Affiliate Program Tutorials

Table of Contents:

1. About the Affiliate Program ........................................................................................................3

1.1 How to use these tutorials ............................................................................................................ 3

1.2 What is the Affiliate Program?...................................................................................................... 4
1.3 Who is the Affiliate Program for? ................................................................................................. 5
1.4 How does the Affiliate Program work? ......................................................................................... 6
1.5 How are Commissions Calculated? ............................................................................................... 7
1.6 What is the Affiliate Control Panel? .............................................................................................. 8
1.7 Where do you go for help and support?....................................................................................... 9

2. Getting Started ......................................................................................................................... 10

2.1 Incremental Growth Strategy ..................................................................................................... 10

2.2 Simple Text Links ......................................................................................................................... 12
2.3 More on Text Links ...................................................................................................................... 14
2.4 The Label Parameter ................................................................................................................... 16
2.5 Deep Linking ................................................................................................................................ 18
2.6 Deep Linking Strategies............................................................................................................... 21
2.7 Advanced Deep Linking ............................................................................................................... 23
2.8 Banners ....................................................................................................................................... 25

3. Search Boxes ............................................................................................................................ 27

3.1 Introduction to Search Boxes ...................................................................................................... 27

3.2 Search Box Settings ..................................................................................................................... 28
3.3 Customising a Search Box ........................................................................................................... 30
3.4 Build Your Own Search Box ......................................................................................................... 32
3.5 White-Label Search Box .............................................................................................................. 38
3.6 Search Box Strategies.................................................................................................................. 42
3.7 WordPress Plugin ........................................................................................................................ 44
4. Private Branding ....................................................................................................................... 46

4.1 What is Private Branding? ........................................................................................................... 46

4.2 Why use Private Branding? ......................................................................................................... 48
4.3 Creating a Private Branding Template ........................................................................................ 49
4.4 Simple Private Branding Customisations .................................................................................... 52
4.5 Introduction to Custom HTML .................................................................................................... 56
4.6 Proper Testing Procedure ........................................................................................................... 58
4.7 Linking to your Private Branding Template................................................................................. 60
4.8 Setting up a Custom URL............................................................................................................. 62
4.9 Private Branding Limitations ....................................................................................................... 66

5. Private Branding Masterclass .................................................................................................... 68

5.1 Custom HTML Logo and Colours ................................................................................................. 68

5.2 Custom Navigation Options ........................................................................................................ 71
5.3 Manipulating Visual Elements with CSS...................................................................................... 75
5.4 CSS Structure of Page Elements .................................................................................................. 77
5.5 Third-Party Code - Ads or Tracking ............................................................................................. 81

Appendix: ........................................................................................................................................ 83

Language Codes: ..................................................................................................................................... 83

Country Codes:........................................................................................................................................ 84
Currency Codes: ...................................................................................................................................... 87
White-Label Search Box Stylesheets: ...................................................................................................... 90
 1. About the Affiliate Program

1.1 How to use these tutorials

Welcome to the HotelsCombined Affiliate Program Tutorials! These tutorials are designed to teach you
about the Affiliate Program and how to use its features to maximise your commission earnings. This
brief introduction will introduce you to the tutorials, and will explain how you can use them in the most
efficient manner. Remember, our success as a business relies on your success as an Affiliate, so we are
committed to helping you grow your online profits as much as possible.

Our first suggestion is that you don't read these tutorials from start to finish. This is a long document, so
you would waste a lot of time trying to read it all in one sitting. Also, a lot of the information probably
won't apply to you until you reach the required level of experience. Depending on your own strategies,
some of the information won't even apply to you at all.

Instead, we suggest you skim through section 1, to form a basic foundation of the Affiliate Program,
then jump straight to the individual tutorials that interest you most. Each tutorial is a short lesson about
one particular point only, which makes it a perfect, "bite-sized chunk" of knowledge for you to digest.
Once you learn the lesson and have experience putting it into practice, you can return to these tutorials
and learn another one.

In many cases, the tutorials in a section build on each other. If you have the patience and commitment,
you will benefit from reading a whole section of tutorials in order. Still, this is not always important, so
feel free to just read the tutorial you're most interested in and only go back to the previous one if there
are any points you feel you need clarified.

For example, if you have a WordPress site you may just want to jump straight to the "WordPress Plugin"
tutorial without reading anything else. Alternatively, if you want to read the "Advanced Deep Linking"
tutorial, you should probably read the "Deep Linking" tutorial first, to get an understanding about the
concept of Deep Linking and how our Affiliate Program allows you to achieve it.

So even though this document appears long at first, we hope you feel comfortable enough to explore it,
one tutorial at a time, and in no particular order. Each tutorial should only take a few minutes to read,
but the information you learn could help you achieve the next level of success in your online business.
We hope that, beyond anything else, these tutorials are a pleasure to read, and answer your questions
about the HotelsCombined Affiliate Program.
 1.2 What is the Affiliate Program?

The HotelsCombined Affiliate Program is a system that adds a powerful Hotel Price Comparison feature
to your website, and allows you to make money by helping people book hotel rooms with our suppliers.

The www.HotelsCombined.com website provides the ability to compare hotel room prices across many
of the most competitive hotel suppliers on the Internet. We believe this is a very useful service, and
we're sure that most of our visitors will agree. The problem is that not everyone knows about our
website, so not everyone will know to use our service when they want to book a hotel.

This is where you come in. You can use the Affiliate Program to help bring our service to all the people
who don't know about it, by placing our links on your website. You can also rebrand our service and
integrate it into your website, to bring this useful feature to visitors under your own logo. Our aim is to
make it as easy as possible for anyone on the Internet to book their hotel rooms at the best possible
rates, and we invite you to share this goal.

Of course this also represents a business opportunity. Our suppliers pay us commissions for referring
visitors to their sites, and we in turn want to share these commissions with you. The Affiliate Program is
the system we use to provide you with this opportunity, and to track all the earnings that you generate.
So by helping people find the cheapest hotel rates, you also stand to make yourself a lot of money.

The Affiliate Program is therefore several things. It is a method of bringing our hotel price comparison
service to the world through your website, and it is also a way for your website to earn some extra
money. Together, these goals make the Affiliate Program the ideal method to grow both our Internet
Businesses together.
 1.3 Who is the Affiliate Program for?

The HotelsCombined Affiliate Program is for anyone who is interested in making money online from
travel-related Internet traffic.

If you own or run a travel-related website, you could earn some extra money by offering our hotel price
comparison services to your visitors. By placing our Affiliate Links on your website, you stand to earn a
commission each time one of your visitors clicks through and uses our services. We can even integrate
our services in a way that allows your visitors to return to your website if we don't provide what they're
looking for.

If you are an Internet Marketer, you may know other methods of attracting visitors to our website.
These may include Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which includes Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, or
any number of more obscure methods; like article submission, directory listings, paid linking, and more.
Experienced Internet Marketers can quickly make money with little or no startup cost, just by using our
Affiliate Program.

If you run your own subscription-based newsletter, forum, web log (blog), RSS feed, YouTube channel,
newsgroup, or other system that has a regular audience that is interested in travel, you can also benefit
from our Affiliate Program. Our goal is to attract as many new visitors to our website as possible, so just
about any method you have of reaching a new audience can work. We just like to steer away from
anything that is defamatory, adult or otherwise offensive in nature.

Just about anyone who has an active Internet-based audience that is interested in travel can benefit
from the HotelsCombined Affiliate Program. Just be sure to check our Trademark Policy before using
any promotional method that doesn't use your own website.
 1.4 How does the Affiliate Program work?

HotelsCombined earns revenue each time a visitor clicks through to a supplier's website, so when this
happens we pay a portion of that revenue back to you as commission.

The first step is to track which visitors you send to our website. This is done with the Affiliate Links we
provide through the Affiliate Control Panel. Each Affiliate Link includes your unique Affiliate ID, and it is
this Affiliate ID that allows our servers to track your visitors.

Whenever a visitor clicks on your Affiliate Link, your Affiliate ID is copied into a tracking cookie on their
browser. This tracking cookie can last for up to 365 days. Whenever the visitor returns to our website
during that time, even if it's not directly through one of your Affiliate Links, we can still track any
revenue they generate, to pay a share of it to you as commission.

So visitors follow your Affiliate Links to land on our website, but at this stage no one earns any money.
HotelsCombined earns revenue only when visitors click through to our suppliers, so this when you earn
your share of the commission. When a visitor clicks through to one of our suppliers, it is called a "Lead".

There are two types of Leads:

1. Hotel Leads, and

2. Ad Leads (ads are currently not displayed on our website, but they may be in the future).

A Hotel Lead is when the visitor clicks through to one of our hotel suppliers. This can only happen when
the visitor runs a search on our website for a particular set of check-in / check-out dates, and chooses a
supplier from our results list for each available hotel. Hotel Leads pay the highest commission, so these
are the ones you want to focus your efforts on.

An Ad Lead is when the visitor clicks on any advertisement (ad) we display on our webpages. Currently
there are no ads displayed on our website, but we previously displayed Google ads and we may again in
the future. Commissions for Ad Leads are relatively small, so they aren't usually worth the effort. Note
that you can choose to display your own ads on our website (using Private Branding), but these will have
to be tracked by your own systems, so they won't be reported as "Ad Leads" in the reports we provide.

Essentially all the outbound links on our website are to revenue-generating suppliers. Whether they are
hotel suppliers or advertisers, you still earn commission each time one of your visitors clicks out from
our website. Since these links usually open in a new window or browser tab, those visitors will still have
our website open in the background, to give them a chance to generate further Leads for you after they
finish with the first one.

So in summary, you send visitors to our website, and we present them with revenue-generating links to
our suppliers' websites. Each time your visitor clicks on one of those links, it is called a Lead, and you
earn a share of the revenue as commission.
 1.5 How are Commissions Calculated?

Commissions are paid for Leads only. This is a unique feature of our Affiliate Program that helps you
profit from your traffic faster, and in a more stable way, than with strategies that other websites offer.
This tutorial will explain how your commissions are calculated, and why our Lead-based strategy is much
better for your online business than other commission strategies.

Our website deals with 30+ suppliers at any one time. Each supplier has its own commission strategy
and its own reporting system limitations. It would be practically impossible to report on all these
different commission systems in a way that wasn't confusing, and still allowed you to easily measure the
value of your traffic.

This is why we use a simple per-Lead commission system instead. This system cleverly manages all the
different supplier revenues, and calculates the value of your commissions at the per-Lead level.

Some suppliers pay us for Leads already, which makes things easy for us. Other suppliers only pay us
when there is a booking. Our commission system converts this revenue into your per-Lead commissions
using a fair and simple formula:

Booking Conversion Lead

x =
Revenue Rate Value

This means that if a booking is worth $20 revenue, and your visitors make 1 booking for every 20 Leads
(conversion rate of 1 / 20 = 0.05), then your Lead values for this supplier will be $20 x 0.05 = $1.00 each.
Therefore if you start targetting more expensive hotel stays, or if your Lead-to-Booking conversion rate
increases, the value of your Leads for these suppliers will go up to match.

But suppliers who pay per-booking tend to pay us the month after the customer checks out of the hotel.
This can often be more than 6 months after the customer first visits our website! If you partner with
these suppliers yourself, you will have to wait this long for your commissions too. The beauty of our
Affiliate Program is that we calculate your commissions immediately, and pay you the following month
(when minimum thresholds are met).

Our commission system also properly takes into account our suppliers' various reporting limitations, so
your commissions can be reported in real time. This is another benefit that our Affiliate Program offers,
which makes it easier for you to measure the value of your traffic.

Overall, our per-Lead commission system is a fair and highly versatile way to calculate your earnings.
You can quickly and easily measure the value of your traffic, and you get paid much faster than our
suppliers can offer you themselves. Once you start earning commissions through our Affiliate Program,
you'll never want to use another hotel offer on your website again.
 1.6 What is the Affiliate Control Panel?

The Affiliate Control Panel (ACP), previously known as the Partner Management Area (PMA), is where
you administer your Affiliate Account.

You can log into the Affiliate Control Panel from two places:

1. The "Existing Affiliate Login" box on the "Affiliate" page of the HotelsCombined website
(http://www.hotelscombined.com/Affiliates.aspx), or
2. The standard login page (http://affiliates.hotelscombined.com/User/AffiliateLogin.aspx)

Just enter your email address and password into the appropriate fields and click the "Login" button to
continue. If you ever forget your password, both these login boxes include a password retrieval link that
will send your password to you via email.

The first screen that appears when you log in is the Main Page, which shows important, recent
information. The News section at the top of the screen shows important announcements from the
Support Team, and the Summary Report shows your account's performance over the last 7 days. Be
sure to read the announcements in the News section regularly, to stay up to date with developments.

You can find everything you need within a click or two of the Main Page, using the links that are
available throughout the Affiliate Control Panel. The links on the left of the screen allow you to navigate
through our various features and documentation. Also, a summary of your financial position appears
near the top-right corner of the screen, along with your Affiliate ID and the "Logout" link. If you have a
payment due this month, it will be displayed in red at the top of the page.

The navigation options on the left side of the page appear in groups:

1. The "My Account" links provide account-wide information and settings. This is where you
can update your contact and payment details, edit your Private Branding templates, or
return to the Affiliate Control Panel's Main page.
2. The "Build Links" section provides everything you need to build your own Affiliate Links. You
can build Text Links, Banners and Search Boxes. You can also access our Data Feeds here,
and read about the application process for the Web Services API.
3. The "Reports" links allow you to view your historical data. These links let you view your
account's financial performance over time, and also the payments that our Accounts
Department processed for you in the past.
4. The "Help" section provides important documentation and support information. This is
where you can find answers to your questions about the Affiliate Program, including our
legal Affiliate Agreement document, our FAQ section with Email Support Form, specific help
documents and these tutorials.

All Affiliates large and small use the same Affiliate Control Panel to administer their accounts and build
their Affiliate Links, so you should find it both simple to use and powerfully versatile.
 1.7 Where do you go for help and support?

We provide plenty of online documentation in the Affiliate Control Panel, or you can email us your
question and we will try to respond within 1 business day.

Our documentation was written, and is constantly updated, based on real

experience with real Affiliates like you. The best place to start when you
have a question is usually the FAQ page
(http://affiliates.hotelscombined.com/Tools/FAQ.aspx). This FAQ page
presents answers to the questions that are most commonly asked of the
Affiliate Support Team, arranged in groups to make it easier for you to find
the one you want.

There is also an email support form at the bottom of the FAQ page. You
can enter your question into this form, and we will respond to your
registered email address. You are also welcome to email the Affiliate
Support Team directly at Affiliate@HotelsCombined.com , but please try to
use your registered email address, or at least mention your Affiliate ID in
your message.

Note that email support is only currently offered in English. Still, through
the power of Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/) we will still
attempt to answer any queries that are presented in other languages. We
ask that you forgive any translation errors of this automated system.

In addition to our FAQ page and email support, there is also plenty of other
documentation available in the Affiliate Control Panel. The links in the
"Help" section of the left navigation bar are handy to clarify some of the
more important topics, including our Commission System and our
Trademark Policy. They also include a link to the Affiliate Agreement,
which you should familiarise yourself with.

And lastly, there is also important documentation on the pages that contain our other important
features. Some documentation is in paragraph form, and some appears in little popup Help links next to
the relevant features. We suggest that you explore the webpage when you run into difficulties, as you
may well find support right in front of you.

Overall, there is plenty of documentation to help you as you proceed through our various features, and
our Affiliate Support Team can supplement this information with their world-class email assistance.
 2. Getting Started

2.1 Incremental Growth Strategy

The first step towards a profitable Affiliate account is deciding on a successful growth strategy.
Successful Affiliates tend to start with a plan and stick to it, which gives them a goal to work towards
and helps them through any tough times. The "Incremental Growth Strategy" is a generic plan that
helps minimise risk while keeping you focussed on the most profitable elements of your work.

The general idea behind the "Incremental Growth Strategy" is to start with a simple implementation and
only move onto more advanced ones when you are confident your idea has merit. Our advanced
implementations can multiply your success, but they won't make a bad idea into a good one.

Here is a general outline of an Affiliate using this strategy:

1. Join the Affiliate Program, build a simple website (1-5 pages) and add a few Text Links,
Banners and/or Search Boxes.
2. Work on some simple promotion methods, to let people know about the site.
3. After a few weeks, analyse traffic trends and build more webpages around the more popular
topics (e.g. similar travel destinations, more content, etc.).
4. Try different promotional methods, such as Paid Search and SEO.
5. After a few more weeks, consider specialising the website (e.g. just focus on one country or
one type of holiday).
6. Try building a Private Branding template.
7. Keep adding more webpages around the most successful website ideas.
8. After a few months, try marketing a few pages to other languages or other source countries.
9. Try adding SEO-friendly content from the Data Feeds.
10. Ask for special reports from the Affiliate Support Team to help optimise your traffic.
11. etc.

There are many benefits to this simple strategy. First, it's easy to get started, so you don't stand to lose
much if you accidentally choose an unprofitable niche to target with your website. Second, Google
favours websites that grow organically rather than all at once, so you stand a better chance of appearing
high in their search results pages if you follow this method. And third, you only work at ideas that are
proven to work with your specific audience.

The opposite of the Incremental Growth Strategy is the "Field of Dreams" strategy, which is named after
the Kevin Costner movie. This is a "build it and they will come" strategy, where you attempt to build a
fully-functional website offline, and only publish it when it is completely ready. This strategy may work
for big companies with large marketing budgets, but it doesn't often work for smaller Affiliates.

