If you’re advertising your product or lead capture pages via text link, banner ads, PPC networks and email marketing, you need a conversion tracking software to track exactly where the sales and leads are coming from. This allows you to efficiently manage your ad campains without losing a lot of money on low performing ads.

The affiliate platform plugin can be used to measure the number of visitors you are getting from a particular ad and measure the true conversion rate of each ad campaign.

How to Track Online Ad Conversion

Step 1: Create a dummy affiliate account for yourself (you can create as many affiliate user account you want for yourself).

Let us assume the "Affiliate ID" of this account is "ad_grp1" for this example

Step 2: Create an affiliate link pointing to your landing page using this newly created affiliate account. For example:

Step 3: When placing your ad on the external site or PPC network, use the link created in step 2 as the target page URL.

This will ensure that every time a visitor comes to your site clicking on that ad, the plugin will record the click and you will be able to see how many clicks you got for the "ad_grp1" affiliate.

Step 4: Integrate the affiliate plugin with an eCommerce or lead capture software (see the “Integration Options” section in the documentation).

This will ensure that every time a visitor comes to your site following that ad (created in step 3) and makes a purchase or fills in a lead capture form, it will track that conversion.

Now, you will have insight into exactly how many visitors are coming through that ad and converting. This will help you determine how well that ad is performing and do cost benefit analysis.

Below is a list of the main features of the WP Affiliate Platform.

Installations, Usage and Management

• Easy to install and use
• No limit on how many affiliates you can have
• Recurring Commissions – For subscription payments via PayPal
• Individual Commissions – You can set different commission levels for different affiliates
• Simple banner and text link management
• Two tier affiliate structure
• Edit or Remove Affiliates
• View your affiliate details, commission level, account status etc. Easily change commission, edit affiliate details, view affiliate referrals, commissions and much more

Design/Customization Options

• Stand alone page or embedded affiliate area – You can either have the affiliate view area as a stand alone page or embed it on a WordPress page or post that you create
• Customizable affiliate emails – You can customize the emails that are sent by the WP Affiliate Platform to your affiliates. eg. the welcome email
• Any texts or messages that your visitors can see, can be customized through the language file
• Some language files for the commonly used languages are already included but others can be added upon request
• Provide affiliates with multiple creatives - Your affiliates will have a variety of ways to promote your products and services
• Create Unlimited Banners and Creatives - (e.g articles, text links, graphic banners, videos, eBooks and so on)
• Customize the appearance of the affiliate view – You can use CSS to customize the look and feel of the affiliate view area

Reporting

• Real time reporting of clicks and sales
• Custom affiliate panel (your affiliates can log into their affiliate account and view real time clicks and sales statistics)
• Search affiliates or commissions from the admin dashboard

Integration Related

• Integrate the WP Affiliate Software with a 3rd Party plugin (Overview)
• API – Awarding Commission Via WordPress Hook
• API – Awarding Commission via HTTP GET or POST
• Plain PayPal button integration
• ClickBank integration
• Instinct’s WP-eCommerce Plugin integration
• Shopp plugin integration
• eShop (by Rich Pedley) integration
• PHPurchase/Cart66 and the WP Affiliate Software Plugin Integration
• S2Member integration
• Group Buying Sites (GBS) and WP Affiliate Software Integration
• E-Junkie and Affiliate Platform Integration
• cForms Plugin integration for pay per lead affiliate model
• Gravity Forms integration
• Contact Form 7 and Affiliate Platform Integration for Pay Per Lead Model
• Contact Form 7 and Affiliate Platform Lead Capture Integration
• Capture Lead on WP eStore’s Squeeze Form Submission
• Simple WP Shopping Cart and Affiliate Platform Integration
• Pre-integrated with the WP eStore (the WP eStore plugin is not included with the WP Affiliate Platform)
• When integrated with the eStore you can set custom commissions per product
• When integrated with the eStore you can automatically turn your customers into affiliates

Affiliate Payouts

• Pay your affiliates using PayPal Mass payment in one go or pay them via bank transfer or check
• You can easily filter your affiliate payout by minimum payout amount, date range or individual affiliate ID

Affiliate Commission Types

• Percentage based commission
• Fixed amount commission per sale
• Pay-Per-Lead

Support

• Free lifetime plugin updates.
• Free technical support for our plugin. Please see our support site to find out the available support options

You can track a custom field with the WP Affiliate Platform to help with your ad campaigns.

