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It is very important that new affiliates understand how the Affiliate - Guild of Blades relationship works. For most Internet affiliate programs, the Affiliate - Supplier relationship works as follows:

1) Affiliate lists an image or text link for the website in general, or perhaps for a specific products. The link is a specialized link that tells the web site owner which affiliate it was. Interested customer clicks on the link.

2) After clicking on an affiliate link the potential customer is taken to the website sellers own website. From there, if the customer buys something, the special web link allows the seller to compile data on how much is then owned to the affiliate that helped get that customer to the sellers website.

3) Publisher/seller than processes payment for the sale and ships out the product.

THIS IS NOT how the Guild of Blades Affiliate System works. With the Guild of Blades Affiliate Program, a customer never actually visits our website at all. We provide you with special web links for each product of ours that you will be selling. You make a modification to this web link (see below) so we can identify which affiliate has generated a sale. You put promotional content (see Promoting and Selling) on your website, ranging for a short text description of the product, perhaps a picture of it or one of our banners, provide reviews, host discussion forums, work with us to provide add on content, etc. Next to your listing of the product, you insert your link code, which will provide your viewers a   shopping button. Clicking on that button will take the consumer directly to a purchase processing page hosted by Paypal, our credit card processing merchant. Hence, your link does not take the consumer to the Guild of Blades website. The product is listed for sale on your website and is processed through our credit card processor, directly from your link from your website. Of course, Paypal, as our credit card processor handles payment processing and the Guild of Blades Publishing Group handles product delievery.

It is also important to understand that our processing system does not calculate shipping fees automatically. As such, we must provide two purchase buttons for each item we sell. One for US customers, which carries one shipping fee, and a different purchase button for International customers, which carries a different shipping charge. A basic sample of what a product listing might look like:

US Customers:   International Customers: 

Everying product listing listed through our Affiliate Program must contain at minimum the following information:

1) Product Title
2) Product Code
3) Guild of Blades Suggested Retail Price
4) A purchase link for each of US customers and International customers.

Additionally, and this is very important, every Guild of Blades affiliate MUST have the following legal disclaimer somewhere on their sales page, in a font color and size that is readable by the site viewer. We "require" this to be on an Affiliate website before we will process orders dervied from links on that Affiliate's website. You can send an e-mail to Affiliate-Ready@guildofblades.com with the URL/s with our products listed on them, once you have your pages completed and they include the following disclaimer:

Disclaimer:
"This website is an authorized sales agent for the Guild of Blades Publishing Group. Product sold here are sold by, and will be delivered by the Guild of Blades Publishing Group. E-mail us with any concerns you might have."

The HTML code for that disclaimer would be:

<font>This website is an authorized sales agent for the <a href="http://www.guildofblades.com">Guild of Blades Publishing Group</a>. Products sold here are sold by, and will be delivered by the Guild of Blades Publishing Group. <a href="mailto:affiliate-customer-questions@guildofblades.com">E-mail</a> us with any concerns you might have.</font>

Your Customized Affiliate Links: How to Modify Them:

Each product will have its own link. You may get a complete list of available products and basic link codes on our Complete List of available products for Affiliates page.
When you first sign up as an Affiliate and are accepted, you will be given an Affiliate number. You will insert your Affiliate number into each link you utilize on your web page. Below is a sample of a standard product link:

<!-- Begin PayPal Logo -->
<FORM ACTION="https://secure.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" METHOD="POST"><INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="cmd" VALUE="_xclick"> <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="business" VALUE="dowrie@guildofblades.com"><INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="return" VALUE="http://www.guildofblades.com"><INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="item_name" VALUE="The War to End All Wars Box Set Edition"><INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="amount" VALUE="34.95"><INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="shipping" VALUE="3.95"><INPUT TYPE="image" SRC="http://images.paypal.com/images/x-click-but01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"></FORM>
<!-- End PayPal Logo -->

To list this product on your web pages as an affiliate, you will need to make two modifications to this link. Notice the first highlighted portion of the link code. This is the URL that the purchaser will be returned to when they are done buying the product. You will want to replace "http://www.yoursite" with the URL on your website you desire to have the purchase return to after making the purchase. The second highlighted seciton lists the name of the product being purchased. At the end of the product name, you will insert a dash (-) and then your designated Affiliate Number. So, if you are Affiliate #20, then the above product's name would be listed as "The War to End All Wars Box Set Edition-20". This tells us that Affiliate Number 20 has sold this product. It is very important that you properly list your Affiliate Number. Without it we can not give you credit for sales generated from your web page.

Visit Complete List of available products for Affiliates to get link codes for all products currently availaable for our Affiliates to sell.

Also visit the Promoting & Selling web page to get banners, and ideas on how to better promote and sell your Affiliate products.