The "Field of Dreams" strategy is NOT recommended for most Affiliates. It generally takes a lot of time
and costs a lot of money to build a complete website, so if it fails, your business may suffer badly. Also,
there is no feedback from the audience while you're building it, so you don't know whether or not
you're on the right track. And lastly, you can't tell how profitable your niche will be until you test it with
some traffic, so you may end up building a popular website that doesn't make any money.
Going back to the "Incremental Growth Strategy", we suggest you start small and work your way up.
Even advanced website developers will benefit from starting with a simple implementation before
committing to something more difficult, and even large companies will benefit from "market research"
to test how their audience will respond to their website before they start building it.

So before you contact the Support Team about help with the Data Feeds, and before you submit your
application for the Web Services API, remember that we strongly suggest you start by testing your traffic
with a simple implementation. The same goes for your promotional efforts, as a small marketing budget
is a smaller burden to lose on an unsuccessful idea than a large one. And remember, you can always
grow an idea more confidently once you've measured its initial success.
 2.2 Simple Text Links

The easiest way to start sending visitors to HotelsCombined is to use the Link Generator to build some
Affiliate Links, and then place them on your own website where visitors can click on them.

Start by logging into the Affiliate Control Panel, and clicking on the "Link Generator" link in the left
navigation bar. This will take you to the Link Generator page, as shown below:

This page is divided into two sections:

1. The top (options) section includes all the options and various settings you can choose from.
2. The bottom (results) section displays the resultant Affiliate Link in both HTML format and as
a normal URL.

We will explore the top section in later tutorials, so please ignore anything that isn't specifically
mentioned below.

If you use a WYSIWYG website builder such as FrontPage, WordPress or Dreamweaver, you will only
need the URL form of the Affiliate Link, at the bottom of the page. Simply copy the URL from the Link
Generator, and paste it into your webpage just like any other link.
If you build your webpages manually using a text editor, you may find our pre-built Affiliate Link more
useful. Simply add your anchor text into the "Anchor Text" field at the top of the page, and watch it
automatically create the entire set of HTML code in the "Link" field for you. Simply copy the entire
"Link" field into your webpage, and your Affiliate Link is complete.

So you see, building Affiliate Links is easy with our Link Generator. As a homework exercise, try building
your own Affiliate Links using the Link Generator, and see how easy they are to place on your webpages.
 2.3 More on Text Links

The Link Generator can be used to build much more than just Home Page links, as even the most
advanced integration methods make use of text links. In this tutorial, we'll go through the various
options that are available to you in options section of the Link Generator.

The first field we will explain is the Anchor Text. This is the text that will be shown on the Affiliate Link,
when you select the pre-built HTML Link in the results section (the normal URL won't be affected at all).
You are free to enter almost any anchor text you want into this field, and it will appear in the Affiliate
Link as the text your visitors will click on.

Be sure to choose suitable anchor text. For example, "Click Here to Compare Hotel Prices", "Click Here
to visit HotelsCombined" or "Find the Best Hotel Rates" are all suitable options. Anchor text like "Click
Here Now", "You'll Love This Website" or "Everything you need for Travel" are all inappropriate, as they
don't properly describe what the visitor will see when they click on the link.

Next is the Private Branding field. Private Branding will be explained in more detail in a later tutorial, so
all you need to know for now is that this field selects which of your templates that will be used on the
results page. Just leave it as "No Branding" for now so it can point to our HotelsCombined-branded
website.

The next option chooses the language of the results page. Note that this doesn't translate your anchor
text, or change the default language on your Private Branding template. This option simply sets the
language that the visitor will first see when the results page loads. English is selected by default, and
you are free to choose from the many other languages we offer.

The "Site" setting allows you to manually choose which variation of our domain name your link will use.
In most cases, you can simply leave it as HotelsCombined.com as this is the main domain name we use.
Still, in some situations, your visitors may respond better to a particular ccTLD (Country Code Top Level
Domain). For example, if you target France as your main traffic source, your visitors may respond better
to our HotelsCombined.fr domain name, as ".fr" is the native ccTLD for France.
The "Label" field is a freeform tracking parameter with a 15 character limit that you can set yourself.
This field is not required, so you can leave it blank if you want, but it does provide the potential for far
more information in the reports. For example, you can use the Label field to mark one of your Affiliate
Links "Home Page" and another "Hawaii Page". Then, your reports will be able to show you how well
each of these links performed, so you can better understand how profitable your pages are. The Label
parameter will be explained in more detail in a later tutorial.

There is also an "Open in New Window" checkbox. As the name suggests, this makes the pre-built HTML
Affiliate Link open in a new window or browser tab. This is often recommended when you don't use
Private Branding, so that your original website will remain open in the background while your visitor is
browsing our results. This increases the chance that when they are done on our site they will return to
yours, where they can continue to generate you revenue.

Finally, the "Deep Linking Options" at the top also provide additional functionality, but this will be
explained in a later tutorial. For now, just leave this as "Select Country", which means that Deep Linking
is switched off, and the Affiliate Link will simply point to our Home Page.

We hope you start to see that the Link Generator page does much more than just append your Affiliate
ID to our URLs. Once you master these various features, you will be well on your way towards building a
profitable Affiliate Marketing Online Business.
 2.4 The Label Parameter

The "Label" parameter is one of our most powerful tracking features. You can use the Label parameter
to track the performance of practically any traffic metric you want, to make it really easy to target the
most profitable ones with your future efforts. If you want to be successful with our Affiliate Program,
you need to know how to properly use the Label parameter in your Affiliate Links.

The Label parameter is a freeform, 15-character, tracking field you can insert into any Affiliate Link.
What this means is that you can add your own tracking text (up to 15 characters long) to any Text Link,
Banner or Search Box. Whenever someone clicks on that Affiliate Link and converts into a Lead, your
tracking text will appear in a special place in our reports. This lets you measure how much money you
earn from each of your Affiliate Links, so you can find out which ones work the best.

The easiest way to set the Label parameter is to use the tools in the Affiliate Control Panel when you
create your Affiliate Links. The Link Generator, Banners page and Search Boxes page all have "Label"
fields where you can manually enter tracking text for the Affiliate Link you're building. This is the easiest
method of adding the Label parameter to your Affiliate Links.

Use this method when you want to measure the performance of different webpages on your site, or of
different Affiliate Links on your webpage. If you have your own web analytics software, you can
measure the number of visitors to a page, and compare it with our reports of your profits for that Label,
to see how profitable your page is for each visitor who sees it. Alternatively, you can see how much
profit you made from each Affiliate Link's Label on the page, to find out which one works best, so you
can create more like it.

After you create a few Affiliate Links with Label parameters, you will probably notice that the Label
appears in the URL as "&Label=" followed by your tracking text. If you are careful not to change any of
the other parts of the URL, you may want to add the Label parameter to your Affiliate Links manually, or
else write a script to automate the process for you. The main benefit is that you can start tracking
different traffic metrics, other than just which Affiliate Link your visitor clicked on.
Experienced Affiliates will immediately see the potential benefits of this idea. For example, you can use
the Label field to track which keyword a visitor searched for in a Paid Search campaign, which
advertisement they clicked on in an AdGroup, or which traffic source they arrived from. All you have to
do is encode or abbreviate your information into a string of 15 characters and write a simple script to
pass that string into your Affiliate Links as the Label parameter.

Advanced Affiliates will take another step and see that the Label parameter can be used to store a
unique identifier for retrieving additional information from their database. There are no limits on how
many different Label values you can have, so you can easily use it to store a database key or click-log ID
that lets you access all the other information your website already stores for that visitor's session.

For example, you can track a visitor through your website, then place their server session ID (hashed to
15 characters) into all the Affiliate Links you present them on your site. If that visitor clicks through to
our website and generates any Leads, you'll be able to report on them separately, just by looking at the
Label field in our reports. You can then cross-reference our reports with your own database, to see how
many Leads and how much commission that visitor earned for you during that session.

If your tracking software includes heat-map capabilities, you will have unparalleled visibility into your
visitors' activities on your site. You could literally watch recordings of them browsing your pages, to see
how each layout affects their progress through your site. Note that Private Branding could also
accommodate your heat-map software, for complete end-to-end tracking of your visitors.

The main reason you would want this level of detail in your reporting is to optimise your website. If you
know how well each part of each page performs, you can compare them to find out what works and
what doesn't work, so you can improve the overall performance of your website. If you're creative
about how you layout the pages you want to compare, you will learn a lot about the way your visitors
like to use your website.

So overall, the Label parameter can be used as a simple way to track the performance of individual
Affiliate Links and/or individual webpages, or it can be used to almost limitlessly track every detail of a
visitor's progress through your website. The level of detail you choose to track is up to you, but either
way it will give you invaluable insight into your visitors' actions, that will definitely help you improve the
overall profitability of your website.
 2.5 Deep Linking

Linking to our Home Page is a great way to start out, but often it is more profitable to send each visitor
straight to the webpage of the city or hotel they are most interested in. This is known as "Deep Linking",
because you link to a page that is deep within our site structure.

The Link Generator is again the best way to build these Deep Links. Much of our website runs on
cookies and server session variables, so most of the time you cannot simply copy the URL from the
Address Bar and use it to build an Affiliate Link. This is also why, until you start using advanced
techniques based on our Data Feeds, you should always use the Link Generator to build your Affiliate
Links (Home Page Links and Deep Links).

Deep Linking works best when you want to place your Affiliate Link on a webpage that already targets a
particular travel destination. For example, if your webpage talks about Hotels in Sydney, your visitors
will probably appreciate being linked straight to our Sydney Page. If your webpage lists various hotels in
Sydney, you may want to place a link to each of those hotels right next to their description too.

To achieve this, start by going to the Link Generator and setting up all your usual options (Anchor Text,
Language, Label, etc.). Then use the "Deep Linking Options" to the right of the page to select the
country, city and/or hotel you desire. As soon as you make a selection, it will update the Affiliate Link in
the results section of the page.
You can build your Deep Links to point to any Country Page, any City Page or any Hotel Page on our
website. There are no limits on which you can choose, but the following points will act as a guide to
help you make the most successful decisions:

 Try not to link to Country Pages very often. Most of the time this won't help your visitors
very much, because they will still have to search through a long list to find their chosen city.
Instead, try building a country page on your own website, and filling it with Deep Links to
our City Pages.

 When linking to a City Page, start by copying the URL into your browser, to test that there
are enough active hotels in the city. Don't run a search on that page (i.e. don't enter check-
in / check-out dates), just look down the list of hotels and count how many list a price in the
"Lowest Price" field. The hotels with a price are the active ones, and are the only ones likely
to offer any rooms to book. Inactive hotels generally can't earn you any commissions, so we
recommend you only link to a City Page if there are at least 5 active hotels in that city.

 Only link to a Hotel Page when it is appropriate. For example, if you list one or more of your
favourite hotels on your website, you could place a Deep Link to each Hotel Page right next
to each listing. You should still check (as per the above point) that each is an active hotel
first. It may be inappropriate to Deep Link to a Hotel Page when you don't first introduce
the hotel on your own webpage, so in these cases you may want to consider using a Deep
Link to a City Page instead.

 With Deep Links, as with Home Page Text Links, the Anchor Text is very important. You
should be certain that the Anchor Text clearly lets your visitors know what to expect when
they follow the link. So for example, instead of just using "Click Here", you should try using
something more descriptive, like "Click Here for Sydney Hotels" or "Get Rates for the Hilton
Hotel Sydney".

 The Label parameter will greatly help you improve the performance of your Deep Links. If
you use the Label field to identify each of your Deep Links, you will be able to see in your
reports which ones are profitable and which ones aren't. This will help you remove the non-
performing ones and focus your efforts only on the profitable ones.
Learning how to effectively use Deep Links will be greatly rewarding for you. Effective Deep Linking
strategies are what separate highly successful Affiliates from mere hobbyists. We urge you to keep
testing and growing your Deep Linking skills; including learning how to use the Label field to properly
track your progress. As an exercise, try placing at least a dozen highly relevant Deep Links on your
website today.
 2.6 Deep Linking Strategies

There are many effective strategies that use Deep Links. Each has its own costs and benefits, so it's up
to you to decide which one to use. This tutorial will outline a few of the more common strategies, to
give you a taste of the options available to you.

Linking to Countries or States (when available):

You can use the Link Generator to build a link to each of the countries (or states) your website supports.
In general, this strategy isn't very effective, because it leaves your visitor several steps away from your
commission-earning links. It can, however, be a useful strategy if you display the country links in an
interesting manner, such as embedding them into a map of the world or a major continent.

Linking to Cities:

Deep Linking to City pages is often an effective strategy, as long as the links are relevant to your visitors.
The following list shows a few different strategies that work well with city links:

 Generic pages can link to any city. Generic "Hotel Search" or "Accommodation" pages can
include a list of "Popular Cities", arranged by country, continent or number of hotels. This
helps give people ideas when they start searching for travel destinations.

 Country pages can link to their own cities. For example, a page about France could easily
include a link to "Paris Hotels". Similarly, there would probably not be any reason to link to
any cities outside the country. Most countries have lots of cities, so we recommend you
only select the largest ones, or else link to them in a creative way that helps your visitors
easily find the ones they're looking for.

 Region pages can link to cities within their limits. You may build a webpage for any "region",
including a state, province, island, mountain range, agricultural area (e.g. wine region),
coastline, resource-producing area (e.g. mining towns), or any other grouping you desire.
Each city that forms part of the "region" can have its own Deep Link on that page.

 Destination-specific websites can link to their cities in global navigation. If your website is
specifically about travel to a particular part of the world only, you may want to link to the
relevant City pages right from your global navigation bar.

 City pages can link to nearby cities. Often people are interested in neighbouring towns or
cities. This is especially true when hotels in nearby cities are cheaper and still within easy
commuting distance. We recommend you place these links out of the way, such as at the
bottom of the page, because they generally won't attract too many clicks and might in fact
confuse people a bit.

 Hotel pages can link back to their parent city. Each hotel page should only link back to the
hotel's city, and not to any other cities. This will be useful to your visitors, and can in fact be
used in your "Breadcrumb Trail" navigation links.
  Maps can link to cities. Our Geography Data Feed includes a list of all the cities we support,
along with their latitude/longitude geo-coordinates. You are free to use this data to plot our
cities on a map, if you feel it will benefit your visitors.

 Article pages can link to cities they mention. If you write an article about a trip to Tokyo,
you might as well include a Deep Link to the Tokyo City page. When people read your article
and are inspired to travel there, they can click on your Deep Link and earn you commission.

 Events pages can link to the host cities. Any pages that list various events (conferences,
festivals, trade shows, etc.) can of course link to the cities that host those events. This will
help your visitors to book hotel rooms if they need to travel far to the events.

There are of course other webpages that would be suitable for placing city-specific Deep Links, but we'll
leave it up to your imagination. The main idea to remember is that city links should be directly relevant
to the rest of the content on the pages where you place them. If you keep this in mind, your city links
will be helpful to your visitors and profitable for your Affiliate earnings.

Linking to Hotels:

It is often difficult to find suitable webpages to place hotel-specific Deep Links that are profitable for you
and useful to your visitors. Your visitors generally know their destination city before they arrive at your
website, but often don't know anything about the hotel they will end up choosing. This is why you need
to be careful about placement of your hotel links.

One way to display your hotel links is on a webpage about a single city. Just like our City page, you can
place your hotel links in a list, along with an image and a bit of information about the hotel (from the
Data Feeds). The main benefit of this strategy is that it may help your SEO ranking on keywords that
relate to the city name, which may have a flow-on effect to other pages on your website.

Another place to display your hotel links is alongside articles and useful information about the hotels.
We recommend that your content differs from our own, so your visitors find value in clicking on the link.
If your webpage has at least a few paragraphs about each hotel, you may measure profitable results
with as little as 2 or 3 hotel links on each page. Still, visitors tend to convert better when they have at
least 5 or 6 available hotels to choose from.

In general, the most profitable place for hotel-specific Deep Links is on article pages that only mention
the hotel's name in passing. This is usually enough to trigger the curiosity of your visitors, without
appearing too aggressive. The main shortfall of this strategy is that the article needs to know something
specific about the hotel, which generally limits it to places where the author has actually stayed.

Overall:

The most important point to remember when Deep Linking is to make sure your Deep Links are relevant
to your visitors. This is best achieved by relating your links directly to the rest of your page's content,
and by keeping your webpages tightly related to each other. In time, this idea will benefit your website
as much as it benefits your Affiliate Links.
 2.7 Advanced Deep Linking

Sometimes you will encounter highly specialised circumstances that require very specific Deep Links.
For example, instead of linking straight to our standard City page, you may want to pre-populate a few
of the filtering or sorting criteria to be more relevant to the page you're linking from. In these cases, we
ask that you follow the procedure in this tutorial to generate your Deep Links, as it is the best way to
ensure they will function as expected and track all your commissions properly.

Note that this is an advanced method that most Affiliates will probably never need to use. We advise
you to skip this tutorial for now, and only return to it if advised by the Affiliate Support Team.

First, begin with a normal Affiliate Link to your target page. We recommend you use the Link Generator
in the Affiliate Control Panel to get started. Here is an example of a link to the Sydney City page:

http://www.hotelscombined.com/City/Sydney.htm?a_aid=12476&brandId=35577&label=TestLabel

You'll notice that this is essentially a link to our normal Sydney City page, but that it also includes the
various Affiliate parameters after a question mark ('?'). Click on the Affiliate Link, or else copy-and-paste
it into your browser's Address Bar. You'll notice that the Affiliate parameters disappear from your
browser's Address Bar and you are left with just the standard Sydney City page URL:

http://www.hotelscombined.com/City/Sydney.htm

This is because the Affiliate parameters get stored in the browser's tracking cookie. This is an important
point that we will return to by the end of this tutorial. Note that there might be some new parameters
added to this URL (such as LanguageCode), but this is nothing to be concerned about just yet.

