BILLmanager allows to add and manage affiliate programs. An affiliate program will compensate a certain amount of purchase on referred new customers.
An affiliate can bring referrals in two ways:
- Via an affiliate link. The billing system generates a unique link for every partner. The system considers that clients who clicked through referral are invited by a particular partner. As a rule, the provider's partners place affiliate links on their websites.
- Using a promo code. Each partner has a unique promotion code. Affiliates need to enter a promo code when ordering services. Clients who used this promo code are considered to be invited by this particular partner.
Affiliate program configuration
To add a new affiliate program navigate to BILLmanager Marketing → Affiliate programs → Add:
Provider — a service provider who launches an affiliate program. This field is shown only in BILLmanager Corporate.
Name — the name of the affiliate program.
Promo code template — you can use the macro @ID@ - a unique partner ID. A promo generated without this macro is invalid. A promo code is only valid when used for the first time. If a client has several unpaid services on his account, the promo code won't work.
Reward — percent of a client's expenses that will be added to the affiliate account at the end of the month.
Referral period —period in months during which a client will get a percentage from referral expenses.
Website URL — the URL of the provider website. Add the '?from=' parameter to the domain site to generate an affiliate link. Using this parameter, BILLmanager defines an affiliate who referred a client. Every affiliate has a unique URL with its id at the end.
Client group — a group of clients who can participate in the affiliate program.
Forbid for group members — a group of clients who won't be rewarded for the affiliate program.
How to configure affiliate program rules
By default, the affiliate program applies to all types of services, across all expenses of the referral. You can configure specific rules for particular product types in Marketing → Affiliate programs → Rules button → Add:
- Enter the Reward — the percentage of the referral's expenses that will be accrued to the partner at the end of the month.
- Select the Product/Service for which the specific rule will apply. Press Ok.
For example, the provider has created the referral program "For individuals — 20%". All types of services are rewarded with 20% under this program. An exception is the type of service "Shared hosting". A separate rate for this type of service exists — 30%. The provider has set this amount of reward using a rule. Partners will be rewarded according to this rule, specifically, 30% of the attracted referral’s expenses.
Integration with your website
To keep track of clients who followed the affiliate links and got registered, add the following code into any page of the provider's website:
<script language="javascript"> var counter_url = "https://billmgr.domain/mancgi/counter?rnd="+Math.random()+"&project=1&r="+escape(document.referrer)+"&p="+escape(window.location.href); document.write("<img src='" + counter_url + "' border=0 width=0 height=0 style='display: none;'>"); </script>where:
billmgr.domain — a domain name of the provider's billing panel
rnd — this parameter allows to prevent caching.
project — the id of the affiliate program provider. For BILLmanager the id is always "1", for BILLmanager Corporate - values different from "1".
r — the parameter which is used to register a page/domain a referral was referred from.
p — the full URL of the current page to retrieve the id of the affiliate who referred a new client
Assigning a client manually
To associate a referral with the client, navigate to Clients → Clients → select a client → Accounts → select an account → Edit → Referred by client :
Paying commission to affiliates
At the 1st of each month, the affiliate gets paid for the payers he sends. The amount is calculated based on the referral expenses for the previous month. The billing system automatically creates a payment for the affiliate.
The provider can run the operation manually:
/usr/local/mgr5/sbin/billmaintain --command affiliatemonthly --date 2016-04-01The billing system generates referral rewards for the current month. if the '--date 2016-04-01' parameter is specified, the system will generate the payments for April (the fourth month).