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OSC-Affiliate


henri

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Hi everyone, Henri has done a brilliant job with this script, however i am going to suggest a few changes or new features that could possibly be looked into.

 

1). Paypal payment option - Allow affiliates to be payed into their paypal account (shouldnt be to hard to do)

 

2). Banners - I think the banner page should be split up into 2 pages...one for banner links and one for product links. I feel it may get congested otherwise.

 

Perhaps even a banner centre could be setup as a head page linking to all the various types of links on seperate pages...ie one for banners, one for text links and one for product specific links.

 

I also think that there needs to be a dropdown list of the products for people to choose from for their links rather than just by entering the product id. Most people wont know what the ID number is or how to find it.

 

3). The reporting pages that show things like clickthru's etc become cluttered and hard to read at smaller screen sizes or higher text sizes, so perhaps we need to change the way they are displayed and box format them perhaps.

 

4). I dont know if you have setup the pay per sale rate or not??? but it would be a good addition to add to the script ( i never got that far ) I think admin could give the option of paying by percentage or by sale to each affiliate or to every affiliate.

 

5). The clickthru rate function needs to be set up as well so that the admin can offer a pay per click function on banners.

 

6). The affiliate Invoice feature is great, however i think a nice fancy html mail invoice should be done and sent as well as the printable one.

 

7). Another good feature would be to have a monthly automated invoice that is sent out to the affiliate as a report on sales etc...perhaps not monthly, or perhaps set by a frequency specified by the admin.

 

A cron job would take care of this.

 

8). The new reporting contribution could be tied into the affiliate module allowing all data to be displayed graphically.

 

9) A setting to include the shipping costs in the order total that is processed with an on/off function in admin would also be a good extra.

 

10). An adjustable % rate that could be applied to an affiliate once they have reached a certain level of sales, or adjusted by admin would be a good future addition.

 

anyway thats my TOP 10 main suggestions, what are everyones thoughts???

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First let me say indeed this is ONE great module! Easy install, and I really liked that it didn't affect too many core Oscommerce files. I made sure to donate for this module!

 

1). Paypal payment option - Allow affiliates to be payed into their paypal account (shouldnt be to hard to do)

 

This would be very important to me. It's one of the few ways to pay international affilaites!!!!

 

5). The clickthru rate function needs to be set up as well so that the admin can offer a pay per click function on banners.

 

Yes!! I need this!!! I can count and pay for clicks the way it is now but it would be ever so much easier if the program did it for me!

 

These two things are the most important to me.

 

Vikki

 

 

anyway thats my TOP 10 main suggestions, what are everyones thoughts???

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4). I dont know if you have setup the pay per sale rate or not??? but it would be a good addition to add to the script ( i never got that far ) I think admin could give the option of paying by percentage or by sale to each affiliate or to every affiliate.

I second on that one too

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I may be inserting my foot into my mouth for not studying features a lot, but two things that I think would be very important are:

 

1) Adding a "referrerID" to customer accounts. This would allow for calculating commissions on all sales even if the person later comes back for repeat purchases at a later date directly to the site, and not via an affiliate's link. Along with this, need to be able to export daily/weekly/monthly reports of all sales including the customer, referrer ID, products/dollars, etc.

 

2) (And from the sourceforge dept... :wink:) Allow for automatic and recurring billing at a customer specified interval. This would first check to see if the credit card could be automatically billed, bill the card if so, etc. Good items that get used up every month like inkjet cartridges, nutritional products, hosting fees, monthly memberships, etc.

 

I believe Steve is working on #2 but has a way to go due to changing checkout code in the CVS. I'm not sure about #1.

Ryan Thrash

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I may be inserting my foot into my mouth for not studying features a lot, but two things that I think would be very important are:

 

1) Adding a "referrerID" to customer accounts. This would allow for calculating commissions on all sales even if the person later comes back for repeat purchases at a later date directly to the site, and not via an affiliate's link. Along with this, need to be able to export daily/weekly/monthly reports of all sales including the customer, referrer ID, products/dollars, etc.

 

Im working on a great reports system for another project im working on and may be able to modify it to suit. As for a referrerID well i dont think you want to be paying an affiliate comissions 12 months later just for him bringing the customer to your site once.....I think the adjustable cookie is enough for this.

 

An alternative is to use Ian's module where an offercode can be created, but ill have to have a look into that.

 

2) (And from the sourceforge dept... :wink:) Allow for automatic and recurring billing at a customer specified interval. This would first check to see if the credit card could be automatically billed, bill the card if so, etc. Good items that get used up every month like inkjet cartridges, nutritional products, hosting fees, monthly memberships, etc.

