Affiliate Programs

[makphisto]

Are there any MM4 stores successfully using affiliate marketing, specifically with the built-in or the Viking Coders Affiliate modules (not a third party package like CJ)? If so, would you care to share your URL so that I can take a look? I'm having some difficulty coming up with things like "Terms and Conditions" and "How to use your affiliate link" stuff.

[William Davis]

Were using Viking Coders solution. Check it out www.CubaCollectibles.com. They're software is nice, works well and most important; No reocurring fees, No partnership or comission to share, Affiliate can link directly to your site versus linking to another and then redirected to yours. However it's not perfect -it lack a few things. One of the biggest problems that it has it's inability for one affiliate to link to different pages, categories and or products. This is not a problem affiliate services. Its a good start. If you get bigger, you can always change later. There are still some improvement outstanding on my list to do, but I have other priorities at this time, but I will eventually get back to this.

[leslienord]

Linking

Jerry,

You can link to products or categories. You've probably seen it done in posts in the User Group and just not realized it.

For example say I really liked your Product FRAMED SET OF 6 BILLS, New design

My Affiliate link would be (if I were an affiliate):

http://www.cubacollectibles.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=104-F6BM&Affiliate=leslienord

Or say I fancied your Comedy category:

http://www.cubacollectibles.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=30&Affiliate=leslienord

The only drawback I possibily see is that you have to use non "Merchant Optimized" links. But I can create tons of links to any product or category I so desire to do.

[jason - jmh web services]

Were using Viking Coders solution. Check it out www.CubaCollectibles.com. They're software is nice, works well and most important; No reocurring fees, No partnership or comission to share, Affiliate can link directly to your site versus linking to another and then redirected to yours. However it's not perfect -it lack a few things. One of the biggest problems that it has it's inability for one affiliate to link to different pages, categories and or products.

huh? Who told you that? It does do this.

Jason

[makphisto]

Were using Viking Coders solution. Check it out www.CubaCollectibles.com. They're software is nice, works well and most important; No reocurring fees, No partnership or comission to share, Affiliate can link directly to your site versus linking to another and then redirected to yours. However it's not perfect -it lack a few things. One of the biggest problems that it has it's inability for one affiliate to link to different pages, categories and or products. This is not a problem affiliate services. Its a good start. If you get bigger, you can always change later. There are still some improvement outstanding on my list to do, but I have other priorities at this time, but I will eventually get back to this.

Thanks Jerry. I am using the Viking module, and I like its mechanics. I just needed some idea of how to do the "Accept terms and conditions" ect. You're site does that well - I may use it as a template, if you don't mind!

[William Davis]

Leslie, when we last spoke with the developer during the implementation of this project, they advised that their module could not do this. Each affiliate can be assigned a different page to link to, but only one page (categary or product -don't recall now if it will work with static pages).

I just tried your recommendation by placing an order, and the module was not able to track the hit, much less the order.

We are very intersted in this feature, we have a multitude of affilates that own a web site but do not have their own shopping cart, thus they use are for their products. Obvious they would like to display a link to each of their products on their site.

Please let me know.

[makphisto]

The module documentation says this:

Allowing Affiliates to Link to Products & Categories
The process of affiliates linking directly to products and categories is simple. You can take the URL to a product in your store and just append &AFFIL=XXX to the end of the URL (where XXX is the Affiliate?s code).
Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_code=XYZ&AFFIL=XXX
You may want to turn off redirecting for the affiliate. If you?d rather leave that on, you can instruct the affiliate to also append &NR=1 to the URL.
Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_code=XYZ&AFFIL=XXX&NR=1
This will send the shopper, via the affiliate?s referral, directly to any page you setup. It will bypass any redirection.

http://www.vikingcoders.com/docs/BROK_AFFILIATES.pdf

[William Davis]

I know I had posed this question before to the group & the developer.

To make sure we are all on the same page -I am referring primarily to myself, I like to confirm what our needs/problems where and still is:

For each affiliate inability to link to more than one (different) categories and/or products –either dynamic or static pages.

As I posted earlier, both the group and the developer stated at that time that it was not possible. In fact, as a result of this thread, I made a purchase using a test affiliate account, and the affiliate module did not recognize the order using the suggested link format in the thread.

