As you might have already heard, Click2Sell will introduce many great features and changes on the 1st of November. It may seem that most of new things are dedicated to merchants, but that is not exactly true. Actually, development of Click2Sell new version began from considering on how could we help our affiliates to earn more money online and improve their experience using Click2Sell Affiliate Network.

We have received a lot of affiliates' feedback about Click2Sell system: your concerns about receiving payments from merchants, payment delay issues or simply – lack of trust of each individual merchant. We have listened to you and taken into account each and every your suggestion. Our aim was to make Click2Sell the most attractive and Affiliate-Friendly system online:

1. Provide 100% Affiliate Protection and guarantee commission payments;
2. Make frequent affiliate commission payouts;
3. Establish much more clear commission payouts schedule;
4. Increase options to receive affiliate commissions.

We are happy to say that we have achieved all of our set goals!

Let's get deeper into exact benefits of new Click2Sell system features for Affiliates:

• Click2Sell will pay all your affiliate commissions – always on time without any delay. Two out of three affiliate management systems (COMPLETE and HYBRID) have vastly improved level of commission payments and now Click2Sell will be taking care of it. Until now merchants had to pay their affiliates themselves and we did not allow them to have any single unpaid commission if they wanted to continue using Click2Sell. This ensured that 97+ % of generated commissions were paid. However, we felt that it was not enough and wanted to increase the percentage to 100%.

  Thus merchants who are using "HYBRID affiliate management system" will have to either pre-pay affiliate commissions in advance, or they will have to provide direct access to their PayPal accounts which will be charged as soon as you or any other affiliate refers a sale. In both ways money for paying your commissions will be available in your Click2Sell account immediately.

• Money for sales from merchants who are using "COMPLETE affiliate management system" are collected to Click2Sell company accounts, thus money for your commissions is available immediately as well. Possibility of losing your affiliate commission simply does not exist when promoting products of merchants using "Complete" model.

  Click2Sell marketplace will list only those products, which are sold using "Hybrid" or "Complete" affiliate management systems. Choose any product to promote from there with confidence!

• Affiliate commissions will always be paid on a certain day – Tuesday. No more situations like "a commission will be paid sometime within three weeks (maybe after 2 days or maybe after 3 weeks)". We understand that not knowing when exactly you could receive a commission is quite troublesome, thus we established clear payment schedule – you will be paid on Tuesdays.

• Increased frequency of affiliate commission payments. Earnings from promoted products listed on Click2Sell marketplace will be paid on each Tuesday. So you will be paid WEEKLY with 14 days delay (as soon as your referred transactions pass security check).

  How will it work:

  1. You refer a sale.
  2. Money is reserved for your commission immediately;
  3. Your referred sale enters clearance period of 2 weeks (mainly to see if there will be no refund for your referred sale) ;
  4. Once the period of 2 weeks finishes and your sale is not refunded, the commission will be paid on the next Tuesday.

• Better handling of reversal payments. From the 1st of November your future commissions will be automatically adjusted in cases of commission reversals and you will not need to pay reversals separately. In other words, if some of your referred sales are cancelled after some time, you will not need to manually pay back commissions for the refunded sales.

• More ways to receive your affiliate commissions. Wire-transfer payment option becomes available for affiliates earning high commissions. There will be no more troubles to receive commissions from "PayPal-only" merchant while you have just, let's say, Moneybookers account. Merchants will pay affiliate commissions to us and then we will pay you using your preferred payment option: PayPal, Moneybookers or wire-transfer. We intend to add more payment options in future.

• We added a lot of new features which will allow merchants to sell their products in a more convenient way. This means that more merchants will be able to use Click2Sell and thus more quality products will be available for you to promote!

As you can see, we have improved the most important aspects related to affiliates: commission payments, commission receiving options and variety of products to promote.

We have many more ideas of how to help you promoting products, thus Click2Sell system will keep getting better and better every day.

If you have any suggestion or need some special feature, just let us know! Your opinion is extremely important to us. Majority of our new features were developed according to Click2Sell affiliates' needs. So we would love to hear your thoughts on that!

Regards,
Click2Sell team

The purpose of this article is to compare three different Affiliate Management Systems available at Click2Sell and help you to find the most suitable for you.

General purpose of each Affiliate Management System

COMPLETE Affiliate Management System (COMPLETE System)

A complete all-in-one e-commerce payment processing system that enables you to accept credit card and Paypal payments from your customers online. The only thing you need is a digital product to sell! Click2Sell will take care of all your e-commerce needs.

