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Wishlist Items
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Hi George/Kento,
I’ve been using your affiliate plugin on client websites for a couple years now for fundraising. You’ve been great answer all of my questions and helping me troubleshoot! Thanks for that!
I thought I’d reach out to see if there’s a way with either Affiliate Pro or Enterprise to do the following. We’re wasting a lot of time with work arounds to accomplish this.
Can an Affiliate (ex. fundraiser named Bob Smith from Organization “West End Soccer Team”) set up affiliates with their own links? For example a link for each soccer player so that Bob can track in real time how much each kid is earning? In the end, we only payout to Bob, so a total for the Affiliate + its Sub-Affiliates is needed. But now Bob can easily track how much each kid earned with our fundraiser and add it to anything else they’ve earned outside of our website.
Here’s my current work-around (which is cumbersome): I’ve added three fields to the checkout that the buyer has to type in – Name of Organization (ex. West End Soccer Team), Name of Seller (ex. Timmy Johnson), Seller Details (optional, ex. 5th Grade). I export ALL orders from WooCommerce from the start date to end date of the fundraiser. I sort by the “Name of Organization” and pull those orders into a new spreadsheet. I sort by Name of Seller and send the spreadsheet to the Affiliate. There are problems with this because the buyer doesn’t always complete the check-out fields correctly. So, it takes time to figure out which orders are missing when the total doesn’t add up correctly.
I have a video of how to do this for my client if you want to see where my issues are (it also explains my workaround for the next issue). (link for internal use, removed) (if this takes you to the
The other problem we have is that we get duplicates in Affiliates Pro. So, at the end of a fundraiser, an Affiliate may look at their dashboard and it says they earned $450.00. If my export in the above process totals less, I can go into the Affliates > Referrals tab and usually find duplicate referrals – they come in at the same time and when clicked on, go to the same order. Then I have to remove the duplicates and tell the Affiliate that they actually earned less (ex. if I find 3 duplicates, the total reduces to $436.50).
Again, that video explains the work around process I go through to identify the discrepancies.
If you can help me solve either of these issues by upgrading to enterprise, installing add-on plugins or making adjustments to my settings, that would be great!
Thanks so much for the great work with Affiliates Pro!
-Erica
Posted in Affiliates Pro
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2 responses to “Wishlist Items”
Hi Erica,
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation, the video on the process is very helpful, too!
I just wanted to let you know that we are investigating a possible solution based on our tools. Affiliates Enterprise’s campaigns might be a fit, an affiliate could create campaigns that relate to the fundraising events and for you as an administrator, it would be possible to review per-campaign data in the back end for each campaign.
A couple of considerations came up:
* From what I saw in the video, affiliates are kept inoperative before and after a certain fundraiser event, are they allowed to refer before and after the event and can they be instructed to use campaigns?
* Let me assume one thing (I’m not quite sure if the following would be possible, but that’s how I would suggest to do it given what I see right now) – fundraisers have products which are available only for a limited time. Affiliates that are enabled for a fundraiser could have rates set up for that particular product. While the product is being sold (i.e. while the fundraiser event is being held), customers can be referred by eligible affiliates. This could solve the necessity of inoperative affiliates before/after an event, and affiliates could use campaigns to refer to products while they are purchasable. Our Groups Drip Content could be used to limit products to be available for sale during a specified interval of time – see under “Specified Time” on the Drip Content documentation page.
* My instinct tells me that your setup could benefit from using Groups in combination with affiliates and rates. Could be worth looking at … you don’t need to use the groups with Groups Drip Content if it turns out not to be suitable, as the drip extension allows to limit product access to a specified time without the need to use groups.
Eugen will be exploring things further and follow up accordingly, if you’d like to go ahead and check meanwhile, please have a look at Campaigns in Affiliates Enterprise and at the Campaigns Dashboard shortcode which is also available as a block and integrated with the affiliates dashboard itself (if the affiliates dashboard is used, it isn’t necessary to add it explicitly as the dashboard adds that automatically).
Thanks for using our tools, the case you are working on is quite interesting!
Cheers
Wow – great options to review. I’ll dig deeper but have a few questions/comments.
We usually do activate an affiliate’s link as soon as they’re approved, rather than waiting until their fundraiser start date (unless requested). So, they would have the opportunity to add a campaign and group members prior to the start of their fundraiser.
I don’t believe I need product live dates. I use shortcodes so that it shows one message on the page when the link is active…”Welcome! Buy!” and another when it’s inactive “This fundraiser has ended.” That is working well.
The issue is more tracking sales by seller within a fundraiser. Lots of people ask me if they can see what each student/player/member is earning in real time. That’s what my crazy process accomplishes, but not in real time.
I do have a thought…would this work? Let’s say I have…
Coach Lasso (Affiliate – Richmond Soccer Club)
Jamie Tart (seller)
Roy Kent (seller)
Sam Obysana (seller)
Currently, all 4 are using the same affiliate link. With Enterprise, I believe I can use affiliate tiers where Coach Lasso can invite Jamie, Roy and Sam to create their own account which gives them their own link to share. Now fans can purchase using any of the four links. Here are a few questions though…
1. Who approves the tiered affiliates (Jamie, Roy and Sam) – This would need to be the affiliate (Coach Lasso) or auto-approved for the tiered affiliate. (But, we need to review the main affiliate (Lasso) prior to approval manually.)
2. Can Coach Lasso monitor Jamie, Roy and Sam’s totals?
3. Can they all have the same “earning” amount. Fundraisers earn 50% of the sub-total so Coach Lasso, Jamie, Roy and Sam should all earn 50% on a purchase using their link.
4. Can I as the administrator easily see the total for Richmond Soccer Club as a whole? Or can I export the Richmond Soccer Club and tiered affiliates easily to total outside of the system?
5. Following a fundraiser, I would want to remove all tiered accounts, keeping the main affiliate (Ted Lasso). That way, next year, he can invite a new set of tiered affiliates (because he’ll have different players). Would those be easy to find and delete?
If I used Groups instead, could I track the purchases back to each member of the group? Groups seem to lockdown content. That might be helpful for the members to see what they’re earning, but how would that track back…with a pixel?
I’ll keep exploring the options you gave me over the next few days. Hopefully the info above helps you come up with new options for me to explore as well! 🙂