Merchant FAQs: our most asked question in affiliate marketing
Avelon is the premium content publishers affiliate network. We do not work with cashback affiliates, promo or browser extensions – and primarily work with publishers, content creators and ambassadors.
Affiliates 101: Basic terminology in affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is, in theory, incredibly simple to understand – but the terminology around affiliate marketing can leave both sides of the table confused and flummoxed. In this section, we’ll pinpoint the key terminology you need to ensure you can speak the lingo.
Affiliate (publisher, content creator or ambassador)
An affiliate is a person or a company that agrees to promote a product from a company to their audience in exchange for commission on conversions that come through their promotion
Merchant (retailer or brand)
A merchant is the company who is selling the goods that an affiliate wants to promote. For example, if you agree to promote a product, then you are an affiliate working with a merchant.
Commission
Commission is the monetary value you will be paid for a successful conversion. Commissions can either be a percentage of the final sale price, otherwise known as a CPA (cost per acquisition) or as a flat rate such as £10.00 per sale.
Attribution window
The attribution window is the length of time that a merchant is willing to pay an affiliate between the first click and the conversion. For example, if an affiliate were to drive a click on the 1st March and the merchants attribution window was 30-days, then the affiliate would be awarded a sale if the consumer purchased before the 31st March.
Cookies
Cookies are what the affiliate industry uses to track potential consumers. A usual term is ‘cookie drop‘ – which means that when an affiliate link has been clicked, the affiliate network has started to track the potential consumer for as long as the attribution window allows.
Affiliate link
An affiliate link is not the same as a regular link. An affiliate link has tracking technology embedded within its structure to ensure that the person who clicks the link has a cookie dropped on them – which enables the network (Avelon) to track them for a finite amount of time.
Regular link: https://www.sigmasports.com
Affiliate link: https://sigmasports.avln.me/kw93e8fn
Questions about affiliate marketing in general
All the basic questions about the affiliate marketing industry.
An affiliate is someone that agrees to promote a brand or a brand’s products to their audience in exchange for commission on any orders that come through their promotion.
Promotions can take place across social media, Youtube, websites and even in person – but it’s totally up to the affiliate how they promote the brand.
Affiliates are provided affiliate tracking links and discount codes to track sales and incentivise the consumer to purchase.
All sales are directed through the brand website and the affiliate doesn’t need to worry about fulfilling any of the orders.
As long as a brand has a website that has a checkout or a lead form, any brand can use affiliates. The most popular type of brands are eCommerce driven, i.e are selling a physical product that will be delivered to the consumer, but insurance companies, tutors, service providers such as agencies and almost any brand can utilise this form of marketing.
As long as there’s a way to track a conversion, you can use affiliates to promote your brand.
Avelon is a bootstrapped start-up from sports-mad best friends, Andrew Richardson & Roland Pogonyi.
We’re absolutely obsessed with cycling, trail running, climbing, yoga, snowboarding and any form of physical exercise – so want to develop our platform to work alongside our peers.
That’s not to say we won’t work with brands outside of the sports space, but the platform is currently working directly with sports publishers.
Avelon works with primarily sports publishers, but if you’d like to see a full list of our publishers, just head to this link.
Avelon is a private company which was set up in November 2021 by Andrew Richardson and Roland Pogonyi.
Sales and click reporting is available directly in your dashboard. We simplify all reporting structures to ensure you can understand and see exactly what’s working with what affiliate.
An affiliate attribution window is the time you’re willing to reward an affiliate for a sale of a product, i.e the window of time from a user clicking a link to them purchasing.
The average attribution window is 60-days on Avelon, meaning if an affiliate promotes your product via a link and that user clicks that link then returns to purchase 59-days later, the affiliate will be awarded the sale and a percentage of the total sale in commission.
The average commission rate for affiliates varies greatly depending on your business type and the type of affiliate you’re looking to work with. For example, nutrition brands sit around the 19% region mark for social affiliates whilst publishers average 18.2%.
When you onboard with us, we’ll guide you through the average amount of commission for your industry and recommend what you should be offering your affiliates.
There’s so many factors when starting an affiliate program, so it’s difficult to pinpoint the amount your brand can make.
For example, if you already have ambassadors you want to incentivise, or whether your brand is a household name or not – even down to whether you’re a retailer or a brand.
We can estimate to 80% accuracy how much revenue you can expect to drive by asking a range of questions. We recommend booking a call with us and we can give you a range.
Unlike other platforms, we do not charge commissions on shipping.
Unlike other platforms, we deduct tax rates in the US and Canada before calculating how much commission is due.
Integration & data collection policies
Questions about how Avelon integrates to your website and what data we collect.
We track sales through something called a plug-in, which injects a script into the header of each page on your site and sends a POST API request at the checkout.
When a user clicks an affiliate link, our system drops a first-party cookie on that user and tracks them for as long as your attribution window allows.
If a user purchases within your attribution window, then the affiliate who drove the traffic will be awarded a commission.
We integrate with your website through either a plug-in on your eCommerce store (Shopify, WooCommerce etc) or we can perform a custom integration.
