My Shop Cart provides all members with a web based affiliate program to complement their shopping cart. This program is a sales based program. It will track all sales made through your affiliate's sites, record them, and calculate totals. You can manage all aspects of the affiliate program through the administration area.
Administration
Getting Started
To access the affiliate program you will need to log into the members administration area and select the link to the affiliate program.
If this is your first time using the affiliate program you will asked to answer some questions to configure the program. After you configure the program, you will then need to configure commission tiers. These tiers can either be a flat fee or percentage based. All affiliates who signup will automatically be set on tier one. You can change their tier at any time by editing their account.
After these two steps are performed, your affiliate program will be operational. We advise that you go into the affiliate configuration section before going live and setting their variables to your specifications. You can also add custom headers and footers from within the administration area so the affiliate's pages will match your site.
Affiliate management and tracking
All the affiliate management and tracking functions are web based. All you need to do is log into the affiliate program. Once inside the affiliate program you will see how simple it is to manage. If you have any specific questions about features of the web bases administration please contact us through the link in the members administration area.
Purchases and payments
When a purchase is made through one of your affiliate's, the purchase is recorded and the commission is calculated automatically. You can set whether you want the purchase to be automatically added to a members account, or you can hold the purchase pending approval. If you choose the later, whenever you log into the affiliate program you will see the number of transactions waiting approval. The affiliate will also see that there is a purchase awaiting approval. Just click on the link to either approve, deny, or edit the purchase. You can also edit a purchase at any time via the affiliate program.
The affiliate program also handles payments. Just type in the minimum amount you want to pay and it will list all the affiliates, amount owed, and their mailing address who need to be paid.
Affiliates
Signing up affiliates and the affiliates administration area:
To signup affiliates all you need to do is provide a link to http://www.myshopcart.com/affiliate/merchant_name/account.cgi (replace merchant_name with your merchant name). This is also the link for affiliates to edit their account and check their statistics. When an affiliate signs-up, they will also get this link in a e-mail so they can manage their account.
Affiliate links:
When a affiliate signs-up to be one of your affiliates, they will receive their own link to send customers to your site. This link will be in the form http://www.myshopcart.com/affiliate/merchant_name/click.cgi?account (replace merchant_name with your merchant name and account with their username). The affiliate will receive their custom link once they signup on the "success" page and via e-mail. We do not save your banners on our site therefore, you will need to provide a link to a page that has your banners and linking instructions.
You can set whether you want a affiliate to be instantly approved or wait for your approval in the administration area.