Very often we get questions to support mailbox asking Is Click2Sell.EU a merchant account provider? Or what kind of merchant accounts Click2Sell.EU supports? So, in this post i‘ll explain the situation.

As many of you already know merchant account is an arrangement that a company or individual makes with a bank in order to facilitate online sales and payment via credit card, and sends encrypted transfer of credit card and approval information back and forth between the store, the merchant bank, and the credit card processor. Merchant accounts are typically associated with a specific payment gateway provider.

So, if you want to do business online  and sell or promote products and receive money, you definately need an online merchant account. Some of them are quite easy to obtain – PayPal or Moneybookers, because they are „e-wallets“ with very easy account opening procedure (takes only several minutes to open an account) and provide internet users possibility to send and receive online payments, but they do not give you an option to accept credit card payments. It‘s the simpliest way to start accepting money online. Others are more difficult to get – you have to provide quite big bunch of papers to merchant account provider, get product approovals, pay startup fees, etc.

Click2Sell.EU is an innovative affiliate marketing network portal which combines an online point of sale, transaction processing using integrated payment service providers and an affiliate network in one website. As mentioned above, PayPal and Moneybookers accounts are easy to get, so at this moment Click2Sell system uses them as main payment options for merchants and affiliates. Additionally, some vendors can use their own merchant accounts (opened with other merchant account providers).

Here is complete list of online merchant account providers which are supported by Click2Sell:

• PayPal – „is the faster, safer way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account“. Accepts merchants worldwide.
• Moneybookers – „is the cheaper way to send and receive money worldwide. Secure and convenient online payments. More than 7 million customers and 35,000 merchants“
• Google Checkout – „is a fast, secure checkout process that helps increase sales by bringing you more customers and allowing them to buy from you quickly and easily with a single login“
• RBS Worldpay – „accept debit and credit card payments, subscriptions, online payments and more, in multiple currencies and languages“. Accepts merchants worldwide.
• Authorize.net – „payment gateway which enables internet merchants to accept online payments via credit card and e-check“
• eWay – „is the PCI compliant payment gateway, providing a range of eCommerce solutions to meet your eCommerce business needs“. Suitable for merchants located in UK, Australia, New Zealand, European Union, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Brunei, Macau, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
• First Data (including LinkPoint and Your Pay) – „is provider of electronic commerce and payment processing services to financial institutions, governments and merchants in more than 50 markets around the world“
• PayPoint – „provides merchant services including online payments, internet merchant accounts and credit cards processing“. Accepts only European Union merchants.
• Moneris – „provides the solutions to process debit and credit card payments online in a secure, real-time environment“
• Sage Pay (former Protx) – „is the UK and Ireland’s independent payment service provider (PSP). Catering for businesses of all sizes, Sage Pay makes accepting payments online, simple, fast, secure and profitable“
• Optimal Payments – „provides the processing technology and services that merchants require to accept credit card, debit card, and electronic check payments for retail, Internet, mail order, and telephone order sales“. Accepts merchants from United States, United Kingdom and Canada.
• Ogone – „allow your customers to pay for their purchases with their preferred method of payment“. Issues online merchant accounts for vendors from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom.

So, if you have online merchant account with any of the merchant account providers listed above, you can set-up them on Click2Sell and expand your business possibilities! If you don’t have yet, you should apply for one and I‘m sure that at least one of the listed Payment Service Providers will give you merchant account. Happy selling!

Even though Click2Sell aims to be a perfect all-in-one e-commerce solution, excellence can’t be achieved overnight. We continue to work very hard to provide you the best possible system in the Internet business area and it is only the matter of time when we will achieve that goal. But for now it wouldn’t be wise to reject mature and well-tried products which are leaders in their niches and complement with Click2Sell system. We listened to your requests and worked with several very well known software developers.

We would like to present you the first collaboration result: DLGuard solution! We worked with Sam Stephens to make sure that this software would be 100% compatible with Click2Sell.

Please take a look on DLGuard. We strongly recommend using it!

DLGuard

DLGuard is a powerful and easy to use script that you simply upload to your website and then rest assured that your internet business is not only safe, but also much easier to manage, automating the tasks you just don’t have the time for.

DLGuard protects your products from the most common forms of theft:

• Download link sharing: 
  Each download link can have an expiring time limit as well as a maximum number of download attempts. This means that you can give your customer, for example, 2 hours to download your product with a maximum of 3 download attempts. Even if your customer posted their own real download link on a public forum, the link would become useless before real damage is done.
   