In all fairness, I most likely failed to properly convey our objectives at the time. However, I will be very grateful if we can revisit the matter and perhaps provide me with an example each of the following four scenarios listed below using the store setup described:

Store Setup:
Store: CubaCollectibles.com
Affiliate Code: YI620872
Category Code: 33
Product Code: 104-1CBC58
Static Link Format: http://www.cubacollectibles.com/Cuba/*.html (* = category or product code)

1. Static Category Affiliate Link?
2. Static Product Affiliate Link?
3. Dynamic Category Affiliate Link?
4. Dynamic Product Affiliate Link?

Please let me know.

[leslienord]

I "think" I mentioned that your affiliate links have to be dynamic. I'm not sure what the Affiliate Manager module could do before you upgraded your site. It is "possible" that a few years ago the uncompiled version couldn't do what the compiled version can now. But as already posted:

Allowing Affiliates to Link to Products & Categories

The process of affiliates linking directly to products and categories is simple. You can take the URL to a product in your store and just append &AFFIL=XXX to the end of the URL (where XXX is the Affiliate?s code).

Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/Merchant2/me...=XYZ&AFFIL=XXX

[makphisto]

In fact, in reading a previous version of the Doc, and comparing to the most recent version of the Doc, I see that the old version doesn't even mention linking directly to products and categories - perhaps that's a new thing for this version?

[William Davis]

We just upgrade to the current version of VK Affiliate Manager.

We will test it this weeken and will let you how it turned out, but the test performed on 05/16/2006, using the code example mention in Leslie's post of 05/15/2006 in this thread did not work.

We will test it again now with the new version. Will let you know.

[jason - jmh web services]

I know I had posed this question before to the group & the developer.

To make sure we are all on the same page -I am referring primarily to myself, I like to confirm what our needs/problems where and still is:

For each affiliate inability to link to more than one (different) categories and/or products ?either dynamic or static pages.

As I posted earlier, both the group and the developer stated at that time that it was not possible. In fact, as a result of this thread, I made a purchase using a test affiliate account, and the affiliate module did not recognize the order using the suggested link format in the thread.

In all fairness, I most likely failed to properly convey our objectives at the time. However, I will be very grateful if we can revisit the matter and perhaps provide me with an example each of the following four scenarios listed below using the store setup described:

Store Setup:
Store: CubaCollectibles.com
Affiliate Code: YI620872
Category Code: 33
Product Code: 104-1CBC58
Static Link Format: http://www.cubacollectibles.com/Cuba/*.html (* = category or product code)

1. Static Category Affiliate Link?
2. Static Product Affiliate Link?
3. Dynamic Category Affiliate Link?
4. Dynamic Product Affiliate Link?

Please let me know.

You originally said

One of the biggest problems that it has it's inability for one affiliate to link to different pages, categories and or products.

This is not an accurate statement, and viking coders and probably this group did not say it was not possible to do what you want with miva merchant pages. affiliate manager is a miva merchant module and thus everyone assumes you are talking about miva merchant pages unless you specify static pages. You can however do the same with static pages by using viking's redirect code that is included with their docs. It is something like http://www.domain.com/Merchan2/merch...iggys/xyz.html

hth
Jason

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

As an aside...which will probably muddle this whole thread...why would you redirect an affiliate link to a static page. I don't see it bandwidth/CPU issue (unless you have a wildly successful affilate program...in which case, you should quit your day job and head out on the seminar circuit)...or am i missing something.

[jason - jmh web services]

As an aside...which will probably muddle this whole thread...why would you redirect an affiliate link to a static page. I don't see it bandwidth/CPU issue (unless you have a wildly successful affilate program...in which case, you should quit your day job and head out on the seminar circuit)...or am i missing something.

He wants to link to his merchant optimizer pages. Another aside is that I believe Susan has developed a jedi method with ajax to use affiliate manager with merchant optimizer.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

That's what I thought...so I don't really see the need. Optimizer is used either for SEO purposes or Performance enhancements or both. In either case, I don't see the logic of pointing Affiliate links at Optimizer pages unless you really think you'll be getting lots of folks adding these links to their pages (and hence matching them up with indexed pages).

The two methods that make sense to me is using an .htaccess rewrite if a link contains Affiliate= (or whatever the code is) that actually takes them to Merchant page, or running some sort of I-frame connector (think that's what Susan uses).