Incentives Plus Documentation 

Here is all the documentation that you will need for running your own site with Incentives Plus. It will explain everything that you will need to know, and if it doesn't, just e-mail us at admin@project-Incentives Plus.com with your question and we will be happy to answer it. 

Script Installation 
It is very easy to install the script. The first thing that you want to do is create your database, username, and password, and then link them all. If you are unsure of how to do this, there is a great tutorial that shows you how to do this that can be found here. Now you do that, go to your script, and open the includes folder, and open the db.php file and find this: 

Code: 
$dbhost = 'localhost'; // The ip of the sql server(usually localhost) 
$dbuser = 'dbuser'; // Username to connect to the database with 
$dbpass = 'dbpass';   // The password to login to the database 
$dbname = 'dbname'; // The name of the database this is stored in  


Leave $dbhost as localhost, and change $dbuser, $dbpass, and $dbname to be your username, password, and database name, respectively. 

Then go through the rest of db.php and give the settings that you want. Each setting has a comment next to it explaining what it does, so I will not go into detail about that here. 

Now that you've gone through db.php and made all configured your settings, it's time to upload the script. Upload it so that the index.php and install.php files are in the public_html directory. Once everything is uploaded, go to http://www.domain.com/install.php (obviously change the domain name to your own). It will automatically query the database changes required for Incentives Plus to run. It should go through fine, and once it's done excuting, delete the file from the server so it can not be run again. 

The script itself is now setup!  

What you have to do now, is register an account. Do this like you were any normal user. Make sure to use the e-mail address that you specified to be an admin in the db.php file. Once you've registered, you must check your e-mail inbox and activate your account. Then login. When you login, you should see a link for "Admin Panel" at the bottom of every page. If it doesn't show, make sure that you are set as an admin in db.php. 

You will now want to change some template things, such as the image header. To set the items that you will be giving away, go to the section in the admin panel. 

Installation is now complete!  

Adding Offers 
Now that the script is set up, you will want to add offers for users to complete. It is suggested that you do all offers through the companies Commision Junction and/or SearchCactus. This documentation only covers how to run a site with Commision Junction and SearchCactus (they will be abbreviated from now on as CJ and SC). 

Commision Junction (CJ) 
Signup for a CJ publishers account (an important thing to know is make sure that you don't lie about being an incentive site. Don't lie when filling out that box relating to incentives), and start applying for offers that your users will like, and pay good money. Do not even apply to eBay or any forms of eBay, because if you do, you will probably get denied, and if you don't, your earnings from eBay will probably just be revoked. You should get approved to a lot of them. So when you get approved for an offer, go to the "Get Links" tab in CJ, and you want "By Relationship", and it will default to "My Advertisers", which is what you want. I will use "Netscape ISP" as an example. So click on "Netscape ISP", and you want to get banner links. Then find the link that you think will fit the site. If possible, get a 120x60 or 120x90 image. Here is a great example of what to use: 

 

So click on the image that you want to use, and you will be brought to another page. Click "Get HTML". Select the website that this link will be on. This is very important if you are using your CJ account for more then one site. Leave the encrypt, new window, and hide code boxes unchecked. There then should be a textbox with some HTML coding in it. Here is an example: 

Code: 
<a href="http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-1556440-10368006" target="_top" > 
<img src="http://www.lduhtrp.net/image-1556440-10368006" width="120" height="60" alt="Netscape ISP" border="0"></a>  


Now, in a different browser window, go to your Incentives Plus admin panel, and go to "Add Offer". Type in the name of the offer, and a description. In the description, be sure to include the requirements for completing the offer. Then, put the credit time (5 business days is usually a good amount, unless it's a credit card offer or an offer that requires the user to stay past a free trial). Now, switch back to the CJ site and look back at that textbox. Take the URL that is between the two quotes in the "<a href=" section of the code. That would be 

Code: 
http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-1556440-10368006 


from my code above. Take that, and add a "?SID=[USERID]" onto the end of it (without the quotes). This should give you something like: 

Code: 
http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-1556440-10368006?SID=[USERID] 


Place that in the "URL" textbox in the Incentives Plus admin panel. 

What you just added is what can track the user who does the offer. Incentives Plus will replace [USERID] with a code that is unique to the user who does the offer. Then, you must get the URL to the image part of the code. Take the URL to the image that is between the two quotes in the "<img src=" section of the code. That would be 

Code: 
http://www.lduhtrp.net/image-1556440-10368006 


from my code above. Place that in the "Image" textbox in the Incentives Plus admin panel. Hit the Submit button and now your offer is added. 

If you wish to edit or delete an offer, just chose "List Offers" from the Incentives Plus admin panel navigation, and find the offer that you want to modify, and choose either "Edit" or "Delete". 

