Affiliate Link Currency Conversion

This is the first in our ongoing series of educational pieces designed to increase sales for AC Lens affiliate partners. We encourage you to contact us if you have a specific question on this topic. Suggestions for future pieces are greatly appreciated.

One big advantage in an AC Lens partnership is our international capabilities including easy currency conversion. ACLens.com converts currency from USD to British Pounds, Euro’s, Japanese Yen, and Canadian Dollars. This type of flexibility allows our affiliate partners to promote all over the world in the currency of choice. It works great for sites with international sections and PPC affiliates can easily link right into the currency of the country they’re promoting.

Converting currency with affiliate links is quick and easy. For the homepage, all that needs to be done is the addition of a parameter at the end of .com. Affiliates would add /default.asp?NCurID=X where X is the currency being used so that the URL now looks like this: http://www.aclens.com/default.asp?NCurID=2.

Product URL’s are almost the same. Instead of /default.asp, only add &NCurID=X at the end of the URL so that it now looks like this: http://www.aclens.com/displaylens.asp?LensID=148&NCurID=2

Here are the current X value’s for all of our currencies:

Creating a custom link with Commission Junction and ShareASale.

Now that we’ve converted the link to your required currency, you can use that link with CJ or SAS links to track sales.

In CJ, append ?url= to a tracking URL and then add the currency converted AC Lens URL at the end. Your link should now look like this (XXXXXX would be your PID):

http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-XXXXXX-10300402?url=http://www.aclens.com/default.asp?NCurID=5

ShareASale affiliates can take any currency converted link and enter it in the custom link creator. Login to your SAS account and click on “Create A Custom Link To A Page”. From there, choose ACLens.com from the merchant drop down box and copy the URL, minus http://, into the website line. The link will convert to something similar to this (where XXXXX is your affiliate ID):

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?u=XXXXX&b=58985&m=7335&afftrack=&urllink=www%2Eaclens%2Ecom%2Fdefault%2Easp%3FNCurID%3D2

Please test all URL’s when converting to ensure proper tracking. Datafeeds can be converted in exactly the same fashion but prices will not be in the required currency. Contact us if you need a custom currency product datafeed with both URL and Price conversions.

Affiliate Summit East Recap

I’m back from Affiliate Summit East - Boston. It was a great time as always…lots of fun and business. Here’s a recap of my trip:

• Met quite a few of our affiliates and ABW’ers for the first time. I’m in awe of the number of great people in this industry and it makes working on a program so much better knowing you get to interact with fun, inspiring individuals on a regular basis. A quick thanks to those who chimed in with ways we can improve the AC Lens program as well. 
• I bumped into Haiko from ABW a couple times. I can’t say enough good things about him as a person let alone as an advocate for affiliates. Being able to thank him in person for his most generous donation to the AC Lens Walk for Autism made my trip. 
• I mentored two people for part of the Affiliate Summit Mentor program. Both mentoree’s (is that a word), were great people and internet marketing veteran’s prior to ASE. I hope they learned as much from me as I learned from them. 
• The ShareASale party was excellent…again. SAS always throws a classy, fun party and this one wasn’t any different. Thanks to Brian for helping me with a question on our SAS program…a big addition coming to AC Lens affiliates soon… 
• If you plan on attending a future Affiliate Summit, or skip the sessions when you do go, I urge you to make time to attend the Wil Reynolds (SEER Interactive) SEO session in Vegas. Of all the Summit’s I’ve attended so far, the two Wil Reynolds sessions are the most informative. His sessions are no fluff, no sales pitches…just real information that you can take back and make immediate improvements to your situation. Wil said he contacts those who write about him but don’t include a link. I’m not including a link to his site to see how long it takes for our new blog to get back to him via Google Alerts and/or whatever watches he has set up. The test starts….now.
• ASE Review: As I said it was great again. My only complaint (besides Logan Airport) was the Meet Market. It was packed, dark, and louder than usual. The aisles were to narrow and several spots were bottle necked. The RIO was perfect last February and I hope AS will keep that in mind as they continue to grow. 
• The PMA (Performance Marketing Alliance) had a couple meetings and an open Q&A. I attended the meeting Saturday and was encouraged by some of the ideas and suggestions made. It’s still early to tell but I think it’s progressing in the right direction with fairness and benefits for the entire industry in mind. The Q&A was heated at times and I’m glad a lot of things said were brought out in an open forum. Hopefully the PMA working groups can use that session to build on their current ideas.

That’s it…time to work.

Bob

UPDATE: Almost forgot to mention Dave at BrandVerity. Their service has been a big help in watching our trademarks on G, Y, and MSN. I was able to meet Dave at AS and make a few suggestions for improving an already great product…everyone should check out their service.