LayGuide Affiliates Program

"I changed my name, URL and sitename but the changes aren't reflected on the free web-page. Why?"

Most popular questions
"How much does it cost to join the affiliates program?"
It doesn't cost anything. Joining and participating in the LayGuide Affiliates Program is completely free.

"How are you going to pay me?"
Payments will be made via PayPal, MoneyBookers or E-Gold, please refer to the Using E-Gold section of this FAQ for more information on E-Gold.
Under the alternative ClickBank program, the money will be mailed to you with a check from ClickBank.

"How much do I get paid for referring subscribers to LayGuide?"
Please refer to the Pricing section of this FAQ for an exact pricing scheme.

"When do I get paid for referring subscribers to LayGuide?"
Please refer to the Receiving Payments section of this FAQ for an exact payment schedule.

"Do I need to have a website to become an affiliate?"
No, you can start earning even without a website. Please refer to Free Page; Control Panel; Tips & Tricks.

"Where can I find link code / banners / my affiliate links?"
Login to your affiliate control panel, then click Create Your Links.
ClickBank - if you joined the ClickBank program instead, check your ClickBank account for more details.

Using PayPal / MoneyBookers / E-Gold to receive payments
"Why do I have to open a PayPal / MoneyBookers / E-Gold account?"

In contrast to ordinary affiliate programs, which send out checks but force their affiliates to wait until a certain sum has been accumulated (for example $20, $40, even $100), payments in the LayGuide Affiliates Program will be made via PayPal / MoneyBookers / E-Gold. This means that theoretically you can have money on your bank account even within hours of making a commission! Naturally, you'll also have to open a PayPal / MoneyBookers / E-Gold account in order to receive these payments.

ClickBank - if you want to receive a check instead, you can join the ClickBank program, where a check will be mailed out to you by ClickBank once a month provided that a minimum payout level has been reached.

"E-Gold? Is that another one of those gimmicky internet money thingies?"

Depends on your definition of "gimmicky". But as E-Gold is fully convertible into USD or any other currency (see the individual exchange rates of various E-Gold exchangers), I'd reserve the word "gimmicky" for those systems that lack the option of converting their "credits" into real money, instead forcing you to spend them on "gifts", only in certain online shops etc. E-Gold however is fully convertible. And on top of that - every account is fully backed by gold deposited in the Bank of Nova Scotia. Alternatively you can also use the well-known PayPal or the also very popular MoneyBookers electronic payment system.

"I don't want to use E-Gold or whatever it is - I want REAL MONEY!"

All assets on an E-Gold account can be turned into REAL MONEY on your bank account with a click of a button. The beauty of E-Gold is that you can either spend it directly where E-Gold payments are accepted or you can retrieve money from your E-Gold account using virtually any means possible. To retrieve money, you don't need a credit card, you don't even need a bank account and you can even live anywhere in the world! Once you have earned some commissions referring LayGuide (see Tips & Tricks for countless ways of doing it) and have received some payments on your E-Gold account, you can withdraw money from it using every imaginable means (bank wire, check, money order, cash, credit card, paypal etc) through any of the E-Gold exchangers.

When converting E-Gold on your E-Gold account into real money, most exchangers even pay you a premium for it. For example you can get $101 of real money for $100 worth of E-Gold (the terms and geographical locations of various E-Gold exchangers differ from each other, so choose the one that fits you best; for larger amounts we recommend IceGold).

"Why should I choose E-Gold or MoneyBookers over PayPal?"

If you already have a PayPal account - great! We can send your commissions via PayPal. PayPal has evolved into one of the largest and most popular electronic payment systems on the net today. It's innovative "send money with e-mail, even to people who don't have a PayPal account", auction support and mass payment features still stand unrivalled. However, there are also a few important drawbacks to the system, the largest being the requirement to be an owner of a US banking account or a credit card holder in any of the predefined (mostly Western European) countries. While not important to some, this can be the decisive difference between being or not being able to earn money with the LayGuide Affiliates Program for others.

Namely - if you don't have a US banking account or don't have a credit card in any of the predefined countries, you can't use PayPal to receive payments. Whereas with E-Gold or MoneyBookers, you could be an 8-year-old, with no credit card, no bank account, living deep within the Amazon rainforest or way up in the Himalayas - and STILL be able to earn with the LayGuide Affiliates Program, because there are no restrictions to opening an E-Gold account and you can retrieve your money in almost any way imaginable.

