Newbie help please!

[yellowmellow]

Aghh! Help! Eek!

I've recently signed up with Affiliate Window and received permission to affiliate with a merchant of my choice.

But what to do next? AW sent me an email saying that most of my questions would be answered at AW's FAQ pages but there is no link whatsoever to any faqs on AW's home page! I've even googled:
affiliate window faq
and got nothing from AW's site in the results.

Everything I click on in my account pages just brings up tables that are meaningless to me and indeed the appearance of some of them together with the jargon therein made me faint nearly completely away.

I'm an affiliate with Amazon, and directly with another merchant, so I certainly know what being an affiliate is all about. But I'm truly freaked out.

A url to the faq page(s) *please* from someone?

Getting going as a new affiliate should not be this difficult.

[accelerator]

Once logged in to the Affiliate Window interface, click on Current Merchants in the right hand column.

The merchant you have been accepted for should show up.

Click on the Green Links button.

Click on the orange tick in the Text column.

Click on the URL radio button.

You now have a basic affiliate link for your merchant.


Hope that helps.

Rgds

[yellowmellow]

Once logged in to the Affiliate Window interface, click on Current Merchants in the right hand column.

The merchant you have been accepted for should show up.

Click on the Green Links button.

Click on the orange tick in the Text column.

Click on the URL radio button.

You now have a basic affiliate link for your merchant.
Hope that helps.

Rgds

I very much appreciate your willingness to help, accelerator, and for that I thank you.

However, my intention is to link to specific products and photos as well as specific product areas of this merchant.

Also, it really doesn't make sense for me to have to ask on this forum about every single step I need to take - I mean to say there must be these faq pages somewhere on the AW site.

Anybody?


PS to Affiliate Window personel: Pointing new affiliates towards their next steps is far more important than "Congratulations you're the next contestant on the Affiliate Window Raffle Bonanza." Really!

[darrenb]

Click on the deep link builder tool (on the right menu) : Affiliate Network - Affiliate Window

Then find the product you wish to promote (like you may do in Amazon), the copy the page link into the deep link url box, that should create a deeplink to the product you wish to promote.

You can then grab the image as you would do with amazon (right click save as and upload from your computer), or if allowed link from the image on the site.

Another option is to use the content widgets (again on the right hand side menu) which creates a widget similar to the Amazon one's with the product name, brief description, picture and price.

[yellowmellow]

Click on the deep link builder tool (on the right menu) : Affiliate Network - Affiliate Window

Then find the product you wish to promote (like you may do in Amazon), the copy the page link into the deep link url box, that should create a deeplink to the product you wish to promote.

You can then grab the image as you would do with amazon (right click save as and upload from your computer), or if allowed link from the image on the site.

Another option is to use the content widgets (again on the right hand side menu) which creates a widget similar to the Amazon one's with the product name, brief description, picture and price.

Thank you!

"if allowed link from the image on the site" Where do I find out what's allowed?

And do the FAQ pages really exist?

[accelerator]

And do the FAQ pages really exist?

In the right hand column, if you click on Support / Create New Ticket, you'll find an FAQ.

For what it's worth I think that navigation into this section needs improvement - it should be a lot easier to find the FAQ, which will be the first thing a newbie looks for.

Rgds

[darrenb]

Thank you!

"if allowed link from the image on the site" Where do I find out what's allowed?

And do the FAQ pages really exist?

Best way to see if it's allowed is to link to the image and see what happens, if your promoting the merchant in question with the image then it shouldn't be a problem. The best way is to save the image and upload to your site, that way you have control of the image in case it gets changed or removed from the mechants site in the future.

[yellowmellow]

In the right hand column, if you click on Support / Create New Ticket, you'll find an FAQ.

For what it's worth I think that navigation into this section needs improvement - it should be a lot easier to find the FAQ, which will be the first thing a newbie looks for.

You're not kidding accelerator - you'd think they'd have got it sorted, wouldn't you?

Best way to see if it's allowed is to link to the image and see what happens, if your promoting the merchant in question with the image then it shouldn't be a problem. The best way is to save the image and upload to your site, that way you have control of the image in case it gets changed or removed from the mechants site in the future.

Thanks very much for this info, darrenb and accelerator both.

I can't think why I kept on calling Affiliate Window AF in my first post - I've gone back and changed it.

If anyone wants to add any more to this thread I will certainly attend to the replies and take any beginner's tips anyone wants to give.

[yellowmellow]

I think I may have been doing this incorrectly. There's a box in the Deep Link Builder page for "Click Ref:" (the middle box on the left). At the moment that box is empty. Can someone please tell me what the Click Ref is and where do I get the Click Ref from?

Thanks in advance.

[darrenb]

I think I may have been doing this incorrectly. There's a box in the Deep Link Builder page for "Click Ref:" (the middle box on the left). At the moment that box is empty. Can someone please tell me what the Click Ref is and where do I get the Click Ref from?

Thanks in advance.

The Click Ref is something you can add so that you can track your links to see what generates the most clicks and sales.

For example you may have a page on a site about an ipod and may want to track clicks from that page, in this case you would insert a Click Ref of ipod (just an idea).

[yellowmellow]

Brilliant - thank you DarrenB!

This is just possibly the best forum I've ever encountered.

:tup

[yellowmellow]

I'm continuing to use this thread because keeping my newbie questions all in one place might be useful for other newbies when they stumble across it.

A few days after I requested to affiliate for a particular merchant, I received a welcome email that seemed to come from that merchant, except that the email address mentioned in it doesn't seem to be related to them nor to AW, and the phone number given is a prison's phone number! I assume she typed her phone number incorrectly. I seem to have mistakenly deleted the original email together with some junk, but I have all the text of it (just not the email address it came from). AW's home page url is at the bottom of the email under the sender's name.

It was from a person who only gave her first name (no surname) and the email included the words:

"I wish you every success with the program and am always here if you need advice or technical assistance"

I've tried emailing her (using the email address she gives in the body of her email) re some technical assistance and the email was returned to me "User unknown. Message non-deliverable".

Can someone please tell me:

1. Is this person likely to be my Affiliate Window account manager (she didn't say anything about this in her email)?

2. If so, how else can I contact her?

3. What should I do next about finding her?

4. The reason I wanted to contact her is that a deep link url to one of the merchant's webpages doesn't work (another deep link I created to an individual product page does work, so I know that I'm creating the links correctly). Since the woman isn't contactable, I submitted a ticket to AW about the link. Was that the right thing to do?

5. Should I submit another ticket about trying to contact this woman? I mentioned it in passing in my first ticket (as the reason for me having to submit a ticket), but it might be best to send a separate ticket about it? The thing is, it might be that this woman works for the merchant and not AW.

If people could assist me with any/all of these questions I'd be very grateful.

[Claire Theobald]

Hello Yellow Mellow

We would be happy to offer you more advice so please get in touch.

You can contact me directly on 020 75530402 or alternatively any member of my team will be able to answer your questions and point you in the right direction.

The Account Development team can be reached on either our hotline number 0844 557 9242 or by email at accountdevelopment@affiliatewindow.com

Many thanks

Claire

[yellowmellow]

Thank you Claire. I have now spoken with both you and Daniel and all my questions are being addressed.