11 / 28
Apr 2009

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.

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.

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.

1 month later

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).

4 months later

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

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?

3 months later

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

3 months later

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

11 days later

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

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.

12 months later

Are the cookie 'rules' listed anywhere? So for example, what if one of my affiliates (Affiliate A) directs a person (Jill) to my site for purchase. Jill's cookie is set for Affiliate A. However she doesn't buy anything.

A month later Jill clicks through to my site from Affiliate B.

What happens? Is the cookie reset to Affiliate B?

What if Jill purchases that day - who does the sale go to?



Thanks - if this info/logic is listed somewhere - please tell me where as I couldn't find it!

In the scenario you described, Affiliate B's cookie would clobber the earlier cookie for Affiliate A -- which makes sense if you think about it, since Affiliate A's referral did not generate a sale, whereas Affiliate B's did (suggesting B was probably more effective at marketing your product(s) than A was).



The cookie is set to expire 6 months from the last time the buyer clicks through the affiliate's link, so any purchases they make during the lifetime of that cookie (whether the full 6 months or until the buyer clears their cookies in that browser) will be associated with the referring affiliate.

1 month later

@E-JunkieGuru



Yes, it makes sense if you put it that way, but let me put another way.



1. Affiliate A recommends product called WidgeTech

2. Bargain-user goes back to Google and searches for "widgetech coupon."

3. Spammer Affiliate B (who has no coupons since none actually exists) creates a page Titled: "WidgeTech Coupon -- 50% Discount!!"

4. Within the page, there is only an affiliate link that reads "Click here to get discount"

5. User clicks and gets directed to vendor

6. Honest affiliate A's cookie is deleted.



How sad.



On the other hand, the scenario you described doesn't necessarily mean that the last affiliate is the one who sold the product. We all know that selling something often requires follow-ups and reading second opinions.



Affiliate A is the one who introduced the product to the buyer. It's very likely that the buyer found Affiliate B only as a result of Affiliate A's recommendation -- or the buyer only followed B's link as a result of A earlier influence.

Yes, there are all sorts of unusual scenarios one might imagine, and what you described could work the other way as well, where Affiliate A promises a discount that doesn't exist, so the buyer declines to purchase when they see they aren't getting any discount, or imagine that Affiliate A completely misrepresents the product, so the buyer does not purchase once they click through and see that it's not what they wanted at that point, but then sometime later Affiliate B markets the product to that same buyer accurately and appealingly and reintroduces the buyer to it in a context favorable enough to entice them to make a purchase.



At any rate, we can't have it both ways and had to decide which way the system would work, so we went with the most common, likely scenarios that would benefit most affiliates acting in good faith, which also happened to be the simplest solution from a software standpoint, and so that's the way it is.

6 months later

So, does inputing the IPN in Paypal still worthless because I just did and I just found this thread and now see that it was pointless? You guys never deleted that set IPN line in the Seller admin. As a customer I will assume that I have to put it in or my transactions won't count.