Receiving payments
"When do I get my commissions transferred to my PayPal / MoneyBookers / E-Gold account?"

Other affiliate programs force you to wait until you accumulate a certain sum before they send out a check. With LayGuide Affiliates Program it is different - you can have your commissions transferred to your PayPal / MonyeBookers, E-Gold account whenever you just ask for it! (Please note, that an initial review period of one month will be required of all newly joined affiliates before any payout can be made to avoid fraud - read here for more). So whenever you feel like you'd like to have your commissions transferred to your E-Gold account, drop me a note at (also please don't forget to add your affiliate username and your PayPal / MoneyBookers / E-Gold contact details) - and be it $0.15 or $1500, I will arrange for the transferral.

ClickBank - if you joined the ClickBank program instead, your check will be mailed out by ClickBank once a month provided that a minimum payout level has been reached.

"How can I have commissions on my bank account within a couple of hours?"

Currently, all commissions will have to be transferred manually. In other words - your commissions will not be transferred to your PayPal / MoneyBookers / E-Gold account automatically each time they are made. So where does this "have commissions on your bank account within a couple of hours?" come from? It comes from the fact that unlike with other affiliate programs, where this would be donwright impossible, the LayGuide Affiliates Program still allows for it. Here's are an example sequence of events:

a) a commission is made
b) if you are a trusted affiliate, I transfer the appropriate amount to your PayPal / MoneyBookers / E-Gold account
c) depending on the service you use, you can retrieve the money to your bank account within minutes

Total time - a couple of hours! So at best, you could indeed have a commission on your bank account within a couple of hours. Similarly though, the same process could take days to complete as there are quite a few factors in play here. But be it hours or be it days - it is still vastly superior to the waiting periods of MONTHS of almost any other affiliate program out there!

ClickBank - if you joined the ClickBank program instead, your check will be mailed out by ClickBank once a month provided that a minimum payout level has been reached.

"Why the initial waiting period of one month before I can start having my commissions trasferred via PayPal/MoneyBookers/E-Gold?"

When the LayGuide Affiliate Program first opened, we tried to be innovative by allowing all affiliates to receive their commissions in E-Gold immediately if they wanted to. For a while, this system worked well, but then unfortunately the word about this possibility started to spread among online criminals and they started to sign up the program to make purchases with stolen credit cards, then quickly claim their 50% commissions and then disappear without a trace once all the charbacks started to come in. This pattern kept repeating itself and the problem became so overwhelming, that we were literally swamped with fraudulent purchases, fraudulent affiliate signups and fraudulent commission requests, so we had to close down the affiliate program for a while.

Now that the program has been re-opened, all trusted affiliates can still receive their commission payments in PayPal, MoneyBookers or E-Gold, but if you are a new affiliate, you will have to go through a review period of at least ONE MONTH to confirm the legitimacy of the commissions you make. If during that one month period the commissions you make do not result in chargebacks and your advertising efforts are clear and visible, you will become a trusted affiliate and can start claiming your commissions immediately via PayPal, MoneyBookers or E-Gold like all the other trusted affiliates.

"Why don't you use ClickTrade or CommissionJunction to handle the affiliate program?"

Aside from the LayGuide Affiliate Program right here on the LayGuide.com site, LayGuide will also consider opening traditional affiliate programs handled by ClickTrade and CommissionJunction. However, the LayGuide Affiliate Program will always be able to pay higher commissions, since there are no setup and handling fees like those required with traditional affiliate programs, we will also pay those commissions faster (using electronic stransfers instead of sending out checks) and have a lot more flexibility in general. Just for comparison's sake, here are the features of both the LayGuide Affiliate Program and most other affiliate programs you can find on the net:

	LayGuide Affiliate Program	Ordinary affiliate programs
Commissions	Up to 50%	10-20%
Delivery triggered	Upon request	Once a month, no delivery if certain sum ($20-$100) not accumulated
Delivery frequency	Infinite	Once a month, no delivery if certain sum ($20-$100) not accumulated
Delivery time	From hours to days	From weeks to months, no delivery if certain sum ($20-$100) not accumulated
Delivery cost	None	Bank charges for cashing in checks
Multi-level commissions	Yes, two levels deep	No
Free webpage included	Yes	No
Example affiliate code	http://www.layguide.com/xxx/yourname	http://www.othersite.com/cgi-bin/ affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=yourname

As I already mentioned, LayGuide.com will also commence an "ordinary" affiliate program handled by a third party. After all, that is currently the industry standard and undoubtedly there are people who might not want to request their commissions electronically and instead prefer to receive checks at the steady pace of once a month. If you are one of them, please check back shortly, as details about a third-party affiliate program for LayGuide.com will be unveiled soon.

