account added admin allow buyer buyers contact data enable feature fixed flash help information item list messages next order paragraphs paypal product purchase purchased receive sale send support system transaction

I am new.. and couldnt seem to find an answer to my question(s)

1.) the affiliate program/options.

I am still a bit un-clear how it works.. and I know this request may be a bit of a strain on this option..

but can I:

a.) set up a product in my 'e-junkie' store/account (for digital download)

b.) set this product to be say: "$5.00" in costs

c.) somehow set the product up with affiliate id(s)? so that the following happens on every 'purchase'
1.) the 'product' creator/author (if this is a music file or piece of art for example) gets a certain percentage/cut of the product cost

2.) if this user/customer was sent here/found this 'product' by clicking in through a 'banner' (affiliate banner?) then the potential 'affiliate' (or whomever is hosting that banner/ad) gets a certain percentage/cut

3.) regardless of whether #2 above is in the equation.. the remaining 'money' goes to the the 'store'

I can see where you would be able to set up an artist or author as an 'affiliate' to make sure they get a certain percentage.. as well as allowing them to log into an admin panel of sorts to 'keep track' of how many of their 'wares/products' have been sold...


I hope that makes sense?


secondly..

I think I read a few pages/paragraphs about customizing their service/code for your own purposes.. blog/ebay..etc

Im assuming this can also be used from within FLASH applications & widgets too? since its just a simple query/var type API?

Hello,

Our affiliate system works by allowing your affiliates to create a free E-junkie account from which they can get their own unique affiliate links and see reports on sales that they refer to you (information which also goes into your account as well of course).

When a buyer clicks through an affiliate's link a cookie is placed in their browser which will credit that affiliate for any purchase made from your account. The cookie lasts for six months on its own, but if the buyer clicks through a different affiliate link in the meantime the cookie is replaced.

That means you cannot have two different affiliates getting credit for the same order, and our system does not really work in such a way that you can use it to track sales of products produced by other people and credit them with a portion of the sale. For example, if you sold two products by two different artists the only artist that would get credit is the last one who was added to the cart.

Long story short, the only part of your plan that would work properly is for tracking which banner ad/link lead the buyer to your site, which is how our affiliate system was designed to work.

If you are looking into customizations of our service we recommend that you contact a developer who specializes in offering those. For the most part the only advice we can give you on customization is whether or not a particular idea is possible or not, but we cannot directly support outside customizations. We can recommend Andrew at www.easye-junkie.com or any of the developers on our list here for more help:
http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/developer-directory.htm

hmm.. that doesnt sound very good or promising.. (good thing I posted before I purchased!)

forgive me for being 'thick headed'..

but maybe the system can be tricked? or used a different way?

can I potentially do the following:


If I create a product for an individual 'artist'..

I then create/add an 'affiliate' (but this really the 'artist'.. because ti will give him a unique 'affiliate id'...right?)


if I only ever USE the specific/unique affiliate style LINK to purchase that product.. wont the 'affiliate' [artist] always get his percentage?

if in the store/public domain.. the ONLY link to anyone an use to purchase a product is the one linked to a specific/unique affiliate [artist].. then Im sorta tricking the 'affiliate program' to get my artists paid.....right?

all along they can keep track of how many of their unique/individual id LINKS were converted to sales..right?



question: does an 'affiliate' get paid per ORDER...or per PRODUCT?

Im thinking your saying its by ORDER.... (hence the 6 month cookie thing)


if I user adds a product to his cart that is associated with a specific 'artist/affiliate'

then adds another product to the cart associated with another 'artist/affiliate'.. only the last one used will get credit for BOTH.... right?


hmm I see the problem. =(

anyone know of a solution/workaround.. ANYTHING?


thanks

Yes, affiliates are paid per order, not per product. There really isn't a work around for that, that is the way our affiliate system was designed to behave. There's no way to credit a single order to multiple affiliates.

I understand.

Thats unfortunate. It blocks me from using this as a solution. =(

I also sought out the custom developer solution as well, and rankly more software add-ons and $600+ in total is just too much money to try and ensure the 'artist/creators' of the products/items get a cut from each sale.


Im hoping some sort of alternate solution can be applied (using data already available?)

or I find a competitor that offers this 'split pay' option.


Where can I read or see an example of the 'sales tracking' overview for the whole 'store/account'?

what it all entails or involves..etc.

You can see what information our system can track by going to Seller Admin>View/Download Transaction Log, even if you have no products or sales. The page that comes up will have columns for all the data that our system collects.

Although it would be complex to setup, you could use our Variant feature to setup different physical products, like art pieces, so you can have the artist connected to their piece and you can have different prices for each one:
http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.variants.htm

The complex part would be that once you get the button code, you would need to re-write the code so instead of one button for multiple products you have a button for each product. This would require custom coding that you would need to write on your own, or hire someone to do so.

This will allow you to know which artist needs to get paid when a piece sales, even if multiple artists' pieces are purchased, and you can have the affiliate program separate for people who send buyers to the website.

For digital products, each product needs to be it's own product, you would not be able to use the Variant option. You can still track the artist by including their name in the product and checking in the transaction log.

You will still need to make sure to pay both the affiliates and artist, since our system will send all payments to a single account.

Thanks for the reply!

I was a bit unclear on the variants stuff..

I dont mind coding buttons or changing code.. (comfortable with a decent level of coding in certain languages)


Everything (for now) is a digital download.. which I just want to make sure I can pay reliably to each artist each time an item sells of theirs.

I was thinking maybe just using the transaction logs and sorting by 'name' (or whatever other column value that can be used to identify a product with an artist..etc)

I was going to (hopefully) create two MASS PAY files then.. to use for payouts in the end.

right now.. Im testing the demo

and I am getting an error:

Transaction refused because of an invalid argument. See additional error messages for details.
CancelURL is invalid.
Error

Could you clarify when and where you are seeing that error? Are you testing our cart buttons on a website of your own?

that is correct, as it is my own site.

actually it was a quick Flash 'app' that I added some of the code to a button event for testing the checkout process.


I believe it has been fixed though. (with turning OFF PayPal Pro option in e-junkie admin panel)




I think overall we're going to give it a shot..

(so I hope you wont mind the barrage of 'noob' questions over the next week or so, after we buy the download/off-site hosted plan)

thanks

We're always here to help. :)

Be sure not to enable the PayPal Pro option if you do not have the Website Payments Pro service. However, the error you describe does not sound like one we've seen happen with PayPal. More likely this a problem with your Flash app. Our buttons can work in Flash but there's some adjustments you'd need to make, see our help page here:
http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.flash-shopping-cart.htm

We can give you more specific advice but we'll need to get a link to your site to offer any kind of solid answers. Our buttons work as they are, so to find errors we need to see the buttons on your website to spot any possible conflicts in the code, things like that. If you continue to receive errors please give us a link to your site here or via email.

Thanks for the reply.

I could be I missed something when changing the code for a flash button event instead.

I followed the examples though.. and also 'just' changing that option seemed to fix it. (no code changes through my flash app)

I have few threads to catch up on!

thanks