Affilate how to documentation

[gio50000]

I'm looking for more information on how to use the affiliate feature within AbleCommerce.

- Are there posts or documentation available?
- Who's using it and what are your thoughts good and/or bad?

Thanks,
Gio

[mazhar]

There would be helpful posts in the forums, you can search forums by using affiliate domain related keywords to find out suitable results.

[gio50000]

@mazhar -- you have been helpful with many of my questions but I'm looking for more information rather than searching the forums. It's my fault that I didn't note that that but I already searched the forums. I'm finding little or no documentation on the affiliates feature.

@AC Community -- If anyone can refer documentation, wiki content or comment on prior experiences while using the affiliate feature that would be great.

Gio

[jmestep]

Prior experience with it - in Able 5 we used it for search engine paid links only and went with Affiliate Wiz for real affiliates because it was more full featured and robust.

[gio50000]

@AbleCommerce Angel - Thanks for the insight on the Affiliate software called Affiliate Wiz. Have you heard of others being used with AC?

Thanks,
Gio

[jmestep]

No, I haven't heard of others unless they were something like click exchange. Affiliate Wiz is great and the have some code customized to work with Able. Their support is outstanding, also.

[jmestep]

I found out while looking for sample code to develop our referral program that the Able affiliate program is not fully implemented as far as reports for the affiliates. In the MyAffiliateAccountPage.ascx, there is a place for a report, but no coding for a report. It says

Code: Select all

 <tr id="trAffiliateReport" runat="server"  visible="false">
        <td class="pageMain">            
            Affiliate Report here.            
        </td>
    </tr>

[gio50000]

@jmestep - That's strange. Thanks for the taking the time to post your findings. I wish AbleCommercre would get their act together and document all of the features.

Gio

[Brewhaus]

We are about to give up on AC's affiliate system and move to third-party software. How simple is Affiliate Wiz to set up (I notice in the AC back end that we must enter the third-party tracking URL)? And, has anyone used iDevAffliate? If so, how difficult was it to integrate it with AC? The software looks nice, and has good reviews, but it does not appear to have direct integration with AC.

Also, being a third-party system it appears that the sale information is transferred at the time of order confirmation. Does this mean that even declined payments or cancelled orders will be processed as a completed sale (ie. the affiliate will be paid on orders that never get paid or completed?)

[jmestep]

Affiliate wiz was pretty easy to set up. It also has an option in it so that you can mark the orders as approved before the affiliate gets credit for them.

[Brewhaus]

Is this something that then becomes an automated process? In other words, we change the setting, and the affiliate gets credited only once the order has an approved payment status?

[gio50000]

Unfortunately, I'm not having much success with the affiliate feature built-in AbleCommerce. Does anyone have other resources or tips to share?

Thanks,
Gio

[Brewhaus]

I spoke to Able on Friday, and the affiliate portion of the software is not something that they are, at least at this time, looking at working on. That leaves only third-party options, which, of course, are not going to work seamlessly. I would think that this is a feature that would be used by a larger percentage of AC users, so it would be nice to have it built in.