The purpose of the Sources page of your account
Use the Sources page of your Rbate account to register each of your Help Sources with Rbate, and view their earnings and rankings. Each Help Source is either an online or offline medium that assists consumers (an article, clip, interactive tool, publication, comment, etc.), or a consumer assistance service (an organization, premises, person, or facility).
Two quicker ways are also available to create and update your Help Sources: By integrating Rbate with your content management system, and by having sources automatically-created when first Rmarked by your users.
Rcodes and Rmarks
Each registered source is allocated a unique alpha-numeric Rcode that is displayed both in the source table and at the top of each source's form once it is saved.
You include a source's Rcode in that source's Rmark URL, allowing the correct source to be identified when consumers click Rmark links to add that source to their collection of Rmarks (their annotatable library of product research). Rebate claimers cite your source as helpful on rebate claims by selecting their Rmark of your source.
If a source is on the Web or is a mobile app, a consumer can Rmark it via an Rmark button or link. For offline material, this is done through either a printed short URL or a link encoded in a QR image that can be followed by taking a photo of it. Alternatively, you can give someone an Rmark yourself by requesting either their email address or Facebook name, or by getting them to tap their smartphone on your NFC device or wristband. Instructions on how to do each of these can be found here.
Each source must be individually registered or linked to a group or a comment host
A Help Source cannot be cited by a rebate claimer, and so earn you Rbate income and citation credit, unless (1), you have individually registered that source with Rbate, either via the form on the Sources Page, or by having your systems call Rbate's API, (2), you have registered a Help Source that represents a (media or service) source group, and use the group Rcode to associate individual sources within this group with the group as a whole, (3), you have registered a Help Source that represents a media group, which can allow individual Web-based sources within this group to be automatically registered with Rbate when first Rmarked, or (4), the source is a user comment that can be matched by Rcode or URL to a media source on which you've set the Comment Permalink Prefix field. User comment sources aren't listed on the Sources Page.
You can manually register single sources, or only source groups
It's best if you can register as many of your individual sources with Rbate, preferably prior to their first availability. Registering a source adds it to Rbate's search engine, allocates it a unique Rcode, and allows you to view separate earnings and statistics.
If you run a service, you can choose what level of detail to register, from individual staff members, to individual premises, regions, or just a single source for each service type. A finer division of sources allows you to track performance at more levels of hierarchy. Use the "Parent source" field to group sources in their proper hierarchy.
If your organization creates media, and you find it too much work to pre-register all your individual pieces as Help Sources through Rbate's site, you may be able to arrange for your Content Managment System to call Rbate's API to automatically register and update sources with Rbate as they are published and updated in your CMS.
If you're unable to use the API, you can instead reduce your workload by registering sources of the "Media group" type. Each may represent a particular masthead or website, or one section of such. Even if you do pre-register some or all of your individual media sources, it can be convenient to organize them in Media Groups.
If you choose to use such group sources for your offline media, the Rcode that you should use on your individual media pieces should be the Rcode of its most specific group. Rebate claimers cite a source as helpful by Rmarking the group source, which can earn the publication that the group represents both income and increased search engine ranking. However no citation credit or income can accrue to an individual piece or person until you register it or them separately.
If you use media group Rcodes in Rmark buttons placed on online material, Rbate will often be able to automatically register a new source for each individual piece when it's first Rmarked. Although this saves you from pre-registering via the Rbate website or API, the disadvantage of this approach is that many properties of the source cannot be carried in the vulnerable public client-side Rmark parameters, so they must either inherit from the group source or be manually edited after registration.
An automatically-registered source inherits its product category and product list from the group in question, and a heading/title and description from the webpage in question. You will be notified of the source's creation by email, and prompted to edit the new source to set a correct media type, product category, product list, and any other fields. It's also desirable to update the Rmark buttons on the source's pages to use the newly-allocated individual Rcode, rather than the Rcode of the group.
It's important that each source be given the most specific possible product category, allowing your sources to be listed prominently in Rbate claim citation candidate lists whenever its category is a tight match for the product that has been bought. Correct titles, descriptions, media types, and product lists also allow your source to be found more easily by shoppers using Rbate's search engine.
