How To Keep Your Affiliates Happy
How To Keep Your Affiliates Happy
Did you hear that?
That was the sound of an angry marketer ;-)A lot of marketers don’t like promoting products that contain and opt-in box or a squeeze page on the sales page, they believe that people may sign up to the newsletter and then buy the product in a few weeks, meaning they would be a lot less likely to get credit for any sales.
This is understandable; if an affiliate promotes your product they deserve to be rewarded when a visitor they sent to your site decides to buy.
What I don’t understand is why people don’t just use a very simple snippet of PHP code on their sales page to capture the affiliate ID and then pass it to their auto responder. You can then send out follow up messages that contain the affiliates ID so they won’t lose out on any sales.
Did you hear that?
That was the sound of you, wanting me to show you how it’s done 😉
As I don’t like to disappoint here is the dead simple way I capture the affiliate ID and send it to my auto responder so that affiliates don’t lose out on any commissions. In this example I will be using a Clickbank affiliate link and Aweber, however you can use this method with most affiliate programs and auto responders.
Step 1
Set up a web form in your Aweber control panel (List Settings > Web Forms)
Fill in step 1 as you normally would, then on step 2 click on the “Add New Field†link and enter the details as shown in the screen below. You can give the label any name you like, but in this example I will just call it “affâ€.
Step 2
Save the web form and then go to either a follow up message or a broadcast message. Add a new follow up/broadcast message. Click into the box where you usually type in your message and click on the “Personalized Fields†drop down box.
You will notice that at the bottom of the list we have a new filed called {!custom affâ€}
Placing this tag in your message will insert the affiliates ID into the message, so if you were using a Clickbank style link, the format would be:
http://{!custom aff}.VENDOR.hop.Clickbank.net
Step 3
We have now set up Aweber to save our affiliate ID. Now you need to place the opt-in form onto our sales page.
Go back to the Web Forms page in Aweber and click on the “Get HTML†link. For this example we MUST use the HTML code, not the javascript option. Copy the HTML form code onto your sales page.
Step 4
Open up your sales page and put the following code underneath your <body> tag:
<?
$hop=$_GET[‘hop’];
?>
Then find your HTML opt-in box code you just entered. Look for the line of code that says:
We now simply add this into the value variable using this code:<?PHP echo $hop; ?>
Save the page and upload. Before we go any further I should point out the you must save your page with a .php extension, or use your .htaccess file to parse all HTML pages as PHP. (If you don’t understand this post a comment and I will clarify for you!)
Step 5
We now have everything in place, not so difficult was it?
The PHP code will now pass the “hop=†information into our Aweber form, the Aweber form will then display the affiliate ID in our follow up messages so that affiliates no longer lose out on any commissions made via the follow up series of messages!
That brings to an end this week’s newsletter; did you find it useful or just plain confusing?
I was thinking of making a video tutorial showing how to do this with different styles of affiliate links, what do you think?
Until next time,
Dan
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Great Advice Dan….
And a good description,….. But yeah – A video would be even better 😉
Also – I would assume you would then need to mention on an affiliates page that you’ve done this ?
So that te potential affiliates know they wont be losing out …and in fact have more of a chance of the sale and hence extra income.
Cheers for a great post
Randy
http://www.MonthlyBargains.co.uk
http://www.RandolfSmith.com
Hi Dan,
Yep – a video tutorial would be a great thing to have – and you could even use it as a promo tool for your biz!
Thanks.
Kevin
LOL, looks like a video it is then!
@ Randy – Yes, it would definatly be worth while mentioning it to your affiliates, i’m sure they would be please to know they wouldn’t be missing out on any commission.
Hey Dan, yep video is always good, although your post does it explain it in very easy to follow steps.
If I promote an affiliate product I always check to see if the seller has ways that they can avoid paying me a commission, which unfortunately some sellers do.
However I have participated in a few affiliate products / programs using this method I think it’s great!
Great Info yet again
Look forward to the video, Sally 🙂
Great post Dan. And really timely. I’ll be adding the code *and* adding a note about it to my affiliate page.
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Hi Dan! I would love to see a video using this method! I for one am totally baffled with .htaccess and parse ect.. so feel free to elaborate! I’ll be adding a FYI link back to your blog for all my readers!
Thanks for the great information!
Terri
Hi Terri,
With regards to the .htaccess:
Log into your hosting account via FTP and look for a file called .htaccess
Open it up and add the following line:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html
Save and then upload. If you don’t have an .htaccess file there already, just create a new notepad txt file with the above line in, and save it as .htaccess and upload.
This will then tell the server to look at all HTML pages as if they were PHP.
Hi,
I know that I could make it work, but I’m a helpdesk tech. What about those who aren’t using Aweber and aren’t tech oriented?
You always give great advice. And by the way, I have your Basic HTML, and recommend it to all my clients! It’s a great place for the newbies to start.
Best wishes,
Gail
Hi Gail,
I only use Aweber so that’s all I could test it on, but as long as your autoresponder allows you to add new fields (which i’m sure the vast majority will) you can still use this method.
Cheers,
Dan
Great information Dan! In fact, I’ve printed this post off and I’m going to follow your instructions just as soon as I clear some time.
Thanks again!
Lee McIntyre
Can I go back to the original point. I have always assumed (as a clickbank affiliate) that if the sales pages encourages someone to join a newsletter or short course, so long as the subsequent emails don’t have links to a different site, then a purchase will still reward the affiliate. Surely if someone sets up a system that deliberately cuts the affiliate out of the loop then Clickbank should kick them out – or am I being naive!!!
Hi David,
Yes, you are right, as long as the vendor is linking to the site through a standard link then you should still get credit for a sale as the Clickbank cookie will still be on the users PC.
However if that cookie is deleted then you wouldn’t get the sale, so by inserting the affiliate link in the follow up emails you are placing the cookie each time the link is clicked, rather than relying on the user not to delete their cookies whilst the follow up emails are on-going.
There are also vendors that will use the follow up’s to cut the affiliate out of the sale, they will use a secondary clickbank ID of their own and then direct the user to the sales page via their link – saving clickbank fee’s but also making the original affiliate lose out on the comm. It’s a really bad practice but it still goes on.
My advice would be to sign up to the follow up emails before you promote a product.