Configuring the H4H Affiliate Program

If you want to use the H4H Affiliate Program simply allowing customers to become affiliates and set up one commission for your products for everyone to get without any payments for bringing new affiliates or customers to your shop, use this quick start guide to configure the affiliate program quickly and correctly. In other case use next section of this chapter to configure the H4H AP properly.

This quick start guide provides set up of the AP with the following configuration: all products have one static commission, no multi-tier use, no sign-up payments set up for customers and affiliates, no payments for clicks set up.

1. Go to Administration section of your shop

2. Choose 'H4H Affiliate Program' menu item from left menu

3. Go to'Configuration' section

   

   • Set From Name value to your name (this name will appear in e-mails sent by the H4H AP)

   • Set E-mail Address value to your e-mail address (this e-mail address will appear in 'from' field of emails sent by the H4H AP)

   • Set Payable Affiliate Referring to false

   • Set Pay For Customer to false

   • Set Cookies Life Time and Time When Commission is Paid with appropriate time (in hours) or leave Cookies Life Time blank for lifetime and Time When Commission is Paid to 00:00 for lifetime

   • Set Multi-Tier to false

   • Set Pay for Clicks to false

4. Go to 'Orders Status Setup' section
   Set one of the statuses to active. When an order status will acquire this status the commission will be paid if this order was referred

   

5. Go to 'Affiliate Groups' section

   • Set Group Own Commission value to the commission you want to pay your affiliates for your products (in %) for the default group

   • Set Use Own Commission value to true

6. Update information in

   • Info System 7

   • InfoSys7 FAQ

   • InfoSys7 News
     sections (for detailed information please refer to Chapter 5, Using Info System 7)

7. Now configuration is completed and the H4H AP is ready to use.

If you want to use all the powerful features and capabilities of the H4H Affiliate Program, use this section to properly configure it.

Go to Administration section of your shop and choose 'H4H Affiliate Program' menu item from the left menu. Choose 'Configuration' menu item.

Page "Configuration"

This page contains important main configuration parameters of the H4H Affiliate Program. Be careful to change these parameters because it influences much to proper work of the H4H AP

Let us describe every parameter in this table

• From Name
  This parameter is used when E-mails are sending using the H4H Affiliate Program. The name entered will be used in 'From:' field of the email messages such as sign-up letter, newsletters etc.

• E-mail Address
  This parameter is used when E-mails are sending using the H4H Affiliate Program. The combination of 'From Name' and 'E-mail Address' will be used in
  From: From Name <email@address> field of the email messages such as sign-up letter, newsletters etc.

• Payable Affiliate Referring
  This parameter has two possible values: true and false.
  If set to 'true' your affiliates will be paid for bringing new affiliates to your shop. The value of the payment is set up in 'Affiliate Groups' section.
  If set to 'false' your affiliates will not be paid for bringing new affiliates to your shop. If the payment value is set up in 'Affiliate Groups' it will be ignored.

• Referred Affiliates Multi-Tier
  This parameter has two possible values: true and false.
  If set to 'true' your affiliates will be tracked by the H4H AP using Multi-Tier system. The Multi-Tier system configuration is set up in 'Affiliate Groups' section. If set to 'false' your affiliates will not be tracked in Multi-Tier mode. For more information about Multi-Tier please refer to Chapter 6, Multi-Tier

Remember if 'Payable Affiliate Referring' configuration key is set up to false, the value of 'Referred Affiliates Multi-Tier' will be ignored.

• Moderated Signup
  This parameter has two possible values: true and false.
  If set to 'true' your affiliates will not be able to use or log-in int their accounts without your approval. Affiliates are approved in 'Affiliates' menu by setting their status to 'Active'.
  If set to 'false' your affiliates will normally sign-up and use their accounts without any sign-up restrictions.

Remember if 'Moderated Signup' configuration key is set up to true, your affiliates will not be able to log-in into their control panel and use it while not approving.

• Default Affiliate Group
  This parameter is used to set-up a default affiliates group. When new affiliate signs-up it will be placed in the group set up with this configuration key. The possible values are all groups which were set up in 'Affiliate Groups' section.

