Affiliate Management: Table of Contents 

Affiliate Management Overview

Office Autopilot’s Affiliate Management system allows you to track who's sending you traffic and sales so you can reward them. It's simple to get started, with powerful features for advanced marketers. 

It allows you to manage one tier and two tier affiliate programs. It gives you the ability to run multiple affiliate programs, for instance, if you've got a couple of different levels of affiliates and you want to offer them different commissions on different products, or different products to sell. In this case, you could set up multiple programs, and since each affiliate can only be a member of one program, the system knows how to pay them.

It links to the completely customizable affiliate center, thanks to the WordPress integration (which is the place where your affiliates can log in and see their stats, get promo tools like banners and emails, and see when their next payment is coming).  

It has simple and powerful affiliate pay options. And, it is tightly integrated with Office Autopilot’s marketing automation engine for outstanding affiliate follow up.

Order of operations for creating your affiliate system

To create your affiliate system, you'll want to go through the following steps:

1. Set your Global Settings
2. Create your affiliate program(s)
3. Create and upload your promo tools
4. Create and post your affiliate signup forms
5. Promote the affiliate program

Affiliate Global Settings

The first time you sign in and click on the “Affiliates Tab”, you’ll be taken to the “Global Settings” page.  While each different program you create will have its own sign up form and its own settings that you'll set on a per-program basis, these settings are global, which means they're set across all your programs.

1. First, you will indicate how affiliates will be paid (you can choose to pay them via PayPal, check, or their choice). Currently, if you choose to pay them via paypal, you'll get a "tab delimited" file which you can load into paypal and use to make a paypal "mass payment". If you choose to pay via check, you will get a .csv file which you can either give to your bookkeeper, or   import it into your QuickBooks system and print out the checks.
   
2. Next, the “Pay Threshold” is how much owed commission must be accrued before you pay. You may not want to be paying every affiliate every time they make even a tiny little sale. 
3. Below that you will find the “Affiliate Link Settings”. This is where you choose how you would like your affiliates’ links to look. The first two settings are simple, and are for you if you're hosting your membership site on one of our public domains. However, if you're hosting it on your own domain, you'll likely want to use the third or fourth option. These two options require a bit of setup work on your part. You can read instructions here and you can call at (805) 568-1424 and we'll give you a hand with it. 
   
4. Next, you will select whether you wish your commission to be paid to the first or last referrer.
   
5. Then, select when the cookies will expire. See, when a person clicks on an affiliate link, their computer gets a cookie put onto it, which basically tags the prospect as having come through the given referrer. Once those cookies expire, then if that person buys, the referrer won't get credit for the sale. Or, if they click through someone else's affiliate link to buy after the cookies have expired, then that person will get the credit for the sale.
   
6. Lastly, add your company name and logo, save it, and you’re all set. 

First Referrer vs. Last Referrer

If you choose 'first referrer', that means that when a sale gets made, the very first person who's affiliate link got clicked will get the comish, no matter how many other people's affiliate links get clicked in the interim. Last referrer means that the affiliate link that gets clicked last, or, most recently, leading up to a sale is the one that will get paid, no matter who was the first one to refer the sale.

Advantages and disadvantages of both

The advantage of a first referrer system is that it encourages affiliates to mail early in a launch cycle, so that their affiliate link gets clicked first before anyone else who may be promoting the product. The disadvantage is that affiliates may get sluggish toward the the end of a launch cycle and decide not to mail much for you, given that they know that if their link got clicked first, they're already going to get that comish.

The advantage of a last referrer system is that it encourages affiliates to mail late in a launch cycle, which is typically right before the car opens and the product goes on sale. The disadvantage is that if affiliates know it's a last referrer program, then they won't likely mail early in a launch cycle, preferring to wait 'till the last minute with the hope that prospects will click on their link right before buying.

Create a New Affiliate Program

Once you've set your Global Settings, you'll want to create at least one Affiliate Program.  Each program will have its own affiliate signup form, and any affiliate can only be a member of one of your programs. So, this allows you to invite, say, more potentially valuable prospective affiliates to sign up to a premium affiliate program, and have all the other, say, standard affiliates, sign up for your regular program.