PRIVATE Affiliate Management System (PRIVATE System )

It gives you absolute freedom to sell your products and run affiliate programs in any way you want. Accept payments directly to your merchant account and pay, manage affiliates yourself. All rules are set by you.

HYBRID Affiliate Management System (HYBRID System)

You get all the best things from both (Complete Affiliate Management System and Private Affiliate Management System) worlds: use your own merchant account to accept payments from your customers and completely automate commission payments (this job will be done by Click2Sell) to hundreds or thousands of your affiliates.

Where the money from your customers go?

COMPLETE System

Once a customer attempts to buy your product or service, Click2Sell will buy your product with a small discount (1$ + 7%) from you and immediately re-sell it to your customer. Practically speaking, money from your sales will be collected by Click2Sell and then paid to you regularly through various payment options.

HYBRID System

You will collect money directly to your PayPal, Moneybookers, Google Checkout, Worldpay, Authorize.net, eWay, LinkPoint, First Data, YourPay, PayPoint, Moneris, Sage Pay (former Protx), Optimal Payments or Ogone merchant account. Your money will be available immediately to you and you will not have to wait for any checks or wire transfers from us!

PRIVATE System

All the payments from your customers will go straight to your Merchant account, just the same way as in HYBRID System case.

Access to Click2Sell Affiliate Network and products' marketplace

COMPLETE System

Your products will be listed in Click2Sell marketplace and thus be available for all members of Click2Sell Affiliate Network to promote. Also, your products will be included to marketplace XML feeds which are used for 3rd party services which scan Click2Sell marketplace.

HYBRID System

Your products will be listed in Click2Sell marketplace and thus be available for XML feeds (which is used for 3rd party services which scan Click2Sell marketplace). Affiliates will be able to promote your products.

PRIVATE System

Click2Sell marketplace won't list products provided by PRIVATE System users. However, you can still have unlimited number of your own affiliates. Each of your product will have its own affiliate program page. You'll be able to use it to recruit your own affiliates and run affiliate programs privately.

Who is responsible for paying my affiliates?

COMPLETE System

Click2Sell will take 100% care of your affiliates: all affiliate commissions will be paid by Click2Sell. You (as a seller) won't have to worry about this at all. Click2Sell is a widely acknowledged as a reliable payer, so affiliates will promote your products with confidence!

HYBRID System

Affiliate commissions' payment is made in the most simple and technically possible way: with the help of Click2Sell Balance just make one payment to us and we will distribute it to hundreds of your affiliates via myriad of their preferred payment options. You can either pre-pay affiliate commissions in advance or set up an automatic charges of your PayPal or Credit Card account (so whenever an affiliate refers a sale for you, we will automatically take money from your account with your permission).

PRIVATE System

Merchant is responsible for paying his/her affiliates and have some powerful options to achieve a complete control of his/her affiliates: configurable commission payment frequency, configurable period of pending status for a commission, ability to mark any commission as paid.

Who is responsible for refunds and chargebacks of my sales?

COMPLETE System

Click2Sell will completely manage refunds and chargebacks for you. Just another thing you do not need to worry about at all.

HYBRID System

Merchants control refunds and chargebacks. If you feel that some customer does not provide good enough reason to be refunded, then don't! (But be aware that refund is much more better option for you comparing to chargeback)

PRIVATE System

As in every other aspect, Private system users retain a complete control of refunds as well.

So what are the Fees?

COMPLETE System

• 1 USD + 7% discount (from product's price) fee/sale. In case of affiliated sale, this fee is distributed between merchant and affiliate equally (50/50).
• Refund fee – 1 USD
• In case of chargeback – 30 USD fee will be applied.
• No set-up fee.
• No hidden fees.

HYBRID System

Click2Sell fee will depend on the price of product you sell:

• If product's price is up to 19.99 USD, then 1 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• If product's price is 20 USD – 39.99 USD, then 2 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• If product's price is 40 USD or more, then 3 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• No set-up fee.
• No hidden fees.

PRIVATE System

Fees will depend on the price of product you sell (the same as in Hybrid case):

• If product's price is up to 19.99 USD, then 1 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• If product's price is 20 USD – 39.99 USD, then 2 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• If product's price is 40 USD or more, then 3 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• No set-up fee.
• No hidden fees.

