Serving over 1,000 merchants with
affiliate software solutions

General

• What is an affiliate?

• So how does it work?

• Do you offer a trial?

Pricing and Payments

• Do you have a money-back guarantee?

• $39/month for the Monthly service. Is there any other fees, like additional one-time activation fee?

• Is the full installation of the software provided for free?

Setup and Integration

• What hardware/software requirements are needed for PartnersManager Affiliate software?

• Will PartnersManager Software work with my shopping cart?

• Can the software be hosted on my domain?

• Do I have to download the software or do you send it to me?

• Can you integrate the software for me?

• Can you change the currency from dollars to my national currency?

• Where will my Affiliates sign up? Can the page be on my site?

• If I purchase monthly program, can I update it later for single licence software and install it on my server? How can I transfer my affiliate list later in that case without loosing the data and affiliates?

Tracking

• What type of tracking technology does PartnersManager Software use? How does it work?

• How does the banner impression tracking work?

• Can I track sales that I take over the phone?

• Will your system be able to track customers who come back a few days later to purchase my products?

• Can I configure the cookie lifespan? I do not want to track sales that are more than 30 days if the customer did not buy immediately after clicking through to my site from the affiliate's web site.

• Using the monthly service where the software isn't hosted on my server, can Affiliates links point to my domain?

Managing Your Affiliates

• How many affiliates can I have?

• How can I control my affiliates?

• How can I control commissions?

• How can I control commissions on sales?

• Can I cancel an affiliate's commission if the customer has cancelled his order or if the order is found to be fraudulent?

• Can I pay one commission on my book and another on my software?

• Can I pay for clicks?

• What kinds of reports will the software show me?

• Can I pay one Affiliate more than another?

• Can I approve Affiliates before they start earning commissions?

• What kinds of linking methods can I offer?

• How will my Affiliates know how they are doing?

• How do I pay my Affiliates?

• Can I pay my affiliates with PayPal mass pay system?

• Can Affiliates be removed from the program?

• What kind of fraud checking/protection system do you have in your program?

• When a sale is made, how do we know if it was through the affiliate link or not and we owe our affiliate commissions? Do we get some notification?

• Is there a feature for sliding commissions included in the software?

• Is it possible and how to import products using the software?

Promoting Your Affiliate Program

• Will you help me find Affiliates?

• How do I recruit affiliates myself?

Miscellaneous Questions

• What is the difference between the Server(Network), Personal and Monthly versions of the software?

• With the monthly proposal which version is used, the personal or the server version?

• Do you have logos of your company on the software (your own ads)?

• Can the software be used in other countries?

• Who do I contact if I have questions?

Q : What is an affiliate?
A : An affiliate is anyone who promotes your goods/services in exchange for payment   based on the results. [top]

Q : So how does it work?
A : The process is best described as follows
 
 - You decide how much commission to offer to prospective affiliates and begin affiliate recruitment.
 - Affiliates apply to join your affiliate program and you approve them after pre-screening.
 - Your affiliates select your banner advertisements containing tracked links using the provided control panel.
 - Your affiliates display the tracked advertisements on their web sites.
 - A visitor to an affiliate's web site sees your advertisement and clicks on it.
 - The visitor is transported to your web site and the tracking link identifies which affiliate referred the visitor. This is stored on the visitors computer in the form of a cookie for a specified number of days.
 - If the visitor makes a purchase within the specified number of days, the affiliate's commission is calculated and read into the affiliate software.
 - Once the sale is considered valid, you approve the sale in your password protected control panel.
 - The affiliate sees the sale is approved using their password protected affiliate control panel.
 - Once the affiliate acheives your minimum payment threshhold, they can raise an invoice for the total commission on approved sales. [top]

Q : Do you offer a trial?
A : Yes. We offer a trial. On our site you may sign up for a free 30 days trial for the Personal version of the software. If you want to test our Server version, please contact us and we will create a test account for you. [top]

Q : Do you have a money-back guarantee?
A : Yes. There is a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you are not satisfied with the Software you have ourchased or with the Support service we offer you may cancel the deal and get your money back. [top]

Q : $39/month for the Monthly service. Is there any other fees, like additional one-time activation fee?
A : No. There are no additional fees for using the Monthly service. [top]

Q : Is the full installation of the software provided for free?
A : Yes. The software will be installed and configured on your server for free by our Support team. [top]