1. Click the “Affiliates” tab, then click “Create a New Program”. 
2. Name the program. You might call it "Gold Program" if this is your premium program, or "Standard Program" if it's your normal program for instance. 
3. Then select whether or not new affiliates require your approval to sell your products for you or if they are automatically approved. You might want to approve access to your premium program, but, not for your standard program, for instance.
4. Select if you want the referrer’s affiliate code to be automatically added to all email links. If so, select for how long you want it to appear.
5. Next, select if you wish for any future sales after the first sale of a commissionable product to be credited to the referrer. If so, select the time duration that this will last.  This gives a big incentive for people to refer people who are loyal customers and who buy repeatedly.
6. Select the program type (whether you want a one-tier or two-tier program).
7. “Personal Information”: Here, you will select how much information on referrals you want shared with the referring affiliate (when the affiliate logs into their backend).  Below that, you can select any of the check boxes to show even more information to your affiliates, in the case, say for instance, that you have special, "reseller partners" who you'd like to allow to do very thorough accounting based upon their sales.
8. Next, is the “Product Commissions” section.  Select the products you want to post commission on as well as the percentage earned by each tier of affiliate.  
9. Click the save button.

Hard-Coding Affiliates' Links into Emails

A Note about this feature: This was inspired by Jeff Walker. Basically, this is if you want to have a last referrer, or last cookie system, so as to encourage your affiliates to mail late in a launch cycle, for example. But you also may want to have an incentive for early mailings. What you can promise if you use this feature, and what Jeff Walker, for example, promises, if you’re the first referrer, is that he will keep track of that, but he will pay the last referrer (so that people can add their bonus packages etc).

What he also promises is that if you were the first referrer (when Jeff sends out his emails announcing that his cart is open) then he is going to hard code that first referrer’s link into all the emails that he sends out. In doing so, he is actually overriding the last referrer. This means the first referrer gets a major benefit. Of course, if someone does click through someone else’s link at the last minute, then, it will go to the last referrer.  

To achieve this would be a major coding project/nightmare (without a system such as ours).  So, if this is what you would like to do then you would select, “Before the first sale, automatically add the referrer's affiliate code to all my email links” and you would then choose the length of time.

One tier vs. two tier systems

A one-tier system means that the only time a commission is made is when someone refers your product and a sale is made.  A two-tier system allows for the original referrer to make another, usually smaller commission whenever someone who they referred makes a referral that ends up in a sale. This of course, gives your affiliates an incentive to refer people who refer.

Promotional Tools and Program Settings

Click on the “Affiliates” tab, then to the left, click on “Promotional Tools and Program Settings”.  This is where you view the programs you created, edit each program, and also create and edit promotional tools for this program.

Promo Tools

These are the tools you will give your affiliates will use to sell your stuff for you.  You upload them through the Promotional Tools area, and then your affiliates can access them through the affiliate center.

We allow for four different types as of now:

Banners

A banner ad is a commonly used method of attracting a click. You'll design the ad, then upload it. Affiliates download the banner, which is already linked with their affiliate link and embed it onto their web pages.

Emails

These are marketing emails written by you, usually with lots of links in it to the sales page or order form. These links come pre-populated with the affiliate's link so all they have to do is copy/paste the whole email into their email service of choice and mail their people with it. You'll simply create the email in the editor provided.

Lightbox

Upload any image, like a banner type image, and when your affiliates download it, they'll get special code which they can paste onto their web page, which will make it pop up a lightbox that has that image on it, linked with their affiliate link.

Direct Links

This is just their affiliate link.

Creating/uploading a new Promotional Tool

1. Click on the “Add New Tool” button.
2. Name the tool 
3. Type in the URL this tool is to promote
4. Select what type of tool you wish to create (banner, light box, etc). If you're creating an email tool, you'll simply type up the email, and merge in the affiliate's link via the mail merge option.
   
5. Type in a campaign name
6. Type in ad name
7. Select a stored image (for Banner or lightbox).
8. Once you upload, these will be available for your affiliates to download from your WordPress affiliate center. 

IMPORTANT NOTE RE: PROMO TOOLS

The URL that the promo tool leads to MUST be tracked using the "Manage Domain Names" feature, otherwise the referrer will not be tracked. Also, if you happen to be using a WordPress site and a theme that is not compatible with PilotPress, then you can choose to install tracking scripts manually rather than using PilotPress as a solution.

Commission and Affiliate Manager

 To access this area, click on the “Affiliates” tab, then “Commission and Affiliate Manager”.