ClickBank - if you wish to receive checks, you can now join the ClickBank program handled by ClickBank. Click here for a comparison between the locally run affiliate program and the ClickBank program.

"I still want to receive a check!"

Aside from the LayGuide Affiliate Program right here on the LayGuide.com site, LayGuide will also commence traditional affiliate programs handled by ClickTrade and CommissionJunction (details to be posted soon). If you feel like you simply want to sit back and receive your check once a month, you can join any of those programs instead. But although not yet fixed, the commissions through those programs will undoubtedly be lower due to the setup and handling fees charged by the maintainers of those programs.

ClickBank - if you wish to receive checks, you can now join the ClickBank program handled by ClickBank. Click here for a comparison between the locally run affiliate program and the ClickBank program.

Pricing
"Will I earn commissions from all purchases or only those made with credit cards?"

Many affiliate programs out there never mention the fact, that although they offer their customers many different ways to pay (credit card, paypal, online check, 900 number etc), they only give out commissions on purchases made with credit cards. But not so in the LayGuide Affiliates Program - we do our best here to ensure that you will get as many commissions for your marketing efforts as possible.

Therefore, you always get a commission when:

someone subscribes via credit card
someone subscribes via online check
someone subscribes via PayPal or E-Gold
someone subscribes via dialing a 900 number

The only instance you will not get a commission is when someone decides to send us cash or a personal check in regular mail - since this transaction can not be tracked by a computer, it is impossible for us to assign a commission to anybody for such a sale. But apart from this, you can rest assured that you are getting all and every commission possible as a LayGuide affiliate.

"What if someone coming to LayGuide through my affiliate code joins only weeks or months later?"

The commission tracking system will remember each user who came to LayGuide through your affiliate code up to a year. So whenever within that 12 months period any of those users decide to subscribe, you will get your commission.

ClickBank - under the ClickBank program, a referral will be remembered for up to 24 hours. In other words - you will receive a commission if the user subscribes within 24 hours of last clicking on your affiliate link to LayGuide.

Using the affiliate control panel
"Where do I find my affiliate link?"

You will find your affiliate link in your affiliate control panel. Click on Login & Stats and enter your affiliate username and password (the ones you chose when you joined the program). An example of your affiliate code is on the opening page. You can find more links to use when you click on the "Create Links" tab.

"I want to test my affiliate link. How can I do that?"

Login to your affiliate control panel. At the bottom of the screen there is your affiliate link. Click on it - you will be directed to the front page of LayGuide.com. Press the back button of your browser. Now press the refresh button of your browser - the reloaded affiliate control panel should show that one click has occurred. This means that your affiliate link is live and tracking!

ClickBank - the ClickBank program provides only accounting and revenue tracking functins. There is no support for click-through statistics.

"I want to direct people also to other pages in LayGuide, not just the main page. How can I do that?"

By default your affiliate link takes anyone who clicks on it to the main page of LayGuide.com. But there are a number of situations when you might want to direct people to a different page in LayGuide and still use your affiliate code (in hopes of getting commissions if someone subscribes). Instructions on how to direct people to a different page in LayGuide can be found at the bottom of your Create Your Links tab of the affiliate control panel. In brief - you'll have to add &page=URL-of-desired-page at the end of your affiliate code.

For example, to direct webmasters directly to the Affiliates Center, you'd use the link
http://www.layguide.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=yourname&page=http://layguide.com/affiliates/index.html

Or to direct your friends (or other people) to a specific article, you'd use the link
http://www.layguide.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=yourname&page=http://layguide.com/name-of-article.htm

"Now that my affiliate link is working - how do I start earning with it?"

See the Tips & Tricks section for advice on how to start referring people to LayGuide and how to start earning with your affiliate link.

"Which banner should I choose?"

There are many ways of choosing the "right" banner. You can choose a banner that:

you like the most. Look at all of them and choose the one you like the best.
you noticed immediately. Most likely, visitors to your site will notice that banner immediatley as well.
best suits your website. Maybe the banners that you like the best or noticed immediately don't suit your website (unsuitable content/colours etc). Choose a one that does.

Historically, the ones with the biggest click-throughs (most clicked on) are the so-called "trick" banners. I don't really like the concept of "tricking" surfers to click on a banner, but for your freedom of choice, examples of such banners are provided as well. If you decide to use them, you can expect above-average click-throughs. It is an entirely different matter though, how many of those click-throughs will actually result in sales.