• Insecure thank-you / download pages:
  A common form of "hacking" is by simply searching for insecure download pages via popular search engines. The term hacking is used loosely, as there is no skill in searching for insecure download pages, but the effect can still be devastating.
  With DLGuard, even if the whole world knows the URL of your thank-you page, they won’t be able to download your products.

Automatic auto-responder Sign-up

DLGuard can also help you with auto-responder tasks. Marketing tests and successful business owners tell us time and again that to maximize profits you need to create a loyal customer list. This can be difficult or uneconomical by using customer signup forms as a large percentage of your customers won’t signup. First you need to convince them to buy your product, and then you need to convince them to signup to your mailing list?

DLGuard fixes this problem by automatically adding your customers to your mailing list after a sale is made. No more manual submissions, no more annoying your customers by asking them to jump through hoops. Use only easy, instant and invisible auto-responder signup.

Customer Tracking and Reporting

Who has downloaded your product? And how many times have they downloaded it? DLGuard will track each of your customers download attempts. Simply search for your customers name, email address or receipt number and DLGuard will show you how many times that customer has attempted to download your products and bonus products. View a customer’s information and download attempts. Reset timers, download counts, resend download emails, and more from this screen. Overall reports can be produced as a total, or per month.

DLGuard has a lot more features and options. You are welcome to visit DLGuard website to find out more great aspects of this premier sales protection system.

As we said before, this product is among the first quality software/services that directly support Click2Sell. We will be working relentlessly to make Click2Sell friendly with many different tools that are popular among marketers and sellers. Click2Sell has to be known not only for innovations, but for convenience to use with other tools as well.

One of the most powerful features of Click2Sell system is – Tracking channels. Briefly put, this feature allows you to measure your various promotion campaigns with surgical accuracy.

So, what exactly are those magic "tracking channels"? Technically speaking, it is just an upgraded link which leads your customer to your product’s sales-page. It works exactly in the same way as a normal Buy or Affiliate link for your customer. However, it is "upgraded" in that way that all visitors through the link are calculated in separate statistics. This allows you to divide your bulk traffic into many separate "channels" and thus you can see how many visitors, views and sales you get from each of channels.

Using just one tracking channel won’t give you much benefits. The strength of tracking channels lie in quantity: the more you have, the better analysis you can do. So, what you can do with them?

Read the rest of this entry »

Affiliates help you to sell your product or service to your customers all over the world. Hence it is very important that you increase the number of affiliates and also retain the existing ones. Its very important to know how to manage affiliates successfully and implement this knowledge in your daily job. This article gives you seven great tips to manage affiliates successfully.

• Reward your affiliates in a way so they would feel that your product is worth being promoted! The most difficult decision to take in affiliate program is choosing correct amount of commissions for the affiliates. If you pay very little then your affiliates will lose interest in promoting your business. On the other hand if you pay more you might end up in loss. So, the ideal condition is to pay varying commission rates to different affiliates depending on their performance. In most cases you can have a test and see yourself. Offer your affiliates for example 50% of affiliate commissions if you sell digital products online. Run such affiliate program for a few months and see the response. Then increase your affiliate commission more – to 75% and see if that attracts more affiliates or makes them more ‘loyal’. Always test and see for yourself. The thing is that you have to offer your affiliates as much affiliate commissions as possible, this way they will reward you with more sales.
   
• As a general rule set a default commission rate which you can afford to pay on your profits for your affiliates. From time to time give some offers, promotions and bonus and distribute around 25% more of the allotted sum. You can bump another 25% during holidays or when your sales go down. Using Click2Sell affiliate marketing network you can set default commission rate (for example 50%) for products you sell and then run advertising campaign to recruit affiliates with "Special offer" – for example "Members who sign up to promote my products will get 75% commission instead of 50%!" This or similar message may attract attention of very good and active affiliates. From your Click2Sell acocunt you will be able to manage affiliates successfully by contacting them, changing affiliate commissions, banning unwanted affiliates (for example spammers), etc. Believe me, it is really very effective. This technique will encourage the affiliates to great extent, it is better than giving the entire money as general affiliate commission.
   
• You should have an affiliate approval and banning mechanisms. It should be one of the basic features of your used affiliate marketing system because if an affiliate has been using unethical means to drive traffic to your site it will not help you to enhance your sales and moreover it can damage your reputation. You should be able to ban such unwanted affiliates.
   