Affiliates pending approval

This is where you view the affiliates that are awaiting approval. For those who have filled out one of your affiliate signup forms (if you require approval of new affiliates), you can either decline or approve them here. Furthermore, you can send them either an email or a postcard, perhaps welcoming them, or even letting them know why you regretfully must deny them.

Commissions pending approval

Here you can approve commissions or cancel commissions. Note that each commission is based on one sale.

Affiliates to pay

Once you approve them, they aggregate by affiliate, and show up in this next section. For example, an affiliate makes three sales, and once you approve them, they’ll appear here as one line item with the total amount for all three of those sales. You have the options of paying affiliates here, creating a group of affiliates, or downloading a PayPal csv, which you can import into paypal, and do a paypal mass pay with it.

Approved/paid commissions

Here you can see commissions you've already approved and/or paid. In addition to the familiar options, you can even deny unpaid commissions.

The Affiliate System and the Contact Record

The affiliate system extends into the contact record. You can open up any contact record, either by clicking on a contact's name anywhere in the system, since it is hyperlinked, or simply by going to the contacts tab and clicking from there.  Here, you can view the first and last referrer of any contact under “lead and personal information”. You might reference this in order to check to see who the first or last referrer were, or to manually set this, yourself.

Create a New Affiliate Signup Form 

You will need to have your prospective affiliates fill out an affiliate signup form in order to become an affiliate. If you already have a list of affiliates to import, scroll down to the FAQ section for help.

1. Click on the “Affiliates” tab, and then click on the “Create a new signup form” button.
2. Name the form.

3. Next, indicate which program people will be joining when they fill out this form(this is marked at the top as "Affiliate Program".

3. Now, you’ll indicate what actions you’d like to take place once a contact fills out this form. For example, you may wish to tag them as ‘Gold Program Affiliates’. You can also have them subscribed to sequences. You will probably want to subscribe them to a sequence called, something like “Gold Program Affiliate Sequence”, which you will use to give them information they will need (including their affiliate center login information and a link to the login screen for your affiliate center). This information can be merged in using the mail merge function, the very same way as you merge in the first name. You will simply scroll down until you see the "Password" merge field for the website in question and merge it in.

4. Next, you will need to create a rule that gets fired when this form is filled out. In order for your affiliates to gain access to their affiliate center, they must first be set as a subscriber, or member of your website.To start, make sure you are editing the correct form, then add a form under "fire rule if transaction is successful" Then name the rule.

You could name the rule something like: “Make new affiliate a member”. You would also want to set a “conditions” as well to ensure that if your new affiliate is already a member that you don’t inadvertently downgrade them to the basic membership.

To achieve this:

• Set the condition to be "Change field to value" , and set the field to “website status is not equal to blank”. by clicking on the words in red
  
• Next you will set “what should happen?” to change “status” to your lowest level of membership.
• We recommend having a free, low, or no access membership level that’s just for affiliates, so that they can be added without you having to give them too much access simply because they’ve become an affiliate.
• Now, you will select the thank you page you would like them to land on once they fill out the form.  Your choices are our default page, landing page you’ve created using our landing page editor, or a custom page you created elsewhere on the web including your integrated WordPress site.
• Next, choose the positioning of the field labels.

 
5. In “Form Fields”, you can choose what information you’d like to gather from your affiliates. A default collection of fields is already present, but you can add or remove fields. Also, re-order fields with drag and drop.
6. Finally, choose what you’d like your submission button to say or upload a custom image you’d like to use.
7. Once you’re through, click the save button.

This affiliate signup form will now be available for you to drop onto your WordPress site, simply by clicking the “Add OfficeAutopilot Form” button. You may choose to add it onto a landing page created in OfficeAutopilot (by adding a form layer just as you do with any other form onto a page) or by copying and pasting the code onto any other page.

FAQ's

"How Do I Import My Current List Of Affiliates?"

"When are commissions paid?"

"Where can I get a link or a banner to promote?"

"Where can I see how much traffic I've sent or how many sales I've made?"

"Can I sign up for my own account with my affiliate link and get a discount?"

"I want to refer my clients and I'll need a login to their account. Can I have that?"

"Can I somehow transfer my content into my referrals' accounts?"

I have a subscription based product. I want my affiliates to receive commission ONLY on the first month of the subscription and nothing after that. How can I set that up?

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