"How do I know which of my link placement efforts are paying off?"

The Top 100 Referrers tab in your affiliate control panel counts and shows all the places your affiliate code has been clicked on. This way you can see exactly how successful placing your code in different parts of your website, or posting it to FFA pages or directories, or classifieds or newsgroups has been. The places that don't generate you any hits you can either try to improve upon or drop altogether. The places that generate you the most hits - well you can always try to make them generate you even more traffic:) On your website, you can also try different banners to find out which give you the best results.

"How can I speed up the loading of the banners?"

Your default affiliate code (created under the Create Your Links tab) fetches all banner images from LayGuide.com. Here's one way to speed up the images - download the images and save them in your computer or website directory, then change the URL of your affiliate code to point to the new location of the images. But aaother (can be used in conjunction with the first) and even more important way to speed up graphics is to add the width="[pixels]" and height="[pixels]" paramatres somewhere within the <IMG> tag of each banner. This way the banners will be displayed WHILE they are being downloaded, additionally this will create the illusion of a fast loading page.

You'd have to know the right width and height in pixels of each banner for that though. But instead of firing up a graphics program or a special image size calculating tool, here's a surprisingly simple shortcut to finding out the dimensions of an image. In Internet Explorer right-click on the image and choose Properties - on the screen that opens the dimensions are where it reads... "Dimensions":) In Netscape right-click on the image and choose View Image - on the page that opens the dimensions can be seen in the title of the page.

"I can't find a suitable banner to put on my web page. Now what?"

The Create Your Links section of the control panel (this is where you find the banners) is still being updated and new banners are being added. If you can't find a suitable banner at the moment, I suggest you see the Tips & Tricks section on how you can also make very effective use of a text link or banner. You can also design your own banner - we'd love to add it to the banners section! And finally you can check back after a while to see if new banners have been added.

Using the free web page
"Why does my affiliate code look so long? Isn't there a shorter option?"

Yes, all the generated affiliate links in the affiliate control panel are in the format http://www.layguide.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=yourname. But when you joined the program, a free web-page was created for you at http://www.layguide.com/xxx/yourname. You can use a link to this page instead of the longer version - this tracks hits and gives you commissions just as well as the long version. The main difference between the two is that the longer version directs people directly to the front page of LayGuide, while the shorter version directs people to your free web-page (they can continue to move to the frontpage from there).

ClickBank - the free web page and short affiliate code are not available under the ClickBank program.

"Why would I want to use a shorter code instead of the long ones in the affiliate control panel?"

Here are just a few examples of where you might want to use the short http://www.layguide.com/xxx/yourname version of your affiliate code instead of the long http://www.layguide.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=yourname version showed in your affiliate control panel:

When recommending the site on the fly - in an e-mail, in a chatroom, in a conversation etc. Whenever you need to recommend the site spontaneously, you can't bother with remembering or looking up, and then either typing or explaining the long version of the code. The short http://www.layguide.com/xxx/yourname is easy to remember and easy to pass on. And it will track your commissions just as well.
When you want to increase the appeal of your link. Some people are suspicious of long codes, to the point of not clicking on them. Some are especially suspicious if they detect an affiliate link - they think you have a stake in the site you're recommending and thus your recommendation is not objective. This of course isn't true when recommending LayGuide:) But instead of explaining that you could just provide a shorter link.
Where space is limited - for example when posting a small ad in a classifieds page.
If you don't have a website. The bulkyness of the long code does not pose a problem when you can code it directly into HTML. But outside HTML you will most probably want to use something simpler. So if you don't have a website, a website has been pre-created for you - you can start earning instantly by referring people to it. And even if you do have a website, the simpler URL is still a lifesaver - in the signature of your e-mail, when posting to FFA pages, in classifieds (see Tips & Tricks for more possibilities).

"How can I modify my free http://www.layguide.com/xxx/myname web-page?"

You can't modify it directly. But if you wish, you can send me the index.html file you'd like to see in place of your generic page. I'll add your affiliate code to the page and you can have a personalized commission-tracking LayGuide web-page this way:)

"I changed my name, URL and sitename but the changes aren't reflected on the free web-page. Why?"

For the changes in your user info to be reflected in your free web-page, I'd have to recompile all the free web-pages. If you wish to have your changes reflected on your page, mail me here - - and I'll do the recompilation.