I enabled the “direct” referrals, but it doesn’t show any clicks at all under the affiliates and clicks view. I would like confirmation that my “direct” clicks are being cookied onto the client browsers…
Direct shows no clicks at all
Posted in Affiliates Pro
You can reject the referrals you don’t want by visiting Affiliates > Referrals. If needed use the filters provided to narrow down the results and the preferred referral. On the edit page of the referral, you can set the referral status to rejected.
Cheers,
George
Either way, I would really prefer keeping the first referral as the active one.
Any way this could be accomplished?
Holy hell, I would *CERTAINLY* prefer having the FIRST affiliate get the commission. Otherwise it sets up the affiliate program for abuse…
As in, “Hey, nice site, I got referred by so-and-so, but actually, let me make an alternate identity, become an affiliate, then refer myself and collect my 13% off…”
That is just too easy.
It doesn’t work that way unless you allow affiliates to do that. See Auto-referrals and auto-coupons on this page http://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/setup/settings/referrals/ – don’t take your case as representative for the rest of the world, it’s not. Some businesses will welcome auto-referrals, others don’t. Some businesses will post discount codes on their own site without anyone having to join an affiliate program. Some may invite you to join an affiliate program and require you to have minimum amount accumulated to receive payment, etc.
Paying twice for ANYTHING is wrong.
Hi,
There are two points I’d like to clarify:
– If you run a PPC campaign either through the system directly or through a third-party provider, then that is of course part of your marketing spending. If an affiliate then eventually helps to convert it to a sale, of course you still have the commission that has to be paid to the affiliate. But this is not paying twice, it’s two marketing components with different costs and coverage.
– Here’s an idea that we could follow up and implement, people have been asking for that before in fact. If we have two affiliates A and B, a visitor clicks on A’s link and then on B’s link. Who should get the commission? A or B? Both have contributed to the conversion – the common assumption is that the one whose link got clicked last is being attributed the sale, and this is how our system works. But I can understand that some would prefer it the other way, that the first affiliate whose link was clicked is granted the commission. Studies in marketing have shown that sales reps should insist in following up with customers and that those who drop contact with the cusomer too soon, have just prepared the sale for the next competitor – here is an interesting article on how many ‘touches’ it takes.
Regarding this second point, to me it can make sense to reject a commission when a customer came to your page before clicking an affiliate’s link. I say it ‘can’ because I believe this depends on the type of business and products. In some cases it might not be fair to the affiliate and in others not to the business. In any case, I think we should consider taking this into account as an option in the affiliate system. We’ll be looking into this in further details to see if we can improve our software adding the appropriate functionality. While this does not solve your question immediately, I hope it still helps and we might be adding a solution for this.
Cheers
Hi Marie,
You could always promote direct affiliate links as well.
If though the user reaches your site, there is no reason for them to try and reach your site again.
Even in that case, you will have a sale per two clicks, which is huge.
Cheers,
George.
Yes, but if the user first reaches my site through Adwords/PPC, and then later clicks on an affiliate link, I will be paying twice for the sale. Once for the PPC campaign, and once for the affiliate, essentially doubling my significant marketing costs for that sale.
Even though it doesn’t store a cookie when accessed directly, any possible referrals will be recorded as long as the option is enabled under Affiliates > Settings.
Cheers
Well, that’s not ideal. I’d rather the plugin did store a cookie for DIRECT when accessing the website, well, directly…
Hi Marie,
When your site is accessed directly through http://www.example.com, then no cookie will be stored.
When your site is accessed through http://www.example.com/?affiliates=1 then a cookie will be stored named wp_affiliates with value 1.
This means, that if you promote http://www.example.com/?affiliates=1, after a click on it, there will be a visit recorded under direct affiliate’s statistics.
Please note that cookies are stored in the user browser and not in the Affiliates plugin statistics page.
Cheers,
George
OK so let me bite-size you an assumption that would binarily answer my question:
When someone visits my site directly or through google adwords, etc… There is a cookie for “DIRECT” being created on their browser even though I don’t see it in the “Affiliates and referrals” page. Correct?
Thanks
Hi Marie Claude,
That would happen only if the cookie expires before the visitor makes a purchase. When a visitor comes to your site, a cookie is stored in their browser that expires either when the browser window is closed (0) or after a set amount of days. This option can be found under Affiliates > Settings > Referrals.
In general, if you want to record direct referrals as well, then you should enable that option in Settings. So, when there is a sale even through a direct visit, the direct will be granted with a referral. That way you can keep track on the amount of sales coming from direct visits to your site.
With that option disabled, all sales that don’t involve an affiliate obviously come from direct sales.
Also, since you mentioned pay per click, there is Pay Per Click integration for Affiliates plugin which allows to pay your affiliates commissions when they generate traffic. For more information you can have a look at the documentation.
Hope everything is clear now, otherwise you are welcome to ask for more details. 🙂
Cheers,
George
OK I am pretty sure I understand what you are saying…
However, if for example I am paying for advertising, and people click on my site’s link without the /affiliate=* part, then there is no referral or affiliate at all, correct?
So if later they see someone else’s affiliate link and click on that, the affiliate will get the referral, even though I paid for their first click. Essentially, I will be paying twice for any sales I make.
Or am I not understanding correctly?
Hi Marie Claude,
A direct affiliate is granted with a referral whenever there is a referral recorded and no affiliate applies.
So, to make sure it works, try a test purchase using an affiliate link with id of a non-existing affiliate.
For example, if your affiliate ids come up to 100, your domain is example.com and your affiliate url parameter is affiliate, use an affiliate link with id 101.
http://www.example.com/?affiliate=101.
Kind regards,
George