• Pay for Customer
  This parameter has two possible values: true and false.
  If set to 'true' your affiliates will be paid a static payment for bringing customers to your shop. The value of the payment is set up in 'Affiliate Groups' section.
  If set to 'false' your affiliates will not be paid for bringing customers to your shop. If the payment value is set up in 'Affiliate Groups' it will be ignored.

• Pay for Customer Multi-Tier
  This parameter has two possible values: true and false.
  If set to 'true' your affiliates will be paid for bringing customers to your shop in multi-tier mode. The value of the payment is set up in 'Affiliate Groups' section.
  If set to 'false' your affiliates will not be paid for bringing customers to your shop in multi-tier mode. If the payment value is set up in 'Affiliate Groups' it will be ignored. For more information about Multi-Tier please refer to Chapter 6, Multi-Tier.

Remember if 'Pay For Customer' configuration key is set up to false, the value of 'Pay for cutomer Multi-Tier' will be ignored.

• Cookies Lifetime
  This value is used to set up the lifetime of cookies on the customer's computer. The H4H Affiliate program uses cookies to track referred affiliates and referred customers. If cookie expires, no information will be tracked and no commission will be paid. Use this configuration parameter to manage the time when new customers and new affiliates are tracked by H4H Affiliate program. Value is set in hours.

Set the value to blank if you don't want the cookies to expire.

• Time when commission is paid
  This value is used to set up the time duration when the commission is paid. Use this configuration key to manage the time between new customer's registration and purchase. If new customer has registered a new account and made a purchase within this time, the commission will be paid to affiliate for all products he purchased. Value is set in hours:minutes.

Set the value to '00:00' if you want the commission to be paid on a lifetime basis.

• Multi-Tier
  This parameter has two possible values: true and false.
  If set to 'true' the multi-tier commissions are allowed and will be calculated in multi-tier mode.
  If set to 'false' the multi-tier commissions are disallowed. For more information about Multi-Tier please refer to Chapter 6, Multi-Tier

• Quantity of Levels
  This configuration key is used to specify numbers of multi-tier levels if multi-tier commissions are allowed. For more information about Multi-Tier please refer to Chapter 6, Multi-Tier

• Pay For Clicks
  Use this configuration key to allow/disallow pay for clicks (PFC).
  This parameter has two possible values: true and false.
  If set to 'true' your affiliates will receive payments for clicks. The value of the payment is set up in 'Affiliate Groups' section.
  If set to 'false' your affiliates will not receive any payments for clicks.

• Payment Per Click
  This value is used to set up the payment amount for one referred click. Set up the value without any additional signs (like $, etc).

If 'Pay For Clicks' configuration value is set to false, the value of 'Payment Per Click' is ignored.

• Time Between Clicks
  Use this configuration key to set up minimal amount of time between clicks to pay for.
  Value is set up in 'hours:minutes'.

If 'Pay For Clicks' configuration value is set to false, the value of 'Time Between Clicks' is ignored.

• Tie to Url
  Use this configuration key to allow/disallow pay for clicks from other sites.
  This parameter has two possible values: true and false.
  If set to 'true' your affiliates will receive payments for clicks that are only from the URL they entered during registration.
  If set to 'false' your affiliates will receive payments for clicks from any site.

If 'Pay For Clicks' configuration value is set to false, the value of 'Tie to Url' is ignored.

• How Many News Shown in the News Box
  Use this configuration key to specify the number of news that are shown in news box.

Page "Order Status Setup"

Use this page to set up the order status for the referred orders of the commission to be paid.
On this configuration page you have to choose one of the order statuses. When the order will get the chosen status, the commission will be calculated and transferred to affiliate's account. Choose one of the order statuses when you want the commission to be transferred.

The recommended value is 'Delivered' to be sure the order was processed correctly which helps to avoid commissions paying for fraudulent orders.

Remember to set up at least one status to 'active' or no commission will be paid.

