Affiliate FAQ's
General Programme Questions
1. What is an Affiliate Programme and how does it work?
2. Is it free to join?
3. Who are Affiliate Window?
4. Can I track my performance and transaction metrics?
5. What are cookies and why are they important?
6. What is de-duplication
7. What do you de-dupe against?
8. How will The Towel Shop affiliate team communicate with me?
9. How will I find out about new products, coupon codes and other site offers?
10. What are the benefits of joining?
11. Sounds good, How do I join?
Sales & Commission
12. How are sales tracked from my site?
13. How much will I earn?
14. Do I earn commission on VAT and shipping cost?
15. Do you offer a performance incentive?
16. When will I get paid?
17. What constitutes as a valid sale?
18. What if a customer returns an item?
Eligibility
19. Can anyone join The Towel Shop's affiliate programme?
20. Do I have to reside in the United Kingdom to be part of The Towel Shop's affiliate programme?
21. I have multiple websites, can I still join your programme?
Creating & Setting up Links
22. I'm signed up, now what?
23. How do I start linking to The Towel Shop via banners and links?
24. Can I create my own links to specific products and categories?
25. How many banners and links can I use?
26. Where should I place the links and banners on my site?
27. How often does The Towel Shop update its banners?
28. Does The Towel Shop have a Product Data Feed available?
Programme Agreement & Further Assistance
29. Any Terms and Conditions I need to know about?
30. I need more information!
31. I need to contact The Towel Shop regarding the Affiliate Programme
General Programme Questions
1. What is an affiliate programme and how does it work?
An affiliate programme is an excellent way to make your website more profitable. The Towel Shop's affiliate programme will allow you (the affiliate) to earn commission when you send visitors to The Towel Shop website through our links and banners. When the visitor makes a purchase within 30 days, you will earn a 4% commission on every item they buy. You can earn higher commission of up to 15% plus cash bonus based on your performance (click here for more information).
Increasing your commission earning is dependant upon: A) the amount of traffic driven to your own website and B) improving the click through ratio from your website to The Towel Shop by using banners, links and coupons that are most appropriate to your visitors interest. The more relevant the banners, links and coupons are to your visitors interest, the more likely your visitors will click them.
2. Is it free to join?
Yes! It is completely free to join The Towel Shop's affiliate programme! Just be an active affiliate, keep linking to our website and earn commission on every sale you refer! For activation purposes, Affiliate Window will initially charge you £5 to join their network but this will be credited back to your account once they approve your publisher account.
3. Who are Affiliate Window?
Affiliate Window are an award winning performance marketing network based in the UK and US which The Towel Shop has partnered up with. They will provide our affiliates with tracking, real-time reporting, a range of other tools and ensure prompt commission payments to you. Being a publisher with Affiliate Window means you can join our affiliate programme but also gives you the flexibility to join other merchants programmes.
4. Can I track my performance and transaction metrics?
Yes, this information is all available in the reports section of the Affiliate Window interface.
5. What are cookies and why are they important?
Cookies are harmless small text files placed on your web browser when you visit certain websites. Don't worry, they can't access your hard drive or read your personal information! In this case, it is simply used for attribution purposes so that Affiliate Window can identify the merchant, the publisher, the specific link/banner clicked, the transaction amount and how much commission to pay out to the publisher.
6. What is de-duplication?
De-duplication is the process of attributing a sale to a single online marketing channel based on predefined conditions. A customer can visit The Towel Shop via different channels such as through an affiliate website, Pay Per Click (PPC), organic search etc. De-duplication will ensure that the merchant pays only one single channel to prevent paying duplicate times for the same sale.
7. What do you de-dupe against?
Our affiliate programme is very favourable to our affiliates as we do not de-dupe on Brand PPC, natural/organic or direct. We only de-dupe on Generic PPC.
For example, if a user comes through The Towel Shop site via Brand PPC (or natural search), then leaves and returns via an affiliate site, then decides to leave and returns back to The Towel Shop via Brand PPC (or natural), the affiliate site will still be awarded with the commission despite the last click being Brand PPC (or natural search). So yes, in this instance we will be paying out twice 1) for the PPC advertisement and 2) as commission to the affiliate.
In simple, our programme policy works in such a way where we will do everything to award commission to our affiliates.
8. How will The Towel Shop affiliate team communicate with me?
Our affiliate team will communicate with you regularly by sending periodic emails to all publishers.
9. How will I find out about new products, best sellers, coupon codes and other site offers?
The affiliate team will send out periodic newsletters to all publishers with updates regarding the programme such as new products, best sellers, new banners, coupon codes etc. You should regularly check the Affiliate Window interface for any coupon codes we distribute.
10. What are the benefits of joining?
Many! You will be partnering up with one of Britain's leading manufacturer and wholesaler in home textiles with prices 20%-70% lower than high street prices. With free UK mainland delivery, unrivalled customer service and a huge variation of products, our conversion rate is over 14% which translates in to more commission for you!
We give an opportunity to all our affiliate to start earning more than the default 4% commission immediately when joining on to our affiliate programme! We also have other challenging targets which means you can start earning really high commission and receive cash bonus when you meet the outlined targets (click here for more information).
As part of our programme, we treat our affiliates as individual partners and our dedicated affiliate manager will assist you to ensure you can get the most out of our programme. Simply put, we look after our affiliates.
11. Sounds good, how do I join?
- Step 1: Sign up here as a publisher on Affiliate Window. If you already have a publisher account with Affiliate Window, click here to join our programme for free.
- Step 2: We will manually review all applications to ensure your website meets our approval criteria. This will take up to 2 working days. Once approved, we will send you a welcome email with full set up instructions on how to get started including banners and deeplinks to place on your website so you can start linking to us immediately.
