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).

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?

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

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.

Tyson, should I disable IPN on Paypal?



matt

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

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

We send our IPN requirements to PayPal with every checkout, and those would override any manual IPN settings in your PayPal account for that transaction. The obsolete IPN setting we recommended in our Affiliate program setup instructions would have no relation to our system processing orders for you and tracking any affiliate commissions earned if you set up an affiliate program. We had intended that IPN setting only to notify us when merchants actually pay out commission earnings to their affiliates, but in practice that did not work out as intended, so that instruction has been removed in the next version of Seller Admin we've been working on. Our current Flash-based Seller Admin has become so complex that modifying anything at all in it tends to break things in unexpected ways, so we're just leaving it well enough alone until its DHTML-based replacement is ready for primetime.

E-junkieGuruWe'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.

So given we are in 2013 now I assume that I no longer need to do this ? Even though it still says to do it in the instructions ?

Yes, you can still disregard those IPN instructions when setting up your affiliate program. We're still working on the new Admin project, which should be ready go live sometime this year.