing, either. Something about refunds - paying on a certain day instead of another one... I don't get it.



I can usually figure things out... but I'm totally hitting a brick wall on this. Very frustrated! Please, help.



Thank you.

[sgt_bilko]

Could you just clarify who you are using for you billing Angela? you mention a hoplink so I assume you mean clickbank. They handle payouts to affiliates automatically, so as a vendor you wouldn't have to do anything. It sounds to me like you are reading information about the affiliate scheme here at e-junkie and getting the two separate schemes confused.



Each product for a vendor at clickbank has it's own I.D number. You place that number in your preferences here at e-junkie, so when somebody clicks to buy a product an encrypted code is sent through and the customer then receives the correct download.

[angela]

I use PayPal.



After reading the same thing over an over again - this is what happens when you don't get enough sleep, probably - I see that there is a part about product specific code that you can use. They use the term hoplink here: http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.affiliates.htm along with the optional direct link.



That makes more sense!



But, I still don't understand how you know when to pay affiliates.



Also, I'm concerned about security. As far as secure ordering goes - that's what e-junkie is for, right? So, it should be safe and fool proof from people who would want to, for instance, demand refunds for products they didn't actually purchase... That is my concern.



Thanks!

[sgt_bilko]

I bill through clickbank, so I am effectively using e-junkie just to handle the download part, so others here can probably help you more in this instance.



FWIW I would be inclined to use the standard e-junkie solution rather than a fixed direct link. The product is stored in a secure location and and if the download url gets handed around it won't really mater because the url will expire after a short time that you can establish yourself.



Regarding your concerns about security and being asked for refunds from individuals who never actually purchased a product, I don't see how they could do that without all the relevant transaction codes and they would also need to control the email used to make the original purchase.



For paying affiliates through e-junkie I remember seeing a preference in the seller admin for paying affiliates. I believe you have to establish in advance you will be doing this and then stick to it. From what I can remember it's just a straight payment from your paypal account to theirs.

[angela]

Thanks!



I appreciate the advice!



Very helpful!

[maryann_shank]

Angela, I have the same concern you do, I think. I use PayPal as the payment processor. I avoid ClickBank because of the security issues that they have had. However, in reading through the materials it appears that ALL affiliate links must go to ONE sales page. I have over 60 products, each with its own sales page, and that is a real issue. Each product is geared to a different market (e.g., retail, magazine publishing, etc.). There is no one page on my site that I would want every affiliate to go to. It just doesn't make sense.



The only other option I see is to have each affiliate create his/her own sales page and have the sale made directly from that page. Since most people are not inclined to write sales pages, that doesn't seem like a very good option either.



So if someone in the know has a solution, I would appreciate it.



Thanks,

MaryAnn

[sgt_bilko]

Out of curiosity, what security problems have there been at clickbank? I only started with them about two weeks ago. I only have one product on sale at present, so much of what you are discussing is not currently an issue for me.

[maryann_shank]

Ashley, there have historically been big issues with those who can intercept your code and get free copies of your books, which they then re-sell under their own brand. There are some programs that have been developed to prevent this sort of hijacking. I honestly don't know how effective the hijacking programs are. I have been very happy with the security on E-J. With the hundreds of downloads that I've had, I am not aware of a single hijacking incident, nor have I seen any reported from anyone else. That kind of security is hard to come by, so I would like to stick with E-J if possible.

[angela]

Mary Ann,



As I understand things - at ClickBank, you would have to create an entirely new account for each and every product - and pay a fee (around $30, if you already have one account with them). This also allows each product to have it's own listing in their market place and stand on its own individual merits with regard to number of sales. Otherwise, you get one product listed - that product's ranking is affected by the sales of any other product you have added under it.



e-junkie doesn't seem to have as many affiliates looking for products to sell...



I was also not aware that ClickBank had had that issue. I have seen some criticism of them on discussion boards for hitting vendors with suspicious fees, though



Angela

[E-junkie_Guru]

Nice to see everyone helping each other out here! :^)



With E-junkie's affiliate system, you have a choice of using Common Affiliate Program Settings (these are the same across the board for all your products) and/or using Product-Specific Affiliate Program Settings, and these can also be combined. Any product-specific share (commission) percentage would override the common percentage for all affiliate-referred sales of that product.



It's possible to have a common hoplink without a common percentage (so all percentages would be set on a product-by-product basis) and to have product-specific percentages without a product-specific hop link (so affiliates could get just one, easy common hoplink to refer buyers to your site).