If you have registered complete websites or website sections with Rbate (which can also represent printed sections), then when you place an Rmark button on each page of your individual unregistered pieces you should try to set the the button's rcode parameter to that of the most specific Media Group for the piece, and also try to either set either the button's first_page_url parameter to the URL of the first webpage of the piece, or the url parameter to that of the webpage that's being rendered.
If your web-app makes it hard to set page-specific parameters, they can often be left off the button HTML, and an attempt will be made to determine them automatically. However leaving off the URL parameters will cause problems with some browsers and pages. Media group Rcodes can be omitted when the URLs of your site are arranged so that the URL registered for the group source is not only the group's "home page", but is also a prefix of the URLs of all pieces in that group. If this is the case, Rmark URLs can be parameterless, which means that Rmark HTML can be site-wise statically rendered.
Creating and Updating Sources through the API
You can use Rbate's API to allow your Content Management System or other sotfware to create and edit your registered Rbate sources outside the usual Web interface of your Rbate Helper Account.
This can be done by POSTing the following parameters to
http://rbate.com/helpers/set_source
To make it easier to set the product_category, product_availability, location, and area_served parameters in a CMS form, embed the following HTML to allow rendering of selectors for one or more of these parameters which will set the value of a specified hidden form element.
<script>
var RbateCategorySelectorOptions = {};
</script>
<style>
select.rbateCatSel {
display: block;
width: 23em;
max-width: 95%;
}
</style>
<script src="https://rbate.com/assets/catsel.js"></script>
To render a selector for one of these four source parameters, add a key with that parameter's name to RbateCategorySelectorOptions, and set that key's value to an object having keys fieldname, which is the name of the form field you want set, root, which is an optional array that can be used to restrict the category root, and display, a boolean value which enables display of both the selected category (for when you want to manually copy the value) and the array to which the root parameter would need to be set for this value to become the selector root.
Then add an empty div having id attribute equal to the fieldname value suffixed by "_div" to render that selector at that page location.
| PARAMETER NAME | REQUIRED? | PARAMETER VALUE | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rcode | Existing Sources |
The Rcode of the source to be updated. Do not include this parameter when creating a new source. |
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| key | Y |
Your API key. Log-in to see. |
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| handle | New Sources |
A unique handle for the source, of at most 25 characters. |
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| type_name | New Sources |
A string that represents the type of source this is.
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| title | New Sources |
Title or name of the source. At most 100 characters. |
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| url | N |
The cannonical URL of the first page of the source. |
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| content_changed | N |
Set to 'Y' to trigger a re-spider of the content. |
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| N |
For sources of the person type, the email address for the related Assistant account |
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| can_activate_claim_codes | N |
For sources of the person type with an assistant email, whether they should be given the same permission as the helper to manipulate Claim Codes. "Y" or "N". |
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| tags | N |
A space-separated list of tags that can be used to filter sources in your account. |
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| area_served | N |
A unique comma-separated expanding placename hierarchy subset that encompases the locations served by this service or price/availability source. Placenames should be taken from the Rbate location selector (see above for how to embed this in a form). For example Sydney, Australia The state "NSW" cam be skipped because this two-placename subset is globally unique. A blank or missing value specifices a global area is served. |
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| specific_area_served | N |
If a most-specific setting of the area_served parameter is not sufficiently precise, refine the location(s) by also setting this parameter. |
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| location | N |
A unique comma-separated expanding placename hierarchy subset that encompases the location(s) of a service source. Placenames should be taken from the Rbate location selector. See area_served above. |
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| specific_location | N |
If a most-specific setting of the location parameter is not sufficiently precise, refine the location(s) by also setting this parameter. |
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| postal_code | N |
The postcode of this service source. |
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| latitude | N |
The latitude of this service source in degrees (-90 to 90). If left blank, an attempt will be made to automatically determine it from a postal_code value. |
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| longitude | N |
The longitude of this service source in degrees (-180 to 180). If left blank, an attempt will be made to automatically determine it from a postal_code value. |
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| info_service | N |
Set to "Y" for service sources that provide consumers with product information. |
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| recommend_service | N |