Next, click on the filtering or sorting options you want to pre-populate for your website's visitors. For
example, I selected "5km from Bondi Beach" in the "Location Distance" section. I then set the maximum
price to $500 and sorted the results by price (low to high). This left 54 of 379 hotels.

Note that I didn't select any search criteria, such as Check-in / Check-out dates, Guests or Rooms. It is
against the Affiliate Agreement to pre-populate these parameters for your website's visitors.

Now, refresh the page (by hitting F5 on Windows or Command + R on Mac), then copy the URL from the
Address Bar into a normal text editor (like Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac). Here is the
example URL I'm working on so far:

http://www.hotelscombined.com/City.aspx?languageCode=EN&fileName=Sydney&pageIndex=0&lo
cationId=22&distance=5&currencyCode=AUD&Adults=1&Rooms=1&lowRate=10&highRate=500&ch
ainGroup=&chain=&chainGroupSwitch=0&open=1,2&pageSize=25&sort=MinRate-
asc&tabId=Details&rateTabId=rateViewSimple&view=hc_sr_summary

If you look closely, you will probably be able to see the parameters that set your selected sorts/filters.
In this example, the "5km from Bondi Beach" is set by the "&locationId=22&distance=5" parameters, the
maximum price of $500 is set by the "&highRate=500" parameter (this is directly related to the
"&currencyCode=AUD" parameter), and "sort by price" is set by the "&sort=MinRate-asc" parameter.
The rest of the parameters were automatically selected by the website to best match the country I'm in,
based on my computer's IP address. It is important that those parameters are also selected for your
end-users automatically, which is why you should remove any extraneous parameters at this stage.
Here is the same URL with extraneous parameters excluded:

http://www.hotelscombined.com/City.aspx?fileName=Sydney&locationId=22&distance=5&currency
Code=AUD& highRate=500&sort=MinRate-asc

Your shortened URL should still take you to the same page with the same filters selected. Still, because
our website relies heavily on cookies, the proper way to test your new Deep Link is to clear your cookies
and THEN try clicking on it. If you don't clear your cookies first, the link might only work because of the
data in your tracking cookie, which means it won't work for your visitors.

Clear your cookies and test your link now. If it doesn't work, return to the previous step and be more
careful about which parameters you remove.

Assuming your new Deep Link works, the last step is to add the Affiliate parameters that were stored in
the tracking cookie at the start of this tutorial. The Affiliate parameters always include your Affiliate ID,
and sometimes also include your Brand ID and/or your Label parameter. Also remember that URLs only
ever have one question mark ('?'), so you should use an ampersand ('&') to join the parameters instead.
Here is our example URL with the Affiliate Parameters added to the end:

http://www.hotelscombined.com/City.aspx?fileName=Sydney&locationId=22&distance=5&currency
Code=AUD&highRate=500&sort=MinRate-asc&a_aid=12476&brandId=35577&label=TestLabel

This is the completed Advanced Deep Link.

You can now place this link straight into your webpage, but we advise you stop and think about how
profitable it may or may not be for you. You should consider the following points:

 People like to see lots of hotels. If you limit the hotels too much with your pre-populated
filters, they may leave your site because they think you haven't got enough choice.
 By default, our website sorts hotels by popularity. We find this to be the most profitable
sort order. If you change the sort order, you may become less profitable overall.
 If you pre-filter the results, you need to make it very clear to your visitors when they click on
your link, or they will be upset. Make sure your anchor text clearly describes your filters.
 If you pre-filter by "Hotel Features", you should know that this field is not very reliable.
Most hotels don't maintain a reliable list of features in our database, which means that
often your filter will return incorrect results. We take all care but no responsibility for this.
 If you automatically generate your Advanced Deep Links using the Data Feeds, you should
first check that there are enough hotels on each results page. Sometimes your filters will
cause few or no hotels to display, which would be very unprofitable for you.

Overall, we generally don't recommend you use this Advanced Deep Linking strategy at all. This tutorial
was only included for the sake of completeness and because there are a few cases where such a strategy
is warranted. We suggest you check with the Affiliate Support Team before attempting this strategy.
 2.8 Banners

Banners are a popular advertising method on the Internet, but it can be tricky to use them correctly.
This tutorial will explain how to use the banners provided by the HotelsCombined Affiliate Program, and
will give you some strategies to think about before you decide to place them on your website.

The Banners Page is accessible by clicking on the "Banners" link in the left navigation bar of the Affiliate
Control Panel. The Banners Page contains all the Banners that we currently offer, including static,
animated and ones built in HTML.

There are only 2 options on the Banners page.

1. The first is the Label field, which is exactly the same as the Label field on the Link Generator
page. Hit the Apply button to send your Label into the Banner code. Again, this field is
optional, but we highly recommend you use it to measure the performance of each of your
Banners.

2. The second is the Language option, which lets you choose which set of Banners the page
provides for you. Changing the Language option changes the language used in the Banner
text, and also the language that is used on the HotelsCombined page it links to. We
currently provide at least a handful of Banners for each of over 20 different languages.

To place a Banner on your webpage, start by selecting a Label and a Language, then choose a Banner
from the list. All the HTML code you need is in a text box below the Banner. Just copy this HTML code
into your webpage where you want the Banner to appear.
The Banners we offer are mostly branded with our Trademark HotelsCombined logo and style, which
means they are not compatible with Private Branding. If you use Private Branding (explained in a later
tutorial) you will have to build your own Banners to promote your website.

Most Banners simply link to the HotelsCombined Home Page. This is because most of the Banners have
a generic message like "Save on Hotels", so it would be inappropriate to use a Deep Link instead. Before
you consider using a Deep Link on any Banner (whether one we supply or one you create yourself), it is
important to ensure that the message on the banner is very clear about what your visitor will see when
they click on it. This is just as important as using appropriate Anchor Text on your Text Links.

Most static and animated Banners are made up of a single image file. For copyright reasons, you are not
permitted to modify these image files at all, or host them on another server. There are a few banners
that are made up of a block of HTML elements, and you may modify these within reason, but this is an
advanced technique that may require you to use the Data Feeds. We suggest you contact the Support
Team if you plan to modify any of our Banners, so we can help you do it correctly.

The most important point to note is that excessive use of Banners can make a webpage look "spammy"
and untrustworthy. Most Internet users avoid clicking on Banners of any sort, which is why they
generally don't perform as well as other methods (such as Deep Linking). A key to effective marketing is
to have no more than 2 Banners on any one page, and to ensure they both advertise different suppliers
or products that are directly relevant to the rest of the content on your page.

Careful placement of Banners on your website can greatly increase the overall exposure of your Affiliate
Links to your audience, which in turn has the potential to increase your earnings from the Affiliate
Program. Banners are easy to install on your webpages, and add a splash of colour if you don't have
many images already, but try to avoid using too many, to keep your website looking respectable.
 3. Search Boxes

3.1 Introduction to Search Boxes

Search Boxes are probably the most effective way to send visitors to our website, because they send
pre-qualified visitors straight to our results pages, and leave behind everyone else for you to make
money from them by other means.

The main Search Boxes Page is available through the "Search Boxes" link in the left navigation bar of the
Affiliate Control Panel. This page lists all the available Search Box Widgets, with a preview of each. New
designs and translated options are added as they become available.

Some Search Boxes are generic, in that they allow your visitors to search for any city in the world. Other
Search Boxes are city-specific or hotel-specific, in that you preselect the destination for your visitors.
Selecting the right kind of Search Box will be discussed in more detail in a later tutorial.

To install a particular Search Box onto your webpage, simply click the "Generate HTML Code" link. This
will open a new page for that particular Search Box, where you can apply your settings, preview the
outcome, and copy all the HTML code you need to paste into your webpage. This page will also be
discussed in more detail in a later tutorial.

Proper use of Search Boxes can be highly profitable for your online business, so it is worth the effort of
learning their successful strategies. At this stage, we suggest you start learning about Search Boxes by
placing a few on your website and watching how they perform.
 3.2 Search Box Settings

Once you select the Search Box you want, there are some additional steps to consider before copying
the HTML code into your webpage.

The main Search Boxes screen, available from the left navigation bar in the Affiliate Control Panel, only
displays a list of options with previews of each. You click on the "Generate HTML Code" link next to your
favourite one, to be displayed the options and HTML code for pasting it into your webpage. This page is
divided into 3 sections:

1. Settings - contains simple customisation options

2. Preview - shows the Search Box with customisations applied
3. HTML - provides the HTML code that you copy into your webpage

The Settings section contains several options:

 Affiliate ID - always your own Affiliate ID, and cannot be changed on this page
 Brand Redirection - the Private Branding template that will be used to display results to your
visitors (more on Private Branding in a later tutorial)
 Label - the tracking parameter that will track visitors who use this Search Box (more on the
Label Parameter in an earlier tutorial)
 Open in New Window - Check this box to show results in a new window
 Apply Changes - Apply your customisations to the Search Box in the Preview section

There are also some additional options that only appear for city-specific and hotel-specific Search Boxes:

 Country - when you choose a country, it populates the next field

 State - only appears when you choose United States or other country where we track the
state / province of the city
 City - selects the city that will be searched by this Search Box
 Hotel - (only for hotel-specific Search Boxes) selects the hotel that this Search Box targets
Most of these options are self-explanatory. We generally suggest that you go through them from top to
bottom, making sure that each setting is correct before moving onto the next one. This is especially
important when selecting a city or hotel, because you have to select the right country before the city
name appears, and the right city before the hotel name appears. The Brand Redirection option will be
explained in a later tutorial, so just leave it as "None" for now.

Once you select all your options, click the "Apply" button to see how they affect the Search Box in the
Preview section. If everything looks alright, simply copy the code from the HTML section into your
webpage, and publish it online.

As you can see, the options for each Search Box are fairly simple and self-explanatory. They are no more
complicated than the Link Generator page, which you should already be familiar with.
 3.3 Customising a Search Box

There are several different Search Box designs available in the Affiliate Control Panel. Still, you may
require a different size, shape or style to place on your webpage. In this case, the easiest solution is to
customise one of the Search Boxes we already offer by using your own CSS stylesheet.

The first step is to select a Search Box that most closely matches your requirements. The one you select
should be as close as possible to the correct size, because this will make it easier to apply your own
customisations later. You should also make sure that it has the kind of features you want, for example
can users type in a city name or is the Search Box already targetted to a single city or hotel?

You should then make sure that all the correct Search Box settings are configured. You will have to
choose which Private Branding template you will use for the results page, whether the results open in a
new window or the same one, and what the Label parameter will be. These settings are all explained in
a previous tutorial.

At this stage you should copy the Search Box code into your draft webpage. You will notice that the
Search Box code is just an HTML <iframe> tag. There are 3 parts of this tag that we will have to
manipulate to customise the Search Box:

1. the "width" attribute,

2. the "height" attribute, and
3. the "src" attribute.

The "width" and "height" attributes set the size and shape of the Search Box. You are free to adjust
them to fit the Search Box into your webpage, but you should be careful to allow enough space for the
calendar popup to appear when a visitor clicks on one of the date inputs. The calendar can only appear
within the boundary of the iframe.

The "src" attribute contains the URL of the Search Box's webpage on our server. Each parameter of this
URL influences the way the Search Box works. All you need to do to customise your Search Box is to add
the URL of your own CSS stylesheet to a new "CustomStyle" parameter. For example, here is the default
code for one of the Search Boxes:

<iframe frameborder="0" style="display:block;" width="300px"

height="246px"
src="http://www.hotelscombined.com/Affiliate/Widgets/300x246/default.as
px?a_aid=99999&languageCode=EN" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true"
></iframe>

Here is the same code with a new stylesheet added (highlighted in yellow):

<iframe frameborder="0" style="display:block;" width="300px"

height="246px"
src="http://www.hotelscombined.com/Affiliate/Widgets/300x246/default.as
px?a_aid=99999&languageCode=EN&customStyle=http://www.hotelscombined.co
m/Affiliate/Widgets/300x250/box.css" scrolling="no"
allowtransparency="true" ></iframe>
This particular example doesn't produce a good-looking Search Box, but it is only displayed here for
demonstration purposes. In practice, you will host your own CSS stylesheet on your own server, where
it can be accessed from wherever you place the Search Box.

Building this stylesheet may require time and patience, so we recommend you use a tool like Firebug.
Firebug is a plugin for the Firefox browser that helps identify all the key HTML, CSS and JavaScript code
that affects each element on a webpage. This will be a valuable tool for finding out the CSS class names
of each part of the Search Box, so you can create your own CSS code to adjust it how you see fit.

In general, this method of customising an iframe Search Box by using your own stylesheet is best used
when you only want to make minor adjustments to the style or shape. If you intend to fully revise the
way your Search Box functions or appears on the webpage, you would probably achieve better results
by reading the rest of the tutorials in this section.
 3.4 Build Your Own Search Box

Rather than using one of our pre-made Search Boxes, you may want to build your own from scratch.
This tutorial shows you how to build a Search Box from the ground up, which should give you the
freedom to create something unique and wonderful.

The main function of a Search Box is to generate the Search Results page URL. All other features like
calendar popups, auto-complete menu and "Popular Cities" links just support the generation of this URL.
This tutorial therefore focusses only on the complete and correct format of the Search Results page URL.

There are 4 different search scripts you can call with your Search Box. Each script behaves differently,
depending on what you want your visitors to search. Each has its own set of required and optional
parameters, and you can also choose from the list of common parameters below.

The scripts below are provided in the Standard URL format, but you are encouraged to replace these
with Private Branding Custom URLs where relevant. Instructions for using Private Branding Custom URLs
are provided in a later tutorial.

City Search:

URL: http://www.HotelsCombined.com/Search.aspx

This is the default "City Search" script. It is used when you want your visitors to type in their city name.
Visitors are directed to a "Disambiguation" page when there is more than one city with the same name.
The parameters for this script are:

Search: This required parameter is the search term (the name of the city you're searching for).
You must URL-encode this parameter to prevent transmission errors.
CountryCode: This optional parameter limits your search to a single country. You can only
choose from the 2-letter country codes in the appendix at the end of this document.

Instead of using the "Search" parameter you can optionally use geo-coordinates to search for a city.
Visitors will first land on a disambiguation page that lists all cities within the radius of the search, so it
isn't as user-friendly as the city name search above. If you want to use the geo-coordinate search, you
must replace the "Search" parameter with all 3 of the parameters below:
 Latitude: The Latitude coordinate in decimal format.
Longitude: The Longitude coordinate in decimal format.
Distance: The radius of the search in kilometres. The city centre must fall within this radius for
the city to appear in the results, so use a large enough value.

City Search (preselected):

URL: http://www.HotelsCombined.com/SearchResults.aspx

You use this search when you already have the city's file name preselected. Each city's file name is listed
in the Data Feeds, or you can use our auto-complete to select it on the fly. The auto-complete feature is
too complicated for this tutorial, so let's assume you preselected the city file name from the Data Feeds
to build a city-specific Search Box. These are the parameters for this search:

FileName: This is the complete and correct file name for the city. It is a required parameter and
it must be exactly correct for the search to work. Note that the city file name can be
hard to guess, so always check the Data Feeds for the correct value.

Hotel Search:

URL: http://www.HotelsCombined.com/HotelSearch.aspx

This is the "Search by Hotel Name" script. You probably won't ever need to use this script, but it's listed
here for the sake of completeness. Here are the parameters:

HotelName: This required parameter is the search term (the hotel name you're searching for).
You must URL-encode this parameter to prevent transmission errors.

Hotel Search (preselected):

URL: http://www.HotelsCombined.com/SearchedHotel.aspx

You only use this search when you already have the hotel's file name preselected from the Data Feeds.
There is no auto-complete feature for the hotel file name field. Use this search when you want to build
a hotel-specific Search Box. These are the parameters:

FileName: This is the complete and correct file name for the hotel. It is a required parameter.
Again, the hotel file name may be significantly different to the normal hotel name, so
always get the correct value from the Data Feeds. Note that this search will not work
using the Hotel ID, so be sure to use the hotel's file name.
Common Parameter List:

As well as the parameters specifically listed above, all of the search URLs will accept any or all of the
following optional parameters:

a_aid: This is your Affiliate ID. It is a required parameter if you use a HotelsCombined domain
name. It isn't necessary if you use a Private Branding Custom URL.

Brandid: This is your Private Branding Brand ID. It is only required if you use a HotelsCombined
domain name to send your visitors to one of your Private Branding templates. It isn't necessary if you
use a Private Branding Custom URL.

Label: This is the 15-character "Label" tracking parameter as used by all other Affiliate Links.
The Label parameter is explained in an earlier tutorial in the "Getting Started" section.

NOTE: The above parameters are common for ALL Affiliate Links, but are listed again here to remind
you to include them in your Search Box URL, so our servers can properly track your traffic.

Checkin: This is the check-in date. It must be entered in "YYYY-MM-DD" format. For example,
"the 16th of July, 2011" is represented by "2011-07-16". Remember not to use a default value for this
field or you may be in breach of the Affiliate Agreement.

Checkout: This is the check-out date. It also has to be entered in "YYYY-MM-DD" format.
Remember not to use a default value for this field or you may be in breach of the Affiliate Agreement.

NOTE: If you want your Search Box to send visitors to the Live Rates and Availability page, you need to
make sure that the "Checkin" and "Checkout" parameters are both properly set with valid dates.
Alternatively, if you're happy to send visitors to our Static City page, which just shows indicative prices
and doesn't include any commission-generating supplier links, you can leave these two parameters out
of your search.

Adults: This is the number of guests for the search. It must be an integer (a whole number)
from 1 to 10. We cannot search for more than 10 guests at a time. If this parameter is missing, a
default value of 1 will be used.
 Rooms: This is the number of rooms for the search. It must be an integer (a whole number)
from 1 to 5. We cannot search for more than 5 rooms at a time. If this parameter is missing, a default
value of 1 will be used.

