Affiliate Marketing with CS-Cart

Nowadays affiliate marketing has become widespread over the last few years as it provides business owners with a possibility:

• to extend one's business to attract new customers from other online segments;
• to advertise and promote your store over the web.

CS-Cart Affiliate Add-on is a built-in system helping to set and manage affiliate marketing program. This add-on gives the full control of the affiliate marketing on your webstore allowing to: create banners, create plans, approve commissions, view accounting history, specify settings to automate the process. You can also attach a specific commission plan to each affiliate, specify commission rates and conditions of the program. A range of setting allows you to create a flexible program satisfying most critical affiliates.

You can also set up a multi-tier affiliate system which allows affiliates to earn money by forwarding other people to the program.

CS-Cart affiliate add-on automatically identifies the site that the customers came from and calculates commissions for the affiliate. It tracks all the commissions and generates general statistics.

The best thing about this, you don't need third-party software to get all these features.

How to set up 'Affiliate system'

In order to set up CS-Cart Affiliate program, follow the instructions below.

Part 1

• Sign in your administration panel;
• Go to the Administration tab;
• Click on the Addons link;
• Find Affiliate add-on in the list;
• Change its status from Disabled to Active in the select box on the right. This will enable the add-on.
• Reload the page and you will see the Affiliate tab appeared in the administration panel.
• After all these actions completed customers will be able to select the Affiliate account in the Account type option on the registration/updating profile page.

Part 2

• Open the Design tab;
• Follow the Blocks link;
• Open the Home page in the line of tabs on the page;
• In the right column find the Affiliate side box;
• Change its status from Disabled to Active.
• You will be able to activate this side box only in case you already have at least one affiliate registered in your store.

Your affiliates will see the Affiliate side box displaying when they signed in your storefront.

Part 3

How to create banners for affiliates

Sign in the administration panel of your webstore;

Go to the Affiliate tab;

Open the Banners tab;

Choose one of the following variants:

3.1. Text banners.In order to create banners with texts for:

• 3.1.1. Product groups:
• Go to the Affiliate tab;
• Open Product groups tab;
• Click on Add group for categories button;
• Specify the name for a group of categories;
• Clicking on the Add categories button will open a new window;
• Tick the checkboxes opposite to the required categories and click on Add categories button;
• Click on Create button.
• Go to the Affiliate=>Banners=>Product groups tab;
• Click on Add banner button;
• Specify the required fields: Title, Content, Status;

In the Product group field choose the required group (you will see in the drop-down list a number of groups you've created earlier). Notice that if the select box contains only the "None" value, it means that Product groups are not specified, and the banner won't be displayed in the customer's area in the Affiliate block.

• 3.1.2.Categories and Products
• Click on Add banner button;
• Specify the required fields: Title, Content, Status;
• Click on Add categories/Add products;
• Tick the checkboxes opposite to the necessary products/categories;
• Click on Add categories/products and close button;
• Click on Create button.
• 3.1.3 URL
• Click on Add banner button;
• Specify the required fields: Title, Content, Status, URL;
• Tick the box Show URL if you want URL address to be displayed in the banner's content field, if you don't tick this check bow, the Content field value will be displayed as a link name.
• Click on the Save button.

3.2. Graphic banners – in order to create banners with pictures for: Product groups, Categories, Products, URL repeat all the same actions as in the 3.1 section. The only different thing about Graphic banners – instead of the Content input field you'll have Image field as a required one.

3.3. Product banners – this option allows you to create banners for some specific products, clicking on this banner will lead user from affiliate's site to product detailed page of your webstore.

• Click on Add banner button;
• Specify all the necessary features of the banner and click on Create button.
• In the Customer's area your affiliate partner should go:
• to the Affiliate block;
• open the Product banners link;
• click on Banner code for some links link;
• click on Add products to this section button;
• a pop-up window will appear;
• find the desired product in the search;
• tick the checkbox opposite to product;
• click on Create button.

On the Product banners page the selected product will appear: the look of the banner in the left column and the banner code in the right one. Affiliate user should copy this code and place it on his own website.

Part 4

How to approve commissions

In order to see the clicks you received from your affiliate's website:

• Go to Affiliate tab;
• Open the Approve commissions tab;
• Select the necessary lines;
• Next he can either Approve commissions or select Choose action (Disapprove commissions or Delete them).
• After you approved commissions an affiliate will see them appear in the Affiliate block, Commissions link.