There are 4 ways of setting up affiliate sales through Infusionsoft and SubscriptionBoss. The default behavior is for it to work straight out of the box. No setup is required other than setting up the Referral program in Infusionsoft. However if you have a more complex setup involving a checkout that does NOT take place on Infusionsoft then one of the other options is required to ensure the affiliate is credited with the sale.
Default Affiliate Setup
Affiliate Identification Mechanism: SB uses Infusionsoft Affiliate Cookies
Give your referral partners the standard Infusionsoft affiliate links which point to Infusionsoft order forms, product bundle links or shopping cart. You will already have embedded a SB script in the Infusionsoft form theme or cart theme to handle PayPal payments. In this case, the SubscriptionBoss script reads the Infusionsoft affiliate cookies and hence the sales are credited to the affiliate. No special configuration is required.
Custom Affiliate Tracking URL
Affiliate Identification Mechanism: SB uses SubscriptionBoss and Infusionsoft Affiliate Cookies
Use this method if you are NOT using an Infusionsoft order form or checkout and the buyer goes from your self hosted sales page via a SubscriptionBoss form or button to pay on PayPal. The configuration is to set up a Custom Affiliate URL on Infusionsoft to refer to an affiliate redirect URL on the site where SB is installed.
The SB “affiliate redirect” page drops TWO cookies, one on the WordPress site, another on the Infusionsoft sub-domain. PayPal orders pick up the former affiliate cookie, credit card orders pick up the latter. For more see Affiliate sales using a custom affiliate URL
Custom Programming
Affiliate Identification Mechanism: SB is provided with the Affiliate Code to use by a custom code snippet
This solution is one where maybe affiliate URLs have already given out to affiliates and hence it is too late to introduce a custom affiliate URL. SB cannot derive the affiliate code but it can be told who the affiliate is. SB allows the affiliate identity to be passed through in the URL querystring, hidden form fields, session variables as well as cookies.
Some users have their own sales page on their own hosting and derive the affiliate code on the sales page and then make it available to SubscriptionBoss by one of above mechanisms. This technique is often employed where a third party affiliate system is being used or simply where the user operates a self-hosted checkout.
Multi-Stage Checkout (Buyer Pre-registration)
Affiliate Identification Mechanism: no affiliate code required at the point of sale
This fourth mechanism does not involve any SubscriptionBoss setup but can be employed to good effect. It makes use of a multi-stage sales process where the person registers first and hence the contact is stored in Infusionsoft with any appropriate affiliate code used to create the “Lead Referrer”. The affiliate program is set up such that the “lead referrer” gets the affiliate commission if there is no “sale referrer”.
The multi-stage approach means the affiliate is NOT passed through on the order so there is no sale affiliate. When SB processes the order the contact already exists. Infusionsoft will calculate affiliate commission for the lead referrer.
The checkout page will have the email address/contact fields hidden or disabled as the contact identity has been determined on an earlier page (via registration or member login). The sales/registration page and the checkout page can be hosted on Infusionsoft or be self-hosted.
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