For any questions regarding Affiliate Management Systems and their features, please, contact Click2Sell Support! You may also read about best affiliate managements systems in one account on Click2Sell website.

When you do business online you usually have to make a choice: either you want to receive money from customers directly to your, let's say, PayPal or Authorize.net merchant account and then pay your affiliates yourself (PRIVATE Affiliate Management System approach) OR you may want some reliable company to collect money from your customers and pay all commissions to your affiliates instead of you (COMPLETE Affiliate Management System approach).

Both ways are very different and, obviously, have their own advantages and disadvantages. Here at Click2Sell we always wanted to make the system as flexible as possible and this way get the best from the 'both worlds'. That is how Click2Sell HYBRID  Affiliate Management System was born. The main purpose of Click2Sell HYBRID Affiliate Management is to join the most important benefits of these two very different business approaches and eliminate negatives of them as well. Such synthesis produces a very new, unique and innovative way to manage your business and affiliates.

Hybrid Affiliate Management System gives you the best things from both worlds: use your own merchant account for getting money from your customers immediately after a sale and completely automate and outsource commissions payments to your hundreds or thousands of affiliates. You won't have to compromise yourself.

The essence of the HYBRID Affiliate Management System: you process payments directly to your merchant or Paypal account and get paid instantly after sale. You can completely control all your affiliates, recruit new ones and run your affiliate programs, but at the same time Click2Sell takes care of paying all your affiliates automatically. Just make sure that your Click2Sell Balance has enough of funds to cover commissions for affiliate sales.

Key benefits you will get by using Hybrid Affiliate Management System:

• Accept payments from your customers directly to your merchant account. No more waiting for checks or long delayed money transfers. Click2Sell works with many payment gateways smoothly: PayPal, Moneybookers, Google Checkout, Worldpay, Authorize.net, eWay, LinkPoint, First Data, Your Pay, PayPoint, Moneris, Sage Pay (former Protx), Optimal Payments, Ogone.

• Retain control of various aspects of your business: 100% control of your business policies, money back guarantees and refunds. We do not interfere in such areas.

• You can sell any legal product you want – we do not control this.

• Pay Affiliates easily – the new Click2Sell Balance feature will help you easily pay your affiliates who use many different payment accounts or currencies. You simply go to your Balance page and enter your Paypal or credit card details and then Click2Sell system will automatically charge your accounts for affiliate sales. Several options are available to completely automate refilling of your Balance, so you won’t need to spend any time for this at all! Then every week we will take care of paying your affiliates via dozens of their preferred payment options: PayPal, Moneybookers, wire-transfers in five different currencies, so you won't have to. Just make sure that your Balance has enough funds to cover affiliate sales and we will make all the work.

• Clearance period – all your affiliates will be paid every week by Click2Sell with a 14 days clearance period. For example, if your affiliate makes a sale today, the transaction will be in a 'clerance' for the comming 14 days and then on the nearest Monday affiliate commission will be sent to the affiliate automatically.

• Use integrated Click2Sell Affiliate Network to boost your sales – your products will be listed in public Click2Sell Marketplace which is frequently visited by Click2Sell affiliates. They have great confidence in merchants using “Hybrid” model, so you can realistically expect to have many affiliates promoting your products. In other words, Click2Sell will stake its reputation on affiliate commissions to be paid since we are paying affiliates for you.

• Your products will also be available to many 3rd party software / services as Click2Sell marketplace is fully available in XML data. Widgets for websites/blogs, text ads, auto-website generators, major databases of products for affiliates – all of them use XML data of Click2Sell marketplace. Thus your products will be available to them as well! 

Requirements. Merchants using Hybrid Affiliate Management System will have to fulfil one of the following requirements below in order to have their products listed in Click2Sell marketplace:

1. PayPal API data saved in Click2Sell account or
2. Pre-pay $50 to your Click2Sell Balance for your future commission payments or
3. Enter credit card details, so that Click2Sell system would be able to charge your card right after affiliate makes a sale and reserve a commission.

Click2Sell fee will depend on the price of product you sell:

• If product's price is up to 19.99 USD, then 1 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• If product's price is 20 USD – 39.99 USD, then 2 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• If product's price is 40 USD or more, then 3 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• No set-up fee.
• No hidden fees.