The custom field tracking can be used to measure the effectiveness of individual campaigns. For example, you have created an affiliate account whose affiliate ID is “tips21″. You have placed affiliate links/ads on two different sites using this same affiliate ID. The custom field can help you identify which site sent more clicks.

How to Use The Custom Field Tracking

Step 1. Enable this option from the settings menu of the plugin by checking the “Enable Custom Field Tracking for Clicks” field.

Step 2. Add the custom field value in the affiliated URL (see example below).

You are probably familiar with the following type of link which is just a plain affiliate link (tips21 is the affiliate ID in this example):

Now to add custom field tracking to this link simply add the following:

“XXXX” is the value of the custom field that you want to associate with this link. An example value could be “site1″ in which case the affiliate URL will look like the following:

Now, when a visitor clicks on this link it will obviously know which affiliate sent the traffic but additionally it will track the “site1″ parameter which helps in identifying which site in particular sent the traffic.

When you go to the “Click Throughs” menu it will show the custom field value associated with the clicks:

The WP Affiliate Platform can be used to capture leads (potential customers) so you can award the appropriate commission to the referrer later once you have made some money from the lead.

The WP Affiliate Platform can be setup to be used with the following two types of Pay Per Lead affiliate model

1. You pay the referrer a commission for every lead that the affiliate sends your way (the commission is awarded when the lead takes an action on your site e.g. submits a contact form)
2. You pay the referrer when you make actual money from the lead that the affiliate sent your way (the commission is awarded when a sale is made to that lead later). For this model you need to capture the lead so you know who originally referred that lead. This allows you to award the appropriate commission later.

This page explains how you can capture lead using the Contact Form 7 and WP Affiliate Platform plugins

Capture Leads Using the Contact Form 7 and WP Affiliate Platform Plugins

Step 1: Setting up the Contact Form

Somewhere in your contact form’s “message body” enter the following piece of text:

[wp_affiliate_lead:reference:1:end]

Contact Form 7 setup

1 is the a reference number (it can be anything). If you have multiple contact forms on your site then this number allows you differentiate which form generated which lead.

Step 2: Modify the code so the lead gets captured upon contact form submission

Open the “classes.php” file from the “includes” directory of the Contact Form 7 plugin and search for the following text

$headers = "From: $sender\n";

Once you find that line simply add the code given here just above that line.

All done, now when a visitor submits a contact form that has the special tag embedded in the “message body” it will capture the lead. You can view all the leads in the “Manage Leads” menu of the Affiliate Platform Software. You will be able to manually award commission from this menu once you get revenue from a lead.

Screenshot of the Manage Leads Menu

The WP Affiliate Platform can be used to capture leads (potential customers) so you can award the appropriate commission to the referrer later once you have made some money from the lead.

The WP Affiliate Platform can be setup to be used with the following two types of Pay Per Lead affiliate model

1. You pay the referrer a commission for every lead that the affiliate sends your way (the commission is awarded when the lead takes an action on your site e.g. submits a contact form)
2. You pay the referrer when you make actual money from the lead that the affiliate sent your way (the commission is awarded when a sale is made to that lead later). For this model you need to capture the lead so you know who originally referred that lead. This allows you to award the appropriate commission later.

1. Pay Commission Per Lead (e.g. Per contact form submission)

• cForms Plugin Integration for Pay Per Lead Affiliate Model
• Contact Form 7 and Affiliate Platform Integration for Pay Per Lead Model

2. Capture Lead and Pay Later (Capture the lead when the contact form is submitted)

• Contact Form 7 and Affiliate Platform Lead Capture Integration
• Gravity Forms and Affiliate Platform Lead Capture Integration

What is Tier Affiliate Model?

How will referring new affiliates to an affiliate program make me money in the future? the answer is tier affiliate program. A tier affiliate model is an Affiliate program structure whereby affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program.

So with a two-tier affiliate tracking system, not only are your affiliates rewarded for sending direct sales to your web site, they also get rewarded for encouraging other affiliates to join your affiliate program.

Using a tier affiliate structure potentially attracts more affiliates and hence more referrals to your site which means more sales for your products or services.