Now do this for the rest of the offers you wish to add. 

SearchCactus (SC) 
Signup for a SC publishers account (an important thing to know is make sure that you don't lie about being an incentive site. Don't lie when filling out that box relating to incentives). The good thing about SC is that you are automatically approved for all offers. Go to "View Available Offers" and check off all offers that you want to add to your site, and then when you get to the end of the page, press the "Submit" button. 

Before you start adding offers, there is something that you must do now. Go to "Manage Sub Accounts" and create a sub account. Give it a name and description. Even if you only have 1 site, you still must create a sub account (this is not a SC requirement, but a Incentives Plus requirement. It will be explained why you must do this a little later on). 

Now go to "My Current Offers". Go to the offer you want to add, and click on "Get offer link". For this example I will use AOL. Choose the banner you want, again, preferrably a 120x60 or 120x90 image. Here is a good example of what to use: 

 

Then, choose the sub account for your site. You must do this. I also suggest that you check the box at the bottom of the page. If checked, when users go to the offer, a popup will popup with the requirements for completing that particular offer. 

There then should be a textbox with some HTML coding in it. Here is an example: 

Code: 
<a href="http://www.searchcactus.com/publisher/trackofr.asp?phlp=1&chnl=194792&ofr=1070180&subcn=1&uid=xxxx "> 
<img src="http://www.searchcactus.com/images/AOL9_120x60_1.gif " width=120 height=60 border=0></a> 


Now, in a different browser window, go to your Incentives Plus admin panel, and go to "Add Offer". Type in the name of the offer, and a description (you might want to use the description already give to you by SC). In the description, be sure to include the requirements for completing the offer. Then, put the credit time (5 business days is usually a good amount, unless it's a credit card offer or an offer that requires the user to stay past a free trial). Now, switch back to the SC site and look back at that textbox. Take the URL that is between the two quotes in the "<a href=" section of the code. That would be 

Code: 
http://www.searchcactus.com/publisher/trackofr.asp?phlp=1&chnl=194792&ofr=1070180&subcn=1&uid=xxxx  


from my code above. Take that, and replace "xxxx" (which is at the end of the URL) with "[USERID]". This should give you something like: 

Code: 
http://www.searchcactus.com/publisher/trackofr.asp?phlp=1&chnl=194792&ofr=1070180&subcn=1&uid=[USERID]  


Place that in the "URL" textbox in the Incentives Plus admin panel. 

What you just added is what can track the user who does the offer. Incentives Plus will replace [USERID] with a code that is unique to the user who does the offer. Then, you must get the URL to the image part of the code. Take the URL to the image that is between the two quotes in the "<img src=" section of the code. That would be 

Code: 
http://www.searchcactus.com/images/AOL9_120x60_1.gif 


from my code above. Place that in the "Image" textbox in the Incentives Plus admin panel. Hit the Submit button and now your offer is added. 

If you wish to edit or delete an offer, just chose "List Offers" from the Incentives Plus admin panel navigation, and find the offer that you want to modify, and choose either "Edit" or "Delete". 

Now do this for the rest of the offers you wish to add. 

Giving Users Offer Credit 
Probably the most important thing about running a site is giving users offer credit. It can be very tedious work, except that Incentives Plus makes it very simple, fast, and easy. Both CJ and SC let you generate downloadable reports, which you then can give to the Incentives Plus admin panel, and it will turn those reports into credits for the users. 

InstaCredit with MetaReward 
MetaReward offers a cool feature called "Closed Loop Reporting", which basically means instant credit. To set this up (as it is not setup by default), first make sure you change the key in includes/db.php file (change it to any random string of letters and numbers). The reason for this is so if a user somehow discovers the secret URL, they would be able to use it to give themselves and others credit (basically to trick the script into thinking it was MetaReward). What the key does is it prevents the user from doing that, as only you and MetaReward will have the key. Once you have changed the key, sign in to your account on your site (where you are an admin), and then go to this URL - http://www.domain.com/instacredit.php. That will display some instructions to you. All you have to do is take the URL that the script shows you, and send it to your MetaReward representative and ask for closed loop reporting to be set up with that URL, and then once they give you the thumbs up it will all be working. When MetaReward receives notice of an offer completion from their advertisers, it will then let the script know, which will give the appropriate credit. 

Commision Junction (CJ) 
Login to your CJ account, and go to "Run Reports". Select the date frame that you want your report to include. It is better to include too much and have overlap then to include too little and miss offer credits. Incentives Plus won't give double credit for a user, so it's always better to have too much then too little. I suggest that you do it once a day, and just generate the reports from the previous day, so you don't miss anything. Leave everything else the same, except for the web site. Change that to the website which you are giving offer credit. Then hit the "Generate Report" button. 

