Hello,
today let me tell you how Click2Sell system works in general as I keep getting questions about Click2Sell payments.

Click2Sell is a merchant platform with integrated affiliate network. The system coordinates your sales via Paypal, Moneybookers, Worldpay, Authorize.net, Google Checkout and other PSP (Full list of Merchant Account Providers supported by Click2Sell.EU) and allows you to run your own affiliate program.

That means that if you want to use Click2Sell for selling your products, you will have to have merchant account in one of above mentioned payment processors and use it.

Let me explain how the purchase of your product goes:

1. A person (let's call him John, ok?) visits your website, read and analyze your product and see that it's a great deal. John decides to buy your product, so he finds buy-now button (provided by Click2Sell) and clicks on it.
2. John sees Click2Sell checkout page where he can choose payment options you provided (e.g., Paypal, Moneybookers and Google Checkout). Let's say, he chooses Paypal.
3. He is then redirected to Paypal checkout page where he enters all the necessary billing information. He is charged. Then John clicks on "return to merchant" button.
4. The buyer is redirected to your provided thank-you page.

As you may see from this scheme, no money goes through our hands. All transactions are made in Paypal, Moneybookers, Worldpay, Authorize.net or Google Checkout systems. This means top security level. But not only that.

It also means that you get money directly to your merchant accounts in those payment systems. Money that you have earned from your product sales are not withheld anywhere and your earnings appear in your merchant account instantly after a successful sale.

I have mentioned "coordinating sales" in the beginning of this post. By saying that I meant that we send necessary information to payment processors (so your buyer could successfully buy your product) and they return us some data that we need.

Such exchange of information allows these things:

1. You do not need to setup your products in both Click2Sell and in your merchant account of payment processor. It is absolutely enough to setup your product in Click2Sell only. Click2Sell will pass the necessary details to your chosen payment processor, so your buyer would buy and get the correct product.
    
2. You can track your sales and statistics in much more convenient way than in Paypal, Moneybookers, Worldpay, Authorize.net or Google Checkout systems. What is more, it is especially useful when you have several merchant accounts (e.g., Paypal, Moneybookers and Authorize.net). In this way you can see everything from one place and you don't need to login to each separate systems to see your status.
    
3. You can also not just view and track the status, but manage some things from one place. For example, it is very useful with refunds. Once you get a request for refund, you can easily find the necessary transaction and refund it in Click2Sell. The system will send notification to your payment processor and arrange all the necessary changes.
    
4. It's possible to run affiliate program what you simply can not do with just merchant account of any my mentioned payment processor. Click2Sell knows which your sale is made by your affiliate, so your affiliates can promote your products with confidence that you know their efforts and you will pay them for successful sales. In Click2Sell you can gather your affiliates in two ways: by recruiting your own people or by getting interest from regular Click2Sell affiliates (there are more and more of them). To make the gathering easier you can upload and offer your affiliates various promotional tools like articles, banners, email letters and so on. These things greatly improve "the taste" of your products to your potential affiliates.
    
5. Click2Sell provides additional protection for your sales. Each sale is doubly verified in our servers, thus even the most advanced hackers will not be able to get your product without paying you or for less money.

These are just the major things what you get by using Click2Sell service instead of, let's say, simple Paypal buy-now button.

I hope that this short article has explained you the working system of Click2Sell.

Regards,
Vytis

What is an affiliate link cloaking and why is it required?

It’s a program or script created for a few main purposes:

1. Protects the affiliate (who promotes a certain product) from another unfair affiliate who could easily modify the affiliate code and buy the product via own affiliate link – affiliate link hijacking.

2. Protects the affiliate from visitors who delete the affiliate link and buy products instantly – affiliate link bypassing.