Q : What hardware/software requirements are needed for PartnersManager Affiliate software?
A : You must have PHP/MySQL installed on your server. The software is tested and works fine on both Apache and IIS web servers. [top]

Q : Will PartnersManager Software work with my shopping cart?
A : The PartnersManager Affiliate software is designed to be easily integrated with every kind of shopping carts. All you have to do is to place the appropriate transaction tracking code on the right page. [top]

Q : Can the software be hosted on my domain?
A : Yes. You may host the software on your server. [top]

Q : Do I have to download the software or do you send it to me?
A : The software may be installed for free for you by our Support team or we may send you a zip file with the files needed for the installation and you will install it yourself. [top]

Q : Can you integrate the software for me?
A : Yes. We can help you integrate the software with your site to fit your needs. [top]

Q : Can you change the currency from dollars to my national currency?
A : Yes. The currency sign may be easily changed to whatever you want. [top]

Q : Where will my Affiliates sign up? Can the page be on my site?
A : You may place the affiliate signup page wherever you want. It can be easily integrated on your site. [top]

Q : If I purchase monthly program, can I update it later for single licence software and install it on my server? How can I transfer my affiliate list later in that case without loosing the data and affiliates?
A : It is possible to sign up for the monthly service and then later to purchase the software without loosing any affiliates data stored until that moment. Our Support team will help you install and configure the software on your server and transfer your data to your new database. You will not be charged for that. [top]

Q : What type of tracking technology does PartnersManager Software use? How does it work?
A : PartnersManager Affiliate Software uses a "cookie" based tracking system. A cookie is a small text file that is saved in a visitor's browser files. When a visitor clicks on a banner, a cookie is placed on their browser detailing the affiliate and banner clicked. If the visitor completes a sale then the cookie is read to determine which affiliate referred the customer. [top]

Q :How does the banner impression tracking work?
A : Every time a banner is served, the banner and affiliate info is written to database. This ensures that low level tracking does not degrade the banner serving performance through high volume realtime database transactions. [top]

Q : Can I track sales that I take over the phone?
A : Yes. There is an feature in the software to manually insert transactions. [top]

Q : Will your system be able to track customers who come back a few days later to purchase my products?
A : Yes. PartnersManager software is able to track customers who come back even weeks later. [top]

Q : Can I configure the cookie lifespan? I do not want to track sales that are more than 30 days if the customer did not buy immediately after clicking
through to my site from the affiliate's web site.
A : Yes. PartnersManager software allows you to specify the number of days before cookie expire. [top]

Q : Using the monthly service where the software isn't hosted on my server, can Affiliates links point to my domain?
A : Yes. There is a feature in the software letting your affiliates links to point directly to your domain when using the Monthly service where the software is hosted on our domain. [top]

Q : How many affiliates can I have?
A : There is no limit to the number of affiliates you may have.

Q : How can I control affiliates?
A : Affiliates can be pre-screened on application then either accepted into the program or rejected. Affiliates are automatically notified by email. Cookie length and commissions are also configurable for each affiliate. [top]

Q : How can I control commissions?
A : Commission can be set-up differently for each affiliate as a percentage of sale or as a fixed amount (useful for mobile phones). Commission amounts can also be overridden on an individual sale basis to cater for partially fulfilled orders etc. [top]

Q : How can I control commissions on sales?
A : Each sale goes through a lifecycle as follows
 
 - New sale - visible to merchant and affiliate as pending or approved depending on the program transactions approval status.
 - Merchant approve or rejest the sale.
 - Approved sale - sale is confirmed and commission is ready for payment to affiliate.
 - Rejected sale - commission is deducted from affiliate balance. [top]

Q : Can I cancel an affiliate's commission if the customer has cancelled his order or if the order is found to be fraudulent?
A : Yes. You may cancel affiliate's commission at any time. You can also edit the commission as well should the customer's order amount be reduced, in order to reflect an accurate commission for your affiliate.  [top]

Q : Can I pay one commission on my book and another on my software?
A : Yes. You may pay different affiliate commission for every product you offer. [top]

Q : Can I pay for clicks?
A : Yes. You may set your program to be a Pay-Per-Click program. [top]

Q : What kinds of reports will the software show me?
A : In the software are included the following types of reports : Daily, For Period, Traffic, Transactions, Commissions, Advertising Links, Affiliates. [top]

Q : Can I pay one Affiliate more than another?
A : Yes. You may set different commissions for every affiliate. [top]

