Integrating the WP Affiliate Software with a 3rd Party 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

Premade Integrations

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.

Tagged as: 3rd party Integration, WP Affiliate Platform

{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }

Chris September 3, 2009 at 3:15 am: Hello,

Can you please provide the documentation for using the affiliate program with other shopping carts?

I have several websites already using other carts, but I would love to know how to use your affiliate plugin with a cart like Wp Ecommerce, Shopp, etc.

I have purchased your plugins and I will use your cart if I have the option, but for sites already using another cart, I would like to integrate the affiliate plugin you offer.

Thanks! Keep up the great work!
admin September 3, 2009 at 8:45 am: Hi Chris, I am working on it… I will get something out soon.
czydrm September 25, 2009 at 1:52 am: Hi there,

Great plugin! How is the 3rd party development coming along? I would specifically like to use this with both the supporter plugin AND the pay to blog plugins. If there is any info I can offer to help with this please let me know.

JC
admin September 25, 2009 at 9:38 am: You should be able to use it with the Pay to blog plugin.. I remember doing a job where I integrated this with the Pay to Blog plugin. I don’t know what the supporter plugin does.. will have to do some reading on this.
czydrm September 25, 2009 at 4:10 pm: Here is the page for the supporter plugin. http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/supporter Funny thing is the guys at wpmudev JUST came out with an affiliate plugin for supporter. Still… I’d like to use yours. If you need access to supporter coding let me know.

Do you have the code for pay to blog available?
admin September 27, 2009 at 9:11 am: Thanks for the link, It should be doable… I will contact you via email.
Ryan Bayne December 7, 2009 at 2:30 am: Hey

I’m using eStore and your affiliate plugin. I just went and bought OIO Publisher because I want to sell ad space, problem is I totally forgot I wanted my affiliates to get commission on ad space sales!

Now I have the option of setting up adspace by making products in eStore and applying a custom button (the ad itself) then placing the php for the ad in my sidebar. Issue with this is theres no proper ad management really. I wondered if you had any ideas?

I think an ads sales plugin to your collection would be great but can I possibly run the OIO publisher plugin, sell adspace but affiliates who signed up on the WP Affiliate Platform plugin still get commission?

If you can provide this intigration easily, even with a fee than I’m up for paying.

Ryan
WebTechGlobal
admin December 7, 2009 at 10:53 am: Hey Ryan, I haven’t used the OIO Publisher plugin cause I am waiting to finish my ad management plugin and use that but you should be able to put the commission awarding code in the “Post Payment Processing” part of that plugin.

All the affiliate referrals/clicks on your blog is already tracked by the affiliate plugin so all you need to do is tell the pugin to award the commission. I can give you a bit of code that will do this but you will need to identify and tell me if this plugin offers and post payment processing option.
Chris Melton December 11, 2009 at 1:04 pm: Hi, I’m already using your Simple WP Shopping Cart ( which works great – I’m a big Fan ) and would like to know what I need to do to integrate the WP Affiliate Platform with it?

I know how good your customer service has been in the past, so thanks ahead of time.

Chris
admin December 12, 2009 at 6:07 am: Hi Chris, you just gotta check the “Use Affiliate Platfrom” checkbox from the settings menu of the simple shopping cart plugin then get a PayPal IPN handling script from me and thats it.
Chris Melton December 12, 2009 at 12:14 pm: Can you please email me the “handling script”? I knew you’d have a simple way to make it work. Thanks for producing great Wordpress plugins and have great support as well.
admin December 13, 2009 at 1:51 pm: I sent you an email but it bounced (Please contact me through the contact from and don’t make a spelling mistake in your email address
Frank December 29, 2009 at 3:26 am: Your plugin looks like JUST what I have been looking for. I would love to know if it can be integrated with the YAK shopping cart we use on 52teas.com. You guys really seem to know your stuff. We already borrowed your idea for using the NextGen Gallery plugin on our In Stock page. Maybe I just need to consider switching to your cart software.
admin December 29, 2009 at 6:50 am: Hi Frank, I haven’t used the YAK shopping cart so can’t really tell for sure. Does it use paypal’s IPN functionality .
Frank December 29, 2009 at 6:10 pm: I think so. We also accept credit cards to be processed manually, and we collect account name and number from our fellow IMS Barter Network members to process offline. Can your WP-eStore do that? More importantly, can it offer a flat shipping surcharge for international customers? We have customers in Australia, UK, Germany, Denmark, France and Israel now. They all get charged a flat $2 extra per item for shipping. Shipping to the US and Canada is free. If this is possible to do with your cart, I might think about switching.
admin December 30, 2009 at 5:37 am: Hi Frank, if your shopping cart uses IPN then it should be easily integrated with the affiliate plugin. For manual payments you can use the “Manual Commission Award” option in the affilate plugin. Please point me to the documentation of the shopping cart and I will do a bit of investigation.