We have native integrations (plug-ins and applications) available directly with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Citrus Lime, Circuly, Push Retail and CraftCMS.
We will be launching a native integration with BigCommerce very soon.
An integration is whereby you install a plug-in or application on your website. This is done through your CMS (content management system) in their app store / plug-in store.
Integrating means we have access to place an invisible script in the header of each of your pages, allowing us to track when users come to your site through one of our affiliate links.
Integration takes about 30-seconds for Shopify, WooCommerce, Craft CMS and Push Retail websites. BigCommerce will also only take about 30-seconds.
Circuly takes around 30-minutes.
Magento can take anywhere from 1-3 hours of developer time.
Citrus Lime takes about 1-week.
Yes, there are a few different types of integration depending on your tech stack and what your goals within affiliate marketing are.
The most popular option is a straight eCommerce integration which tracks users and the checkout function of your site, but we also have custom integrations for businesses such as insurance companies, service driven businesses such as agencies and even app/tech businesses which are looking to drive more downloads/engagement in the Apple App/Google Play store.
We’ve never used third-party cookies and will only ever use first-party cookies. We believe in trust, privacy and data security – and putting the consumer back in control of their data is one of our core values.
First party cookies mean the cookie is stored on the users local browser and tracking only occurs when they visit the site that the original link directed them to, unlike third-party cookies which track across every site.
First party cookies also hold no user identifiers such as names, addresses or location trackers, making them incredibly safe and secure for use at scale.
No, our plug-ins do not effect site speed. We purposefully created them to be as lightweight as possible and because the consumer uses their own browser for storing their cookies, there’s no impact on your site.
The plug-in simply places a script in the header of your pages which only talks to our server if a user with a clickID is on your site.
The checkout process only reports to us at the checkout confirmation page, too – so only once a checkout has completed will we draw down the data.
Our data collection is primarily first-party cookies and we work with absolutely no consumer information. No names, addresses, payment info – nothing that could identify the user by another person.
We work on an order ID, click ID and product information.
We also use enterprise level data security to encrypt our data, adding another level to ensuring privacy is at the core of everything we do.
Absolutely not. The data we collect is basically worthless outside of our system, anyway. We don’t collect any identifiable consumer info.
No, you do not need your own server. Avelon is a cloud-based SaaS platform which you can access anywhere.
Costs & billing
Questions about the cost of Avelon and how billing works.
You can view all the packages available here.
If you are using one of our plug and play integrations, then integration costs £0.00.
We developed our own applications within the major eCommerce platforms to ensure you never have to pay anything to us for integrating with our technology.
If you have a completely custom integration, there is a fee which starts at £199.00. The fee depends on complexity of integration and will be advised of prior to integration starting.
Yes, Avelon automatically pays the affiliate on your behalf on the last day of the following month.
For example, if an affiliate earns £100.00 of commission in June, we will invoice you for £100.00 on July 1st, debit your account on July 14th and pay the affiliate on the last day of July.
We bill once a month for your subscription, recurring from the day you sign up to the platform.
We submit an invoice to you on the 1st day of the month for due commissions. You then have 14-days to query any commissions due and your account gets debited on the 14th of the month at 12:00 UK time.
Avelon works on an including VAT scheme, meaning the Retailer/Brand/Merchant needs to adjust their commission to take VAT into account.
No, there are no commission bonds when you join Avelon.
A commission bond is a minimum payment made to the affiliate network. It’s mostly bullsh*t and a way for other networks to make more money.
Yes, we have a content payment service you can use within the platform. You can send money directly to any affiliate/ambassador on the platform.
We work in almost every currency across the world. A list of our available currencies and countries we can work within are available within this link.
Attribution & how the platform works
How does the platform work?
Yes, you can set your standard attribution window when you onboard to the platform. This can be anywhere from 7-days to a whole year depending on your AOV and generic timeline to purchase.
We can help you work out the best attribution window for your program.
Yes, we have external invite features for you to bring your current ambassadors to the platform. These range from single invite, bulk invite and branded sign up pages.
Yes, you can search for and invite affiliates already on the platform into your affiliate program.
Yes, you can offer commission at many different levels – one of which is affiliate specific level. You simply increase or decrease that specific affiliates commission on their profile.
We work with publishers in many different ways, but the most popular are single linking and product feeds.
Single linking is when a publisher is reviewing one of your products and wants to directly link to that product. They’ll come onto the platform, create a link and then post that link.
Product feeds can turn into many things, but mainly take the form of price comparison widgets and best deal widgets.
Hybrid affiliate ad placements are zero-cost ads where publishers will use any remnant/unsold display inventory and place affiliate banners/ad assets. They receive any commissions off the back of those ads generating sales.
We work with 100+ publishers within our space and can work with new publishers in as little as 5-minutes.
Product feeds are created through our integration with your website. Our plug-ins have a function that generates product feeds and updates them in real-time with any stock, pricing or name changes.
The most important aspect of any product feed is the EAN. This is because it’s the only universal code on products to exactly match them together.
Sales and clicks are attributed once an hour, but we email affiliates every day to give them a roundup of all of their sales.