 

I believe Steve is working on #2 but has a way to go due to changing checkout code in the CVS. I'm not sure about #1.

 

Recurring Billing would be a totally seperate module to the affiliate Mod.

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First of all, great module! Many thanks, a lot of hard work must of gone into this!

 

Just a quick Q, sorry if i am being stupid,

 

I plan to run billing on 28th of each month, print the invoices and change the status to paid. However, the commision in the affiliate summery page still shows up as the total they have earned. I would like it to show just thier account balance (ie what they have not yet been paid) for example if a customer has earned ?20 in commision, then at the end of the month when billing is done, that ?20 balance would be set to ?0.

 

I have tested it and it only displays total earnings, not current earnings.

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1) Adding a "referrerID" to customer accounts. This would allow for calculating commissions on all sales even if the person later comes back for repeat purchases at a later date directly to the site, and not via an affiliate's link. Along with this, need to be able to export daily/weekly/monthly reports of all sales including the customer, referrer ID, products/dollars, etc.

 

Im working on a great reports system for another project im working on and may be able to modify it to suit. As for a referrerID well i dont think you want to be paying an affiliate comissions 12 months later just for him bringing the customer to your site once.....I think the adjustable cookie is enough for this.

 

An alternative is to use Ian's module where an offercode can be created, but ill have to have a look into that.

 

Thinking about this from an MLM Affiliate perspective, though, it is important to be able to determine the original source of the referral. (Whether or not something is paid on it is another issue entirely! The rules to determine if they qualify for a commission payment and/or bonuses can be very complicated and tricky. Commissions calculation, therefore, is another module that would need to be developed, but that's another issue entirely...)

 

Further, in many MLM/Affiliate programs, people are paid commissions on the sales of people that were referred by people that they referred. In fact, this can go 3, 4, 5 or more levels deep so that the person is in fact getting commissions on people she may have never even met!

 

Therefore, I think being able to pull a periodic report for each person that sumarizes personal purchases, and includes that person's parent ID would be a way to facilitate getting the appropriate information to a commission payment module. Maybe throw in new referrals for that period as well just for grins. This could be dumped to a CSV or Excel file (or whatever), for processing externally, I guess.

 

Does this make sense?

Ryan Thrash

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Back from Holiday :)

 

1). Paypal payment option - Allow affiliates to be payed into their paypal account (shouldnt be to hard to do)

Seems to be a good possibility; I don't have any experience with paypal (neither an account) yet, so anyone willing to do it?

2). Banners - I think the banner page should be split up into 2 pages...one for banner links and one for product links. I feel it may get congested otherwise.

I also think that there needs to be a dropdown list of the products for people to choose from for their links rather than just by entering the product id. Most people wont know what the ID number is or how to find it.

Yes good idea,

4). I dont know if you have setup the pay per sale rate or not??? but it would be a good addition to add to the script ( i never got that far ) I think admin could give the option of paying by percentage or by sale to each affiliate or to every affiliate.

No, cause i didn't needed it yet.

Given a fixed value (instead of percentage) for an order should be possible. Maybe when i find time.

To split these affiliate independet (i.e affiliate1 gets 5% ;affiliate2 get 7%) is thought for the next version.

 

5). The clickthru rate function needs to be set up as well so that the admin can offer a pay per click function on banners.

From the logging point no problem, but a per click function has to be very restrictive (cause clicks a generated very easily by tools...)

 

6). The affiliate Invoice feature is great, however i think a nice fancy html mail invoice should be done and sent as well as the printable one.

One of the next thing i want to look after...

 

7). Another good feature would be to have a monthly automated invoice that is sent out to the affiliate as a report on sales etc...perhaps not monthly, or perhaps set by a frequency specified by the admin.

A cron job would take care of this.

Shouldn't be a problem to use the affiliate_payment for this.

9) A setting to include the shipping costs in the order total that is processed with an on/off function in admin would also be a good extra.

You mean that the shipping cost is included in % the affiliate get?

10). An adjustable % rate that could be applied to an affiliate once they have reached a certain level of sales, or adjusted by admin would be a good future addition.

%rate per affiliate i planned for the future

 

 

Everyone who want's to contribute something to this contribution just contact me ([email protected]),

if you wan't to help developing it, I put you to the team at sourceforge...

 

Cu Henri

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5). The clickthru rate function needs to be set up as well so that the admin can offer a pay per click function on banners.

From the logging point no problem, but a per click function has to be very restrictive (cause clicks a generated very easily by tools...)

 

I see - so this would be hard to add as you've have to restrict click payments by another function, correct?

 

 

Vikki

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5). The clickthru rate function needs to be set up as well so that the admin can offer a pay per click function on banners.