All the questions you have regarding Click2Sell HYBRID Affiliate Management System will be answered by C2S Support! Just ask! You may also find interesting to read about Best Affiliate Management Systems in one account on Click2Sell website.

Do you want to sell products online and accept credit cards and Paypal payments from your customers? Click2Sell COMPLETE Affiliate Management System is the solution you need.

COMPLETE Affiliate Management System for merchants is an all-in-one e-commerce payment processing and affiliate marketing system that enables you to accept credit card and Paypal payments from your customers online. All you need is a digital product to sell and Click2Sell Affiliate Marketing Network will take care of all your e-commerce needs.

If you seek for hassle-free, info-products friendly credit card processing and completely outsourced affiliates' management, look no more. COMPLETE Affiliate Management System at Click2Sell will let you focus on development of your new products or services.

Key features of COMPLETE Affiliate Management:

• Easy way to accept credit cards online – no merchant account needed; Just add your product to Click2Sell system, get activated! Click2Sell will buy and resell your product to the end customer (immediate resell business model). Customer will be able to pay by credit card or PayPal.

• Click2Sell takes complete care of your affiliates. You won't need to worry about paying your affiliates on time. Click2Sell will pay all your affiliates every Monday with a 14 days delay – transaction clearance period. For example, if your affiliate makes a sale today, the system will wait 14 days for transaction to 'clear' and then pay out your affiliate on next Monday. This is done to save your money in case of refunds.

• Save your time – let us handle all refund requests and chargebacks; We handle all your customers' refund requests and help them. A lot of times refunds happen just because a customer has some issues opening your product's file or just don't know what to do. We provide assistance in all the cases, so your product's refund rates are reduced even more! We deal with your chargebacks, so you don't have to. We don't ask you to provide any additional information about the fulfilled order or any filled documents to fight back the case. We handle everything ourselves and our experience in dealing properly with chargebacks allow us to win a lot of them for you… You don't have to do anything yourself – we deal it for you.

• Intelligent Click2Sell Anti-Fraud system saves you from fraudulent sales and excessive chargebacks. You will be protected against fraud! Within many years doing business online we have encountered almost every possible fraudulent scheme and dealt with fraudulent sales initiated by customers or affiliates. We have developed our own artificial intelligence based Click2Sell anti-fraud system that will provide additional security for your sales at no additional cost. We detect fraudulent sales, affiliate scammers and possible chargebacks and stop them before they happen. You can relax and care only about your own business. Leave the hard job for us.

• 10% reserve protects you from losing money in case of refunds or chargebacks. 10% of your and affiliates' sales amount goes directly to the Click2Sell rolling reserve for 6 months and are used to compensate possible refunds and chargebacks that happen months after the commissions payment. This way you can be sure that you do not lose money in case of refunds or chargebacks later. The money is released from the Reserve right after 6 months on the nearest pay day to your bank account.

• Get your earnings directly to your bank account without having to wait months for checks. All merchants will be paid every week (on Monday) with a 14 day delay period. This means that if you make sale today, it will enter a "clearance" period (to protect you from refunds / chargebacks which usually come within first couple of weeks) for 14 days. After this period sale will be cleared and you will be paid on the coming Monday. So if you make sales regularly you will start receiving payments every Monday – from the 3rd week of a start. All your earnings will be paid directly to your bank account via wire-transfer, Paypal or Moneybookers accounts. We work closely with our merchants and affiliates and we arrange all the payments in the most convenient way for you.

• We do your Customer Support for you! We deal with your customers when they ask for the help to open the product's file, when they fill out a claim or complaint and ask for a refund, we direct them to download a special software in case they need it to open your product. We even forward messages asking for support that can only be handled by you. We minimize your customer support care, so you can concentrate only on the most important business aspects.  

Requirements to get COMPLETE Affiliate Management System activated:

• Personal or business information:
  • In case you'll be selling as Individual: copy of valid personal ID, proof of address;
  • In case you'll be selling as Company: copy of Business registration certificate, VAT number (if available)), proof of business address;
• Your product / service explanation and description – this you'll be able to provide during the product's addition process.

COMPLETE Affiliate Management System fees:

• Payments processing rate is:
  • In case of direct sale (when sale is made without affiliate's help) the fee is 1 USD + 7% (paid by merchant);
  • In case of affiliated sale (when affiliate refers customer to merchant) the fee 1 USD + 7% is split 50/50 between merchant and affiliate.
• Refund fee – 1 USD
• Chargeback fee – 30 USD
• Setup fee – NO setup fees!
• NO monthly, annual, review, product listing or other fees – Pay only when you make a sale!

