So you're a merchant who carefully craft your own product, create the whole website for it, research the niche, look for various promotional methods to make your products and your name more and more known.

I also suppose, that you have an established website or sales-page where you successfully sell your products or service via Paypal, Moneybookers, Worldpay, Authorize.net or Google Checkout.

I guess that you have already thought that being able to let your products to be affiliated by other people would be a very nice addon to your website. Well made products are not only easier to sell for yourself, but they are very desired by other people who would really like to be able to promote your products for just a part of income from their generated sales.

Perhaps you have already tried some systems and networks which help you to find and deal with affiliates.

I'm sure that you have already faced quite a great dilemma: either some affiliate networks don't provide you any merchant tools, nothing (or just at very basic level) for selling "infrastructure", either they provide so basic affiliate management tools, that you actually feel like you're giving your product to them (affiliate network) to do whatever they want, not that they give you some affiliates who you could control.

Well there is also another option: you can always hire a programmer who could develop you your own in-house affiliate program mini-system. Having your own custom affiliate system is indisputable solution when you seek total control of everything and want the system to be as much integrated to your specific niche of your products/service as possible. BUT! You need TIME to develop such thing (and deep insight in planning various details and structure of your future superb mini affiliate system). Also you need to invest some MONEY in to development of such thing.
Do you have both?

I have mentioned two extremities: very custom your own affiliate program system and inflexible big affiliate networks.
Well, you have heard an old saying: "In many things the middle have the best".

Let's imagine that you have just decided to create your own in-house affiliate system.
What would you need from it?

• To be able to decide whether you want your potential affiliates to be manually or automatically approved?
• Maybe being able to track how each of your affiliate is doing?
• What about not just basic tracking, but very detailed? Daily stats of each affiliate? Referral stats?
• Some kind of incentive system? You would want to reward your well performing affiliates, wouldn't you?
• Being able to communicate with your affiliates should go without saying, right?
• Being able to give some promotional material to your affiliates?

Can you think of anything else?

Imagine combining all these things with your already established sales page or website where you sell your products. Feel the power of such improvement?

Let me tell you this:
All of above mentioned features in bulletin can be gained for free. You don't need to create your own in-house affiliate system, spend time and money for it. You also don't need to join other big inflexible affiliate networks which are very one-sided and requires some changes in your already established and well working website.

At Click2Sell.EU Affiliate Network you can get the flexibility of custom affiliate system and keep your selling freedom just like before.

And this article is just about one "module" Click2Sell system.
You can find more selling benefits of Click2Sell system in article on How Click2Sell works.

To your success!

Vytis

Hello all Click2Sell.EU members!

We are proud to announce that from now on all Click2Sell.EU members are able to sell subscription based products via Click2Sell.EU marketplace just by having a regular Paypal account.

How good is this feature and how it could benefit you?

Until now all our members were able to sell subscription based products, membership access to their paid websites, databases or just simple members area and accept recurring payments from their customers. However, there was one limitation… Subscription based products could only be sold by those merchants who had Authorize.net, Worldpay or Paypal PRO real merchant accounts configured on Click2Sell.EU. Recurring billing option was only working for those members who had an ability to accept direct credit card payments from their members on Click2Sell.EU product checkout form.

The most merchants on Click2Sell.EU use Paypal accounts to accept payments from their customers. They don't have real merchant accounts, so our members requested to make Paypal subscriptions option working for regular accounts on Click2Sell.EU.

So… We listened to our members

And now we can proudly announce that you can sell subscriptions using membership management software on Click2Sell.EU – all you need is just to have a Paypal's e-mail address where to accept the recurring payments to.

Of course, if you have a merchant account, you will still be able to continue accepting direct recurring payments from your customers via Click2Sell.EU. But now, in addition to this, you will also be able to offer your customers the convenient way to make recurring payments via their Paypal accounts.

All the subscriptions are managed on Click2Sell.EU members area. You can easily view which members are 'on the list'. You are able to easily to find out who has subscribed to your service, how many of people use access to your paid membership website and you are also able to know how much you will earn (your monthly profits) by running such subscription based website.

If your subscribed member decides to unsubscribe – no problem. Click2Sell.EU system will automatically adjust all your members list, profits and everything needed. The unsubscribed member will not be charged again.

Running your online business has never been easier… Especially when you have great tools at your hand So we would like to thank all our members for using our service and for all the great thoughts to improve Click2Sell.EU even more. We strongly believe that with your help we will be able to build a great system to sell products online!

Sincerely,
Egidijus

Hello again!

We are very proud to announce that finally we have just developed and tested Moneybookers payment processor system and merchant account provider in Click2Sell. On March 27 Moneybookers became available for all Click2Sell.EU members so now all merchants can use this merchant account provider to accept payments for their products via Click2Sell.EU and send affiliate commission payments for all affiliates.

At first let me present you what is Moneybookers and how this payment processor could benefit you.

Generally speaking Moneybookers is just like Paypal. It is a widely respected payment processor. Having Moneybookers merchant account allows you to send money to someone, to receive money from someone, go shopping, setup some kind of buy-now buttons on your website and thus accept payments for your products/services.

There is one thing about Moneybookers that should be interesting to some people. Moneybookers are less restrictive than PayPal regarding countries. Moneybookers cover more countries where you can send or receive payments. So if you weren’t able to get PayPal account, you should definitely check out Moneybookers and it is very likely that you will be accepted there.

Let us talk about what Moneybookers will be doing in Click2Sell.EU.
Until this moment merchants were able to receive payments from their sales directly in to PayPal, Authorize.net, Worldpay or Google Checkout accounts. From now on they will be able to receive payments to Moneybookers accounts too. Moneybookers claim that they have 4.3 million account holders. We can safely assume that quite a big part of them are buyers who prefer to pay via Moneybookers. So there are more potential buyers of your products. 