I am not a big fan of converting other shopping cart users into mine besides the WP eStore only has simple shipping options so it probably won’t meet your needs (http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/?p=50)
Frank December 30, 2009 at 5:54 am: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yak-for-wordpress/
Sarah January 11, 2010 at 4:50 pm: Hi – we’ve just started using your affiliate plugin and it’s looking great so far. Thanks!

We need to integrate it with 3rd party software that isn’t a wordpress plugin. Is this possible? It’s a room reservation system called Globekey. if you need more information let me know. I was wondering if you’d be able to supply us with the correct code that needs to be placed in the purchasing process.

Many thanks!
admin January 12, 2010 at 7:02 am: Hi Sarah, I can’t tell for sure if it will work with this system you have in mind. I can provide you with some PHP code example but cannot guarantee anything.
liizii January 12, 2010 at 8:57 am: hi,admin

i have same question with Chris:
Can you please provide the documentation for using the affiliate program with other shopping carts?

we use your plugin now,
Ivy January 13, 2010 at 12:18 am: There are 1000′s of shopping carts out there. The above documentation explains the overview of how to integrate with 3rd party software. What cart are you thinking about integrating with?

Ivy
Chris January 15, 2010 at 1:22 am: Hi,

Do you know if this can be integrated with a subscription/member type plugin like WishList? http://wishlistproducts.com/products/
Ivy January 15, 2010 at 4:29 am: Chris, The Affiliate platform can only be integrated with wishlist using the WP eStore plugin. The affiliate platform can not be integrated with wishlist by itself.

The following link will explain how to integrate the WP eStore with wishlist:

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/wordpress-estore-and-wishlist-plugin-integration-448
Ivy
Babs January 27, 2010 at 10:53 am: Hello
We’re using Quirn’s eShop plug-in because it could do that shipping we wanted – but really want to integrate an affiliate system – do you know if anyone has done this successfully? Or do you have any thoughts?
Babs
Ivy January 27, 2010 at 11:19 pm: Hi Babs, As long as you can add the bit of code you need (see above last paragraph)this should be doable.

Please let us know how it goes.
Ivy
Steven Smith March 26, 2010 at 2:58 pm: Hi,

As always, I dig your plugins.

What do I do to a PayPal button (especially a subscribe button) to make sure affiliates get paid?

Kind regards,

Steven Smith
admin March 27, 2010 at 5:05 am: Hi Steven, For “Buy Now” buttons, simply add the “rm” hidden field in the form with a value of 2 then check the “Enable 3rd party” integration from the settings menu and it should work from there.

For subscription buttons the only way to do it is through the IPN handling script. Are you using the IPN feature for your subscription buttons?
Steven Smith March 27, 2010 at 6:06 am: Buy Now: got it! Thanks.

I’m not using the eMember plugin on this site (it’s not a membership in the same way, just a payment plan), so is there a “handling script” in the affiliates plugin so that they can get paid? Or do I need something else?

Thanks again,

SS
admin March 28, 2010 at 6:55 am: The affiliate plugin do not have any IPN handling scripts.
S.Smith March 28, 2010 at 7:20 am: So it sounds like I won’t be able to create a Subscribe button on the PayPal site that will pay affiliates properly. But, of course, I can use eMember (with IPN) or eStore (with no extra adjustments) to make sure that affiliates get paid. Is that right?
admin March 28, 2010 at 7:25 am: Yeah you can use eStore or eMember for subscriptions and it will work fine with the affiliate plugin as they both have IPN handling scripts.

For, eMember check this article out:

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-membership/how-to-use-a-simple-paypal-payment-button-to-accept-membership-payment-146
Nitapita April 1, 2010 at 6:37 am: I need someone that knows how to build an affiliate marketing website for my business.
Janice April 6, 2010 at 10:07 pm: I am interested in using the PHPurchase and the Affiliate plugin but in addition to selling digital download material I also want to sell CDs by linking to Kunaki for fulfillment. Do you have integration with kunaki?
Ivy April 7, 2010 at 1:19 am: Hi Janice, We do not currently have integration for Kunaki. Can you tell me a little more about how this program works so I can see if there is a work around or if this can be integrated?