3. Cloaking makes an affiliate url completely ‘unknown’ to visitor and more search engine friendly.

The Biggest Problems Each Affiliate Face When They Promote Products Online

Problem #1 – Affiliate links are too obvious

Most people who frequently use the Internet know that this kind of url:

http://www.someproduct.com/?affiliateid=affiliate-name

Is obviously an affiliate link and that an affiliate will get the commission if the visitor buys the product. Some visitors just don’t like the idea that they were referred by an affiliate… So they are quite reluctant to buy a product via such link.

Problem #2 – Visitors delete affiliate usernames from the urls and buy products directly

A lot of affiliate marketers face a huge problem online. They signup for an affiliate program, get their affiliate links and then start promoting a certain product. In most cases all affiliate programs provide unprotected affiliate links. E.g.

http://www.some-product.com/affiliateprogram/buy?id=affiliate-name

Affiliates start driving targeted traffic and making sales. But the problem is that a lot of  visitors can easily see that he/she was brought to the website via affiliate link. The browser just shows ‘affiliate-name’ at the end of an url. Such type affiliate links are made to ‘make’ the life easier for affiliate (to easily create an campaign, etc). However, they also make an affiliate’s life much harder in other areas.

Some visitors who see an affiliate’s name in the url just delete it and purchase the product themselves directly from www.some-product.com . This way merchant receives a sale, but the affiliate gets nothing in return for bringing this kind of visitor-buyer. The affiliate commission is lost, because the visitor just ‘bypassed’ (deleted) the affiliate link. Of course, in most cases the ‘affiliate cookie’ is set on the visitors browser, so even though he/she deleted the url, the affiliate is still credited. However, in most cases such ‘buyers’ never forget to delete the browser cookies to make sure you (affiliate) don’t receive your affiliate commission.

Problem #3 – Visitors replace affiliate IDs with their own IDs and this way receives a product for rather low price

Another problem is that many product buyers know about affiliate programs. Once they enter a product’s sales page and see that their browser displays a link:

http://www.some-product.com/affiliateprogram/buy?id=affiliate-name

They could easily enter www.some-product.com and search for a page to signup as an affiliate. Then, once they have done this, they create their own affiliate link and buy the product via their link. This way unfair buyer steals the commission from you and actually cheats on the merchant – gets the product at "discount" price. The real affiliate who brought the unfair visitor-buyer is left without any commissions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every day we get a lot of new questions from affiliates. They ask us questions on how they could jump in and start promoting products online using Click2Sell.EU system. When Click2Sell.EU system was being created, we tried to simplify the affiliate signup and product promotion process as much as possible. However, we also feel that we need to educate our members more, so they could understand Click2Sell.EU better and their way to success would be shortened.

Let me show you what steps you need to take in order to start promoting products via Click2Sell system.
This guide won't be long as the whole start-up process is simplified as much as possible.

So, those few steps are:

1. Go to Click2Sell marketplace.

   
    

2. There you will see a list of products, search box and products categories.
   You can choose your desired categories or search for something (eg., "kids" if you feel that you're best at promoting products related to such keyword).

   Look at the list of products. There are some statistics about each of products and at the end of each entry there are two links: "Promote" and "More Info" (an example below).

   

   By clicking "More Info" you will see merchant's name, commission payment ways, various statistics, history of performance in the marketplace.
    

3. If you decide to promote this or that product, you have to click on "Promote" link of appropriate product.

   (If you are not logged in, at this moment you will be asked to login).

   Unique affiliate link will be shown to you in various forms. Choose one of them.

   Please note that your chosen affiliate program won't be shown in "For Affiliate" section until you refer/make 1 visitor through your affiliate link. So if you are going to choose several products for promotion at once, I suggest to write down given affiliate links. 
    

That's all!

If you want to review your affiliated products campaigns, you can find everything (statistics, promotional tools, affiliate links) in "For Affiliate" -> "My Campaigns" section:

Click2Sell affiliate links lead to merchant's provided sales-pages, so you don't need to create a sales page yourself.

Once you make an affiliated sale, you will be automatically credited and the merchant will pay you your commission on the beginning of the next month.

I hope this guide helps you. If not, just contact us and tell us your questions.
Vytis