Page "Affiliate Groups"

Use this page to set up affiliate groups. The concept of a "group" in the H4H AP is used in terms of "group of affiliates with similar preferences".
Using this configuration page you can set-up a new (default) group and edit the properties of existing ones. The default group is indicated in bold.

New group

On the 'Affiliate groups' page press button
At the left you will see the box which allows you to enter group properties:

• Group Name
  This is a string which identifies the group, simply the name of the group.

• Multi-Tier Queue
  This is a string of multi-tier set of percents. Regarding the number of levels (see Configuration, punct Quantity of levels) fill this field with percent numbers if you are using Multi-Tier (For more information about Multi-Tier please refer to Chapter 6, Multi-Tier). E.g. If 'Quantity of levels' is 4, the example string may be '10, 7, 5, 3'.

• Group Own Commission
  This is the percent number the group affiliates will receive for ALL products neglecting the percents set-up in 'Products Commissions' page. This configuration key overrides the settings of commissions for all products if the configuration key 'Use Own Commission' is set to 'true'.

If 'Use Own Commission' flag is set to 'false' 'Group Own Commission' value
Will be ignored

In order to easier identification of groups with 'own commissions' the red/green
Indicator is shown near 'Own commission' column in groups table indicating 'false/true' status of this configuration key

• Use Own Commission
  This group configuration key is used to turn 'Group Own commission' feature ON/OFF by setting its value to 'true/false'.

• Payment for Referred Customer
  This key indicates the payment value for newly referred customers sign-up.

• Referred Customer Multi-Tier
  This is a string of multi-tier set of percents. Regarding the number of levels (see Configuration, punct Quantity of levels) fill this field with percent numbers if you are using Multi-Tier (For more information about Multi-Tier please refer to Chapter 6, Multi-Tier). This Multi-Tier queue is used for customers only.

• Payment for Referred Affiliate
  This key indicates the payment value for newly referred affiliate sign-up.

• Referred Affiliate Multi-Tier
  This is a string of multi-tier set of percents. Regarding the number of levels (see Configuration, punct Quantity of levels) fill this field with percent numbers if you are using Multi-Tier (For more information about Multi-Tier please refer to Chapter 6, Multi-Tier). This Multi-Tier queue is used for affiliates only.
  
  Use button to update the entered information.
  Use button to delete the selected group.

Page "Categories / Products Commissions"

This page allows you to set/change commissions for different categories and products of you shop.
The page is divided into 2 parts: categories/products list and properties.

Categories/Products list.

This section is organized in the same way as default OsCommerce categories page. The list shows all entered categories and products of your shop

and is organized in the table with the following columns:

Categories / Products - shows categories/products names
Group name - shows available affiliate groups
Status - shows the status of the product (for products only)
Action - Click the 'i' icon to view available actions for this category/product.

The table shows categories/products in a list, and if you click the particular row the left column will show available options and actions for it.
If you click the row second time it will open the subcategory of the selected category if such exists. Use catalog icon in each row to browse through categories. Use button to return to parent category.

There is also two features to help you browse your catalog: Search and Go to boxes above the left column on this page.
They work in the same way as in default OsCommerce categories page.

Categories/Products properties

This section is organized in the left column below the categories/products list. The first part shows main category/product information:

[For categories]:
button which redirects you to default OsCommerce categories page, date added, image, number of subcategories and products;
[for products]:
button which redirects you to default OsCommerce products edit page, date added, last modified, image, price, quantity in-stock and average rating.
Next part headed as 'Set/Change Commission' allows you to view/set/change commissions for categories and products. The information box is divided into rows or groups you have in your H4H affiliate program. Use input box for each group to set/change commission for categories/products in your shop. Press button to update the entered information and button to delete it.
If the particular affiliate group uses Own commission parameter (for detailed information about group own commission please refer to Chapter 3, Affiliate Groups ) the appropriate message will be displayed instead of input box supplied with a link to change the group own commission.

If you set the commission for a category which has subcategories and products in it, the commission will be assigned for every subcategory and product in this category if commission was not assigned manually