FAQ
Home > FAQ

• How do I contact you or get support?

  Contact us via the Support Form. We also have a public Discussion Forum.

• How can you offer your scripts for free?

  We offer our scripts (other than Associate Engine) for free when you sign-up with the particular merchant as a sub-affiliate of our affiliate account with that merchant. Being a sub-affiliate does not change the commission rate that the merchant pays to you.

  In general, a merchant that has a 2-tier affiliate program pays a commission to you for each sale made through your website (e.g.: 10% of the sale price) and the merchant also pays a smaller commission to your "parent affiliate" (in this case, us) for each sale made through your website (e.g.: 2% of the sale price) -- your commission rate is not affected, and the commission rate paid to us is much lower than the commission rate paid to you. In general, merchants use 2-tier affiliate programs as an incentive for affiliates to recruit other affiliates for the merchant. If you want, you can even sign-up your own sub-affiliates for yourself; see the merchant's website for the sub-affiliate commission rate and what link to use.

  The difference between us and other "parent affiliates" is that we offer you a valuable free tool to help you make sales and we offer support; other "parent affiliates" do not provide you with any tools or help you in any way -- we consider them to be "absent parents"; in contrast, we're always here to help you. We feel that the sub-affiliate commission is very fair compensation for all that we do. And, if you don't make any sales because of our script, then we also do not make any sub-affiliate commission ($0 in sales = $0 in commission = $0 in sub-commission).

• Why isn't Associate Engine free?

  We are not Amazon.com -- they are a completely different company. And, Amazon.com's affiliate program is 1-tier; Amazon.com does not support sub-affiliates. Thus the only revenue we make from offering Associate Engine is via the yearly license fee that we charge. We do not make any money from the Amazon sales that you make using Associate Engine.

• What is ID time sharing?

  In some of our scripts, we use ID time sharing so that we can offer the script to you for free. ID time sharing is used for merchants that have 1-tier affiliate programs (except for Associate Engine). On average, your ID is used in links 3/4 of the time, and our ID (Cusimano.Com Corporation is an affiliate of the merchant) is used the remaining 1/4 of the time. Because your ID is not used 100% of the time, your effective commission rate is reduced to on average 3/4 of the full rate (e.g.: if the full rate is 8%, then the effective rate is on average 6%).

  Whenever a user access any of the DySE™ generated webpages, view.pl is run. Your server's clock at the time that the user causes view.pl to run is used to determine which ID to use. Specifically the "seconds" hand of the server's clock is examined. If the seconds is less than 45.0 then your ID is used; otherwise, the seconds is 45.0 or greater and then our ID is used. Since the probability that a user will view your webpage at any given second is the same as all other seconds, your ID will be shown on average 3/4 (75%) of the time and our ID will be shown on average 1/4 (25%) of the time.

  If a script uses ID Time Sharing, that fact is clearly indicated on our webpage of that script (go to www.c3scripts.com and click on the script you are interested in). Also, if a script uses ID Time Sharing, that fact is clearly indicated on the download webpage of that script (go to www.c3scripts.com/download and click on the Download link of the script you are interested in) such as shown below:

  Important Note: This script uses ID time sharing which affects the commission rate.

• Why is a key necessary?

  When you want to use one of our scripts, you tell us your affiliate ID for that merchant. Then we create a software key file for that ID and email it to you. Each key is unique to each ID and you cannot edit the key file. The key is required to enable the script otherwise anyone could use the script and we would not receive any compensation. See FAQ above: How can you offer your scripts for free?

• I'm already signed up with the merchant (but not your sub-affiliate). Can I still use your script?

  Just go ahead and signup and/or request keys. In the case that you're already signed up (but not our sub-affiliate), we contact the merchant to confirm your ID and most of the merchants will make you a sub-affiliate if you want to use our script. Unless listed below, the merchant will move your account.

  • Allposters.com: open a new AllPosters.com account.
  • Calendars.com: open a new Calendars.com account.
  
  

• The merchant's application says that they will review my website before approving me, but my website has no content since I haven't run your script yet. Can I still apply?

  Yes, go ahead and apply to the merchant. The merchants that we work with are aware of this "chicken-and-egg" problem.

• When I click one of my affiliate links, I go to the merchant's website but my ID doesn't show up. Is tracking working?

  Some merchants do a redirection at their website. In that case, the address bar of your web browser will not show your ID. To confirm that your ID is being used and to see all the redirections: Right-click on your link (do not left-click it) and select "Copy Shortcut" from the popup menu to copy the URL of the link. Then go to http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html and paste in the URL. Click Submit and watch all the redirections happening. This works for any URL.

• What is difference between 'dynamic script' and 'static script' ?

  Some of our scripts are static and some of our scripts are dynamic (the newer ones are dynamic).

  The static scripts create static .html files on the server's hard drive. Actual .html files are created. Some of the static scripts can create LOTS of .html files. For example, with the allposters.pl script, if all categories are selected, then several 10's of thousands of .html files are created taking about 100's of MB of disk space.

  The dynamic scripts do not create any .html files on the server's hard drive. The Associate Engine script that works with amazon.com (and amazon.co.uk) is a dynamic script. The output that is sent to the user is created "on-the-fly" (in the server's memory) as requested. It's dynamic since amazon.com has 10's of millions of products and it is not possible or practical to create all those pages on your server. Also, with the dynamic scripts, and changes in your templates are immediately reflected on all webpages; you do not have to rebuild the webpages as you would have to do with a static script.

• What is the current version of (some script) ?

  See the download index page.

• Where do I download the latest version of (some script) ?

  See the download index page.

• Can you create a script for (some merchant) ?

  Merchants should see the Merchant FAQ page.

• Can you recommend a hosting company that your scripts work on ?

  See these third-party companies:

  · The Hosting Team
  · akoss-hosting.com

• Can I use your scripts on a GoDaddy.com hosted website ?

  GoDaddy.com does not permit any scripts to access the internet. That is, scripts cannot fetch data from other servers on the internet. Our script require internet access so that they can download data from the appropriate merchant's website (e.g.: Associate Engine must be able to download data from the Amazon.com server). Without internet access, our scripts will not work. Move to a different hosting company.

http://www.c3scripts.com/