Now, scroll to the bottom of the page, and find where it says "Download report in format". Choose "CSV", and hit the "Submit" button. Then, save the report to your harddrive. Open it in Notepad or Wordpad (don't open it in Excel). Then, go to the very last line, and just make sure that it isn't a blank line. If it is, just delete that line so the last line has information on it. Then, select everything and copy it to the clipboard. Now go to the Incentives Plus admin panel, and go to "Parse CJ CSV File". Paste what you just copied into the textbox, and hit submit. It will give you the status of each offer credit. 

SearchCactus (SC) 
Login to your SC account, and go to "View Reports/Stats". Select the date frame that you want your report to include. It is better to include too much and have overlap then to include too little and miss offer credits. Incentives Plus won't give double credit for a user, so it's always better to have too much then too little. I suggest that you do it once a day, and just generate the reports from the previous day, so you don't miss anything. Leave everything else the same, except for thesub account. Change that to the website which you are giving offer credit. 

The reason that you had to create a sub account before, is that if you are ever to use your SC account for a separate site, SC can't create a report for just things without a subaccount. This basically means that if you didn't use a subaccount, the only way to get reports with the site information would be to get the information from all sites. This would completely mess up the parser. If that just confused you, don't worry about it. It's not that important to understand why you must use a sub account, just know that you need to use it. 

Then hit the "View Report" button. If you have data, "Click here to receive detailed transaction reports" will appear. Click on it, and e-mail that report to yourself (SC doesn't allow you to directly download it like CJ does). Check your e-mail, and save the attachment to your computer. Open it in Notepad or Wordpad (don't open it in Excel). The first line should say something like "Subaccount: Sitename". Delete that line, and now the first line should be "Offer,Channel,Unique ID,Commission,Date" or something similar. Then, go to the very last line, and just make sure that it isn't a blank line. If it is, just delete that line so the last line has information on it. Then, select everything and copy it to the clipboard. Now go to the Incentives Plus admin panel, and go to "Parse SearchCactus CSV File". Paste what you just copied into the textbox, and hit submit. It will give you the status of each offer credit. 

This might seem like a lot of work to do, but once you get used to it, it gets very easy to do and saves you lots of time, especially if your site gets big. 

Manual Credit 
If for whatever reason you need to give credit without using a parser, go to the Incentives Plus admin panel, and go to "Give Offer Credit". Enter the user id (which is a number) of the user you want to give credit to, and then enter the offer name and hit the "Submit" button. They now have credit for doing that offer. 

Deleting Offer Credit 
If offer credit gets revoked for a user, you can go to the Incentives Plus admin panel, and go to "List 20 Newest Offer Credits" or "List All Offer Credits" and find that users offer credit and delete it. 

Completed Users 
Verifying Account/Referrals 
When a user gets all their referrals, a button appears on their account status page for them to request to have their account and referrals verified. You then can look at some statistics, and verify the user, or put them, and/or some of their referrals on hold. 

Checking for Fraud 
There are two ways to check for user fraud. You can check by IP address and referrals. 

With "Users and IP", you enter the user id of the user you want to check for fraud, and then all users from the same IP address are listed, along with all information about users. If anything looks suspicious, you can place those users on hold by going to "Place User On Hold" and entering the users id, one at a time. 

With "Users and Referrals", you enter the user id of the user you want to check for fraud, and then all of that users referrals are listed, along with all information about users. If anything looks suspicious, you can place those users on hold by going to "Place User On Hold" and entering the users id, one at a time. 

Verify User 
If nothing looks suspicious about a user and their referrals, you can verify the user. When they come back to check on their account status, they can move on to placing their order. 

Place User on Hold 
If anything looks suspicious, you can place the users on hold. If additional users should be placed on hold, go to "Place User On Hold" and entering the users id, one at a time. If for whatever reason you want to take any of the users off of hold, go to "Take User Off Hold" and enter the user id one at a time. If the user previously already had their account verified, the user will have to request to have their account verified again, and then you can verify it. 

Orders 
All current orders are listed on "List 20 Newest Orders" and "List All Orders". You can view, edit, and delete orders. When you order products from the vendor, update the order status by going to this page, finding the order, and editing its status. 

Support Tickets 
Support tickets are a good way of letting users ask questions or contact the admin(s). To view the support tickets, go to the Incentives Plus admin panel, and then "List 20 Newest Tickets", "List All Tickets", or "List All Open Tickets". You can then open/close the ticket, reply to it, or click on the topic to the message of the ticket and all replies to it. 

Congratulations, you made it to the end. I hope that you're still awake  
If you have any more questions not answered in this documentation, feel free to contact us at info@pluskit.biz