Tier Affiliate Model Example

Say for example, Person A is an affiliate. Person A sends Person B to the site. Person B becomes an affiliate too. Person B referes Person C who buys a product.

In the normal scenerio Person B will receive a commission for referring the sale.

In the tier affiliate model Person B still receives the commission but Person A also receives a small commission since Person A originally referred person B to this site.

PayPal and Tier Affiliate Payout

Just a note of warning: Before you start using a tier affiliate model you should know that PayPal considers tier affiliate model to be spammy network marketing so you cannot use PayPal to pay the tier affiliate commission (you will have to use some other means to make the payout. eg. send physical check). If you do use PayPal to pay these commissions then you are most likely violating their Terms of Use (TOS) and they can shut your account down.

How to use a Two-Tier Affiliate Model in the Affiliate Platfrom Plugin

All you have to do is enable it and specify the values from the settings menu of the WP Affiliate Platform plugin.

2 Tier Affiliate Model Settings

So if you had the “2nd tier commission level” set to 10% and the duration to 30 days then Person A in the above example will receive 10% commission of all sales made through Person B’s referrals for 30 days from the date when person B joined the affiliate program. You can leave the “Duration” field empty in which case Person A will receive the commission indefinitely.

• Is WordPress Affiliate Platform compatible with the latest version of WordPress?

Yes, all of our plugins are kept upto date to work with the latest version of WordPress. We use our plugins on our own site, so it is in our best interest to keep the plugins upto date.

• Are there any ongoing fees for WordPress Affiliate Platform plugin?

No, the WP Affiliate Platform plugin is a one time purchase software.

• Why buy a premium WordPress plugin?

See the why buy a premium WordPress plugin page.

• Does the WordPress Affiliate Platform plugin work on a WordPress MU (multi-user) installation?

Yes

• What license or licenses are you using for the WP Affiliate Platform plugin?

The WP Affiliate is a multi site license. This means you can use this on as many sites and you own and operate. However if you would like to use this on your clients sites you will need a license for each client.

• Can I integrate the WP Affiliate Platform plugin with my eCommerce solution?

The WP Affiliate has API that can be used to integrate with any eCommerce solution. Please see the “Integration Options” section in the documentation page for more details.

• Is there a limit to the number of affiliates I can have with the WP Affiliate Platform plugin?

No, there is no limit on the number of affiliates you can have with the WP Affiliate Platform plugin.

• Does the affiliate software prevent buyers from purchasing with their own affiliate link?

No, the affiliate software doesn’t prevent buyers from purchasing with their own affiliate link. This is so they can buy more for other people if needed(eg. if the customer is a web developer and building a site for someone else). This in my opinion is a very good practice as it also gives the potential customer incentive to buy the product and be an affiliate.

How do you stop people who become an affiliate purely to get a discount on the product? Most people handle this by setting the minimum payout balance to an amount that requires an affiliate to make a few sales before getting paid out. For example, the minimum payout balance of my site is $25, so you will have to make a few sales before you get any money (which will prove that you are a genuine affiliate promoting the product and not just trying to scam the system to get a discount on the price). There is nothing more I like than to pay my affiliates who promote my products.

• Does the affiliate software has the option to manually award commission?

Yes,

• Can the affiliate software automatically reverse the commission for refunded products?

Yes, the affiliate platform plugin can automatically reverse the commission for refunded products when used with the WP eStore plugin. If you are using it with any other ecommerce solution then you will have to call the commission reversal API or do it manually.

• Majority of my customers prefer to pay for my product manually through bank transfer instead of paying by paypal. Is there a way to track the affiliate commission in this manual transaction?

Yes, the affiliate commission is tracked even when your customers use the manual checkout option of the WP eStore plugin.

Overview

I get a lot of queries regarding the integration of the WordPress Affiliate Software with a 3rd party plugin. This page explains what is involed in the process so you can get a picture of what is possible and what is not.

Before I start I would like to make one thing clear… If you want to use the WP Affiliate Platform with the WP eStore plugin then you do not need to worry about any integration work as these two plugins are integrated by default.

The WP Affiliate software tracks referrals (knows who is a referred customer and who is not) and manages all the affiliates side of things but it depends on the e-commerce plugin (eg. WP eStore) that does the actual payment processing for the awarding of the affiliate commission. The reason is that you want to award the commission after a confirmed sale (this prevents customers from clicking the checkout button and getting commission without going through the full checkout) and only the plugin that processed the payment knows when the customer’s payment has been processed successfully.