Click2Sell COMPLETE Affiliate Management System will be launched on 1st of November 2010 and then you'll be able to switch from current version to COMPLETE System.You will have to login to your account and check the welcome message. It will show you step by step instructions how to order / activate the COMPLETE Affiliate Management System. Contact Click2Sell Support for more information. You may find interesting to read more about opening Merchant Account to accept Credit Cards from customers on our website.

Today we'd like to introduce 1 of 3 new Click2Sell Affiliate Management Systems which will be available for all Click2Sell merchants from 1st of November 2010. It's called PRIVATE (for a reason).

Let's say you have a private business and you want to run it by your own rules having complete control of all your payments and affiliates. In this case you want to manage everything on your own:

• accept payments directly to your payment processor accounts
• manage the list of your affiliates
• control your affiliate program completely
• pay out affiliates yourself – as often as you want and whenever you want.

Click2Sell is at your service here – our PRIVATE Affiliate Management System is exactly what you need.

The essence of the PRIVATE Affiliate Management System: you get payments from customers directly to your merchant account and completely control your affiliate program – you pay affiliates yourself.

In order to start selling products you only need a PayPal or Moneybookers account and you are good to go! Say you want to accept credit card payments? No problem! Just get a merchant account from one of our supported credit card processors, add it to your Click2Sell account and you can easily accept credit card payments.

Key features of PRIVATE Affiliate Management:

• complete control of your affiliates and payments. Only you decide how often you want to pay your affiliates and when to pay them by configuring just two simple but yet powerful new features:

• clearance period– period of time (in days) to wait for an affiliate sale to become valid (cleared). Once an affiliate makes a sale that sale enters the 'clearance period' – the time period when affiliate commissions are not generated for affiliate to be paid. This helps you protect yourself from possible affiliate sales refunds or chargebacks and protect yourself from situations when you pay out affiliate commissions and later the refund or chargeback comes.

• payments frequency– determines how often you'll pay commissions to your affiliates. Click2Sell system will generate settlements for cleared affiliate sales in your specified frequency. For i.e. if you select to pay out your affiliates 'bi-weekly' Click2Sell system will generate affiliate commission invoices for you to pay every 2 weeks for those sales that are 'cleared' – after the clearance period.

You will be able to mark settlements as paid manually.  So you can choose alternative affiliate payments methods (for example cash or payments via other payment systems). This also allows you to run an independent accounting suitable to your own needs.

• ability to run private affiliate programs. You will have the ability to create your own affiliate programs on your website and attract affiliates to join them (note: your product will not be shown on Click2Sell marketplace).

• regularly monitored affiliates. We monitor all Click2Sell affiliates for spamming, scamming or any other fraudulent activities, so you don’t have to worry about legitimacy of your affiliates. We’ll take care of it!

• intelligent anti-fraud protection for your transactions. Many individual merchants face a huge problem with their affiliates' fraudulent sales. Here on Click2Sell we constantly monitor each and every affiliate for fraud. Our own developed anti-fraud system automatically detects all fraudulent activities and terminates such 'affiliates' . You don't have to do any screening on your own. You can be sure that your business will always be safe on Click2Sell.

• convenient tools to keep in touch with your affiliates. Click2Sell Mailer allows you to contact all your affiliates directly from Click2Sell system and announce all your promotional campaigns and new product launches. You can send them regular newsletters or just contact desired individual affiliate.

• absolute freedom in running your business. Click2Sell does not put any restrictions on you. You determine the policies, you provide guarantees, you handle refunds / chargebacks. All affiliates are yours and you have a full control what to do with them – contact, encourage or just keep for the future.

Click2Sell fee will depend on the price of product you sell:

• If product's price is up to 19.99 USD, then 1 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• If product's price is 20 USD – 39.99 USD, then 2 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• If product's price is 40 USD or more, then 3 USD fee/sale will be applied.
• No set-up fee.
• No hidden fees.

Remember – when you use PRIVATE Affiliate Management System we don’t ask any questions about your business – it’s yours and you run it like you want to! Click2Sell PRIVATE Affiliate Management System will be available to you from 1st of November 2010. Contact Click2Sell support for more information. You may find useful to read more about Best Affiliate Management Systems in one merchant account on our website.