affiliate bonus Archives - Affiliate Program Management

June 18, 2015

How to Give an Affiliate a Bonus Using ShareASale

A few weeks ago I wrote a post that showed advertisers that operate their affiliate program on CJ Affiliate how to provide their affiliates a bonus. In today’s post I am going to show merchants how to manually bonus their affiliates that operate on the ShareASale affiliate network. I will provide a step – by – step guide to follow during the process.

Step 1 – Log in to Merchant Account and Click “Affiliate List” under the tab of “Affiliates”

After logging into your ShareASale merchant account you want to hover over the “Affiliates” tab in the main navigation and click “Affiliate List.” The affiliate list will show you all your current affiliates in order of performance to date. The top performers will be at the top of the list.

Step 2 – Locate Affiliate You Want to Bonus

Once you are in your affiliate list scroll down the list until you locate the one to manual bonus. Once located click the “Details” link under their name. It will take you to their individual affiliate page where the bonus activity will take place.

Step 3 – Submit the Bonus

Once you are on the affiliates ShareASale page you will need to scroll down until you get to the section titled “Affiliate Actions”. From there you will put the desired bonus amount and the type of transaction. You will fill in the field “Specific Amount to Give Affiliate” (i.e. the dollar amount) and change the drop down box to “Bonus”. Once complete you must hit “Submit Transaction” for it to be complete.

Please note: Even though it is not a sale/lead tracked through ShareASale there will still be a 20% fee charged to you for the manual bonus transaction.

Using the manual bonus feature in ShareASale is straight forward process and necessary for rewarding performance, paying for placements with affiliates, and even correcting transactions (I will dive into this next week).

May 21, 2015

How to Give an Affiliate a “Bonus” in CJ Affiliate

Affiliate marketing is simple to understand, when an affiliate (or sometimes called a publisher) refers a sale to a merchant they receive a commission. The payment can be in the form of a percentage of the sale or a flat dollar amount. There are occasions when affiliates will get paid a “bonus”. The reasons an affiliate may receive a bonus include: being a top performer and the merchant is showing their appreciation, hitting a specific goal outlined by the merchant, paying for placements on affiliates sites, or for some reason their sales not getting tracked and the merchant is manually crediting them their earned commissions. With that being said I will show you how to manually credit a bonus to an affiliate within CJ Affiliate.

Step 1 – Click the “Reports” Tab

Once you log in to you CJ Affiliate merchant account you will want to click the “Reports” tab.

Step 2 – Navigate to the “Transaction” tab under the Main Navigation

Here you can review program performance, affiliate performance, promo codes, but we are going to focus on the “Transaction” tab. Once you click on the “Transaction” tab you will be directed to a screen where you can review all transactions that have taken place over the life of the affiliate program.

Step 3 – Click “Create Commission”

After clicking on the “Transaction” tab you need to scroll all the way to the bottom and click the “Create Commission” button. This is where you will officially pay the bonus to the affiliate. Once the button is clicked a pop-up will appear and will need to be filled out.

Step 4 – Pay the Bonus

You want to make sure the “Action Name” drop down box is filled in with “Bonus”. When filling the “Website ID” make sure you are using the affiliates PID and not CID. If you use a CID it will not work. After entering the “Website ID” enter an order number, it can be an internal one or one specifically for CJ, but it is required. Once that is complete you need to fill in the exact amount you are going to “Bonus” the affiliate. Once all four sections are complete, hit “SAVE”. You will then get a message saying the transaction was successful.

This action is not used on a daily basis, but should be understood. It is important for affiliate managers to know how to maneuver the network and credit affiliates when necessary. As I mentioned above there are various reasons this action can/should be used, but knowing how and why to use it is equally as important.

March 27, 2015

How to Create Affiliate Commission Rules on ShareASale

Do you want your affiliate program to stand out to potential affiliates? Of course you do, so how can it be done? Some programs sell themselves either because they are a recognizable brand, their website converts well, or they offer incentives to their affiliates for hitting specific milestones. Rewarding your affiliates is a key to success, because if they are happy they will continue promoting your program and some may put more effort in. I am going to show you how to set up commission rules in ShareASale so that when affiliates hit certain milestones set up by you they will get a bonus automatically credited to their accounts. You can do this manually, but ShareASale has a great feature that automates the entire process. Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up personalized commission rules in the merchant interface of ShareASale.

Step 1 – Go to the “Edit Settings” tab under the “My Account” tab

Once you are logged in the merchant interface of ShareASale you need to navigate to the “Edit Settings” section under the “My Account” tab.

Step 2 – Click “Manage Advanced Commission Structures”

Once in the “Edit Settings” section you will need to locate the “Manage Advanced Commission Structure” link and click it. You will be taken to a new page where you will begin the setup process of your incentive campaigns.

Step 3 – Decide which incentives you will be enabling

There are a variety of incentives to offer affiliates, some of them include: a first sale bonus, double commission on sales for the first 30 days, a bonus for referring a predefined amount of sales in the first 30 days of being an affiliate, and so on. Be sure to choose ones that will encourage activity immediately upon joining and also make financial sense to you. In the affiliate programs I manage I like to offer all new affiliates a first sale bonus. It shows them that we care about their performance and that it motivates them even after the first sale. We may offer that affiliate other private incentives down the road if performance continues at a high level.

Step 4 – Setting Up the Commission Rule(s)

For the purpose of this post I will show you how to set up a first sale bonus.

You want to name the rule, so “First Sale Bonus” would be the name.

Next, you want to select the action. Click in the “Commission Action” section and you will be provided a drop-down menu and then select “Bonus a flat amount”.

You will then have to include the amount of the bonus, for this example I put $5.

Once you have the name and action complete you will need to apply conditions to the rule. If it is a first sale bonus you will want to click the “Add Condition” box and click “Performance metric reaches a specific value”, the under “Combined Stats” you will click “number of sales total less than 1 (you will add the 1 manually).

To make things even easier you should tag your affiliates so that setting up the rules become even easier. If you have a brand new program with no sales you will not need to create tags immediately, but if you have an established program generating sales you will need to create tags to make sure only new affiliates are being credited for their first sale.

Creating commission rules will help automate the bonus process. As noted earlier, there are other options in terms of bonuses, so be sure to review the ones available in ShareASale and choose the ones that will motivate your affiliates. Rewarding your affiliates should be a part of the overall program optimization process, but make financial sense to you, the merchant. Happy affiliates are the best kind and they tend to spread the good word about you to their peers.