The affiliate program allows you to provide commissions to program users when applicable purchases are made through the shopping cart.

Enabling the Program

1. "Settings > Feature Manager"
2. Set the "Affiliate Program" to "On"

Program Settings

The affiliate program has universal settings as well as user-settings. Unless you manually alter a user's settings, all users enrolling in the affiliate program will be assigned the universal settings.

Universal Settings

1. "Settings"
2. Expand the "Affiliate Program Options" section

User Settings

From the admin control panel, access the "User Management Screen" for the user and scroll down to the "Affiliate Program" section.

Allowing Users to Enroll

Enrolling from a Registration Form

Users can be automatically enrolled from a registration form by creating a hidden field named "affiliate_create" with value "1". When assigned to a registration form, any user registering from that form will automatically be enrolled in the program.

Enrollment from the User Control Panel

As long as the "Hide Affiliate Program?" option is set to "No", users can enroll by clicking the "Affiliate Program" link withing their User Control Panel.

You can charge for enrollment by creating a shopping cart product and then selecting that product within the options:

• "Settings"
• Expand the "Affiliate Program Options section
• Select your product from the "Affiliate Product Enrollment Product" option dropdown.

Manually Enrolling Users

You can manually enroll users from the admin control panel by accessing the "User Management Screen" for the user, expanding the "Affiliate Program" section, and clicking on "Enroll this user in the affiliate program".

Affiliate Links

The standard affiliate link looks like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/ppSD2/affiliates/in.php?id=affiliate_id

You can also use an account username as the "id":

http://www.yoursite.com/ppSD2/affiliates/in.php?id=affiliate_username

Optionally, user can add the following fields to the link to track where users are coming from and redirect users to a specific page.

"tag" field

A "tag" allows users to label a click. When a user views their affiliate program statistics from the User Control Panel, this tag will be displayed next to applicable clicks.

http://www.yoursite.com/ppSD2/affiliates/in.php?id=affiliate_id&tag=tag_name_here

"redirect" field

The default redirect for all affiliate is controlled by the "Redirect Affiliate Referrals?" option, however users can redirect clickers to a specific location using the following link format:

http://www.yoursite.com/ppSD2/affiliates/in.php?id=affiliate_id&redirect=full_url_to_redirect_to_here

Crediting Orders

Automatic Crediting

In order for the affiliate program to work, users must first click the affiliate link and then purchase their your ppSD2 shopping cart.

Manually Crediting Users

You can manually credit an affiliate with a sale by:

• "Shopping Cart > List all orders"
• Expand the order you want to credit the user with
• Input the user's username in the "Assign to affiliate" text box and click on "Assign to Affiliate"

Administration

All administration of orders can be handled through the "Shopping Cart > Affiliate Program" section of the control panel.

• List incoming clicks
• Displays all unconverted clicks recorded for affiliates.
• List converted clicks
• Display all converted clicks.
• "List payouts that are due"
• See section "Viewing Due Payments" below.
• List sent payouts
• A list of all sent commissions.

Viewing Due Payments

The program automatically detects when a payment is due based on the settings established within the options, or if the user has custom settings, using the user's settings.

• "Shopping Cart > Affiliate Program > List payouts that are due"

Click on the "Send Payment" icon to mark the commission as sent. Please note that ppSD2 cannot actual pay the user for you. You will need to manually send a check or PayPal payment.

Last updated on 9 July 2011 11:43pm