Trackable Links are available again for automatic coupons and order attribution. Usage tracking and affiliate credit data remains temporarily unavailable.
You may choose to periodically pay your affiliates for the commissions they earn in cash/check though there are some drawbacks of doing so. Your affiliate may also shop in your store at any time using their credit.
The Store Manager currently doesn't have the ability to update your affiliates' credit/debit information for manual cash payments. This means that the affiliate credit cannot be zeroed out at any time to reflect a cash payment made. If you elect to use cash payments, you will need to keep track of what has been previously paid out.
- Sign in to your My Services page.
- Click the Store link.
/msdyn_blobfile/$value)
- Go to Trackable Links.
/msdyn_blobfile/$value)
- Locate the name of the affiliate you wish to check. The credits, amount used, and remaining balance will appear listed next to the affiliate link.
An Example of Cash Payments to Affiliates
For example, imagine you sold sporting goods and you had an affiliate, HockeyTalk, that had a credit of $100. Your store also has a policy that when affiliates reach $100 in credit, you agree to pay out in cash. You set this policy so affiliates with small credits (less than $100) must use credits, which is easier to handle through Track Links as the accounting is done in the Store Manager.
However, you have also found that sites with a great deal of traffic do not want to participate in affiliate programs that do not pay cash as these sites have costs associated with web hosting and management. In order to manage these larger affiliates, you will need to set up a spreadsheet or some other form of accounting.
For this example, the affiliate Hockey Talk has reached the $100 threshold. You determine this by using the instructions listed above to check the credit for HockeyTalk. Trackable Links shows:
| Credit | Used | Balance |
| 101.24 | 0.00 | 101.24 |
You would then make a payment by check, money order, PayPal, or other form to HockeyTalk. In your spreadsheet you would note the original credit amount, the payment amount, and date of payment. Your spreadsheet would then show a zero credit available though Track links will still show a balance of $101.24.
Imagine, the following month you check the total for HockeyTalk and Trackable Links shows:
| Credits | Used | Balance |
| 241.24 | 20.00 | 221.24 |
This means that someone at HockeyTalk used $20 worth of credit to make a purchase. Also, since they have reached the next $100 threshold, you need to issue another payment. In your spreadsheet though, you need to account for the new credit total and the used amount of credit. In this scenario, you would pay out $120.
| Total credits | $241.24 |
| Less 1st payment | $101.24 |
| Less used credit | $20.00 |
|
| Total | $120.00 |
You may wish to ask large affiliates to not use the credit in order to make accounting easier for your store. While you cannot disable the credits, adjust the total, or remove the link to your store, you will see if any affiliates use credits to make purchases.
It is not recommend that you allow your affiliates to use both methods of compensation. Since a cash disbursement will not update their credit total, yet a credit purchase will, it will make accounting for correct, current credit balance difficult to manage.
See Also:
