Find this feature

From the Main Menu of your Site Manager, click Affiliate Program (in the Marketing column), click Affiliate Information, and then click All Affiliates.  To add a new affiliate, click Add Affiliate.  To edit an existing affiliate, click Edit on the row of the affiliate.

Introduction

To earn commission on your site, a person must sign up as an affiliate, and then you must approve their account.  Alternatively, you can add an affiliate in your Site Manager.

When a person signs up as an affiliate, you will be notified at the e-mail address on your affiliate section’s Contact Us page.  To change this, enter your Site Manager, click Affiliate Program, click Affiliate Profile Manager, and then click Contact us.  Enter new information, and then click Apply.

To sign up for your affiliate program, a person must visit your Affiliate Home Page.  Your visitor can either click the Affiliate Program link on your Web site, or visit:

http://www.yoursiteaddress.com/affiliate/

Replace yoursiteaddress with your Web site’s address.

If the Affiliate Program link is not on your navigation bar, you can add it.  See the Navigation Bar topic for instructions.

Add Affiliate

To add an affiliate to your site, click Add Affiliate on your All Affiliates screen.  Fill out all of the required boxes, and any other boxes you have information for, and then click Save Affiliate.  See the Add Affiliate topic for more information.

Approving Affiliates

A person who signs up as an affiliate on your site cannot earn commission or log in to their affiliate account until you approve them.  When you receive an e-mail that notifies you a person has signed up as an affiliate, you should look at their affiliate account and decide whether or not you want them as an affiliate.

To edit an affiliate account, click Edit next to the affiliate account.

Affiliate Information

Most of the information listed on the affiliate page is your affiliate’s personal information.

Commission Expires after days controls how long affiliates retain their commission before it expires.  Setting this at 0 means commission never expires.

Most affiliate programs never expire commission.

Receive e-mail

This determines whether or not the affiliate receives all affiliate e-mails that you send out.

It’s a good idea for all of your affiliates to receive e-mails sent to affiliates.

Authorize Affiliate

Select this box to authorize this affiliate to earn commission and sign in to the affiliate section of your site.

Enable eCatalog download

Select this box to allow your affiliates to download your eCatalog.  They can then distribute this eCatalog, and purchases made through it will earn them commission.

Commission

Enter the commission amount the affiliate earns.

The amount of commission you pay should depend on how much profit you earn on each sale, and how much effort your affiliate spends to get a sale.  Generally, affiliate programs pay between 3% and 20% commission.

Commission earned on

Determine what your affiliate earns commission on.

Generally, an affiliate program only pays commission on Goods Sold.

Payout threshold

This is the point at which your site notifies you about your affiliate’s earnings.  This keeps you from sending a bunch of small checks or payments to your affiliate.  Setting the Payout Threshold to $50 means that your site will notify you when this affiliate has earned $50 in commission.

Commission Details

Commission earned shows the total amount of commission that this affiliate has earned.  This number does not go down when you make a payment to the affiliate – it shows the cumulative total of earnings.

Commission owed shows the amount of commission currently owed to this affiliate.  This number will be the Commission earned minus any payments you have recorded to the affiliate.

Click here to pay the balance commission takes you to a screen to record a payment you have made to this affiliate.  To learn about this screen, see the topic on Affiliate Payout.