I see - so this would be hard to add as you've have to restrict click payments by another function, correct?

Vikki

Not hard, but you need a good function for this.

At time it wouldn't be a problem to generate a mass of clicks.

So for example it should only be counted one click per reffering-ip per hour

It's like these vote scripts, you allways must be aware that someone trys to fool you.

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Is anyone using this contribution successfully on a live site?

 

I know that it's probably not a great idea given the beta status of it, but then again, OSC2.2 is still in development and we all use that ...

 

In other words, is "stable-ish"?

 

Cheers

 

Ali.

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I have it installed, affiliates signed up. It seems to be capturing their clicks, and referral sales.

It hasn't been in long enough for me to have paid anyone yet. I have a very stable customer base and have never had to refund any money for products (knock on wood that now that I've said it!) so I was thinking about changing the billing time to 10 days instead of 30.....

 

Vikki

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And yes i think it's "stable". Some small features are missing (sending mails to billed affiliates), and I wanna do some more code cleanup.

The features are coming when i find time, or i need them (mail is needed when we start the first billing).

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i have a contrib concerning dynamic order status (orders status dynamically set according to payment mode used by customers ) that also include some features i plan for accounting

for accounting one add is to set one/more FINAL orders status that equals to invoiced orders. after this status reached , it can no more be changed and then can be used for reporting real sales made for affiliates

 

orders_status_confirmation_and_final.gif

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1). Paypal payment option - Allow affiliates to be payed into their paypal account (shouldnt be to hard to do)

 

I would absolutely use this addition.  I was planning to do it manually anyway if it is not implemented in the program.  I would use a lower payment threshhold and it would be the only cost efficient way to pay international affiliates.  My websites have a worldwide base, so I would be recruiting international affiliates.

 

I also think that there needs to be a dropdown list of the products for people to choose from for their links rather than just by entering the product id. Most people wont know what the ID number is or how to find it.

 

I agree with this and also am trying to implement the Virtual Mall option (no success so far) so would like my affiliates to be able to choose by top level category - that is how the stores are identified

 

4). I dont know if you have setup the pay per sale rate or not??? but it would be a good addition to add to the script ( i never got that far ) I think admin could give the option of paying by percentage or by sale to each affiliate or to every affiliate.

 

I am very happy with percentage of sales and personally don't need flat rate and DON'T want pay per click, there are MANY scripts that already do that.  BUT I would love 2-tier program, but can live without it if I have to.  It is a great incentive for affiliates to recruit their friends.

 

10). An adjustable % rate that could be applied to an affiliate once they have reached a certain level of sales, or adjusted by admin would be a good future addition.

 

This would be useful, but is at the bottom of my Top 10 List  :) Paying affiliate via PayPal and choosing links by Category are the most important to me.  I will set up "Stores" by top level category whether I get the Virtual Mall mod to work or not.

 

Debbie

[no external urls in signatures please, kthanks]

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I am very happy with percentage of sales and personally don't need flat rate and DON'T want pay per click, there are MANY scripts that already do that.

 

If I ran a seperate program for clicks then affiliates would have to sign up in two places, no? Or could it run off the referrer statement that the Oscaffiliate program generates? (I could of course be making this WAY too difficult in my head!!!)

Could you tell me some programs that work with Oscommerce that will use the Oscaffiliate referrer that I can use?

 

Vikki

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I've gotten updates from the Oscaffiliate mailing list - should I now go to the sourceforge repository, re-download the affiliate program and then reinstall it to affect these new changes?

 

Sorry if this seems an utterly stupid question.

 

 

Vikki

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As long as i don't post a new release, the changes are in cvs only.

If you want to check the new features then update the changed files (a: using a cvs tool; b: manually by browsing the cvs-repository or by the changes in the mail)

Cu Henri

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Thanks Henry and SnowMan for your wonderful contribution. I installed it today, everything is working except email, any idea why?

I signed as a test account and never received any email.

My site's email feature works I know because it does send me email

after I receive an email

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Gday theer,

 

just reading a few of the posts there were some bugs that have been ironed out. Is it ready to simply plug in and away I go ? I'm still e bit of a newbie and just want to make sure I don't kill anything by installing it etc.

 

cheers,

 

Adam

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I installed it today, everything is working except email, any idea why?

No, cause the email function is the same as in the Shop. So if it works in the shop it should work here to.

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Gday theer,

 

just reading a few of the posts there were some bugs that have been ironed out. Is it ready to simply plug in and away I go ? I'm still e bit of a newbie and just want to make sure I don't kill anything by installing it etc.

 

cheers,

 

Adam

 

Adam its pretty much stable and ready to go and its fairly easy to install :D

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