The same principal applies to “Rewarding affiliates when they refer a customer and he/she registers” situation. The affiliate software will be able to track who is referred by who but the script that handles the registration will have to award the commission after a customer successfully registers. You just need to add a small bit of code that I will provide you in the registration handling script so it can award commission to the affiliate after someone registers.

So the first thing you have to ask yourself is when (for what action of the customer) do you want to award the affiliate with the commission and then identify where in your 3rd party plugin it is handlling this action. Once you can identify that then it is just a matter of adding a small bit of code (I will provide this) in that place that will do the commission awarding for you.

APIs For Developers

• API – Awarding Commission Via WordPress Hook
• API – Awarding Commission via HTTP GET or POST

Premade Integrations

Integrating Instinct’s WP-eCommerce Plugin

• See the affiliate platfrom integration with the WP-eCommerce Plugin post.

Integrating Shopp Plugin

• See the affiliate platform integration with the Shopp plugin post.

Integrating with eShop (by Rich Pedley) Plugin

• See the affiliate software integration with the eShop plugin documentation.

Integrating PHPurchase Plugin

• The PHPurchase/Cart66 plugin is integrated with the Affiliate plugin by default.

Pay Per Lead Affiliate Model Integration

• See the pay per view affiliate model documentation

For more integration options check the “Integration” section on the documentation page.

WP Affiliate Platform
End User License Agreement
Copyright, Tips and Tricks HQ (http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/)
All rights reserved.

By using the software, you agree to be bound by the terms of this license. If you have any questions
about the terms below, please contact tipsandtricks-hq.com for clarification.

1. You must have paid tipsandtricks-hq.com to use the software.
2. The copyright holder retains all intellectual property rights to the software.
3. You are granted the right to install the software on as many websites as you want, limited only to websites you own.
4. You are granted the right to freely modify the software for your own personal use.
5. You may not use code snippets from the software elsewhere.
6. You may not re-distribute (either freely, or for any kind of compensation) the software, in whole or in part, to any 3rd party.
7. You expressly acknowledge and agree that use of the software is at your sole risk. No warrantly is provided, either express or implied.

If you are a developer/designer please contact us about license transfer options.

An easier way to achieve the same result is to use the 2nd option from the following documentation:

• Setup and OnPage Affiliate Area 

After you install the plugin by default the URL for the affiliates to signup/log into their account has the following URL:

First of all, this is not a mandatory step that you need to perform for the plugin to work. This instruction is here for any advanced user who wants to customize the affiliate view’s URL.

If you want to customize this URL (eg. you want your affiliates login page to be at http://www.your-domain-name.com/affiliates) then you can achieve this in two ways (Please note that a little bit of URL structure knowledge is required for this):

Option 1 (The Redirection method)

1. Download the ‘index.php‘ file that has an automatic redirection to the affiliates page.
2. Open the “index.php” file for editing and update the ‘www.your-domain-name.com’ text with your true domain name.
3. Upload this file to the directory where you want your affiliates to go and signup. (eg. www.your-domain-name.com/affiliates)

Now, when someone visits ‘http://www.your-domain-name.com/affiliates’ the visitor will automatically be redirected to ‘http://www.your-domain-name.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-affiliate-platform/affiliates/’

Option 2 (The Copy Method)

1. Copy the “affiliates” directory (this directory can be found inside the “wp-affiliate-platform” directory) and put it where you want it.
2. Update the ‘misc_func.php’ (located inside the affiliates directory) to have the correct relative location of the ‘wp-load.php’ file.

The ‘misc_func.php’ file uses a wordpress system file called ‘wp-load.php’ so you will have to update the ‘include’ statement at the top of the file (misc_func.php) and enter the correct path of the ‘wp-load.php’ file relative to the target URL. the ‘wp-load.php’ file is located on your wordpress installation directory.

So, for example if you want to move the affiliate URL to http://www.your-domain-name.com/affiliates and your wordpress is installed on the root directory then change the following:

include_once('../../../../wp-load.php');

to

include_once('../wp-load.php');

Please leave a comment if you don’t understand a step.