The InventoryStores Affiliate Management Program is an additional channel to sell your products on the web.

• You set a either a flat fee or a percentage commission, create an ad banner for your products, load the banner to your affiliate module, add a brief description of your new program and turn on the affiliates functionality.
• Clients who want to sell your products sign-up to become your affiliate and post your ad banners on their website.
• The banners have the client’s “affiliate code” linked and your InventoryStores platform tracks the customers who have come to your site from your affiliates and who ultimately purchase your products.
• Your site platform counts these sales and you then make payments to your affiliates on a regular basis, such as monthly or quarterly.

STEP 1: Create and upload ad banners to your website admin menu

Admin Menu>>Affiliates>>Banners

Using a graphic program like PhotoShop, create a few ad banners for your program.  Traditional sizes are 468X60 for banners and 125x125 for small image/button ads usually added to the left or right column of the site, but you can use any size that you desire.

From the Admin Menu>>Affiliate Manager>>Banners you can upload your banners.  Use the NEW BANNER button and it will take you to the New Banner Page.

1-      Banner Title: Create the title for your ad.

2-      Product ID: If you want the ad to link directly to a product you enter it in this field.  You can find the product numbers by viewing the front of your site and go to the product page.  Look at the address bar for “?productid=”

3-      Image: Simply click the browse button to upload the image from your computer.

4-      Click the INSERT button to add the banner.

5-      You can repeat this process to upload more ads to your site.

STEP 2 Create your affiliate commissions and program details in the Configuration Menu of your admin.

Admin Menu>>Configuration>>Affiliate Program 

Like other configuration settings on your site, use the Configuration Menu.  Go to Configuration>>Affiliate Program from your admin to create your affiliate program settings. 

From the Affiliate Program Configuration menu you can control your program aspects by clicking on each option and using the red box with the EDIT button on the right.
 

MENU CHEAT SHEET:

1-      Email Address: Enter the email address you want to display in correspondence you’re your affiliates.  Some users create a separate email for this like Affiliates@ or you might want to use yourname@ or admin@ to keep these emails separate from your general sales or support email accounts.

2-      Affiliate Pay: Enter your per sale commission as a flat rate or a percentage of sales. (You might find a flat rate easier to manage/audit if you are new to the Affiliate Process.  Consider the costs of your products and the level of profit margin when determine the amount that you want to pay out.)

3-      Payment Threshold: This is the minimum number of sales required before you would payout to an affiliate in your program.  You do not want to send payments in small amounts, especially if it is a large number of small account affiliates.  To make it easier to manage set a higher dollar amount, like $50, $100, $200, etc before you are required to pay out to your affiliates.  It will depend on how easy you think it will be to keep track of various accounts.  If you make it too high it might be hard to get new affiliates willing to try your program, but a higher amount will also mean that you can keep any of the revenue generated by the smaller affiliates in your program if they stop selling products before they reach this level.

4-      Cookie Lifetime:  Maximum number of cookie time in seconds from the click to your site before the client purchases on your site which would require inclusion in their sales figures. 

5-      Billing Time:  The time set in days will determine that “orders billed must be at least X days old before they are included.  This can meet your returns policy for example.  30 is a fine default for this value to make sure returns can be removed from the totals for an affiliate.

6-      Order Min Status: Minimum status for an order.  Leave this as 3, which equals delivered status.

7-      Pay Affiliates with:  The Payment types to send your affiliate programs.  Check is a simple method for your record keeping and it is inexpensive, but some affiliate prefer Paypal or bank transfers.

8-      Affiliate Tiers:  If your program allows “sub-affiliates” (true or false), or can clients join your program through your own affiliates.  This is more of an advanced option and is best left as false until you have more experience with your program.

9-      Number of Tier-levels:  This determines the number of sub-levels if your want to allow them in your program.

10-  Percentage Rate: Set a declining rate of payout for each tier if you use this option.

 
STEP 3: (OPTIONAL & ADVANCED) Customize affiliate informational messages

You can change the text for your affiliate page by changing your PHP files. 

1-      (After you save this file) Open /includes/languages/YOUR LANGUAGE/affiliate_Info.php

2-      Search for line: define(‘TEXT_INFORMATION’, ‘Your affiliates text goes here.’)

3-      Change the text: define(‘TEXT_INFORMATION’, ‘And add the content in this space that you want to appear for your affiliate program’)

STEP 4 (OPTIONAL & ADVANCED) Customize the Affiliate Signup Email sent to new affiliates when they create an account. 

A default email is sent to your affiliates when they create their affiliate account.  You can change this content.

1-      (After you save your file) Open the file /includes/languages/YOUR LANGUAGE/affiliate_signup_ok.php

2-      Search for the text: define(‘TEXT_INFORMATION’, ‘Congratulations! Your new Affiliate account application has been submitted! You will…......’);

3-      Change the text: define(‘TEXT_INFORMATION’, ‘Change the text here to anything that you want to include in the email’);

STEP 5- (OPTIONAL & ADVANCED) Customize the Affiliate Welcome Email sent to new affiliates.

A default email is sent to your affiliates when you approve their account.  You can change this content. 

1-      After you save your file) Open the file /catalog/includes/languages/YOUR LANGUAGE/affiliate_signup_ok.php

2-      Search for the text: define(‘MAIL_AFFILIATE_HEADER’, “Dear Affiliate, thank you for joining the Affiliate Program.  Your Account Information:   ……..Your Affiliate Team’);

3-      Change the text: Only change the text above marked in bold italics

STEP 6: Activate your Affiliate Program infobox

Admin Menu>>Design Controls>>Info Box Configure

Your new Affiliates Program will not display on your website until you activate the infobox from your admin menu with the Design Controls>>Info Box Configure.  From this menu, find the line “Affiliate Info” on the left and click the green circle to activate the box so it appears on your site.

CONGRATULATIONS  YOUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM IS NOW ACTIVE!!