Post Affiliate Pro ® Full Review

Merchant Panel:

The merchant panel is the place where everything happens. This is where you manage and run your affiliate program from.

The layout of the merchant panel consists of two main areas: left side bar with all the options and the main window where details of each menu or section are shown.

Video (Merchant Control Panel Tour):

Let’s go through all the features together:

• Home menu

This section displays an overview of your affiliate program in terms of traffic and sales. It shows a total cost of sales for the current month (these are commissions you need to pay to your affiliates). Next, there is a news section. Finally there are stats displaying pending tasks, clicks, impressions, commissions, refunds and chargebacks.

• Getting Started menu

This is a neat section as it provides a usable checklist for merchants to follow when starting their affiliate program. Each point contains clear instructions on how to approach it. You can cross-check points you have completed. It starts with “brainstorming” and ends with “promoting your affiliate program”. It is highly recommended to go through the full checklist without skipping any of the points.

• Campaigns menu

Here all the settings related to managing campaigns are found. There is an overview sub menu showing stats related to campaigns and commissions generated. Next, there is a campaign manager sub menu which allows you to manage each of your affiliate tracking campaigns. Campaign can handle one or more products that you pay the same commission for. You can add new campaigns here as well as edit or delete the existing ones. The last feature found in the campaigns menu is the campaign categories feature. This one allows you to create different categories for your campaigns.

• Banners menu

This menu has 3 different sub menus which include overview that shows stats of your banners, impressions, clicks and click through ratio. Additionally, there is a banner manager which you use to manage banners and links. Banners can be in many different forms such as image, text link, PDF, flash or promo email templates. Important detail here is that each banner needs to be tied to a campaign (in order to have a commission connected to it) and you can link banners to any target URL. Banner manager feature allows you to create new banners and to edit or delete the existing ones. As with Campaigns, you can create banner categories from Banners menu.

• Affiliates menu

Overview section shows stats related to your affiliates such as how many affiliates are in your program, how many approved or pending payments there are, etc. Affiliate tree section can show a tree of your affiliates with their sub-affiliates included. Affiliate manager is the most important feature, as here you will be approving and screening your affiliates. You can view and/or change all the details related to affiliates here. Next we have DirectLinks manager feature allowing you to manage URLs, as each URL is first in the pending state until you approve it and make it active. There is also a feature called “Affiliate Help Desk”, and it allows you to setup and integrate LiveAgent service for supporting your affiliates. You do need to have a LiveAgent account to use this feature. You can find more information on LiveAgent here: http://www.ladesk.com. Last feature found under affiliates menu is affiliate tracking code. This is a search feature with various filters.

• Transactions menu

This section deals with all kinds of transactions generated by your affiliate program. Overview area shows stats such as commissions total and sales total, pending commissions’ amount etc. Next, we have the raw clicks list. Here you can see the list of all clicks tracked by your affiliate program. It tracks IP addresses along the way so it can be a neat tool for testing, too. Commissions menu lists all tracked commissions. Here you can see only transactions which generated a commission, as well as per-click commissions if you have them setup. Finally, there is a placement overview sub menu which shows the list of affiliates that fit special conditions of compressed commission.

• Reports menu

This is where all major stats are found. You can find both traffic and finance stats here. Stats include quick reports, trend reports, daily reports, commissions, raw clicks list, payouts history, payouts by affiliate, online users, top affiliates, top referring URLs and keyword performance. Reports menu is perfect for tracking and monitoring the performance of your affiliate campaign.

• Payouts

Here you can find an overview of affiliate earnings which are due to be paid. This section provides a search tool which you can use to find affiliates which reach the minimum payout balance for example.

• Emails

This is a messaging feature which you can use to send messages to your affiliates.

• Configuration menu

This is where you will spend a lot of time when first setting up your affiliate program. Here you can manage all the important settings which include general settings such as language, event logging, proxy server, plug-ins and features. There are also email settings related to mail account, email notifications and templates. Next, there are tracking settings which include cookies, fraud protection, URL parameter names and banner & link format settings. Configuration menu also features important payout settings related to payouts balance, payout options (PayPal, Check, Moneybookers etc), invoice format and VAT handling. Finally, you can also tweak settings related to design and content, such as look of the affiliate signup page, affiliate panel design, etc.

• Tools menu

Tools menu includes several useful tools such as integration settings which include settings for clicks tracking, sales/leads tracking, cron job integration and API integration, as well as advanced settings. News section allows you to publish news visible to merchants, affiliates or both. There are other tools available such as events logs, logins history, import/export, visitor affiliates, views, problem reporting, merchants, roles and compressed commissions settings.

• Offline sale menu

This software also allows you to track offline sales based on coupons. You can use this feature to input offline sales information.

• Help

Post Affiliate Pro features a useful forum and help section with documents and guides for easier setup and troubleshooting.

• Features and plug-ins sections

Here you can manage add-on extensions and plug-ins. Some of those are free and some need to be purchased separately.

Remaining features in merchant panel are related to account settings and panel settings such as theme used, etc.

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Affiliate Panel:

This is the backend that your affiliates will use when they join your affiliate program. It contains similar features as the merchant panel such as various stats and settings, with the difference that items found in this panel are directly related to your affiliates so there are stats such as number of sales, earned commissions etc. Affiliates can get all the promotional materials needed and join different campaigns using the affiliate panel. What merchant sets up in the merchant panel will be available to affiliates here. It is possible to further customize the look of the affiliate panel for better integration.

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