CurrencyCode: This is the 3-character currency code for the search. You can see the complete
list of available currency codes in the "Currency Codes" appendix at the end of this document. If this
parameter is missing, our servers will try to identify which country the visitor is searching from, and then
use the default currency of that country.

LanguageCode: This is the 2-character language code for the search. You can see the complete
list of language codes in the "Language Codes" appendix at the end of this document. This parameter
determines the language of the search term. It also overrides the default language of the results page.
If this parameter is missing, we assume the search term is entered in the default language for the
domain name, and use the same language for the results page (you can set the default language for your
Private Branding template on the Private Branding Editor page).

Sort: This is the default search field used on the results page and/or the disambiguation page.
You can only use one of the following values in this field:

Sort Value Meaning

Popularity-Asc Least popular to most popular (not commonly used).
Popularity-Desc Most popular to least popular (default setting).
MinRate-Asc Least expensive to most expensive.
MinRate-desc Most expensive to least expensive.
Rating-Asc Lowest star rating to highest star rating.
Rating-Desc Highest star rating to lowest star rating.
Name-Asc Alphabetical order of accommodation name.
Name-Desc Reverse alphabetical order of accommodation name.
Distance-Asc Nearest to furtherest from city center.
Distance-Desc Furthest to nearest from city center (not common).

Note: There may be other parameters you can use for these search scripts, and there may be other
search scripts you can use too. Still, we recommend you avoid all other parameters and scripts that
aren't mentioned in this tutorial, because they may be outdated or experimental, and they may be
subject to change without notice.

Examples of Valid Search URLs:

The following examples show valid Search URLs that you may generate with your Search Box. Feel free
to click on these links to see how they work, but please don't click through to the suppliers' websites.
For the sake of example, "dummy" Affiliate ID and Brand ID values are used. Be careful when reading
URLs that wrap to the next line.

Search for the keyword "Sydney" without any dates:

http://www.HotelsCombined.com/Search.aspx?a_aid=99999&Search=Sydney
The same search using a Private Branding Custom URL:

http://www.HotelBargainHunter.com/Search.aspx?Search=Sydney

Search for the city of "Sydney" (in Australia), using the file name found in the "CityFileName" field of the
"Geography" Data Feed and no dates (note that the file name for the city of Sydney in Canada is
"Sydney_Canada"):

http://www.HotelsCombined.com/SearchResults.aspx?a_aid=99999&FileName=Sydney

Search for a 2-night stay in Sydney (country unknown) for 2 people staying in 1 room and checking in on
the 22nd of September 2011 (note that a Label value is used to track this link):

http://www.HotelsCombined.com/Search.aspx?a_aid=99999&Search=Sydney&Adults=2&Room
s=1&Checkin=2011-09-22&Checkout=2011-09-24&Label=testlabel

Search for a 2-night stay in Sydney (country unknown) for 2 people staying in 1 room and checking in on
the 22nd of September 2011, searching in Russian (the Russian word for "Sydney" is "Сидней") in Euros:

http://www.HotelsCombined.com/Search.aspx?a_aid=99999&Search=Сидней&Adults=2&Roo
ms=1&Checkin=2011-09-22&Checkout=2011-09-24&Languagecode=RU&Currencycode=EUR

Another version of the same search (using the domain name to set the default language):

http://www.HotelsCombined.ru/Search.aspx?a_aid=99999&Search=Сидней&Adults=2&Rooms
=1&Checkin=2011-09-22&Checkout=2011-09-24&Currencycode=EUR

Search for a hotel called "Sydney Hilton" (note that the search term has been URL-encoded):

http://www.HotelsCombined.com/HotelSearch.aspx?a_aid=99999&HotelName=Sydney%20Hilt
on

Search for a 2-night stay at the "Hilton Hotel Sydney" (using the correct hotel file name) for 2 people
staying in 1 room and checking in on the 22nd of September 2011:

http://www.HotelsCombined.com/SearchedHotel.aspx?a_aid=99999&FileName=Hilton_Hotel_S
ydney&Adults=2&Rooms=1&Checkin=2011-09-22&Checkout=2011-09-24

So you see, building your own Search Box is just like building an Advanced Deep Link, because all the
important values are passed in through the parameters list. Make sure that your visitors enter their
Check-in / Check-out dates themselves, because it is prohibited to choose these dates for them.

What next?:

The next step is to build a "web form" that collects the required data from your visitor and uses it to
construct the results page URL. You can use a simple HTML <form></form> element with <input />
tags for each of the parameters. This will work best with the "GET" method.
You can also use a "web form builder" application to build the Search Box for you. If you don't already
have access to this kind of application, we suggest you search Google for an online one. There are many
good options on the Internet that will build your Search Box for you for free.

Once you have a functioning HTML Search Box, you may want to upgrade it with dynamic features like
calendar popups and autocomplete dropdowns. JavaScript calendar code is easy to find on the Internet,
but contact the Affiliate Support Team for instructions on the autocomplete dropdown menu.

You can even use Flash ActionScript to build a Flash-based Search Box. This is a more advanced option,
so be sure you know what you're doing before attempting this.

There aren't really any limitations to the way you build the web form itself, as long as you don't use
default check-in / check-out dates for your visitors' searches. We only suggest that the Search Box is
clearly labeled and placed on a travel-related webpage, so your visitors immediately know what it does
and are motivated to use it to book a hotel room.

Search Boxes can be a highly efficient method of attracting targetted visitors to your Affiliate Links.
Building your own Search Boxes can integrate your Affiliate Links more tightly into your website's design.
Tight integration like this can improve the end-user experience on your website, which will no doubt
translate to higher commission revenue, so you have more money in your pocket at the end of the day.
 3.5 White-Label Search Box

Building your own Search Box from scratch can be a time consuming process; especially when all you
want is to create a new design. A much better option is to start with a fully functioning Search Box, and
just apply your own design over the top. This is exactly what our white-label Search Box allows you to
achieve.

The general idea of the white-label Search Box is to take care of all the functional components, leaving
you with complete control over the way it looks. This means that all the input fields and complicated
JavaScript code are already written to your webpage, and all you have to do is apply the style with CSS.
All our HTML code is neatly arranged in a structure that is easy to work with, so you should find it very
easy to mould each element into the position you require.

Here is the base code that you need to copy into your webpage to get the blank Search Box to appear:

<script>
hcw_options = {};
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.hcsearchbox.com/affiliates.min.js"></script>

You will notice that this doesn't look like very much just yet. In fact, it will just look like a bit of a mess
until you start adding JavaScript options and CSS code.

There are two parts to this code:

1. The "hcw_options" JavaScript object: This is where you change the default settings of the
Search Box, such as how the city name is selected, how the calendar looks, what stylesheet
to use and what links appear in the "Popular Cities" list.

2. The linked JavaScript file: This is the script that does all the hard work. This file is hosted
on a very efficient "cloud server" that doesn't use our "HotelsCombined" trademark in the
domain name. This makes it compatible with Private Branding websites.

If you leave the "hcw_options" object empty, the Search Box will use default values for every setting.
The default settings are the most frequently used ones, so you may not need to change them yourself.
The only setting that is important to your design is the one that chooses your stylesheet. As an example,
try pasting the following code into a test webpage:

<script>
hcw_options = {
cssUrl: "http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Deals/Deals300x296.css"
};
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.hcsearchbox.com/affiliates.min.js"></script>
You will see that this one setting is all that's required to entirely change the way the Search Box looks.
Still, you shouldn't use this code on your real website yet, because it doesn't include your Affiliate ID!
You need to add your Affiliate ID and other important information to the "hcw_options" object.

Below is the list of settings you can use in the "hcw_options" object. Each setting includes its default
value and a full description. You can combine several settings together, but be careful of how they
interact with each other in the Search Box. Remember to place a comma after each setting but the last.

AffiliateID: (false) This is your Affiliate ID when you use Standard URLs. This is usually required,
except if you use Custom URLs.

BrandID: (false) This is your Private Branding Brand ID when you use Standard URLs. This is
usually required, except if you use Custom URLs.

Label: (false) This is the Label parameter that is used for tracking. The Label parameter is
explained in an earlier tutorial.

CustomURL: (false) This is your Private Branding Custom URL. It must include "http://" at the
start, without any folders or file names. This setting overrides the AffiliateID and
BrandID settings because your Custom URL already tracks these.

CSSURL: (false) This is the URL of the stylesheet you want to add to your Search Box. You must
use the full URL including the "http://" at the start. You can use your own stylesheet, or
you can choose one from the collection in the appendix at the end of this document.

ThemeCSSURL: ("http://www.hcsearchbox.com/jquery-ui-1.8.10.custom.css") This is the

"ThemeRoller" theme of the popup calendar widget and the autocomplete dropdown
menu. To customise this theme, please visit http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/

LanguageCode: ("EN") This is the language of the Search Box and the results page. You can
choose any two-letter language code from the "Language Codes" appendix at the end of
this document. This setting will automatically translate any default Search Box settings,
but you must manually translate any settings you changed yourself.

FileName: (false) This is the FileName of the city or hotel you want to target if you don't want
your visitors to type in their own. This setting creates city-specific and hotel-specific
Search Boxes. For hotel names, you must also set SearchSingleHotel to True.

SearchSingleHotel: (false) Set this value to True when the FileName setting refers to a hotel.
This setting creates a hotel-specific Search Box. Remember to hide the city name input.

CitiesPullDown: (false) This setting allows you to replace the "City Name" text input field with a
dropdown menu that only allows visitors to choose from the cities you present to them.
You add cities as "key: value" pairs, where the "key" is the city's display name, and the
"value" is the city's filename. Be sure to use a comma between each "key: value" pair.

TopTitle: ("") This is a heading that appears at the top of the Search Box. It is only required for
designs that don't include a heading in the background image.
BottomLinks: ({}) This is a list of additional text links you can add to the Search Box. Some
designs use this list to include links like "Browse All Properties" or "Search By Country".
You add new links as "key: value" pairs, where the "key" is the anchor text and the
"value" is the full URL.

PopularCities: ({ < 9 cities as described below > }) This is the list of "Popular Cities" links. There
are 9 cities selected by default: Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Rome, Bangkok, Las Vegas,
London, Singapore, Sydney and Madrid. You can replace these cities with new links as
"key: value" pairs, where the "key" is the anchor text and the "value" is the full URL.
Remember to place a comma between each "key: value" pair.

CityNameHelpText: ("City Name") This text appears in the City Name input field before the
visitor clicks it or starts entering anything.

CheckInHelpText: ("Check-in") This appears in the Check-In field before the visitor selects a
check-in date.

CheckOutHelpText: ("Check-out") This appears in the Check-Out field before the visitor selects
a check-out date.

DatePickerDateFormat: ("mm/dd/yyyy") This is the date format that is used for the Check-In
and Check-Out input fields. The default setting is US format for the English language.
Other languages may affect the date format unless you specify this setting. You can
learn more about this setting at http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker/

DatePickerFirstDay: (0) This decides what weekday is the start of the week in the calendar
widget. Enter 0 (zero) for Sunday or 1 for Monday.

NumCalendarPanes: (1) This is the number of months that will appear in the calendar popup
when the visitor clicks on the Check-In or Check-Out input fields.

MaxGuests: (9) This is the largest number of guests that will appear in the "Guests" dropdown.

MaxRooms: (4) This is the largest number of rooms that will appear in the "Rooms" dropdown.

SearchOpensNewWindow: (true) This decides if search results appear in a new window or not.
We recommend you only use a new window when linking to our branded website, and
open in the same window when using Private Branding.

LinksOpenNewWindow: (true) This decides if text links (such as Popular Cities links) open in a
new window or not.

DefaultSort: ("Popularity-Desc") This is the default sorting field of the results page. You can
choose any option from the table in the "Build Your Own Search Box" tutorial, but we
recommend you leave it empty, as the default sort is the one we've found to be the
most profitable for you.
Following is an example of how to use these settings to build your Search Box. In this example we
replaced the City Name input with a dropdown menu of Australian cities, and we made the calendar
better suited to Australian viewers. We also used a Custom URL instead of an Affiliate ID and Brand ID.

<script>
hcw_options = {
CustomURL: "http://www.hotelbargainhunter.com",
cssUrl:
"http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Deals/Deals300x296.css",
citiesPullDown: {
'Sydney': 'Sydney',
'Brisbane': 'Brisbane',
'Gold Coast': 'Gold_Coast',
'Byron Bay': 'Byron_Bay'
},
DatePickerDateFormat: 'dd-mm-yy',
DatePickerFirstDay: 1
};
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.hcsearchbox.com/affiliates.min.js"></script>

And here is what it looks like:

With a little practice, you will find it very easy to create your own Search Boxes for your webpages.
When building your Search Boxes, you may want to build your own stylesheets from scratch, or you may
prefer to reuse one of the designs in our collection. The full set of white-label Search Box stylesheets is
available in the Appendix of this document. Feel free to contribute your own designs to this collection
by emailing them to the Affiliate Support Team.
 3.6 Search Box Strategies

Search Boxes can be placed on almost any page of your website. They are fairly self-contained widgets,
but tend to perform better when they work hand-in-hand with the rest of your webpage's content. This
tutorial will describe some of the more successful Search Box strategies you can use on your website.

Your main goal is to maximise the visibility and effectiveness of each Search Box. It is important for you
to introduce the Search Box to your visitors, so they can feel confident enough to use it. This is usually
as simple as including a sentence on your page such as "Search hotel prices across 30+ suppliers at once,
using the Search Box on this webpage".

Search Boxes are classed as a very non-aggressive linking strategy. This means they only attract visitors
away from your website when those visitors are really interested in our product. The beauty of this is
that any visitors who aren't interested in our product will remain on your website, where you can
market other goods and services to them instead.

To make best use of a non-aggressive linking strategy like Search Boxes, you should be prepared with
other products, services, affiliate offers and/or advertisements for your visitors to click on. This works
best when you have a diverse website, such as one that focusses on all areas of travel, rather than just
hotels. Be sure to use your HotelsCombined Search Boxes on all your hotel and accommodation pages.
You may then want to partner with www.SkyScanner.net for your flights pages, and
www.CarTrawler.com for your car hire pages.

The other benefit of Search Boxes as a non-aggressive linking strategy is that they result in very good
Visitor-to-Lead conversion rates, and often also higher than average Lead Values. To make best use of
this, you should try to stick with other non-aggressive linking strategies and high quality traffic sources.
If you try mixing in overly-aggressive linking strategies (popups, popunders, etc.) and/or poor-quality
traffic sources (second-tier paid search, social media, etc.), it will dilute your traffic's inherent value, and
result in mediocre results overall.

Customisations need to be carefully considered with an open mind. If you use HotelsCombined-branded
Search Boxes, your visitors will treat them the same way as an advertisement on your site. For example,
if you have a relatively unknown website, the Search Box will benefit from the strength of our brand.
Conversely, if your visitors trust your brand more than ours, they may be wary of clicking away from it
using the HotelsCombined-branded Search Box, and stay on your site instead.

Therefore, if you're a website owner who's looking to build your brand, customised Search Boxes will
help convince your visitors that the search is just another feature you offer them. If the Search Box fits
with the rest of the style of your website, your visitors will use it without a thought. This solution is
most successful when used in conjunction with Private Branding, which will be discussed further in a
later tutorial.

It is also important to know when to use generic Search Boxes and when to use city-specific or hotel-
specific ones. In general, this decision is based only on the content of the webpage where you want to
place your Search Box. No other webpages are important in this decision, so it is highly likely that your
website will eventually include a mix of generic and specific Search Boxes throughout its pages.
For webpages that contain general travel-related or country-specific content, your best bet is to use a
generic Search Box. If your content is just about a single city or a single hotel, the Search Box can be set
to target that specific city or hotel. So if your visitor is reading about Paris, it goes without saying that
the Search Box should only target Parisian hotels. If you have any doubts, just look at how the Search
Boxes work on the www.HotelsCombined.com website.

There will often be cases where your webpage targets a small country, a region, or just a few cities. In
these cases, some Affiliates have had great success with modifying a generic Search Box to use a
dropdown list of cities rather than a generic text input field. We strongly support such creative ideas,
and the results speak for themselves. If you would like some help modifying a Search Box to use a
dropdown menu, please contact the Affiliate Support Team.

It is also a good idea to create "mashup" Search Boxes that combine different products. So for example
your Search Box could search for hotels by default, and at the click of a button it could search for flights
on www.SkyScanner.net , and with another click it could search for car hire on www.CarTrawler.com .
You could use tabs to toggle between different searches, or you could use buttons, or sliders, or any
number of more creative options.

Search Boxes have many other uses that involve our more advanced features (such as Private Branding
and the Data Feeds). These will be discussed in greater detail in later tutorials. In the meantime, we
suggest that you experiment with some of the above strategies to build your experience. As you grow
more familiar with these strategies, return to this page and read it again, for tips on taking the next step
in your online business.
 3.7 WordPress Plugin

If you would like to place a Search Box on a WordPress website, we have another option for you. The
HotelsCombined Affiliate Program has its own WordPress Plugin that you can download and install with
a few simple clicks.

Start by downloading the Plugin file from the WordPress Plugin Directory, or from the following link:

http://assets.hotelscombined.com/hcsearch-wp-widget.zip

This ZIP file contains the PHP script for the plugin,
and also some screenshots and a ReadMe file to
help explain things to you. Feel free to go
through the ReadMe file to familiarise yourself
with the Plugin, but it isn't really necessary that
you unpack the ZIP file at all.

The next step is to log into your WordPress

Admin area and install the Plugin. The rest of
these instructions may change at the discretion of WordPress, so should be taken as a guide only.