Cheers,
Ivy
Janice April 7, 2010 at 2:53 am: Hi Ivy
Kunaki does cd manufacturing and fullfillment. There is detailed info here about how the XML messaging occurs.
http://kunaki.com/XMLService.htm

Smartdd and DiscBuddy both offer integration but lack some other capabilities. Both are designed to allow secure digital download.
There seems to be a hole in the market here so if you could provide Kunaki integration you would have a glut of happy customers.
Thanks
Janice
.
Ivy April 7, 2010 at 4:05 am: Hi Janice, I will have Amin take a look at this and see if it can be done.

Cheers,
Ivy
Bret Fittje April 9, 2010 at 12:54 pm: Hey. been following your articles latetly and I came across this one. Thanks, it’ll keep me thinking for a while.
Elaine June 7, 2010 at 9:27 pm: Hi, Do I have to use your e store with this plugin? I use pay pal is this integrated with that?

Thanks
admin June 8, 2010 at 1:22 am: @Elaine, No, you don’t have to use eStore to use the affiliate plugin. The affiliate platform can be integrated with a plain PayPal button:

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-affiliate/plain-paypal-button-and-affiliate-plugin-integration-168

It can also be integrated with some of the top wordpress shopping cart plugins.
Tim Nash June 10, 2010 at 7:33 am: Hi we have been asked to do an integration with our members software, as we use reoccuring payments etc, the user will not actually be present therefore no access to cookie during this time so we will be storing the refferer id in the database.

I don’t have a copy of the code so does the do_action(‘wp_affiliate_process_commission’, array()) allow for refferer id to be passed and is it simply ‘refferer’ in the same way it is for GET/POST requests?
admin June 11, 2010 at 1:34 am: Yep, you just have to pass in the following information in the array:

referrer
sale_amount
txn_id
item_id
buyer_email

The first 3 are mandatory for a backend sale processing. Just shoot me an email if you need more info.
Celso Lemes September 3, 2010 at 3:00 am: Helllo Admin,
I am from Brasil and I was wondering if the affiliate plugin can be used to track just one sale with a brazilian payment system.
It does not need to be integrated with the payment system, just need to be tracked somehow.
Can I use this plugin in this case?

Thanks
admin September 3, 2010 at 6:31 am: Yeah you can track the commission with any payment system. As long as you understand the concept and know how to hook the payment system with the affiliate plugin so after every payment the plugin gets notified so it can do the tracking.

You should be able to integrate the plugin with any payment system using the HTTP GET or POST method integration option.
Alex Ochart September 17, 2010 at 4:30 am: Hi,

Can WP Affiliate Platform be intergrate with CGI aMember Pro using PayPal?

Maybe thru IPN…
Ivy September 17, 2010 at 6:54 am: Hi Alex, If you can do the above integration with “CGI aMember Pro” then yes this should be do able. You will need to be able to make the modifications mentioned above.

“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.”
Alex Kemp November 21, 2010 at 8:36 pm: Hi there,

Your affiliate plugin looks perfect for my needs. I’m planning to use realex payment processing which can integrate with tribulant shopping cart plugin the question is can I integrate affiliate platform with tribulant shopping cart?

thanks
Ivy November 22, 2010 at 1:55 am: Hi Alex, As long as you can do the above steps then you should be able to integrate the shopping cart and WP Affiliate.
J. Kelly June 18, 2011 at 2:38 pm: Hi -
I apologize if this is a silly question, I’m new to this. I have a simple shopping cart WP plugin , Paid Downloads. I don’t see any info regarding its compatibility with WP Affiliate Platform. Will I need to add a bit of code to make this work?

Thanks in advance for your help!
Ivy June 19, 2011 at 12:48 am: Hi, I believe the integration method you are looking for is here: http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-affiliate/simple-wp-shopping-cart-and-affiliate-platform-integration-283
Stuart July 5, 2011 at 6:57 pm: Hi,

I need to understand how to integrate with eShop before I purchase. If that’s easy, you get my business.
Ivy July 6, 2011 at 3:18 am: Hi, The following post will explain about the eShop and WP Affiliate integration:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-affiliate/wp-affiliate-platform-and-eshop-by-rich-pedley-integration-210
Robert Ivor Spokes July 28, 2011 at 9:20 am: Thanks this is probably one of the easiest affiliate plugin to date to use!
Nathan Anderson August 17, 2011 at 3:36 am: Does WP Affiliate Platform automatically integrate with Cart66 Lite too?
Tks!
Ivy August 18, 2011 at 12:18 am: @ Nathan, Yes it should automatically integrate with Cart66 lite. The Cart66 lite features page here has this listed as an integration method:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cart66-lite/