• Always be in contact with your affiliate, it will make them feel that you are friendly, cooperative and will work for you happily. Being in contact with your affiliate would help you to receive feedback from them both good and bad, which can help you improve your affiliate program and the product or service that you offer because affiliates usually provide good tips that help you make your affiliate program more attractive and successful. So, why not to ask them?
   
• It will be very useful if you trace out from where your affiliates are bringing in traffic to your site. If a particular affiliate is performing well then make sure that you trace out the traffic source. Your affiliate network (such as Click2Sell.EU) should allow you to trace all the traffic that comes to your products sales page and try to find where all the buyers are coming from. This information can help you to focus on those areas and get more profit out of it.
   
• Training the affiliates can produce better results for you. No matter how best your affiliates were, providing regular trainings can improve their performance to significant level. Provide them the training materials and educate about your product or service. Also, tell them how to improve sales in order to gain more commission, what are the benefits offered to them, etc. If possible try to give them support and needed help.
   
• There are lots of tools and promotion methods available. It is recommended that you try to offer many methods and tips to promote your business. For this you can use attractive banners, articles, examples of selling letters, blogs and lots more. Good promotion tool and method will definitely drive quality traffic to your site and this will convert into sales.

These seven tips will really boost your site’s traffic and product sales. You can try all these tips with slight modification according to your business needs and performance to gain the cutting edge over your competitors. But remember – only knowing how to manage affiliates successfully but doing nothing will drive you nowhere. So, log in to Click2Sell account (or Sign up if you don’t have one) and upload all tools for affiliates which you have. Start to manage affiliates!

It is almost very simple to get affiliates for your program. If you announce that you will provide good commission for their sales and run a good joint venture campaign then you can see that hundreds of people joining your affiliate program to promote as affiliates. But however keeping them working for you is a difficult task. There are many reasons for which they might leave you. This article will provide you 10 ways to make affiliates loyal and active.

• Good Payouts. The main reason why people join as your affiliates is that they want to earn money. So, if your competitor provides higher affiliate commissions for selling a similar product then your affiliates may stop working for you and will promote your competitor’s product. Hence to keep affiliates loyal try to provide best payout on the internet in particular more than that of your competitors.
   
• Training and Support for your affiliates. Your affiliate will work for you only until he gets some good profit for promoting your product. If he doesn’t have the knowledge about your product then how can he promote it, and it would result in poor performance of the affiliate and after sometime he may lose interest in your product. So, to you’re them working for you provide a affiliate good training and support whenever they need it and also provide all the details about your product to your affiliates. If possible give them the trial version of your ebook or software to check it out for themselves.  A simple trial version or sample of your product can provide much more benefits for affiliates. This way they can gain more knowledge about your product and will continue working for you.
   
• Offer Promotional Tools that make the life of affiliates easy. You should always try to help your affiliates to promote your business by providing some tools and tips. For instance you may provide the logo or the picture of your product or the banner explaining the product instead of expecting your affiliate to create them. In this way your affiliate will feel easy to work with you and will be loyal to you. Provide as much promotional tools as possible. You can easily provide the pre-written e-mail letters that could be used by affiliates during the e-mail marketing campaigns. Provide different sized banners, articles, even the best converting keywords lists for affiliates to use on pay per click campaigns. They will definitely thank you for all your efforts to help them by bringing even more sales.
   
• Instant and frequent payments. Some of the affiliate programs say that they will give out the money to their affiliates only when a certain amount of money is earned as affiliate commission. The affiliates feel this system as bad one because they wish to get their money that they have earned whenever they wish. So, you have to pay them instantly whenever you receive payment request from them. This will create a good impression about you, so you can earn more loyal affiliates. You can use a good merchant – affiliate marketing system that would allow you to process all payments to affiliates.
   
• Offer multiple Payment options for Affiliates. This is another way to make your affiliates loyal and active. In different parts of the world different payment options are famous or supported. So, you have to understand that and provide a lot of payment options for your affiliates which is supported by their country else initially they might work for you and in long run they will feel that transferring money from one payment processor to another is very time consuming and they have to pay heavy fees for every transaction. So, you may lose their loyalty. In order to avoid this situation you may provide many payment options for affiliates.
   
• Maintain good relation with affiliates and be in touch with them. In most of the affiliate programs the product owner himself doesn’t know who his affiliates are. This is not good for a long term relationship, you should periodically encourage your affiliates and greet them and congratulate them for their good work. Contact your best performing affiliates personally and thank them. You might even consider a loyalty program – more sales an affiliate makes – a higher affiliate commission you pay to them. You can offer your affiliates incentives, reward best performing affiliates and much more.
   
