Avangate is a leading Digital Commerce solution provider used by thousands of Software, Cloud and Online Services vendors. The Avangate Affiliate Network is home to more than 50,000 affiliates and 22,000 software products. For affiliates interested in promoting software and digital goods, Avangate is an ideal place to start. For those unfamiliar with the Avangate Affiliate Network or just needing a refresher, we hope this How-To Affiliate Guide will help get you started.
Company: Avangate
Site: http://www.avangate.com/
Sign Up: https://www.avangate.com/affiliates/sign-up.php
Phone: +1 650 249-5280 (US) / +31 88 000 0008 (Netherlands)
Contact Us: http://www.avangate.com/contact-us/contact-us-affiliates.php
SIGN UP PROCESS
Signing Up: Fill in an online form with your contact information, promotional methods, and company information.
Network Approval Process: Once you have submitted your application you will receive a verification link sent to the email address you registered with. The link should arrive immediately after submitting your application. Make sure to check your SPAM folder if you don’t see it. Click through the verification link to finalize your application. All new Avangate affiliate applicants will be reviewed within 48 hours according to the network policies available on the sign-up page. You will receive email notification whether or not your application is approved.
JOINING MERCHANT PROGRAMS
Avangate affiliates may only promote vendors who have approved their application. There are two ways to go about joining merchant programs.
Automatic Partnerships: The Avangate affiliate network has hundreds of vendors that automatically approve partnership requests. To work with these vendors, navigate to the Dashboard → Affiliate programs → Find Partners/Products. On the right side of the screen, there is a link to find vendors set to auto approval. Click the Mass Partnership Button and follow the selection criteria to choose merchants you wish to work with.
Manual Review Partnerships: For merchants that manually review affiliate applications, Avangate provides affiliates with several different criteria to search for potential partners.
- Vendor vs. Product: Affiliates can search for specific potential partners by company name or vendor code. Alternatively, you can also search for specific products (or services), product IDs or product categories.
- Coupon Self Generation: A great feature of Avangate’s affiliate network is the ability for merchants to allow select affiliates to create their own coupons using a portion of their commission (see the Other Functionalities section of this guide for a more in-depth explanation of this feature). Avangate allows affiliates to search for merchant programs that are currently offering this feature to affiliates.
- Product Promotions: You can also filter your search to products or services where there is an active promotion.
- Category: Affiliates can filter their search to the software and online services categories they are interested in working with.
Approved and Rejected Applications: Every vendor has its own rules for accepting and rejecting affiliates. Many may reject you for a variety of reasons including toolbars, website content, coupon and deals sites, etc. If rejected, you will receive an email informing you of the rejection. Contact the Affiliate Manager of that program to find out why and what you can do to re-apply.
ACCESSING LINKS
To create affiliate tracking links, go to Affiliate Programs → Get Links and click (Vendor Details) next to the merchant you are interesting in creating a link for. From there you will be presented with a complete list of the merchant’s products or services. Select the product you wish to create a link for to bring up the Get Product Links field. From there you may create the following types of links:
Shopping Cart Deep Links: These link types allow you to send traffic directly to the checkout pages. It is often used by affiliates who are playing the last touchpoint role in the shopper journey e.g authoritative websites.
- Add to Shopping Cart: This option directs customers to a page where the product is added to the shopping cart. Customers can still add additional products.
- Checkout with Cart Functionalities: Avangate’s most popular link type. This takes customers directly to the checkout page.
- Checkout: This option takes customers directly to the checkout but they cannot edit any cart details such as number of units or extra services. Discount coupons can still be added.
- Product Page: This link directs customers directly to the product page, where they can view product information.
Download Trial Links: Because of Avangate’s focus on digital goods, affiliates are offered the option to create links that are associated with the software file download.
- Download Trial: Clicking this link triggers a trial download of the product or gets the customer to a registration page, if available.
Website & Landing Pages Links
- Vendor Website: These affiliate links will direct customers to the vendor’s homepage.
- Custom URL: Affiliates may select a page of their choosing or one specified by the vendor. Useful for linking to custom landing pages on a vendor’s website.
Within the link creation area, you can add the following additional parameters:
- Link Source: This is used to track the performance of specific affiliate links within the Sales Source report. You can also use this if there is a need to track subIDs.
- Order Template: With this option you can apply your own custom shopping cart template.
REPORTING
Avangate Affiliates have four different reports available to them.
Orders Reports: Affiliates can access details about individual orders they have referred, including Reference #, Vendor, Date, Link Source, Total Sale Amount, Commission and Order Status. Updated in real time.
Advanced Reports: Four advanced reports are available for affiliates.
- Monthly Orders Report: A monthly rollup of commissions earned. Updated daily.
- Products Report: A performance report that breaks down results by product. Currently only provides data up to the previous 12 months. Updated daily.
- Sales Source Report: This report shows the number of sales coming from a specific sales source if the affiliate defined that when generating the link. Updated daily.
- Cookie Life Report: This report provides statistics on when sales took place during the referral window (time between the affiliate cookie setting and a purchase). This report is updated daily.
Affiliation Report: The most comprehensive report available. Affiliates can retrieve aggregate performance data using this report, as well as data specific to a particular vendor, product or time period. Here affiliates can view Clicks, Complete Orders, Conversion Rate, Total Sale Amount, Refunds, Commission Rate, Cost Per Click, Commission Amount, and EPC. These metrics can be sorted by time period, vendor, or product.
Payment Reports: This report provides data on past and upcoming payments.
PAYMENT
Payment options: Check (free), PayPal (free), Wire Transfer (free) and Avangate Prepaid MasterCard.
Payment thresholds: The minimum payout threshold is $100 USD or EUR, depending on the currency the affiliate chooses to be paid in.
Payment schedule: Payments are sent out once per month if the minimum threshold is reached. Funds are transferred 20 days after the end of the month when the sale occurred (for example, if you generate $300 in sales in August, payment will be sent on September 20). Bonus payments from merchants are transferred 20 days after the end of the month when the bonus was sent.
OTHER FUNCTIONALITIES
- Affiliate Datafeeds: Affiliates in the Avangate Affiliate Network can create custom datafeeds that are updated daily with all relevant information about the products or services they wish to promote. You can choose between datafeeds based on custom searches or filters and datafeeds created with specific products. Datafeeds are available in both XML and CSV formats.
- Order Templates: When sending customers to a shopping cart page, affiliates can choose to customize the purchase process to match their own website’s look-and-feel.
- Discount Coupons: Some Avangate merchants allow affiliates to create their own exclusive coupons by deducting the value of the coupon from the affiliate commission. For example, if you receive 75% commission and generate a 15% discount coupon, then you will only receive a 60% commission when a sale happens.
- User Access: Useful for affiliates that have multiple users logging into the account and want to create a role-based access policy. For security purposes, you can also restrict the IP addresses that can access the affiliate account.
Want to learn more? iAffiliate Management is an Avangate Marketing Services Partner and would love to answer your specific questions.