Q : Can I approve Affiliates before they start earning commissions?
A : Yes. You may set the Affiliate Approval to Automatic or Manually, so you will be able to control when your affiliates will start earning commissions. [top]

Q : What kinds of linking methods can I offer?
A : Using the software you may create Text, Graphic, HTML, Pop-up, Pop-under and Flash advertising links. [top]

Q : How will my Affiliates know how they are doing?
A : When the affiliate logs into his account there is a Report page where he can see detailed reports on how he is doing. [top]

Q : How do I pay my Affiliates?
A : You may pay your affiliates by wire transfer or, if and your affiliate have a Paypal account, you may pay them using Paypal. [top]

Q : Can I pay my affiliates with PayPal mass pay system?
A : Yes. Our system can generate PayPal mass pay file, which can be later uploaded to PayPal. [top]

Q : Can Affiliates be removed from the program?
A : Yes. Every affiliate may be removed from the program at any time. [top]

Q : What kind of fraud checking/protection system do you have in your program?
A : There is an IP blocking feature in the Software. You may set a value in minutes for it to prevent repeating clicks. [top]

Q : When a sale is made, how do we know if it was through the affiliate link or not and we owe our affiliate commissions? Do we get some notification?
A : You will be notified via email for every transaction of your affiliates. The affiliates will also be notified for every sale revenue they have generated. [top]

Q : Is there a feature for sliding commissions included in the software?
A : Yes. That feature is included in the software. [top]

Q : Is it possible and how to import products using the software?
A : You may import products manually, one by one, or importing them from a CSV file. [top]

Q : Will you help me find Affiliates?
A : Yes. An email promoting your Affiliate Program will be sent to all the Affiliates we have stored in our database. [top]

Q : How do I recruit affiliates myself?
A :  Finding affiliates is all about common sense. There are many sources of affiliates:
 
 - Your own website
 Some of your customers will have web pages and could turn into big traffic drivers.
 - Affiliate Program Directories
 Submit to a few of the popular directories (ie top of search engine) - It's free.
 - Affiliate Forums.
 Affiliates hang out at various forums to discuss which affiliate programs work well and which ones don't. Search for "affiliate forum" on Google to find a whole bunch. Be careful not to spam.
 - Search Engines
 Find out what the customer wants to discuss about your product and search for that too. Eg Motherboards - search for over-clocking, Athlon versus Pentium etc DVD players - search for region hack, multi region etc. Keyword suggestion tools like wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) are a great help.
 - Your competitors.
 Find out who is promoting your competitors products and make them a better offer.
 - Other merchants who sell complimentary products.
 For example, if you sell CD's and DVD's you could team up with merchants who sell DVD players, HiFi and Home Cinema equipment. Swapping affiliate links is better than a simple link exchange because it doesn't matter who has the most traffic (everyone wants to trade links with bigger websites, not smaller websites) it also provides a fair alternative revenue stream for both parties (or just one party).
 - Content Sites.
 Many products that sell well on the internet have associated interest / content sites including Price Comparison Sites and Review Sites. Many of these sites have high traffic and very targeted traffic. Find content sites on search engines by entering your product name as follows: "Compare widgets", "Widget reviews", "Widget guide", "Widget help", "widget forum", "widget chat" etc
 - Newsgroups
 Usenet should be approached with caution as flagrant advertising is treated as Spam and not tolerated. The key is subtlety. Create a good signature strap-line for your emails and join a few busy threads. [top]

Q : What is the difference between the Server(Network), Personal and Monthly versions of the software?
A : When using the Server version of the software there is one Super Admin managing many Merchants and Affiliates. It is the Super which is responsible for recruiting both Merchants and Affiliates for his system. Using the Personal one there is only one Merchant managing his own affiliates itself - he is the one recruiting them for his programs. The Monthly service uses the Personal version - the difference is that the software is hosted on our server and you pay a monthly fee of $39 for using it. [top]

Q : With the monthly proposal which version is used, the personal or the server version?
A : It is the Personal version that is used in the Monthly service. [top]

Q : Do you have logos of your company on the software (your own ads)?
A : When you purchase a license for PartnersManager software you may place your own logos on its pages. However, if you are using the monthly service that is our logo which will be displayed throughout the software pages. [top]

Q : Can the software be used in other countries?
A : Yes. There is no restriction for the countries the software may be used in. [top]

Q : Who do I contact if I have questions?
A : If you have some questions or problems using the Software you may contact our Support team at any time. [top]