In the "Plugins" section of the left navigation bar, click the "Add New" link. On the next page, click the
"Upload" link near the top of the page. On the Upload Page, click on "Choose File", select the
downloaded ZIP file from the directory structure, then click the "Install Now" button.

Once it finishes uploading and installing, you will have to

activate the Plugin. There is an "Activate Plugin" link on
the next page you can click on, but if you miss it, there
are other options. In the "Plugins" section of the left
navigation bar, click on "Installed", find the
HotelsCombined Plugin in the list, and click the
"Activate" link.

Once the Plugin is activated, you will need to place it on

your page and configure your settings. In the
"Appearance" section of the left navigation bar, click on
"Widgets". Drag the HotelsCombined Plugin, and drop it
where you want it to appear on your page. Click on it
again so you can edit its settings.

Most importantly, be sure to place your Affiliate ID in the

correct field, or else your commissions won't be tracked.
Similarly important are the Brand ID and Custom URL
fields if you use Private Branding (more in a later tutorial.
The Label field is for extra tracking, as the Link Generator
page. Use a catchy Title like "The Best Hotel Deals!",
choose your favourite Skin and hit "Save".
Once this is complete, you will see the HotelsCombined
WordPress Plugin as a Search Box on your website. This will allow
your visitors to search for hotel rates and availability for any city in
the world. They simply need to enter the city name, their check-in
/ check-out dates and the number of guests / rooms, and then hit
"Search".

Be sure to only place the Plugin on webpages that are directly

related to travel. Be sure to also introduce the Plugin to your
visitors, by mentioning HotelsCombined in your webpage's
content. We also recommend that you avoid placing too many
other advertisements on your webpage, so your visitors don't get
distracted away from the HotelsCombined Plugin.

The WordPress Plugin is one of the easiest ways to place a high-performing Affiliate Link on your
website. Your visitors will enjoy the simplicity of the Search feature, and they will appreciate having
access to such a great hotel price comparison tool right from your website. And the best part of all is
that you can start making money from your website or blog with very little effort at all.
 4. Private Branding

4.1 What is Private Branding?

Private Branding is a very powerful and versatile feature. Most successful Affiliates can attribute their
success to effective use of Private Branding, so it is a very important feature to learn about. Private
Branding is the bridge between beginner and intermediate skill levels, which is why we recommend you
feel confident about your knowledge of previous tutorials before moving on through these.

Private Branding is the white-label feature of the HotelsCombined Affiliate Program. "Private Branding"
and "white-label" both mean this is a feature that allows you to replace our "branding" (logos, colours,
style, even navigation) with your own. You can effectively turn our website into your own, and your
visitors will think you built it entirely yourself!

Your visitors will still have access to the same hotel price comparison service. The hotels and prices will
still be the same for their search. The filtering / sorting / paging functionality will still be the same. The
way that visitors click through the website will still be the same too. The only things to change will be
the visual style elements that give the website its distinct look and feel.

Note that Private Branding does NOT use iframes, like some other affiliate programs do. Iframes are
crude, inefficient and lack versatility. They also hinder browser cookies, user bookmarks and proper
page scrolling, which translates to up to 50% less revenue from the poor user experience. Instead, the
HotelsCombined Private Branding feature allows you to directly make changes to the HTML on our
pages, and then to host those changes on your own domain name, so you can benefit from the
complete range of website features and Affiliate functionality we offer.
Another way to think about Private Branding is that it provides you with a ready-made website for free.
Practically every page on the HotelsCombined website is affected by Private Branding, so you only have
to create a simple template to have your own complete website in minutes. This is most useful when
you want to focus only on your online marketing efforts, and don't want to worry yourself with building
a whole website. It also helps when you already have a brand you want to build.

Private Branding is essentially a template-based system for changing the look and feel of the
HotelsCombined website. By developing a template that is uniquely yours, you can create a unique
experience for your visitors when they search for hotel prices using our service. It is this "uniqueness"
that can turn your visitor experience into a wonderful one.
 4.2 Why use Private Branding?

There are several business and technical reasons why you may want to use the Private Branding feature.
The following list is by no means comprehensive, but it introduces some ideas that have been shared by
our more successful Affiliates. If you identify with any of the following reasons, we suggest you invest
some time and effort into learning about how Private Branding can be of use to you.

If you are an Internet Marketer and just want a ready-made website to start marketing, Private Branding
is for you. Just point a domain name to our servers and set up a simple Private Branding template for it.
This allows you to get around our Trademark Policy by completely avoiding the use of our brand. It also
frees you up to focus on traffic generation, rather than getting stuck with building and maintaining a
complete website.

If you want to build a large, popular website, you need to grow your brand. A great way to build your
brand is to use Private Branding to add a complete hotel price comparison section to your website. You
can build a Private Branding template easily from one of your current webpages, so by adding a few links
to your global navigation, you can almost instantly provide your visitors with our very useful service. By
giving your visitors what they want, you build trust in your brand, and your website's popularity grows.

If you own or run a website that already has a loyal audience, you can use Private Branding to improve
your Visitor-to-Lead conversion rate. Linking straight to our www.HotelsCombined.com website may
scare off some visitors. But if you display our results through a Private Branding template that looks just
like part of your website, they may be more likely to continue through to the hotel supplier's website
and earn you some commission.

If you want to have a hotel price comparison service on your website, but can't afford the expense of
building and maintaining one yourself, Private Branding is for you. It took over 5 years for us to build
and grow our service to where it is today, so you might as well use ours with a simple Private Branding
setup than try to build your own version of HotelsCombined. When we make improvements to our
service, your Private Branding website will automatically be updated, so this is the easiest way to avoid
expensive development and maintenance costs.

If you want to retain control of your visitors after they leave your website and arrive on ours, the
solution can again be found in Private Branding. All you have to do is place your website's navigation
links in your Private Branding template. Then, when your visitors finish using our service, they can easily
click back to the rest of your website where you can continue marketing other products and services to
them. This is especially useful for all-round travel websites that promote other travel-related products
such as airline tickets and car hire.

One of the only times that Private Branding isn't recommended is when you don't want to build a
professional-looking template and your own website is relatively small and unknown. In this case, it
may be better for you to link straight to our HotelsCombined-branded website, where you will benefit
from the strength of our brand.

Overall, Private Branding can fulfill a lot of general and specialised needs. The key to success is usually
in the amount of effort you put into building your template, but even a simple template can be an
effective strategy for your online business.
 4.3 Creating a Private Branding Template

The way you implement Private Branding is by building a template for each of your website designs.
There is no limit to the number of templates you can have in your Affiliate account, and this should
encourage you to experiment with different styles. The first step is of course to learn how to create a
single template.

Start by logging into the Affiliate Control Panel and clicking on the "Private Branding" link in the left
navigation bar. This will take you to the Private Branding Page, where you can view a list of all your
active templates. When you first arrive on this page it will say, "You have no private brands."

To create your first Private Branding template, click on the "Create a new Private Brand" link. This will
open the Private Branding Editor Page with default settings.

The very first field on this page will be "Brand Name". Choose a name for this template and enter it into
this field. The name of your template is usually the name of your website, rather than your domain
name. So for example, the domain name may be www.Google.com , but the name of the website is just
"Google". Further to this example, you may want to name the template "Google Hotels" to make it
more descriptive.

The rest of the settings are optional and will be discussed in a later tutorial. For now, just scroll down to
the bottom of the page and click the "Save" button. This will save your blank template and return you
to the Private Branding Page.
On the Private Branding Page you will see your new template listed in a table. You will see the Brand
Name you entered on the previous page, the Affiliate URL you can use to access this template in your
browser, an Edit link to take you back to the Private Branding Editor Page to make changes, and a Delete
link to remove this template entirely. We recommend that you never use the Delete link, as you can
continue receiving repeat visitors to your brand for up to 365 days due to the tracking cookie.

The Affiliate URL will only display a "Standard URL" at this stage. This is only the first step to creating a
complete Private Branding template, so you probably won't use this URL on your actual website. For
now, you should click on the Affiliate URL to see what your blank template looks like.
You may be surprised to see that only a Search Box appears on the page. When you consider the normal
HotelsCombined Home Page with all the branding removed, it is essentially just a Search Box, so this is
what a blank Private Branding template looks like.

The browser's Address Bar will simply show the URL as www.HotelsCombined.com , because your
Affiliate ID and Brand ID are stored in the tracking cookie. If you ever want to see the normal
HotelsCombined website after testing your Private Branding templates, all you need to do is clear your
browser's cookies and refresh the page with CTRL + F5. If this doesn't work, you may need to restart
your browser after clearing your cookies.

Note that Firefox has some plugins that make it easy to clear the cookies for one domain at a time. It
might be useful to download one of these plugins so you don't lose the settings from all your other
websites while you're building your Private Branding templates.

Essentially this is all that's needed to create a Private Branding template. If you want, you can start
promoting your blank template already, but it isn't advisable as your visitors might lose faith in the lack
of professionalism. Ideally, we advise you to continue straight onto the next tutorial where we explain
the simple customisations you can use to start personalising your template.
 4.4 Simple Private Branding Customisations

The Private Branding Editor Page includes a wide range of simple, selectable options for customising
your template. This tutorial explains these simple options, so you can prepare your template for the
more advanced methods we will explain later. You should familiarise yourself with these simple options
first, as they provide the ability to do things that aren't possible with the advanced methods.

Start by reaching the Private Branding Editor Page, either by creating a new template or by editing the
one we created in the previous tutorial. You will notice that the page is divided into 4 distinct sections:

1. General Settings - All the most important template settings. Each field has a "(help)" link to
explain what it does.
2. Custom HTML - All the advanced customisation methods use Custom HTML. This will be
explained in later tutorials.
3. Custom Images - Change some of the simple image files using the fields in this section.
4. Colours - A simple way to change the colour scheme of the template.

General Settings:

Brand Name - This is the name you give your template. This name will appear in place of
"HotelsCombined" on various webpages where a website name is required. Remember that a website's
name is different to the URL, so for example the www.Google.com website is simply called "Google".

Private Branding (Sub)Domain - This is the Custom URL you create for your template. Custom
URLs will be described in more detail in a later tutorial, so for now just leave this blank.

Default Site Language - This is the default language of the template. This language will be used
when there is no specific language parameter in the website URL. Note that changing this language
setting will not translate the text in your Custom HTML fields.
 Custom Home Page Link - This field allows you to override all the "Home" links on the Private
Branding website. If you place a URL in this field, all our "Home" links will point to your webpage
instead of the Private Branding Home Page. This is especially useful for making your Private Branding
website integrate better with your main website.

Show Navigation Path - This box selects whether or not to display the "Breadcrumb Trail"
navigation links near the top of the page (e.g. "Home > Australia > Sydney Hotels"). This setting is
mainly useful for some very advanced strategies that we'll explain in a later tutorial, so for now just
leave the box checked.

Custom HTML:

There are 6 fields in the Custom HTML section. These fields will be explained in later tutorials, so for
now just leave them blank.

Custom Images:

There are 8 small images on our website that we allow you to easily replace. These are the Star Rating
images, the User Review images and the Sort Arrow images. Replacing these images with your own
custom ones will help give your template a more personalised feel, and it's very easy to do.

First, make sure that the images you want to use are the right size and are hosted somewhere on the
Internet. Next, paste the URLs of the images into the inputs provided. As soon as you click out of each
input field, the image in the "Custom" column will change to show you a preview of the new image. Be
sure there are no broken links in this "Custom" column or else your website might have errors.
Before using any Custom Image, be sure you own the copyright to reproduce it. These may only be tiny
images, but copyright is a serious issue on the Internet. If you find some images on another website that
you would really like to use, simply send an email to that website's webmaster and ask how to obtain
permission to use the images in your template.

Colours:

One of the easiest ways to customise your Private Branding template is to change the default colours.
The "Colours" section allows you to easily change some of the most common colours on the website. If
you know the Hexadecimal code for the colour you like, you can enter it manually into one of these
input fields. Alternatively, just click in one of these input fields and use the Colour-Picker that pops up.
The colour-picker displays lots of little coloured squares you can choose from. These squares show the
"web-safe colour palette", which are usually the best ones to choose from. If you click on one of these
squares, the bar across the colour-picker (just under the squares) will change to that colour. You can
also choose from the dropdown list of named colours if you prefer. When you are happy with your
colour choice, click the "CLOSE" link at the bottom.

Continue selecting each of the colours for your template. If a particular description isn't very clear (for
example "Colour 1") just browse around your Private Branding website to see which page elements are
that colour. You can always test your colour choices without affecting your real template by using the
"Preview Branding" button, but this will be explained in the next tutorial.

Overall:

Once you are satisfied with your choices in each of the 4 sections of the Private Branding Editor Page,
simply click the "Save" button at the very bottom. If you change your mind and don't want your changes
to affect your template, simply click the "Cancel" button instead, and your changes will be discarded.

You can edit and save your Private Branding template as many times as you like. We encourage you to
experiment with various creative designs and ideas, to come up with a template that is both uniquely
yours and attractive to your visitors. Still, try to aim for a professional feel, so your visitors can feel
confident enough to trust you with their hotel booking.
 4.5 Introduction to Custom HTML

The simple customisations we offer on the Private Branding Editor Page are just a taste of what is
available with Private Branding. The real power and versatility comes from the Custom HTML fields.
This is "where the magic happens" on all the best templates. We'll go into much more detail in later
tutorials, but for now this tutorial will introduce you to some of the possibilities.

Before you can use Custom HTML, you need to know at least a little bit about programming in HTML.
You don't need to be a professional web designer to use Custom HTML, because these tutorials, along
with email support from the Affiliate Support Team, will help you get started with the basics. Still, the
more you know about HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the more you can achieve with Custom HTML.

The general idea with Custom HTML is that you get to place your own HTML, CSS and JavaScript code on
our webpages, to make them look and function more like your own. The code you add goes above and
below our own code, so that it effectively "wraps" around our page content. We like to refer to this
code as the "Header" and the "Footer", but you can use this code to place things on either side of our
content, or even to modify our content itself.

Other affiliate programs use frames and iframes for their white-label offering. At first glance, this
appears to be a very easy solution, and many Affiliates have asked about them in the past.

Unfortunately frames and iframes cause more problems than they are worth, so we recommend that
you avoid them completely. Frames and iframes prevent bookmarks from working properly, so your
visitors can't store and send your Affiliate Links. Frames and iframes also cause display issues, such as
Search Boxes appearing too far down the page, multiple scrollbars conflicting with each other, content
being hidden by frame borders, and large blank spaces due to variable page lengths. They also interfere
with the normal function of tracking pixels when users have certain browser security settings.

Custom HTML avoids all these problems, and you will soon see why.

The way a normal webpage is constructed is in 2 sections: the <head> tag and the <body> tag. For
security reasons, our servers manage the entire <head> tag, so all you need to focus on is the <body>
tag. This shouldn't limit you at all, because you can still link to external stylesheets and JavaScript files
from within the <body> tag.

The <body> tag is further broken down into 3 sections: Your Custom HTML Header code, our page
content, and your Custom HTML Footer code. The following diagram will help illustrate this point (the
Custom HTML code is highlighted in red):

<head>
<!-- HotelsCombined HTML tags -->
</head>

<body>
<!-- Custom HTML Header code -->
<!-- HotelsCombined page content -->
<!-- Custom HTML Footer code -->
</body>
The Private Branding Editor page has several places where you can enter your Custom HTML code, and
each has a different purpose.

Global Header / Global Footer: These fields apply to all the pages on our site. This means that
any Custom HTML code you place in these fields will appear on ALL your Private Branding webpages.
Since it applies to all webpages, it is best for your Global Header to be neat, thin and quick to load, so it
doesn't distract your visitors from the commission-earning links below.

Home Page Header / Home Page Footer: These fields apply to the Home page only. If you
enter anything into these fields, it will override the Global Header and Global Footer for the Home page,
without affecting any of the other pages. This is most useful when you want your Home page to stand
out with extra images, links or text which would be inappropriate to repeat on the rest of your pages.

Mobile Header / Mobile Footer: These fields only apply to the version of our website that
appears on mobile devices (i.e. phones). It is not important for you to enter anything into these fields,
but you are free to experiment with them if you want to actively target mobile phone users with your
marketing campaigns. When this document was written, traffic from mobile devices made up less than
2% of any Affiliate's traffic, so there isn't much reason to spend too long developing your mobile
template.

The easiest way to take advantage of our Custom HTML fields is just to copy-and-paste your own header
and footer code straight from your own website. In most cases this will complete 80-90% of the
integration process, and all that will be left is a little debugging and extra customisation. Give this a try
today, and see how easy it can be to create your own Private Branding template.

By now, some of you are starting to understand the potential of Custom HTML. Every webpage on the
Internet uses this HTML format, so by allowing you to place your own code into our pages like this, you
can effectively turn our website into almost anything you want! And since the <head> section and
URLs are standardised by our servers, all of the basic linking strategies we offer (Deep Links, Banners,
Search Boxes, etc.) continue to function normally, regardless of the template you build.

We hope this tutorial can inspire your creativity to start coming up with new and wonderful
modifications to our website through your Private Branding templates. We hope you can cultivate these
ideas until we return to the topic of Custom HTML in later tutorials.
 4.6 Proper Testing Procedure

When building your Private Branding template, you will want to test it regularly, to see how it develops.
Testing is important because you need to make sure that nothing will break or look bad when real
visitors start using the website. This tutorial will show you the proper way to test your Private Branding
template, so you can be thorough and efficient, without accidentally triggering any of our security
systems.

The main purpose of testing is to make sure your template looks good and works properly. During your
test, you need to specifically browse to pages that contain the elements you change, to make sure your
improvements look good. So if you change a "Star Rating" image for example, you need to browse to a
City Page and/or a Hotel Page, to see how the new image looks on the page. In general, you should
always try to include at least the Home Page, a City Page and a Hotel Page in your test procedure.

