| TO START You must make sure you
have followed the installation instructions and have the following installed: 1)
Site was uploaded to a directory in your web space
2) A mysql database was
created
3) The config.php and /admin/updateaff.php files were modified with
your db details
4) You have run the install.php file in your web browser ADMIN
CONTROL PANEL To log into the admin control panel, go to:
http://www.<yourdomain.com>/<directory>/admin/index.php; or
http://www.<yourdomain.com>/<directory>/admin Username:
admin
Password: admin You can modify this later but not till after you
have set everything up. If you do change this now, you will be receiving an email
for every change that you make to the software. This is all for security (so you
are always notified of what's going on). For security reasons, we recommend
that you rename the admin directory to another name to prevent attempts to hack
into your control panel. Make sure you specify this in the config.php file also.
1) PREFERENCES
Click on the preferences link. On this page,
there are options which you will probably be unfamiliar with. An explanation of
each of the options is shown. Default website URL - This is the URL
of your homepage. We need this so we can work out where to send customers after
they click on a particular affiliate's link. Top of affiliate pages
- This is the URL of the top part of your site. Currently we have placed our default
header here. When creating the top of your file, please ensure you place the full
path to the top of the page (eg. http://www.domain.com/affiliates/top.html). Be
sure to include the <BODY> tag at the top of this file as well (do not have
the </BODY> tag in this file as this will be placed in the file for the
bottom.) Bottom of affiliate pages - This is the URL of the bottom
part of your site. Currently we have our default footer here. As with the top
of affiliate pages, please ensure that you enter the entire URL. Also ensure that
you have the </BODY> tag at the end of
this file. Affiliate
Directory - This is where you place the name of the directory that you have
uploaded the files into.
Calculation Type - This is how you would like the program
to calculate the amount affiliates receive after a sale. Later,
you will enter details of the product you are selling so the program
can credit affiliate accounts accordingly.
Minimum Balance
- This is the minimum balance affiliates must acquire before they are able to
request the funds. Cookies Expiry - By setting cookies to expire
in 3 days, it means that you are giving the customer up to 3 days after clicking
on the affiliate's link to make a purchase and the affiliate will still get credit
for it. This is the same if another affiliate signs up before the cookies expire.
Can be used to promote your affiliate program.
Levels Deep - This is the number of levels deep you are
willing to pay your affiliates. You can only set this up to a
maximum of 9 levels. More levels can be included for a fee as
it requires further customization.
Cooling
Off Period - This is the period before payments are credited to the affiliate's
accounts. You can set this to 0 if you prefer to credit affiliates immediately.
After you have set the preferences, it is recommended that you do not suddenly
modify them especially after the program has been running for a while. This may
confuse affiliates.
2) Affiliate Payment Setup Next thing you
need to do is set how much you want to pay affiliates at each level. The
Item ID field should automatically be filled in for you. Although not required,
you should give each item a name (Item Name) so you know what the item
is. Enter the revenue earned or profits received in the Item Price
field. This amount will be used to calculate how much each affiliate will receive
from this sale (this is required if you are calculating a %, if not provided,
affiliates won't receive anything). Enter the amounts (in whole numbers)
for each level's payments. If % is chosen, an entry of 5 means 5% of the Item
Price is paid to the affiliate. If $ is chosen, it means $5 is paid to the affiliate.
TIP:
If you're using %, ensure the sum of the levels don't exceed 100
If you're using $, ensure the sum of the levels don't exceed the
price of the product.
Select the payment frequency for this item. This is how often
affiliates will be credited for the sale of this particular item.
Once
you've finished, submit the form. The item is saved and you will receive a URL
to redirect customers to once they have made their purchase. If you do not include
the ItemID, it will default to the first item you entered into the database. Don't
worry, the customers actually end up at your actual Completion URL that
you set for this item. The URL you redirect customers to only saves some information
to the database indicating that the customer has paid. You can add as many
items as you like. Each item will have it's own Item ID and a link for
you to redirect customers to once a purchase is complete. 3) Banner and
Text Link Setup Now you need banners/ text links for affiliates to use
to advertise your business. Upload your banners to a directory in your server
and be sure to record where you have uploaded the banner(s) to. Your banners can
be of any size, but it is recommended that you stick to the current standard dimensions: 468x60
88x31
125x125
120x60
etc... You can find more information about
this on the internet but the majority of people prefer 468x60 and 88x31. Once
you have uploaded the banners to your webspace, enter the URL in the appropriate
field. The banner will be added to the database and affiliates will have
access to this banner immediately. You can add as many banners as you like. It
is recommended that you do not delete banners as affiliates could be using that
particular banner. Instead, you should over-write it with another banner. With
the Text Ad, you should enter a phrase to promote your products, eg. Computer
Software available for only $15.00, or something like that. Again you can add
as many text phrases as you like. DH-MLM will automatically generate the link
codes for affiliates to copy and paste into their website. 3) Modify
Admin Login Details Finally, you get to modify the admin login details. Be
sure to enter a secret password and your email address so you can receive notification
everytime an affiliate signs up or anytime someone unauthorised attempts to enter
the admin control panel. You will also begin to receive emails whenever important
information is changed in the admin control panel. 4) Refunds Everybody
hates to refund customers, but sometimes, you just have to. To find the
customer that requires a refund, you should enter one of the following:
- receipt number provided to them; or
- enter their name (or a part of their
name); or
- an approximate date of the purchase
If you have
purchased any of the 3rd party c/c add-ons, the receipt number should be identical
to the one provided by the c/c company (stripped of any non-numerical characters). You
will then be brought to a list customers that fit the description. Remember to
click the right one, otherwise the wrong affiliates will have their balance dropping. Remember,
this will not refund the customer's credit card. You should contact your credit
card provider for that. And you'll probably need the receipt number from the credit
card company. 5) List current affiliates This is pretty much
self-explanatory. You enter this screen to find out which affiliates you
owe the most money to. It is sorted by the amount owed and paginated to 15 results
per page (since it is expected that you will get a large number of affiliates
fairly quickly). Should you wish to find out more information about the
affiliate (eg. address, email, advertising stats, etc) you click on the affiliate
and you will be shown all these details. You can sort the order of display
of the affiliates, based on when they signed up, their names, amount owed or the
traffic they have generated to your site. The details include who the affiliate
is receiving repeated payments from (if they are) and an option to cancel the
payments. It also has a buttom for you to press once you have paid the affiliate.
This will update the database immediately. 7) Setting cron jobs (automatic
running of scripts) Now that everything is done, you're almost ready
to go. Open updateaff.php (in the admin folder) and edit the database information
there to connect to the database (information should be the same as config.php). Advise
your web host that you would like to have this script executed once a day. They
should be able to advise you how to set this up. If you host with us, we can set
up these cron jobs for you.
If you can't set cron jobs, just make sure you log into your
administrative control panel at least once a day or run updateaff.php
(eg. http://www.domain.com/affiliates/admin/updateaff.php) once
a day. That update file has been programmed to run only once a
day, so if you run the script multiple times in one day, it will
only run the first time.
Usually the cron is set as follows (to run at 1am every day):
0 1 * * * wget http://www.domain.com/affiliates/admin/updateaff.php
There, you're done. Conclusion
After completing everything above, visit the affiliate pages
and see the changes to the FAQs (affinfo.php). We recommend you
modify some FAQs to suit your needs. You can edit the file in
any WYSIWYG editor, however we recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver
to edit the pages.
If you have any questions, bug reports etc, please email bugs@dhsoftwares.com
or check out our forums.
DH-MLM - Copyright 2003 DH Softwares All Rights Reserved
http://www.dhsoftwares.com
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