Need help understanding affiliate choices

[schleng]

Hi, I am new here ....and confused.

If I want to set my ebook up to offer it to people to become an affiliate of my product, I see there is Hop Link and Direct. I have read it over and over, but just don't understand.

What is the affiliate html code for and where does it go? I think it goes on the page on my site which tells about the product? I need a picture of what happens first, second, etc and how it all works.

And it says Direct Link takes them to the payment page. Well where do they find out about my product?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of these two types?



If someone could take the time to explain all this to me I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

Susan

[E-junkie_Guru]

Your Affiliate sign-up link code goes wherever you wish on your site (or even on other sites, wherever you can paste HTML), as a link prospective Affiliates can click to join your program. The link will take them to register for an E-junkie login, where they can proceed to their Affiliate Admin page to Get Affiliate Codes, select you as their Merchant, and pick for which product(s) they want which kind of Affiliate link codes.



A Hop Link only redirects buyers from the Affiliate's link to your site where they would do all their shopping. The buyer still buys directly from you on your site, while the Affiliate earns a commission in the background for every product with an Affiliate share percentage set which that buyer purchases from you over the next 6 months.



A Direct Link provides a "Buy Now" button for instant checkout of your product from the Affiliate's link, so the Affiliate can market and sell your product in their own way from start to finish for you, without the buyer ever even having to know your site exists, but the Affiliate only earns their commission on each individual sale.



In either case, the buyer pays you directly for the full price of the product, and we calculate monthly lump-sum commission totals due back to each Affiliate, which you can pay however you choose (tho' we support and recommend automatic monthly Mass Payments via PayPal).



Direct Links tend to favor gung-ho Affiliates who are motivated to do a lot of marketing and selling for you, maybe even construct their own Web site to sell your product -- the more work they do for you, the more sales they can drive, so the more they can earn -- but more passive Affiliates who just want to network and refer sales to you in return for residuals may not find the Direct Link per-sale commission appealing.



Hop Links tend to favor more passive Affiliates who just want to network socially with people in-person and online, making more personal connections to refer sales to your site while they collect residuals for purchases their referred buyers make over the next 6 months -- the more people they meet and contact, the more they can send to your site and earn money -- but the more aggressive, hard-sales Affiliates who may want to control the full marketing and sales process their own way from start to finish might not appreciate that the actual shopping experience and purchases are happening on your site where they can't direct the complete customer experience.

[schleng]

Thanks...now I get it!

Susan

[simplifun]

Is there a link that contains the affiliate code but can be send to the come page of the website instead of a product?

[E-junkie_Guru]

You can specify the Hop Link target as any URL you wish, even set all your Hop Links to the same URL (such as your main shop page).



In fact, very soon we will be enacting a slight change to the way Hop Links work, so that the 6-month cookie we set in the buyer's browser for following a Hop Link would track commissions for all products you have set with an Affiliate percentage, whether those other products have their own Hop Link enabled or not. This will help make things as simple as possible for your Affiliates, as you would only need to enable the Hop Link for one product (even a dummy product named something obvious like "Affiliate Link"), and then just configure the Affiliate share percentage for any/all other products as you wish. Affiliates would then have only one link to choose from, which tracks their commission for sales of all Affiliate-eligible products.

[lemonbar]

Hello,



I want to confirm that the tracking cooking is 6 months long?



Also, why is it that you enforce a 15 day after end of month payment cycle? Wouldn't it be safer to have it 45 days after month end to cover us from a 30 day return window?



Can we change this ourselves in a setting? Maybe consider adding this feature please.



We offer 30 days refunds so the Crazy Nigerian would take me to the bank and bank several times lol.

[E-junkie_Chef]

lemonbarI want to confirm that the tracking cooking is 6 months long?

It is

lemonbar

Also, why is it that you enforce a 15 day after end of month payment cycle? Wouldn't it be safer to have it 45 days after month end to cover us from a 30 day return window?

You can take 30 days, just make sure you tell your affiliates before hand.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Just to clarify, after the close of a calendar month, you have until the close of the following month to engage the Affiliate payment process; i.e., the Affiliate payment process concerns commission total earned during the previous completed calendar month.



If you need or wish to pay commissions more than a month after the close of the month when those commissions were earned, you would need to use your Transaction Log to calculate commissions manually for manual payment. As another alternative, you can obtain the Mass Payment file we make available to you after the close of each month before the close of the following month, and then hang onto that file and submit it to PayPal for issuing automatic mass payments whenever you wish.

[E-junkie_Guru]

NOTE:



Our new Common Affiliate Settings (Seller Admin > Affiliate Program Settings) allow you to offer one Common Hop Link and set one Common Affiliate Share Percentage that applies equally to ALL your products.



Any specific product-based Affiliate Share Percentage would override the Common Percentage for that product (except a 0% product share, which means that the Common % would apply for that product).



All Hop Links (whether a specific Product Hop Link or the Common Hop Link) will earn the referring Affiliate the appropriate percentage (i.e., they earn the Common % unless specified otherwise for a given product).

[miked]

So if I have the process right, the affiliate link sets a cookie, good for six months, that the cart picks up on and uses to credit the appropriate affilliate. If this is correct, when is the link set? When the hop link is clicked?



Thanks



...Mike

[miked]

Also, the cart UI I see this:



"Set https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/ipnext.php as IPN URL in your PayPal account's IPN settings - So we can track the payments you make to ensure the legitimacy of your affiliate program."



WTF is an IPN, and how do I set paypal to use it, or whatever the terminology is?

[werebear]

It's in your PayPal profile settings. Under "payment settings of some kind," but I'm not sure of the exact name.

[matthewcornell]

I would like to get an answer to MikeD's question. I'm still new to e-junkie and paypal, and the IPN stuff is confusing. I'm trying to set up an affiliate, so this is holding me back. Thanks!

[laurab]

In PayPal under My Account, go to Profile > More Options. Under Selling Preferences, go to Instant Payment Notification Preferences. Click Edit Settings, and put the https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/ipnext.php address in the Notification URL field.



How exactly IPN works, I have no idea.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Actually, you can just ignore the IPN instructions in Seller Admin > Affiliate Program Settings, and we'll be removing those instructions in a future version of Admin.



We wanted to set something up where PayPal would notify us when you pay out commissions to your affiliates, so we could back you up in case of any disputes (or have cause to suspend accounts that don't pay out), but in practice that never worked out like we planned.



BTW, Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is how PayPal confirms to our system when payments have been completed, so we can log the transactions for you and process your orders. We don't require you to set up IPN manually for regular sales, as our purchase buttons automatically transmit our IPN requirements to PayPal with every checkout that would override any manual IPN settings in your PayPal account.

[matthewcornell]

Tyson, should I disable IPN on Paypal?



matt

[laurab]

Thanks, Tyson, for clearing that up! That will make my life a little easier.

[E-junkie_Guru]

We're always glad to make things easier for our clients. :^)



Matt, you don't really need to disable or remove your IPN settings in PayPal, but you can if you wish; it doesn't make a difference either way.

[mkp007]

I spent about 20min trying to figure out IPN settings. 20min of my life gone. I will try to move on. Actually now 30min if you include this post. Yes it took me 10min to come up with this. Sad.



perhaps someone could delete the "Set https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/ipnext.php as IPN URL in your PayPal account's IPN settings - So we can track the payments you make to ensure the legitimacy of your affiliate program.".



Mark

www.bagtoss.com

[E-junkie_Guru]

We're already working on a revamped Seller Admin which will eliminate those IPN instructions and make quick alterations much easier for us to apply in the future.