The easiest way to test a Private Branding template as you're building it is to use a "Preview Branding"
button on the Private Branding Editor Page. This creates a temporary preview of your template so you
can test your changes before saving them. The preview feature is occasionally unavailable, but it should
be good enough for testing purposes. When you finish previewing your changes, it's a good idea to clear
your cookies and close the preview window. Then, be sure to return to the Private Branding Editor Page
and click the "Save" button to store your changes.

You should also test your template after you save it by opening it using the normal Private Branding URL.
This is an important step, because it shows exactly what your audience sees, rather than just creating a
temporary preview of it. Just visit the Private Branding Page and click the "Affiliate URL" for the
template you want to test. It will open in a new window or browser tab where you can "click around".
It may be a good idea to clear your browser cookies before running this test, to ensure you're looking at
the right template.

Remember when testing not to do anything that impacts our suppliers or your commissions. Whenever
you run a search for a set of check-in / check-out dates, it ties up system resources for all our suppliers,
and affects your "Search-to-Lead" ratio. Whenever you click on your own commission-generating links,
it results in invalid Leads and may constitute click-fraud. This is why you should never click on your own
commission-generating links during testing, and you should only run the bare minimum of searches.

There are 2 ways to avoid running excessive searches while you are testing:

1. Visit our Static City and Hotel Pages rather than our Dynamic ones. In most cases they
display the same page elements, without involving our suppliers' servers. You can easily get
to our Static Pages by clicking on the "Browse by Country" link on the Home Page, and
clicking through to a random test city or hotel.

2. Run a single search, then use EXACTLY the same search criteria (city, check-in, check-out,
guests and rooms) for the rest of your tests. This will allow our servers to cache the results
on the first search, and show you the saved results for the next few hours. That way, we
won't need to contact our suppliers more than once, and you will be able to click around as
many times as you want before the cache expires. This will also be much faster than waiting
for a whole new search to run each time you test a page.
Remember, you should not click on your own Hotel Supplier Leads (or ads when available) while you are
testing your Private Branding template. You should only ever click on your own commission-generating
links if you specifically intend to book a hotel room on our supplier's website (or make a purchase on an
advertiser's website).

Another thing you may want to test is cross-browser support. This only really becomes an issue once
you start using the Custom HTML fields, so you don't have to worry about it until then. The process is
fairly simple, so we will describe it here anyway.

Cross-browser support means that sometimes your template may look slightly different in each browser
or browser version. To avoid this, you need to repeat the above testing procedure in as many browsers
as possible. Still, you probably only need to test your template in Firefox and the latest version of
Internet Explorer; but it might help to test in Google Chrome, and older version of Internet Explorer
and/or on a Macintosh (Mac) computer too.

The purpose of testing your Private Branding template is to give you the confidence to start actively
promoting it to your Internet audience. Sometimes it can take a lot of trial-and-error to build a template
you can confidently invest your efforts into. If you follow the above procedures while building and
testing your template, you can achieve maximum confidence with minimal impact to our systems and
your account.
 4.7 Linking to your Private Branding Template

Your Private Branding template is more than just a design; it is a complete duplicate of our entire
www.HotelsCombined.com website. Learning to interlink properly between your website and ours is an
art that can really bring them both together into a single, integrated solution. This tutorial will give you
some ideas about effectively linking the two websites, and creating a great user experience.

The first way to link to Private Branding is with the Affiliate Links described in the tutorials in Section 2.
When you use the Link Generator to build your Home Page Links and Deep Links, you simply select your
Private Branding template from the dropdown menu to configure your Affiliate Link to use it. You
should notice that the "&BrandID=" parameter is appended to the URL.

Banners are a different story. The Banners we offer generally include our HotelsCombined logos and
style, so it won't make sense to link them to your Private Branding template. Banners also carry the
implied feel of "paid advertising" for your visitors, so you wouldn't really benefit from linking them to
your own Private Branding template anyway. We suggest you avoid linking to your Private Branding
template with banners.

Search Boxes and are just as easy as the Link Generator Page. You simply select your Private Branding
template from the dropdown menu when you build your Search Box and hit the "Apply" button. This
will place your Brand ID into the correct place in the code. Be careful that you don't select a Search Box
that uses HotelsCombined branding (logos and styles), because it might confuse your visitors when they
land on your Private Branding website instead of www.HotelsCombined.com .

The WordPress Widget has a place where you can enter your Brand ID in the configuration area. We
generally don't recommend that you use this field, because the widget clearly uses HotelsCombined
logos and branding, so it will confuse your visitors when they land on your Private Branding website.

But that's not the end of it. There are 2 types of URLs you can use to link to a Private Branding template:

1. Standard URLs: These are URLs that use our www.HotelsCombined.com domain name and
append your Brand ID (and Affiliate ID) to the end.

2. Custom URLs: These are URLs that use your own domain (or subdomain) to mask ours.
Custom URLs don't need you to include your Affiliate ID or Brand ID, because our servers
identify your account by the domain name alone.
At this stage, only Standard URLs are available to you. Custom URLs need to be properly configured
before they will work, and the process will be explained in a later tutorial. But once you have properly
configured a Custom URL for your Private Branding template, that Custom URL will be used each time
you select that template from the Link Generator or the Search Box pages.

Custom URLs have many advantages to Standard URLs:

 They hide the fact that you are a HotelsCombined Affiliate. This builds trust in your brand.
 They integrate our results with the rest of your website more closely. Your visitors will
believe that our results are simply a section of your website, rather than a whole new site.
 They remove the need to append your Affiliate ID and Brand ID to your Affiliate Links. This
makes your URLs shorter, so you can more easily place them in restrictive places.
 They make it easier for you to promote your Affiliate Links, because the URLs look "cleaner"
without the ID parameters and can't easily be mistaken for spam.
 They allow you to conduct Paid Search activities without breaching our Trademark Policy.
 And of course they look more professional because they use your own domain name!

Many successful Affiliates choose to use Custom URLs instead of Standard URLs. If you decide to follow
suit, and already have your own domain name you can use, we suggest you carefully follow the
instructions in the following tutorial to configure one today. We hope you feel a sense of pride in using
your own domain name for your Affiliate Links, and that this pride helps you commit greater effort into
growing your online business.
 4.8 Setting up a Custom URL

Setting up a Custom URL is a straightforward process. You just create a CNAME Record and then enter
your domain name into the Private Branding Editor page. Still, this process involves several third-party
websites we have no control over. Also, there are a few steps in the process that may be confusing the
first time you configure a Custom URL. To make it easier for you, we've written detailed instructions
about each step along the way. Don't be daunted by the length of this tutorial, because we just want
things to be as clear as possible for you.

The first step is to decide whether you want to use a root domain or a subdomain for your Custom URL.

A root domain refers to the "www." version of your domain name. For example, www.yourdomain.com
is a root domain. If you use a root domain for your Custom URL you will generally not be able to use the
domain name for anything other than your Private Branding website. This solution is recommended for
Affiliates who don't intend to build their own complementary website; such as those who plan to use
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to attract visitors.

A subdomain refers to any version of your domain name that uses something other than "www." at the
start. For example, hotels.yourdomain.com is a subdomain. It is called a subdomain because it doesn't
affect your root domain at all, and allows you to host another complete website at this address. This
solution is recommended for Affiliates who plan to use their Private Branding website to complement
their own website that they host on their root domain.

Be sure you own or control the root domain or subdomain you want to use as your Custom URL!

Now, on the Private Branding Editor Page for your chosen template, enter your Custom URL into the
field called "Private Branding (Sub)Domain".

Click on the "(validate)" link to the right to check it. At this stage, your redirect is not configured, so a
red error message will display "Invalid DNS IP Setup!". If the error message says "Invalid URL!" instead,
make sure you entered the correct root domain or subdomain without any additional characters or
spaces. There is no need for you to enter the leading "http://".
At this stage your Private Branding template is configured to accept your new Custom URL, but your
Custom URL still isn't pointing to the right server. The next step is therefore to create a redirection that
points your Custom URL to our website. This is where you have to be very careful, because the incorrect
redirect can cause our webpages to load very slowly, or your Private Branding template not to display at
all. If for any reason you cannot follow these instructions EXACTLY, please consult the Support Team for
specific advice on your situation.

The correct kind of redirect you need to use is called a "CNAME Record". This is a DNS setting, so you
will need to log into your Domain Registrar account to create it. Your Domain Registrar is different to
your Web Hosting Provider, but sometimes your Web Hosting Provider will manage your DNS settings
for you through their own Domain Registrar. In this case, you will have to contact your Web Hosting
Provider for support.

The aim is to set up a CNAME Record that points your Custom URL to www.HotelsCombined.com

You should note the following points:

 You don't have to use your Affiliate ID or Brand ID in the CNAME Record. Our systems will
already be configured by the steps you took earlier in this tutorial.

 You have to configure your CNAME Record to point to www.HotelsCombined.com and not
just HotelsCombined.com or else your website will load very slowly.

 CNAME Records often don't need you to enter the full Custom URL. Often, just the first part
will do (for example, "www" or "hotels").

 There will often be other DNS settings on the same screen (e.g. A Records, MX Records,
etc.). Just leave them there unless you know exactly what you're doing.
If any of this sounds confusing, we recommend you seek advice from someone who is experienced with
DNS settings. Alternatively, you should contact your Domain Registrar's support department (or your
Web Hosting Provider's support department, as appropriate) for specific advice on how to use their
system. Our own Affiliate Support Team can rarely help you with this, because each Domain Registrar
uses a different system, so it isn't possible for us to know exactly what you should click on.

Remember that you only want to create a single CNAME Record that points your Custom URL to
www.HotelsCombined.com , and that your Custom URL can either be a root domain or a subdomain.

Once your CNAME Record is properly configured, you will have to wait for all the worldwide DNS servers
to update with the new settings before you can use your Custom URL. This may take up to 72 hours, but
often you can start testing in less than an hour. If you find that your new CNAME Record doesn't work
in your browser, just wait a day or two and try again. If it still doesn't work 3 days after you created it,
contact your Domain Registrar or Web Hosting Provider for assistance repairing it.

You will know that your CNAME Record is functioning properly when you can enter your Custom URL
into a browser and see your Private Branding template appear. Still, this won't confirm that the correct
DNS setting was used. You need to use the Validation Tool for that.

The Validation Tool is on the Private Branding Editor Page, near your Custom URL. Just click the
"(validate)" link near your Custom HTML and it will display "Ok!" in green when your CNAME Record is
properly configured.

If the validation tool displays "Please use CNAME record!" in yellow instead, it means you incorrectly
used an A Record. An A Record will still appear to function normally in most cases, but it will generally
run into performance issues; especially from certain continents around the world.
Once the Validation Tool returns "Ok!", you are ready to start promoting your website. Essentially, your
Custom URL just needs a CNAME Record and an entry on the Private Branding Editor Page, but as you
can see, this can be complicated the first time you try. The good news is that you only have to do this
once for each Private Branding template.

301 Redirects (optional):

An optional additional step for creating your Custom URL is to protect variations and misspellings using
301 Redirects. This step is optional, because it usually only accounts for a very small number of visitors.
Instructions are only included here for the sake of completeness.

For example, your Custom URL may be www.yourdomain.com and someone may type yourdomain.com
(without the "www." at the start). Or the Custom URL may be hotels.yourdomain.com and someone
may type hotel.yourdomain.com or www.hotels.yourdomain.com instead.

This is where a 301 Redirect can help. A 301 Redirect will send a visitor from the misspelt version to
your full Custom URL. Note that this only works when the start of your URL is misspelt (i.e. the "www."
or the subdomain part). Also note that a 301 Redirect works by modifying the browser's Address Bar,
which means you still need to use a CNAME Record to setup your primary Custom URL.

There are many different ways to implement a 301 redirect; so many in fact that you will have to read
the following Wikipedia article to find out about them all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection

301 Redirects are server-side redirects, which means you can only create one if you have web hosting (in
addition to domain hosting) for your domain. Most often this only applies if you host your own website
on your root domain and use a subdomain for Private Branding.

Once you decide whether or not you want to use a 301 Redirect, whether or not you are able to use a
301 Redirect, and what kind of 301 Redirect you will use, you only have to create a 301 Redirect that
points each variation / misspelling to your full Custom URL. So further to the examples above, you could
point yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com or hotel.yourdomain.com to hotels.yourdomain.com .

Note that the only purpose of 301 Redirects is to help visitors who mistype your Custom URL. This will
generally only apply to visitors who type in your website's URL by hand. In reality, most visitors will
probably arrive at your site by following a link, especially if you actively promote your site online, so
most visitors will not need to use the 301 Redirect at all.

Overall, the 301 Redirect is not important. All you really need to do is create your CNAME Record and
enter your Custom URL into the Private Branding Editor page, and your visitors will be able to access
your Private Branding template using your own domain name. This is one of the best features of our
Private Branding implementation, and we hope you make the most of it.
 4.9 Private Branding Limitations

Private Branding is an incredibly versatile feature, but there are of course limits. This tutorial will briefly
explain the most common limits you might encounter, along with a few ways to get around them. As
you will see, there really isn't much that Private Branding won't allow you to achieve.

Custom HTML can only go between the <body></body> tags. Often Affiliates will want to add HTML
code to their Private Branding template that belongs between the <head></head> tags. This is not
allowed, as it will pose a security threat to our website. Fortunately, most of the HTML tags you might
want to insert in the <head></head> section can also be placed directly in the <body></body>
section. This includes <script>, <style> and sometimes even <link> tags, although the most
suitable way to link to an external stylesheet is to use the following HTML code:

<style type="text/css">
@import url("http://www.yourdomain.com/style.css");
</style>

You have to edit your Custom HTML code yourself. We don't currently provide any ready-made
templates and we don't currently provide a WYSIWYG webpage editor for Private Branding templates.
Still, if you have a design in mind you can always email the Affiliate Support Team to ask for assistance.
Often times we can help you copy-and-paste the relevant HTML / CSS / JavaScript code from your main
website, to make your Private Branding template instantly look the same.

Server-side scripting is not permitted in Private Branding templates. Private Branding templates are
limited to client-side programming only. This means you can only code in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
This should not really limit you at all, because you can always use your own server-side scripts to
generate dynamic CSS and JavaScript files that you can import using normal HTML code. This effectively
emulates your server-side code remotely, and still achieves the same functionality on your webpages.

We don't currently provide web hosting for your extra files. Your Custom HTML can link to images,
scripts, stylesheets, Flash animations, or any number of other files. Again for security reasons, we don't
provide any hosting space for you to upload these files on our servers. If you want to link to such files,
you should arrange your own third-party hosting space, or else use one of the many free services
available on the Internet.

You cannot create any new pages through Private Branding. Creating a Private Branding template only
allows our servers to change the way our own pages look. It doesn't create any new pages or change
the URLs of any of the existing files. If you want to create your own webpages to support our Private
Branding pages, we suggest you build those pages on your root domain, and host Private Branding on a
subdomain. This is explained in tutorial 4.8 when Custom URLs are discussed.

You cannot change our general site structure. You cannot move our webpages into different folders,
and the City pages will always link to the Hotel pages. Still, it is easy to completely change the way users
interact with the website. Simply disable the "Breadcrumb Trail" links using the "Show Navigation Path"
checkbox, and replace it with your own navigation links in your Custom HTML code. You can even use
JavaScript to make your links page-specific. In the past, Affiliates have used this technique to build city-
specific mini-sites using only Private Branding, so feel free to "think outside the box".
If you use Custom URLs, you need to configure your DNS settings yourself. Using Custom URLs allows
us to display our hotels content on your domain or subdomain, but it doesn't give us any control over
your domain name itself. Pointing your domain or subdomain to our servers does not transfer
ownership of that domain name to us, so you are free to modify it again in the future.

Private Branding does not give you any SEO benefit. Private Branding is just a duplicate of our own
website. Apart from your Custom HTML code (which is common for all pages) there isn't any unique
content on its pages for the search engines to index. So to protect our own website's SEO ranking,
Private Branding is physically blocked from competing with our own HotelsCombined website. If you
want to build your own SEO-friendly website, you can use our Data Feeds to build one on your root
domain, and host Private Branding on a subdomain (as discussed in tutorial 4.8).

So you see, the few Private Branding limitations listed above only serve to strengthen our offering and
simplify the process of creating and using your templates. All the limitations can be easily bypassed by
following the above suggestions, so they shouldn't be considered "limitations" at all. In fact, these
points should only be seen as guidelines for growing your Private Branding website beyond a simple
white-label duplicate of our HotelsCombined site.
 5. Private Branding Masterclass

5.1 Custom HTML Logo and Colours

The first thing you will want to achieve with your Private Branding template is adding your logo image to
the top of the page. You may also want to alter the colour scheme so it matches the colours in your
logo. These simple modifications should only take a few minutes, and will have a massive impact on the
impression your audience has of your website and your brand.

You add your logo using the Custom HTML fields. Start by adding your logo to the Global Header field,
so it appears on all pages. Once you are happy with the result, you can create something special for
your Home page and place it in the Home Page Header field. In general, your Global Header should not
take up much space, while your Home Page Header can be more bold and eye-catching.