• Reward and encourage the best performer. The affiliates who bring many quality visitors for buying your product are the most valuable asset for you. You shouldn’t lose their loyalty at any cost. To keep affiliates loyal you should encourage them by providing some extra money for showing best performance. You can post his name on your site and create healthy completion between affiliates. Increase a commission percentage to such affiliates, so they would feel that you really care about them.
   
• Help affiliates protect their commission – make sure your affiliates get rewarded. Usually people don’t wish to be referred by someone or will try to reduce the price they pay for the product by becoming an affiliate and will buy the product as if it is referred by them. This method will adversely affect the profit or commission of your affiliates and they will lose interest in this job. To keep them loyal towards you, provide some help to them by teaching link cloaking and making changes in their site for legal redirection and lots more.
   
• Make them feel as a part of your business as a friend. Always get feedback and suggestion from your affiliates about how to improve the product and the sales page. They are the correct person to answer or give feedback about your product because they learn about your product and refer it to potential customers. Hence they can give better suggestions. If you provide some incentives for this then they will feel happy and work for you with loyalty.
   
• Provide many promotional offers. You have to periodically introduce new promotional offers in holidays or during celebrations or whenever your sales are down. You may say that commissions are doubled for a month. So, the affiliates will work even harder for you to get more commission during that month, which in turn brings you lot of sales and it echoes for many months.

The above mentioned 10 tips are very crucial to keep your affiliates loyal towards your business and succeed.

(this post is useful not only for affiliates, but also for merchants/vendors)

One of the common concerns of affiliates is how quickly they will get their payments for their referred sales. It is a very natural question as nowadays incredibly a lot of product promotion is done by Pay Per Click campaigns. PPC campaigns require some budget and many affiliates simply reinvest their earned money back to PPC in order to make even more sales.

Now there’s a problem that money for PPC campaigns run out quite quickly while payments are paid out monthly or bi-weekly in many networks. That means that affiliates have to limit themselves in their PPC advertising, because they have to wait for their money which they could reinvest.

Here is a solution for such problem. And it really works as I have already seen great results from such solution which resulted in improved income for both of merchant and affiliate.

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I think there are no such merchants who do not want to have affiliates and their free sales. I mean – every merchant desires to signup as many active affiliates as possible and make even more money without putting much efforts for product’s promotion.

Simply speaking:
more active affiliates = more sales = higher profits = richer merchant.

Now there is quite common problem: every merchant wants to have as many active affiliates as possible, however not every merchant understands the importance of recruiting affiliates himself/herself.

What does it mean to recruit affiliates yourself?

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General Report on Click2Sell.EU members area were tweaked in order to eliminate one problem that all active members had.

The problem

Click2Sell.EU merchants who sell their products on their own usually have affiliates. Some of them have higher number of affiliates, while others – smaller. Once these merchants login to Click2Sell member area, they see general report of their own and their affiliates performance, so they can see at once, for example, how successful day was yesteday. However, the more affiliates a merchant had, the more overcrowded general report (and all other reports) was, because ‘inactive’ or ‘dead’ affiliates were still displayed on his/her reports.

Who are these my mentioned "inactive or dead affiliates"?
Such affiliate signs up to promote a certain product, get his/her affiliate link and after that he/she:

a) simply doesn’t do anything at all;

b) runs promotional campaign for a while, but stops doing this after some time.

However, such "dead" or "inactive" affiliate still leave the product in his "promoted products" list, thus some time ago he/she were displayed on all merchant’s statistics (General report, Daily report and Affiliate reports).

There are quite a lot of people who jump in to try promoting one or another product or just to test Click2Sell system and then leave it. So statistics of active merchants were overcrowded by such "affiliates/testers".

The tweak

Now let me tell you what we did in order to solve this.

Well, the solution was really simple: we removed all inactive affiliates from the reports. So now Click2Sell.EU General, Daily and Referral reports display only those affiliates who bring at least 1 view/visitor on a certain period of time.

This is a small change on the reporting side on Click2Sell.EU, but it decreased the load time of reports and the best thing is that such reports are much more informative, useful and easier to analyze for merchants than they were before.

As I mentioned it’s only a small change. But small changes adds up to the big ones. And these small changes will result in huge gains for all our members.

Egidijus