Clicking any hoplink (whether common or product-based) redirects the buyer to your specified landing URL for that link and sets a cookie in the buyer's browser that expires in 6 months, so anything that buyer purchases from your site during the lifespan of that cookie will earn the referring affiliate the appropriate percentage (product-based percentage for products that have one, common percentage for all other products).



Sidetracking to Refunds here for a moment:

Whenever you issue a refund, you would find the buyer's original payment in your payment processor (e.g. PayPal) account and click the Refund link/button to reverse that payment, so people can't get refunds on payments they never made in the first place. These refunds are reported to our system just as checkout payments are, so we mark those orders as Refunded in your E-junkie Transaction Log, disable any download link(s) issued to that buyer for that order, and rescind any affiliate commission earned for that sale.



Every month, you would go to Seller Admin > Pay Your Affiliates to generate a masspay.txt file, which lists lump-sum commissions earned by each affiliate in the last completed calendar month. You can upload that masspay.txt file to PayPal Mass Payments to pay your affiliates automatically, or just use the file as a reference to pay them manually by some other means.



The masspay.txt file is generated from the state of the last completed month's sales in your E-junkie Transaction Log AT THAT MOMENT when you generate the file. Any subsequent refunds you issue for sales from that month would not be reflected in a masspay.txt file you'd already generated, nor would it be carried over to affect commissions in the following month. For this reason, we recommend generating the masspay.txt file mid-month or later to allow ample time for you to issue any refunds for sales in the completed month, which would affect that month's commissions.

[sgt_bilko]

This has turned into an interesting discussion. My main reason for starting with clickbank for billing was simply because they apparently have the biggest pool of affiliates available today and indeed a good number have already started to promote my product, however, I feel it's fair to say after a couple of weeks that most of these appear to either be rather inactive or their basic marketing is not great. The real work and traffic creation is being done so far by myself and that is why I am already making sales, though obviously you always want to do better.



Looking at my sales stats so far all but one has been made through paypal, so clearly this is an option that buyers are comfortable with and trust. On that score I'd have to say that the buying process through e-junkie is far more appealing than the system used by clickbank, so perhaps I am actually missing out of sales at this point. I'd be very interested to know if anybody has any kind of evidence regarding conversion rates between the two systems. I'd also like to check out the billing cost differences between the two options.



For the question of security isn't the biggest issue down to those at clickbank who have an easily discoverable thankyou page? I wasn't aware of any other problem. Isn't the e-junkie system protecting those of us with clickbank from having our code intercepted?



From what I have seen so far signing up for e-junkie to handle the downloads is a no-brainer and removes a great deal of the complication which would be involved if you try to do it all yourself. I just want to find a solution to the PDF stamping and I'll be 110% happy.

[angela]

Okay,



Where do I find the product specific hoplink?



Will I only see that in the Edit Affiliate Program section after I have more than one product to sell???



Right now, I only see a common option. If I put that on my website, what is it going to take prospective affiliates to and what kind of information are they going to find there?





Also, what is an IPN? This is something at PayPal. I don't understand what it does.



Thanks!

[E-junkie_Guru]

IPN stands for Instant Payment Notification, and that's how PayPal informs our system when they have completed a payment. If you're running an affiliate program with our system, we request that you add IPN settings on your PayPal account, so our system can be notified when you use PayPal Mass Payments to pay out commissions to your affiliates; you can also choose not to add our recommended IPN settings, but then we would be unable to back you up in case any of your affiliates might complain they never got paid their commission earnings if in fact you did payout via PayPal.



As a seller, there is only one affiliate link you'd need to place on your own site, regardless of how your affiliate program settings are configured. This would be your sign-up link, which you would obtain from your Seller Admin > Edit Affiliate Program Settings. To join your affiliate program, new affiliates would first click your sign-up link, which takes them to the E-junkie login/registration page to either register for a new account or login to their existing E-junkie account. You may wish to log out of your E-junkie Admin and then click your own sign-up link to join your own affiliate program and see exactly what your affiliates would see when they join. This help page for affiliates explains how our affiliate system works from an affiliate's perspective:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.for-affiliates.htm



You may want to create a special page for affiliate recruitment on your site, so your sign-up link code would be on that page amongst whatever other information you wish to provide for your affiliates. If you create such a page, the URL to that page should also go in your Seller Admin > Edit Affiliate Program Settings > "More Information" link, so your affiliates will be able to find their way back to it easily from their E-junkie Affiliate Admin.