The way to use the Custom HTML fields is to enter some HTML, CSS and/or JavaScript code. In this case,
we can start with a simple line of HTML code. Assuming that your logo image is hosted at
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/logo.gif the following line will be all you need for now:

<img src="http://www.yourdomain.com/images/logo.gif" />

This will simply place your logo image right in the middle of the top of the page, with our content right
below. If you want to place your logo in the top-left corner, with a coloured bar filling the rest of the top
row, you may want to expand on the above HTML a bit. The example below uses a blue bar:

<div style="width:100%; text-align:left; background: blue;">

<img src="http://www.yourdomain.com/images/logo.gif" />
</div>

You can even make your logo a link to your main website like this:

<div style="width:100%; text-align:left; background:blue;">

<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/">
<img src="http://www.yourdomain.com/images/logo.gif" border="0" />
</a>
</div>

Once you have your logo image appearing where and how you want, the next step is to adjust the colour
scheme to better match your brand. Tutorial 4.4 showed you how to change the main website colours
using the colour-pickers near the bottom of the Private Branding Editor page. If this doesn't offer you
enough choice, you can also use CSS styles to change the colours of other page elements.

For example, you can easily change the background colour of the whole website by adding some CSS
code in a <style></style> block. The following example changes the main background colour to yellow:

<style type="text/css">
body {background:yellow;}
</style>
You can also change the colours (and styles) of individual page elements by referencing them directly
with their IDs or class names. The following example adds emphasis to the "City" input on the Home
page by changing the colours of the text input field and the label. Note that this code will have to go
into the Home Page Header, but it will also work in the Global Header if your Home Page Custom HTML
fields are both blank:

<style type="text/css">
#citySearch {background:#FFDFDF;}
.hc_f_lbl_lng {color:#900000; font-size:16px;}
</style>

Notice that the input field was referenced by its ID using the hash ('#') symbol, while the "City" label was
referenced by its class name using the dot ('.') symbol. Both methods work, but always remember to
test your site (as per tutorial 4.6) to make sure you don't accidentally affect elements on other pages.

To complete this tutorial, we created an example using all the above concepts together. We started
with a new Private Branding template and added the following code to the Global Header Custom HTML
field only:

<style type="text/css">
body {background:#F5EBCD;}
#citySearch {background:#FFDFDF;}
.hc_f_lbl_lng {color:#900000; font-size:16px;}
</style>
<div style="width:100%; text-align:left; background:#1A0902;">
<a href="http://www.hotelscombined.com/">
<img src="http://www.tuttoaster.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/02/business-card_front.jpg" border="0" width="150"
height="100" />
</a>
</div>
As you can see, the above example uses only a very small amount of Custom HTML code, yet it almost
totally changes the look and feel of our website. The purpose is to create a recognisable "Brand" for
your website that builds on your logo's design. The code itself is fairly straight-forward HTML and CSS,
so you should be able to achieve very good results with only a basic understanding of web design.

Once people begin to recognise and trust your brand, they will start telling their friends and relatives
about it. Over time, this effect will grow, which will bring many new visitors to your website without
having to market directly to them. This is the power of branding, and is why the Hotels Combined
Private Branding feature is one of the travel industry's best.
 5.2 Custom Navigation Options

Once you've "branded" your template with your own logo and colour scheme, you may want to consider
adding some special navigation options (links). You can add links to better integrate our content with
your main website, to help promote other websites, or simply to make things easier for your visitors.
This tutorial will present some of the more common Private Branding linking strategies for you to try.

Linking to your own Private Branding webpages on your Home page:

The main purpose of linking to other pages within your Private Branding website is to build up your
Home page. Many Affiliates find it useful to include links to the more popular travel destinations, to
show their visitors that they can find hotels anywhere in the world. We use this strategy on our main
www.HotelsCombined.com website with the "Top Destinations" section.

To add some city links to your Home page, simply build them using the Home Page Custom HTML fields.
We advise you to use the Link Generator to build these links, to ensure they are correct. The following
example code shows one way you can build a "Top Destinations" section on your Home page. Simply
add this code to the Home Page Footer Custom HTML field:

<center>
<div style="width:124px; border:solid 1px black; padding:6px; text-
align:left; background:white;">
Popular Cities:
<ul>
<li><a
href="http://www.hotelscombined.com/City/New_York_City.htm?a_aid=12476&
brandid=35577">New York</a></li>
<li><a
href="http://www.hotelscombined.com/City/London.htm?a_aid=12476&brandid
=35577">London</a></li>
<li><a
href="http://www.hotelscombined.com/City/Rome.htm?a_aid=12476&brandid=3
5577">Rome</a></li>
 <li><a
href="http://www.hotelscombined.com/City/Sydney.htm?a_aid=12476&brandid
=35577">Sydney</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</center>

It's only small, but it's a start for you to build on.

Linking to your own Private Branding webpages from your Global Header / Footer:

Sometimes it is also useful to link to your own Private Branding pages from every page on your website.
This is mainly useful when your website specifically targets a single country or geographic region and
you want to link to other cities in the area. Alternatively, you can still link to a list of "popular cities", but
you may want to use JavaScript or CSS dropdown menus to pack a lot of links into a small space.

Whatever your goal, if you're going to place city links on every page of your website, there are a few
points to consider:

 If you place your links in the Global Header, you should make sure they don't push the rest
of our content too far down the page. Try to minimize the number of links you place at the
top of the page, or place the links down the left side of the page instead.
 If you place your links in the Global Footer, you are free to take up as much space as you
like. Still, you should make sure that these links don't distract your visitors too much, or else
they might wander around your website without generating any commissions for you.
 If you want dynamic links that to relate to the current page (such as showing nearby cities)
you can use a JavaScript "include" file. Simply point the "include" to a script on your server
that generates the links using JavaScript. This is an advanced technique that will be
explained in more detail in later tutorials.

Linking to your main website from your Private Branding website:

You are free to use Private Branding as a complete website, but we highly recommend you partner it
with your own website, so the two can support each other. If you use Custom URLs, you will probably
host your main website on your root domain, and Private Branding on a subdomain. In order to partner
the two sites properly, you therefore need to have an effective linking strategy.

There are many different ways you can link your main website to your Private Branding website, but the
purpose of this tutorial is to demonstrate how to link back the other way.
The general point to remember when linking from Private Branding to your main website is how the two
websites help each other. Your main website should attract visitors using SEO/SEM strategies, and your
Private Branding website should monetise those visitors for you using the commission-earning links.
That means you should have plenty of links on your main website that funnel your visitors towards the
Private Branding pages, and only the bare minimum of returning ones.

For starters, you should make your Logo link back to your main Home page, as described in the previous
tutorial. Next, you should use the "Custom Home Page Link" field on the Private Branding Editor page
to change our default "Home" links to your own website.

You can also create a navigation bar in your Global Header or Global Footer that links back to your more
important pages; like About Us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, etc. This is mainly to make your template
look more respectable, as most important websites do.

If your main website has a global navigation bar, you can also add it to your template. This strategy
helps to better integrate Private Branding with your main website, but unfortunately it often distracts
your visitors away from the commission-earning links on our results pages. We find that visitors make
more bookings when the only links they can click on take them forward through the booking process.

Apart from the links discussed in the above paragraphs, you should generally avoid linking back to other
pages on your main website. The only time you should consider breaking this rule is when you have
other commission-earning links on your main website that you also want to promote; such as links for
other affiliate programs or advertisements. You should keep in mind the per-visitor value of those links
as compared with ours, so you don't lose a dollar to earn a few cents.

Linking to other websites from your Private Branding template:

You may also want to link to other websites from your Private Branding template. For instance, you may
find another website useful for your visitors (such as a flight-comparison or car-rental website), or you
may want to indicate your membership in a community or a special group of websites (such as Facebook
or Blogger).

Our recommendation is to avoid linking to external websites. The main reason is that Private Branding
is full of links that can earn you commissions, while external websites generally aren't. If your visitors
click on your external links instead, and leave your website, they will no longer be able to make you any
money. It is much more profitable to try to keep your visitors on your Private Branding website where
you can present them your commission-earning Affiliate Links.

The only exceptions to this rule are external links that can earn you money, or of course if you really like
the linked websites and don't mind losing a bit of money (after all, you are free to choose). Either way,
the correct method of linking to an external website is to open it in a new window. This prevents
potential Trademark / Copyright issues, and leaves your own website open in the background. If you
use a normal HTML link, you just have to add the "target=_blank" attribute to the <a> tag.
Third-party advertising on your Private Branding website:

You are also free to place third-party advertising in your template. This may help to supplement your
hotel commissions with advertising revenue, if you are careful about your implementation.

The main point to note is that ads tend to distract your visitors from our hotel providers. This is bad
because most ad providers pay you much less per click than we pay you for Hotel Leads. The only
reason to offer ads on your website is that sometimes they offer more variety, which allows you to earn
ad revenue from visitors who otherwise would not have booked a hotel room.

If you decide to place your own ad provider code in your Custom HTML fields, we suggest you follow this
advice:

1. Make sure the ads open in a new window. This will allow your Private Branding website to
remain open in the background, to allow the opportunity to earn commission after the
visitor finishes with the advertiser's website.
2. Make sure you thoroughly test the profitability of having ads on the page. Try running the
ads for 1 or 2 full weeks, then try without any ads for the same length of time. Be sure to
start and finish your tests on the same day of the week, so that your results aren't unfairly
influenced by the way that traffic changes over the week.
3. Make sure you test the placement of your ads in different parts of the page. You want your
ads to be successful without compromising your hotel revenue. In this way, your ads will
supplement your hotel revenue rather than replacing it. We find that a good place for ads is
on the right side of the page, or sometimes at the bottom of the page.

Conclusion about custom navigation options in your Private Branding template:

Overall, your Private Branding template should have just enough links to add credibility and usability,
but not too many that your visitors get distracted away from the commission-earning hotel links. Your
main website's global navigation bar and some banner ads would be a good idea, while a full array of
free links to third-party websites would end up costing you in lost commissions. If you keep these
simple ideas in mind when building your Private Branding template, you should have no problems at all.
 5.3 Manipulating Visual Elements with CSS

Just as with other webpages, you can use CSS to change the layout and design of Private Branding pages.
You can copy your CSS code straight into a <style></style> block in your Custom HTML, or you can
better control your CSS by linking to a stylesheet you host on your own server. Either way, this tutorial
will introduce you to some fundamental concepts about the structure of our webpages, so you can more
easily explore our code and manipulate it with your own.

To start, we will show you the proper way to link to an external stylesheet. Normally you will probably
use the <link> tag in the <head></head> section of your webpages to import a stylesheet. Since our
Custom HTML fields only allow you to enter code between the <body></body> tags, you will have to
use the following method instead:

<style type="text/css">
@import url("http://yourdomain.com/style.css");
</style>

We remind you that we don't currently provide hosting services for any of your own files, so you will
have to provide hosting for the stylesheet yourself. If you cannot provide a suitable hosting solution for
your stylesheet, we recommend that you simply insert your CSS code into a <style></style> block in
your Custom HTML.

The next part is easy. If you want to change the appearance of a particular page element using CSS, you
only have to find the ID or Class name of the object, and write your own CSS declaration that applies the
style to the object. For example, you can increase the font size of the hotel name on each Hotel page
with the following lines of code:

<style type="text/css">
.contactHeaderBold3 {font-size:22pt;}
</style>

Wherever possible, we recommend you use the object's ID in your CSS declarations, as it will only ever
refer to a single page element. If the Class name is highly descriptive, such as "contactHeaderBold3"
in the above example, you can probably use the Class name to target a specific group of page elements.
But if the Class name sounds generic, such as "font18", you should avoid using it, as you may affect
other page elements by accident.

You should never apply your CSS modifications directly to the HTML tags. This will usually cause major
and dramatic damage to the design of all our webpages. For example, the following line of CSS should
be avoided at all costs:

div {width:200px;}

If you cannot avoid applying your CSS to an HTML tag, you should use nesting to keep it targetted to the
correct page element. For example, the following line of CSS will be much better than the one above:

#myheader #mysection #mysubsection div {width:200px;}

All that remains is learning how to identify the IDs and Class names of the objects you want to change.
There are several different ways to do this, so we will only briefly explain a few.

 Viewing the webpage's HTML Source Code. This is a manual process that can be very
tedious and difficult. It involves wading through our HTML code until you find the element
you want to change. It can be a little easier if you run a search for some text that sits in or
near your desired element, but it is still not a recommended method.

 Using a browser plugin. There are several browser plugins available that can help to
identify page elements. The most user-friendly ones are "Web Developer" and "Firebug" for
Firefox, because they allow you to visually select the elements and directly see their CSS.

 Use third-party web development software. There are many applications you can buy to
help you identify and modify CSS webpage elements. In general, these applications are
expensive and take a while to learn, but if you are already familiar with one, you may find it
very helpful. You would probably have to save a local copy of one of our webpages and
open the file in your application to inspect its CSS elements.

Once you identify the ID and/or Class name of the element you want to manipulate, you simply have to
write the appropriate lines of CSS code to modify it, and test it in the major browsers. There is generally
no limit to the kind of modifications you can make to our webpages using CSS, as long as the end-user
can still access all the required features of the site. After a bit of practice, you should be able to easily
change any feature of the website with your Private Branding Custom HTML (CSS) code.
 5.4 CSS Structure of Page Elements

Before you start modifying the CSS of our page elements, it's important to familiarise yourself with the
structures and conventions we use. An understanding of our rules will simplify the process of applying
your modifications. As long as you stick to these guidelines, you will have a relatively easy time of
restyling our website using your Private Branding Custom HTML.

Naming Conventions: The first thing to learn is that most of our IDs and class names begin with "hc_".
This stands for "HotelsCombined" and helps distinguish our IDs and class names from your own. The
aim is to avoid CSS and JavaScript conflicts, by making sure that our page elements are named
differently to yours.

Page Identifiers: Next, you might need your JavaScript or CSS to perform differently for each particular
type of page (Home page, City page, Hotel page, etc.) or for each particular language. The easiest way
for your code to identify the type and language of the current page is to look at the class names on the
<body> tag. There are generally 2 class names on the <body> tag:

1. The Page Type class, and

2. The Language class.

The Page Type class will let your code identify what kind of content is on the page and what type of
region layout is used (more on regions in the paragraphs below). The Language class will allow you to
apply language-specific customisations, such as right-to-left alignment for Arabic and Hebrew languages.

The following lines of JavaScript will extract the class names from the <body> tag and store them as
pageType and pageLanguage variables that you can use later in your code.

temp = document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].className.split(" ");

pageType = temp[0];
pageLanguage = temp[1];

Alternatively, you can nest your CSS declarations to allow each page to perform differently without the
use of JavaScript. In this example, the same Custom HTML element (<div class="mydiv"></div>)
has a totally different background colour, depending on which page type it appears:

body.hc_page_home div.mydiv { background: green; }

body.hc_page_sr div.mydiv { background: blue; }
body.hc_page_hotel div.mydiv { background: yellow; }

Regions: Each webpage is divided into 4 main regions using <div> elements. All our HTML elements
are contained within these 4 regions, which makes it easy to keep our code separate from your own.

The main benefit of regions is that they group related page elements together. This allows you to make
high-level layout changes to our pages with ease. For instance, you can move the "Refine Your Search"
region from the left side to the right side of the page just by adding the "float: right;" attribute to the
"hc_r_2" class.
As an example of how our pages are divided up into regions, here is an image of a City page from a blank
Private Branding template:

Here is an image of the same City page, but with each region highlighted in blue:

The yellow lines are the spacing that is introduced using the CSS "margin" attribute. As you can see, the
elements within each region completely fill the available space.
Regions, and elements that directly support regions, all use class names that begin with "hc_r_". The 4
main region tags go from "hc_r_1" to "hc_r_4", while the supporting tags use class names that end in
descriptive terms instead of numbers. Try looking through the source code of one of our pages to find
the tags that use these region classes.

Regions also set the maximum dimensions of the elements contained within. In most cases you can
change the width of certain page elements just by changing the width of their surrounding region. This
makes it very easy to fit our content within page designs that use non-standard sizing.

Sub-Regions: Sometimes you will find sub-regions that use classes beginning with "hc_sr_". These
usually occur in lists, such as the list of hotels on the City page, and hold the list as a single element
within a larger region. You can generally treat sub-regions the same way as regions.

Modules: Regions and sub-regions are divided into smaller sections known as modules. Each module is
a self-contained unit of related content. For example, each hotel item on the City page is a module. You
can usually identify a module because it has its own border and/or its own background colour, so it
shouldn't be hard to tell which page elements are modules.

The following image shows our example City page (from above), with each module highlighted in blue
and with yellow lines showing the "margin" spacing between them:

Just like regions, modules use a standard naming convention. All module tags and supporting elements
use class names that begin with "hc_m_". Also, special classes that begin with "hc_m_v" apply to the
outermost <div> tag of each module. These special classes define the module's border, background
and hover style. You can either modify these classes to change the appearance of whole sets of our
modules at once, or you can apply these class names to your own elements to make their border and
background better match the rest of our site.
Modules can be resized or moved around, but they always remain within their parent region. Often the
width of a module relies solely on the width of the region, so you have to widen the region to widen the
module. You can also fix the width of modules to be smaller than the region, then use the CSS "float:"
attribute to rearrange the way they are organised within that region. This is the way you can turn
vertical lists into horizontal lists.

Internal Module Structure: Finally, the internal structure of modules is also standardised. Each module
tends to be made up of 3 sections: the Header, the Content and the Footer. Some modules leave out
the Header and/or the Footer if they aren't needed though. Here is the general syntax of the internal
structure of a module:

<div id="SectionID" class="SectionIDClass ModuleBorderClass">

<div class="hc_m_outer">
<div class="hc_m_hd"><!-- Header --></div>
<div class="hc_m_content"><!-- Content --></div>
<div class="hc_m_ft"><!-- Footer --></div>
</div>
</div>

In this example, SectionID and SectionIDClass are placeholders for names that describe the
module's function on the page. They usually begin with "hc_". The ModuleBorderClass is one of the
special module classes that begins with "hc_m_v". This class defines the border and background colour
of the module.