- Step 3: Once you are linking to The Towel Shop website through deeplinks and or banners, you will earn commission on every sale you refer!
Sales & Commission
12. How are sales tracked from my site?
Your publisher account on Affiliate Window will be attributed to a unique affiliate ID. The custom formatted links/banners you place on your website will include your unique affiliate ID which will ensure that traffic and sales originating from your website are correctly tracked so you are paid accordingly. It's important not to tamper with the code to ensure that all sales generated from your website are tracked otherwise, you won't receive your commission payment.
We run on a 30 day cookie period which means that if a visitor clicks on a Towel Shop link/banner from your site, you will be credited with the sale so long as the purchase is completed within 30 days.
Your Affiliate Window publisher account will allow you to track transactions, payments and other performance indicators such as which links are performing well so you can optimise your site to earn more commission.
13. How much will I earn?
Affiliates will earn a base rate commission of 4% on the total sale excluding VAT. For instance, if a customer places an order worth £240 including VAT and thus, £200 excluding VAT (where VAT is 20%), you will receive 4% on £200.
Commission increases and cash bonus are available. See below for more information.
14. Do I earn commission on VAT and shipping cost?
Commission is only paid on the total sale excluding VAT and shipping cost.
15. Do you offer a performance incentive?
Yes! Publishers can earn anywhere from 4% to 15% commission. We give an opportunity to every affiliate to start earning more than the default 4% commission immediately when joining on to our programme! Thereafter, our programme will allow you to increase your commission percentage provided you reach certain targets. Targets will be set based on individual affiliate performance and will be adjusted from time to time. You will need to speak to our affiliate manager regarding performance incentive and targets (click here to get in touch with us).
16. When will I get paid?
Publishers can expect to be paid every 7 to 15 days from when a customer places the order provided there are no issues such as items being out of stock, fraudulent order, order cancellation etc.
17. What if a customer returns an item?
The percentage of items returned back to us is extremely low however, if a customer returns an item within 14 days, commission will not be paid out. However, if the customer returns the item after 14 days, commission will be paid out to the affiliate.
18. What constitutes as a valid sale?
A valid sale is when the customer has passed the checkout process and has successfully paid for their order on The Towel Shop website.
Eligibility
19. Can anyone join The Towel Shop affiliate programme?
Although we would like everyone to promote thetowelshop.co.uk, there are certain websites which are not suitable to be part of our affiliate programme. We review every application manually and notify each applicant of acceptance or rejection. The Towel Shop reserves the right to reject any affiliate if we determine that a site is not suitable to be part of our affiliate programme. Sites which we do not work with include those that:
- Promote sexually explicit material
- Promote any illegal activities
- Violate intellectual property rights
- Promote discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, nationality, disability or age
20. Do I have to reside in the UK to be part of The Towel Shop's affiliate programme?
No. We accept applicants that reside outside of the United Kingdom as well as those residing within the UK.
21. I have multiple websites, can I still join your programme?
Absolutely! You can have as many sites as you wish and still join our affiliate programme. You can also have all your sites on our affiliate programme, it's up to you!
Creating & Setting up Links
22. I'm signed up, now what?
Once you are approved on the programme, you will receive a welcome email with full instructions on how to get started. If you are ready to start linking to The Towel Shop, read below on how you can do this.
23. How do I start linking to The Towel Shop via banners and links?
You can find a number of banners and deeplinks by logging into your Affiliate Window publisher account. Go to Links & Tools > Click Banners / Text Links > Select The towel Shop. You will find all our banners and text links there. Simply copy the code and paste it onto your website.
24. Can I create my own links to specific products and categories?
You can create your own trackable deeplinks to The Towel Shop home page, category page (such as the towels or duvets category) or to a specific product page. Here is how:
1. Login to your Affiliate Window Publisher interface and Go to Links & Tools > Link Builder
2. Where it says Select Advertiser, choose The Towel Shop on the drop down list
3. Choose the format you wish to use, either HTML or URL
4. The Click Ref field is optional. It will help determine where the click was generated from.
5. You may change the Link Text accordingly. If you are linking to the towels category, the Link text could be ‘Towels’ or 'Luxury Towels'.
6. In the Deeplink URL field, paste the specific landing page from The Towel Shop website you wish to link to.
7. In ‘Your Deeplink URL’ box, the deeplink will be created. Simply copy and paste this onto your website and you are done! You will now be promoting The Towel Shop and ready to earn commission on any sales directed from your website to The Towel Shop.
25. How many banners and links can I use?
As an affiliate, you can place as many banners and links as you choose on your website. We encourage affiliates to place multiple banners/links on their site.
26. Where should I place the banners and links on my site?
Banners and links should be placed where users can find them easily such as on the home page of your website. Banners and links are best placed above the fold of a website (the upper half of the site). This will allow users to clearly see the links without having to scroll down the page which will increase the chances of them clicking through. You should check out which pages on your site receive the highest traffic and place our links on there for increased exposure.
27. How often should I update my links?
You should update them regular. Your Affiliate Window account will tell you which links are performing well for you in the reports section so you can continue to optimise them. We will also provide updated banners regularly to keep things fresh.
28. Does The Towel Shop have a Product Data Feed available?
Yes we do. You can find out how to access and use our Product Data Feed by clicking here.
Programme Agreement & Further Assistance
29. Any Terms and Conditions I need to know about?
By joining our affiliate programme, you must agree to our Terms and Conditions.
30. I need more information!
You may find the following resources useful:
31. I need to contact The Towel Shop regarding the Affiliate Programme
You can contact The Towel Shop Affiliate Programme manager by emailing julie.wood@searlco.net.