Hoplinks are the link codes that affiliates obtain from their own Affiliate Admin and paste to their own Web pages, to refer their buyers to your site. If you want to configure product-specific hoplinks or percentages, go to your Seller Admin > Setup Product-specific Affiliate Programs, select a product and click Edit Affiliate Settings. This section explains those settings in more detail:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.affiliates.htm#product

[simplehealth]

Tyson,



I'm new here and new to internet selling etc. I already use my paypal account IPN for my online fitness training site www.eachreach.com. From what I understand, I can only have one IPN... what should I do at this point?



Marcia

[E-junkie_Guru]

E-junkie's purchase buttons automatically transmit our IPN requirements to PayPal with every checkout, and these would override any manual IPN settings you may have in your PayPal account for that sale. However, once PayPal sends us their IPN, we can then forward the IPN data to another URL, as explained here:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.integration.htm



The only catch is that, although our Integration data submission follows the standard IPN format, the receiving end should not try to validate our IPN-style submission with PayPal (which would fail since we are not PayPal, and we validate the original IPN with PayPal in the first place anyway), and they should be able to either handle or ignore some extra fields we add to the standard IPN dataset.



We would recommend sending the link to this forum thread and/or the link to our Integration help page (given above) to whomever is currently receiving your IPNs, to see if they can work with that.

[simplehealth]

Tyson...



So, what if I use Authorize.net for payment? Do they also inform you of a sale? I have no clue how to do the above that you mentioned... I'm a medical professional not a website builder. Thanks though!



Marcia

[simplehealth]

And, how do I pay my affiliates if I use Authorize.net?



Marcia

[E-junkie_Guru]

IPN stands for Instant Payment Notification. It's a back-end data transmission that PayPal sends to another system to confirm when a payment has completed for an order, which also passes along the order data itself (who bought what for how much, etc.).



IPN settings in your own PayPal account tell PayPal where to send these IPNs for any payments you receive. E-junkie's Cart and Buy Now buttons tell PayPal where to send us an IPN for each order we send to them for checkout, and our IPN specs would override the manual IPN settings you have in your PayPal account; this means we get the IPN from PayPal for those sales, instead of whomever you'd specified in your PayPal account's IPN settings.



If you still needed that third party to receive IPNs for all your E-junkie sales, you would need to add their IPN-receiving URL in your E-junkie account's Seller Admin > Account Preferences > Common Notification URL setting (a product-specific setting is also available). As stated previously, this would only work if that third party does not need to validate IPNs with PayPal, and if they can handle or ignore some extra data we add to the standard IPN format, so you should ask them for clarification on this matter and probably refer them to our Integration documentation here:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.integration.htm



Now, here's a really neat thing: Regardless of which checkout method your buyers use (PayPal, Authorize.Net, etc.), we are always informed of the sale, and our Integration feature can still forward the order data to any URL you require as an IPN-style submission. This allows us to send imitation PayPal-style IPNs to third-party services that require IPN... even if you are not accepting any payments by PayPal at all!



Now, about paying your affiliates:



After the end of each calendar month, you would go to E-junkie Seller Admin > Pay Your Affiliates to generate a "masspay.txt" file for the last completed month. This summarizes lump-sum commission earnings for each your affiliates who earned commissions in that last completed month.



This is a plaintext file in a fairly simple, standard format, so you can open the file in a text editor like Notepad, or in a spreadsheet program like Excel, and simply use that as a reference to pay affiliates by whatever means you wish.



However, if you want to make paying affiliates really easy, you can simply upload the "masspay.txt" file to PayPal Mass Payments to pay all your affiliates automatically in one fell swoop! You don't even have to accept PayPal payments from buyers to do this, just as long as you have a PayPal account yourself. Affiliates who don't have a PayPal account will receive an email notifying them of the payment and inviting them to start a PayPal account in order to claim the payment.

[jimmy12]

This threads has been very helpful, thankyou !

[angela]

Okey-dokey! Still having some problems understanding the Affiliate Program.



It says in the affiliate program instructions to go to Seller Admin>Edit Affiliate Programs Settings to change the settings of the affiliate program I currently have set up.



This is what I'm trying to do: At the moment I have a 70% commission set for all of my products. I want to exclude a couple of them.



But, when I go to the above-mentioned page on your site, I only see options for setting the common affiliate program and nothing else whatsoever.



Where can I go to set different commissions or exclude different products from the affiliate program??



Thanks!