However, I guess that the more important aspect is that merchants get another option to pay their affiliates. They won’t be restrainted to PayPal. This means that merchants can expect more affiliates as Moneybookers cover more countries than Paypal.

Many good affiliates cannot promote products online just because they can’t have Paypal account. Anyway, from now on there are no restrictions…

Although a lot of people have only PayPal account, it is very easy to get a Moneybookers account, so within minutes merchants could be able to pay affiliates who have Moneybookers accounts only.

If you have only Moneybookers account and you’re not able to get PayPal, you shouldn’t worry about the fact that there are a lot of merchants in Click2Sell who pay via PayPal only. I’m sure that if you would make some affiliated sales for "PayPal only" merchant, he/she will get MB account just for paying you.

For the end let me remind you that now Click2Sell supports not only Moneybookers, but also PayPal, Google Checkout, Worldpay and Authorize.net and other Merchant Account providers.
Soon I will announce about another new exciting feature of Click2Sell. Stay tuned!

Vytis

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

Dear friends,

yesterday was a great day for Click2Sell affiliate programs network as Rosalind Gardner has made Click2Sell review and published it in her newsletter and blog. I and my team are excited about her very positive opnion! This gives us a lot of energy to continue our work and provide you with even better service. Who's Rosalind Gardner? I think many internet marketers already know (and who don't know sooner or later will get to know) that Rosalind  is one of the most famous and widely recognized person in the affiliate marketing scene, perhaps among the top5 marketers. She is in internet marketing business for 10 years and has made great money in this field during that time. Many people consider her book "The Super Affiliate Handbook" as an affiliate marketing Bible for beginners. And YES! – she liked our system! Rosalind has mentioned a lot of Click2Sell features as great advantages over other systems. At the end of her review she just wrote:

"My hat's off to the Click2Sell developers."

I'll tell you again – this inspires me and my team to work hard in bringing you the best service and provide most useful merchant and affiliates tools for earning money online!

By the way, it's not the first time Click2Sell affiliate programs network gets a positive review by a super-marketer. Few months ago (when Click2Sell had just started its activities), Allan Gardyne also made a review to his subscribers about Click2Sell.EU in a favourably manner. You can read the review here. As you may already know, Allan is in internet marketing business for a long period and is "Earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998". Just like Rosalind, A. Gardyne is also very well known among affiliate marketers. His website Associate Programs provides a very wide range knowledge of internet marketing, thus is one of the most visited websites about affiliate marketing. In his newsletter and blog Allan wrote very lengthy analysis about Click2Sell system, comparing it to Clickbank and Paydotcom in many areas. At that time Click2Sell had just launched, so he was a bit cautious, but eventually he recognized our ambitions as hopeful:

"It looks worth keeping an eye on."

The fact that very experienced internet super-marketers put in a good word about Click2Sell should mean that we made a great system. Of course, any feedback from any person is very valuable to us. We're getting many suggestions about current features improvements or new features development. We're analyzing all of them and set the priorities. I hope that soon the day will come when Click2Sell WITH YOUR HELP will be named as Dream Tool for Affiliate Marketer and Merchant!

Well, that's enough of joy for today and i'm going back to our routine job.

By the way, if YOU have ANY idea how Click2Sell system should be improved or expanded, or maybe you would like to cooperate with Click2Sell in any way, please, feel free to contact us immediately. We're open to all suggestions.

Regards to all of you, my friends!

Vytis

In this short article you will read and learn about the initial steps of selling your products via Click2Sell system. The process is very simple, short and costless. So let’s begin:

1. Signup to Click2Sell

   Signup is absolutely free and you need only one account for both merchant and affiliate activities. There are also no upgrade costs, no monthly fees and so on. Once you finish your registration, you can start using Click2Sell immediately.
    

2. Add a product

   After you login to Click2Sell member area, go to “For Vendor” section and then click on “Add product” link in green sub-bar:

   

   Fill in the required fields going through all the necessary steps. If you are not sure what one or another field means, you can move your mouse over [?] symbol and read an explanation. See an example below:

   

   (of course, you can always contact Click2Sell Support if you have any question).
    

3. Get “buy-now” buttons

   Once you finish creating a product, at Step 5 you will see such page (you can also find this via: For Vendor -> My Products -> “Buy Now Links” in the table):

   

   “Your direct link:” is just a simple URL which leads to Click2Sell checkout page. There is no difference for your buyers between this “direct link” and scripted “Order Now!” link (the first one with the grey field full of java code), but we recommend using scripted link or button because they gather statistical information about your visitors, views, conversions (and so on) which you can see in your Click2Sell account.

   On the left column you can see what will appear in the place where you put the code (from the grey text field): it can be just a simple text link “Order Now!” or a graphic button. Choose the desired one and copy all the code from the grey text field.
    

4. Paste the code into your website

   Paste the copied code into HTML area of your sales-page. Be sure that you don’t accidentally alter the code. Check your page via your browser to see if it’s working correctly.

Well, that’s all. Basically, you have done all the necessary steps in order to start selling your product via Click2Sell. Once a buyer purchases your product, Click2Sell will automatically register the purchase and gather all the required information about transaction.

If you need a thorough review of each option and setting in product adding process, please read this article "Everything About Products Management at Click2Sell (Part 1)".

By the way, just make sure that Click2Sell buy-now button is not placed nearby other payment options (for example, Paypal button or your own shopping cart). Potential affiliates who see more than one payment button (e.g. Click2Sell.EU and Paypal) might not want to promote your product, because there are high chances that customers (brought by affiliates) would click on another payment button and the commissions would be lost. So in order to prevent this – always use only one payment button on one sales page.

If you have any question, thought or anything else, just let us know!