Sometimes there are additional <b> elements within the "hc_m_outer" element but before the
"hc_m_hd" element or after the "hc_m_ft" element. These <b> elements are used to create rounded
corners on the borders that are compatible across many different browsers. We suggest you ignore
these <b> elements unless you specifically want to affect the rounded corners on the borders.

Overall, we're sure you will find our CSS structures to be logically arranged into a very workable format.
Once you start exploring our HTML code and experimenting with your own customisations, you will see
that it's surprisingly simple to modify our page designs. We hope this will give you the freedom to really
express your creativity in your Private Branding template.
 5.5 Third-Party Code - Ads or Tracking

Sometimes you will want to add code to your Private Branding template that comes from another
source (a "Third Party"). It is important to add this code to your template correctly, to ensure it can
function properly. You can add practically any third-party code to your Private Branding template, so
this tutorial will only go over the main types you will likely encounter.

Ad Server Code:

There are many third-party ad servers available to you. The most common one is Google AdSense,
which allows you to place text ads and banner ads on your webpages. Ads have the potential to distract
your visitors from the higher-paying hotel links, but also to monetise the visitors who don't want to book
a hotel, so it's up to you to measure the profitability and decide if it's worth placing ads on your site.

You can place the ads anywhere in your Private Branding template, but the best position is the empty
column on the right side of the City and Hotel pages. This is where we previously displayed Google ads,
so we know it's a good position. The empty space may be removed in future website updates, so be
careful not to place any important code into this spot for now.

The right column is a <div> element with the "hc_r_4" class (i.e. "region 4" as per the previous tutorial).
It is 210 pixels wide by default and contains only another empty <div> element as a placeholder. This
means you can use the following code to insert your ads into that column:

<div id="block1" style="display:none;">

<!-- the ad code goes here -->
</div>
<script>
document.getElementById("hc_r_4").innerHTML =
document.getElementById("block1").innerHTML
</script>

Just insert this code into the Custom HTML Global Footer field on the Private Branding Editor page for it
to work. Note that you can use a similar technique to append your ads to the bottom of the middle
column, but you'll need to use "hc_r_3" instead of "hc_r_4" to select the correct region, and then
"+=" instead of "=" to concatenate your ad code to our hotel list code.

On a side note, if you don't want to fill the empty right column (region 4) with ads, you can apply your
own CSS style code to get rid of it. The following CSS example code shows how you can resize it away to
bring everything else into the middle. Just add this CSS code to your stylesheet or place it in a
<style></style> block in your Custom HTML Global Header or Global Footer:

#hc_r_content {
width: 782px;
}
#hc_r_4 {
width: 0px;
}
Tracking Code:

There are also many different tracking providers available to you. The most popular is Google Analytics,
but you can choose anything from a simple page counter, all the way to expensive "heatmap" software.
You don't have to use third-party tracking software, as our own reporting is good enough in most cases,
but extra traffic analysis may help you improve your website design and optimise your traffic sources.

Often the tracking provider will recommend placing their code in the <head></head> section of the
webpage. Private Branding doesn't allow this, but we've found that most tracking code works just as
well in the <body></body> section, which is where your Custom HTML code goes. We suggest you
place your tracking code in the Home Page Footer and the Global Footer for best effect.

Conversion Tracking Code:

It may be useful to track Leads (conversions) using your own conversion tracking code. This is especially
useful when you use a paid search strategy like Google AdWords, as it allows you to better adjust your
keyword bid prices.

While it is possible to insert your own conversion tracking code into our provider redirect page, there
are various security and technical concerns that first need to be addressed. This is why the only way to
add your tracking code to the provider redirect page is to contact the Affiliate Support Team with your
request.

Social Networking Code:

There are various social networking sites that offer "plugin" code for your own webpages. This includes
code to give ratings (like/dislike), code to generate backlinks, code to connect to RSS feeds, blog scripts,
and code to link back to your social networking webpage. Names like Facebook, Twitter and Digg all
have their own plugin scripts you can place on your own webpages.

There are no known issues with placing these sorts of scripts in your Private Branding template, but
there are usually no real benefits either. There is no real social aspect to our website as yet, and no
plans to add any social functionality in the near future. Also, social networking traffic doesn't really
perform well for Affiliates, because people who browse those sites aren't often ready to book hotels.

Overall:

Since Private Branding Custom HTML is so versatile, you are generally free to add whatever third-party
code you like to your Private Branding template. If you ever have any doubts about the code you want
to add, or if you run into difficulties, you can always contact the Affiliate Support Team for advice.
Appendix:

Language Codes:

LanguageCode LanguageName DisplayName

AR Arabic ‫العربية‬
BG Bulgarian Български
CN Traditional Chinese 繁體中文
CS Simplified Chinese 简体中文
CZ Czech čeština
DA Danish Dansk
DE German Deutsch
EL Greek Ελληνικά
EN English English
ES Spanish Español
FR French Français
HE Hebrew ‫עברית‬
HR Croatian Croatian
IS Icelandic Íslenska
IT Italiano Italiano
JA Japanese 日本語
KO Korean 한국어
NL Dutch Nederlands
NO Norwegian Norsk
PL Polish Polski
PT Portuguese Português
RO Romanian Română
RU Russian Русский
SV Swedish Svenska
TR Turkish Türkçe
Country Codes:

CountryCode CountryName CountryCode CountryName

AD Andorra CG Congo
AE United Arab Emirates CH Switzerland
AF Afghanistan CI Côte d’Ivoire
AG Antigua And Barbuda CK Cook Islands
AI Anguilla CL Chile
AL Albania CM Cameroon
AM Armenia CN China
AN Netherlands Antilles CO Colombia
AO Angola CR Costa Rica
AQ Antarctica CU Cuba
AR Argentina CV Cape Verde
AS American Samoa CY Cyprus
AT Austria CZ Czech Republic
AU Australia DE Germany
AW Aruba DJ Djibouti
AZ Azerbaijan DK Denmark
BA Bosnia And Herzegovina DM Dominica
BB Barbados DO Dominican Republic
BD Bangladesh DZ Algeria
BE Belgium EC Ecuador
BF Burkina Faso EE Estonia
BG Bulgaria EG Egypt
BH Bahrain ER Eritrea
BI Burundi ES Spain
BJ Benin ET Ethiopia
BM Bermuda FI Finland
BN Brunei FJ Fiji
BO Bolivia FK Falkland Islands
Federated States Of
BR Brazil FM Micronesia
BS Bahamas FO Faroe Islands
BT Bhutan FR France
BW Botswana GA Gabon
BY Belarus GB United Kingdom
BZ Belize GD Grenada
CA Canada GE Georgia
Democratic Republic of the
CD Congo GF French Guiana
CF Central African Republic GH Ghana
CountryCode CountryName CountryCode CountryName
GI Gibraltar LB Lebanon
GL Greenland LC Saint Lucia
GM Gambia LI Liechtenstein
GN Guinea LK Sri Lanka
GP Guadeloupe LR Liberia
GQ Equatorial Guinea LS Lesotho
GR Greece LT Lithuania
GT Guatemala LU Luxembourg
GU Guam LV Latvia
GW Guinea Bissau LY Libya
GY Guyana MA Morocco
HK Hong Kong MC Monaco
HN Honduras MD Moldova
HR Croatia ME Montenegro
HT Haiti MG Madagascar
HU Hungary MH Marshall Islands
ID Indonesia MK Macedonia
IE Ireland ML Mali
IL Israel MM Myanmar
IN India MN Mongolia
IO British Indian Ocean Territory MP Northern Mariana Islands
IQ Iraq MQ Martinique
IR Iran MR Mauritania
IS Iceland MT Malta
IT Italy MU Mauritius
JM Jamaica MV Maldives
JO Jordan MW Malawi
JP Japan MX Mexico
KE Kenya MY Malaysia
KG Kyrgyzstan MZ Mozambique
KH Cambodia NA Namibia
KI Kiribati NC New Caledonia
KM Comoros NE Niger
KN Saint Kitts And Nevis NF Norfolk Island
KR South Korea NG Nigeria
KW Kuwait NI Nicaragua
KY Cayman Islands NL Netherlands
KZ Kazakhstan NO Norway
LA Laos NP Nepal
CountryCode CountryName CountryCode CountryName
NR Nauru SY Syria
NU Niue SZ Swaziland
NZ New Zealand TC Turks and Caicos Islands
OM Oman TD Chad
French Southern and
PA Panama TF Antarctic Lands
PE Peru TG Togo
PF French Polynesia TH Thailand
PG Papua New Guinea TJ Tajikistan
PH Philippines TK Tokelau
PK Pakistan TL Timor-Leste
PL Poland TM Turkmenistan
PR Puerto Rico TN Tunisia
PS Palestinian Territory TO Tonga
PT Portugal TR Turkey
PW Palau TT Trinidad And Tobago
PY Paraguay TV Tuvalu
QA Qatar TW Taiwan
RE Reunion TZ Tanzania
RO Romania UA Ukraine
RS Serbia UG Uganda
RU Russia US United States
RW Rwanda UY Uruguay
SA Saudi Arabia UZ Uzbekistan
SB Solomon Islands VA Holy See (vatican City State)
Saint Vincent And The
SC Seychelles VC Grenadines
SD Sudan VE Venezuela
SE Sweden VG Virgin Islands, British
SG Singapore VI Virgin Islands, U.S.
SI Slovenia VN Vietnam
SK Slovakia VU Vanuatu
SL Sierra Leone WS Samoa
SM San Marino YE Yemen
SN Senegal YT Mayotte
SO Somalia ZA South Africa
SR Suriname ZM Zambia
ST Sao Tome And Principe ZW Zimbabwe
SV El Salvador
Currency Codes:

CurrencyCode CurrencyName CurrencyCode CurrencyName

ADF Andorran Franc CRC Costa Rican Colon
ADP Andorran Peseta CSD Serbian Dinar
AED United Arab Emirates Dirhams CUC Cuban Convertible Peso
AFA Afghanistan Afghani CUP Cuba Pesos
AFN Afghanistan Afghani CVE Cape Verde Escudo
ALL Albanian Lek CYP Cyprus Pound
AMD Armenian Dram CZK Czech koruny
ANG NL Antillian Guilder DEM Deutsche Marks
AOA Angolan Kwanza DJF Djibouti Franc
AON Angolan New Kwanza DKK Danish Kroner
ARS Argentine Peso DOP Dominican R. Peso
ATS Austrian Schilling DZD Algerian Dinar
AUD Australian Dollars ECS Ecuador Sucre
AWG Aruban Florin EEK Estonian Kroon
AZM Azerbaijan Manat EGP Egyptian Pound
AZN Azerbaijan New Manat ESP Spanish Peseta
BAM Bosnian Mark ETB Ethiopian Birr
BBD Barbados Dollar EUR Euros
BDT Bangladeshi Taka FIM Finish Markkaa
BEF Belgian Franc FJD Fijian Dollar
BGN Bulgarian Lev FKP Falkland Islands Pound
BHD Bahrain Dinar FRF French Francs
BIF Burundi Franc GBP British Pounds
BMD Bermudian Dollar GEL Georgian Lari
BND Brunei Dollars GHC Ghanaian Cedi
BOB Bolivian Boliviano GHS Ghanaian New Cedi
BRL Brazil reais GIP Gibraltar Pound
BSD Bahamian Dollar GMD Gambian Dalasi
BTN Bhutan Ngultrum GNF Guinea Franc
BWP Botswana Pula GRD Greek Drachma
BYR Belarusian Ruble GTQ Guatemalan Quetzal
BZD Belize Dollar GYD Guyanese Dollar
CAD Canadian Dollars HKD Hong Kong Dollars
CDF Congolese Franc HNL Honduran Lempira
CHF Swiss Francs HRK Croatian Kuna
CLP Chile Pesos HTG Haitian Gourde
CNY Chinese yuan HUF Hungarian Forint
COP Colombian Peso IDR Indonesian Rupiah
CurrencyCode CurrencyName CurrencyCode CurrencyName
IEP Irish Punt MVR Maldive Rufiyaa
ILS Israeli New Shekel MWK Malawi Kwacha
INR Indian rupees MXN Mexican pesos
IQD Iraqi Dinar MYR Malaysian Ringgits
IRR Iranian Rial MZM Mozambique Metical
ISK Iceland Krona MZN Mozambique New Metical
ITL Italian Lira NAD Namibia Dollar
JMD Jamaican Dollar NGN Nigerian Naira
JOD Jordan Dinar NIO Nicaraguan Cordoba Oro
JPY Japanese Yen NLG Netherlands Guilders
KES Kenyan Shilling NOK Norwegian Kroner
KGS Kyrgyzstanian Som NPR Nepalese Rupee
KHR Cambodian Riel NZD New Zealand Dollars
KMF Comoros Franc OMR Omani Rial
KPW North Korean Won PAB Panamanian Balboa
KRW South Korean Won PEN Peruvian Nuevo Sol
KWD Kuwait Dinars PGK Papua New Guinea Kina
KYD Cayman Islands Dollar PHP Philippine Pesos
KZT Kazakhstan Tenge PKR Pakistan Rupee
LAK Lao Kip PLN Polish Zloty
LBP Lebanese Pound PTE Portuguese Escudo
LKR Sri Lanka Rupee PYG Paraguay Guarani
LRD Liberian Dollar QAR Qatari Rial
LSL Lesotho Loti ROL Romanian Lei
LTL Lithuanian Litas RON Romanian New Lei
LUF Luxembourg Franc RSD Serbian Dinar
LVL Latvian Lats RUB Russian Rouble
LYD Libyan Dinar RWF Rwandan Franc
MAD Moroccon Dirham SAR Saudi riyal
MDL Moldovan Leu SBD Solomon Islands Dollar
MGA Malagasy Ariary SCR Seychelles Rupee
MGF Malagasy Ariary SDD Sudanese Dinar
MKD Macedonian Denar SDG Sudanese Pound
MMK Myanmar Kyat SDP Sudanese Pound
MNT Mongolian Tugrik SEK Swedish Kronas
MOP Macau Pataca SGD Singapore Dollars
MRO Mauritanian Ouguiya SHP St. Helena Pound
MTL Maltese Lira SIT Slovenian Tolar
MUR Mauritius Rupee SKK Slovak Koruna
CurrencyCode CurrencyName CurrencyCode CurrencyName
SLL Sierra Leone Leone UYP Uruguayan Peso
SOS Somali Shilling UYU Uruguayan Peso
SRD Suriname Dollar UZS Uzbekistan Som
SRG Suriname Guilder VEB Venezuelan Bolivar
STD Sao Tome/Principe Dobra VEF Venezuelan Bolivar Fuerte
SVC El Salvador Colon VND Vietnamese Dong
SYP Syrian Pound VUV Vanuatu Vatu
SZL Swaziland Lilangeni WST Samoan Tala
THB Thai baht XAF CFA Franc BEAC
TJS Tajikistani Somoni XAG Silver (oz.)
TMM Turkmenistan Manat XAU Gold (oz.)
TMT Turkmenistan New Manat XCD East Caribbean Dollar
TND Tunisia Dinars XEU ECU
TOP Tonga Pa'anga XOF CFA Franc BCEAO
TRL Turkish Lira XPD Palladium (oz.)
TRY Turkish New Lira XPF CFP Franc
TTD Trinidad/Tobago Dollar XPT Platinum (oz.)
TWD Taiwan dollars YER Yemeni Rial
TZS Tanzanian Shilling YUN Yugoslav Dinar
UAH Ukraine Hryvnia ZAR South African Rand
UGX Uganda Shilling ZMK Zambian Kwacha
USD U.S. Dollars ZWD Zimbabwe Dollar
White-Label Search Box Stylesheets:

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Deals/Deals300x296.css
- All Languages
- Tab for Popular Cities
- Square-ish Shape

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Circles/Circles300x296.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Square-ish Shape
- Includes HotelsCombined Logo (not suitable for Private Branding)

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Circles/Circles472x69.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Small, Horizontal Banner Shape
- Uses HotelsCombined Branding (best to point to our branded website)

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Circles/Circles200x190.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- City-Specific or Hotel-Specific
- Small, Square-ish Shape
- Uses HotelsCombined Branding (best to point to our branded website)
- Requires Special Parameters (2 separate examples below)

// City-Specific Search Box //

// Remember to add your Affiliate ID to the static URL in BottomLink //
hcw_options = {
PopularCities: {},
FileName: "Sydney",
TopTitle: "Sydney Hotels",
BottomLinks: {
"Browse All Sydney Hotels":
"http://www.hotelscombined.com/City/Sydney.htm"
}
}

// Hotel-Specific Search Box //

// Remember to add your Affiliate ID to the static URL in BottomLink //
hcw_options = {
PopularCities: {},
SearchSingleHotel: true,
FileName: "Hilton_Hotel_Sydney",
TopTitle: "Sydney Hilton",
BottomLinks: {
"View Hotel Details":
"http://www.hotelscombined.com/Hotel/Hilton_Hotel_Sydney.htm"
}
}
 http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Ocean/Ocean300x296.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Square-ish Shape

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Bell/Bell300x600.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Large, Tall Shape

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Bike/Bike300x250.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Square-ish Shape

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Bamboo/Bamboo728x90.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Wide, Horizontal Banner Shape

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Deals/Deals200x190.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Small Square-ish Shape
- Requires Special Parameters (examples below)

// Remember to add your Affiliate ID to the static URL in BottomLink //

hcw_options = {
PopularCities: {},
BottomLinks: {
"Browse All Properties": "http://www.hotelscombined.com/"
}
}

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Windmill/Windmill300x250.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Square-ish Shape
- Requires Special Parameter (example below)

hcw_options = {
PopularCities: {}
}

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Deals/Deals300x600.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Large, Tall Shape

http://www.hcsearchbox.com/Paper/Paper300x296.css
- Only Designed for English (other languages may need modifications)
- Square-ish Shape

(We will continue adding to this list regularly.)