Referral Origination, Visits & Hits

—

by

Robert

Hi,

I am sorry, but I just don’t get it. I have searched through the documentation and I find nothing that explains this:

Using just Affiliates Pro or Affiliates, how exactly are new referrals originated… Better yet, why is this question not addressed in the documentation. Am I to guess this? I do understand that with the contact form 7 integration, a referrals is originated by a guest filling out the designated form, but no such form exists in the absence of contact form 7.

So my educated guess would be that referrals are ‘manually’ entered in the Referrals section in Affiliates or Affiliates Pro. Am I getting warm?

Assuming manual entry is required, where exactly do I get the information to manually enter?

And if I am to hunt down this data, what is the purpose of the affiliate link?

Lastly, what is the difference between a ‘visit’ and a ‘hit’ in the context of the Affiliates or Affiliates Pro plugin?

I cannot possibly be the only one who doesn’t get this. I just don’t understand why the documentation would assume that this is clear for anyone using Affiliates for the first time.

Posted in
Tags , , ,

Comments

5 responses to “Referral Origination, Visits & Hits”

  1. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    OK, with you on that. Here are my follow up questions:

    1. So a referral is originated automatically only by using an integration. If the integration is Contact Form 7, and that is setup properly, a resulting link such as http://www.mysite.com/contact would be created. Question: In order for the referral to be consumated, can the affiiate’s link suffix be changed from the default of http://www.mysite.com?xxxxxx to http://www.mysite.com/contact?xxxxxxxx ?

    2. The referral fields ‘Description’ and ‘Reference’ do not show up in the affiliates area anywhere. Can this be made possible so affiliates can see them on a referral by referral basis?

    3. In the Referrals screen there are several columns of info, one of them is titled POST. What should normally be viewable here?

    Thanks

    1. antonio Avatar
      antonio

      Hi,
      1.- Members can share different pages within the same domain.
      2.- You can use [affiliates_affiliate_profile /] shortcode to show more information.
      3.- Typically shows information about the event that generated the commission (eg order)
      cheers

  2. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    Yes, with a sale. And a sale occurs when someone clicks the buy now button which tenders a payment to the designated PayPal account.

    But that is just commissions. What about hits and visits? What is the difference between the two?

    1. antonio Avatar
      antonio

      Hi,
      if you are using paypal buttons directly (without shopping cart), you need Affiliates Paypal plugin.
      The visits reflect the different daily visitors, if you have one visitor clicking a single affiliate on the same day 10 times, that will produce 10 hits and 1 visit.
      cheers

  3. antonio Avatar
    antonio

    Hi,
    Affiliates is basically a framework, so normally you need an integration to generate commission when an event occurs.
    When do you need to generate commission? With a sale?
    cheers

Share