Set to "Y" for service sources that provide consumers with product recommentations. |
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| demo_service | N |
Set to "Y" for service sources that provide consumers with product demonstrations. |
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| trial_service | N |
Set to "Y" for service sources that provide consumers with product trials. |
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| purchasing_service | N |
Set to "Y" for service sources that provide consumers with product purchasing or gift services. |
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| phone_area_code | N |
The area code of a service source (omitting out-of-area access prefix) |
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| phone_number | N |
The local phone number of a service source. |
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| phone_time_start phone_time_end |
N |
For service sources, set the hours over which its phone service is available, relative to time zone of the source's location. Each parameter should be set to HH or HH:MM (both 24-hour clock). For 24-hour services, set to 00 or leave blank. |
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| phone_mon phone_mon phone_tue phone_wed phone_thu phone_fri phone_sat phone_sun |
N |
For service sources, set the parameter to "Y" if the phone service is available on that day. |
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net_delivery voice_delivery chatbot_delivery phone_delivery customer_prem_delivery provider_prem_delivery |
N |
Set each to "Y" if this source delivers services repsectively via the Internet (web, app, or stream), a voice assistant, by chatbot, by phone, at the customer's premises, or at your own premises. |
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| sales_service | N |
Set to "Y" if this source sells the products on which it provides advice. |
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| parent_source | N |
The Rcode of the immediate parent media_group or service source to which this source belongs. Chains of sources can be created. e.g. salesperson-department-store-state-chain, or article-section-newspaper. Instead use the author field for authors of media sources.
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| publication_date | N |
The date the source was first made publicly available, in YYYY-MM-DD format. |
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| publication_reference | N |
A descrption of where an offline media source can be found. |
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| expert_level | N |
Set to "Y" if this is a media source that contains expert-level material. |
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| product_category | N |
A unique comma-separated expanding product category hierarchy subset that encompases all the source's content or work. Categories should be taken from the Rbate product category selector (see above for how to embed this in a form). For example Other, Audio uniquely specifies the category hierarchy Other, Audio, Audio/Video/Image, Electronics, Goods (you can own) A blank or missing value specifices unrestricted subject matter, but it's important to be as specific as possible to best highlight your source in rebate claims and search engine results. Select an "Other Topic" category for sources that are unlikely to influence product purchases, but which people may still like to Rmark to compile their research on this topic. |
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| specific_product_category | N |
If a most-specific product_category setting is not sufficiently precise, refine the category(s) by also setting this parameter. |
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| product_availability | N |
A unique comma-separated expanding location hierarchy subset that encompases all regions where the products covered by the source's content or work are available. Locations should be taken from the Rbate location category selector. See the area_served parameter. A blank or missing value specifices global product availability, but it's important to be as specific as possible to best highlight your source in rebate claims and search engine results. |
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| specific_product_availability | N |
If a most-specific product_availability setting is not sufficiently precise, refine the location(s) by also setting this parameter. |
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| not_charged | N |
Set to "Y" if there is no charge to access the media or service of this source. |
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| service_fee | N |
A decimal currency value, set only if the source charges a uniform access/use fee. |
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| service_fee_currency | N |
If the service_fee parameter is set, a three-letter string that represents the currency of the service_fee amount. The following are valid:
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| deferred_charge | N |
If the service_fee parameter is set, set this to "Y" if the service fee is not charged up-front, but recovered from Rbate-managed rebates. |
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| products_referenced | N |
A comma-separated list of products with which this source refers or works. Each product should have the form: [brand/maker name]:[title/model-id]:[R] Where [R] is "Y" if the [title/brand-id] string is a regular expression rather than a literal ([R] = "N"). A special brand or model value "all" can be used. |
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| contributing_sources | N |
A comma-separated list of contributions to this source by other sources. Each contribution should have the form: [Rcode]:[Percentage-Contribution] |
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| description | N |
A plain-text description of the source in at most 500 characters and 5 paragraphs. |
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| disclosure | N |
A plain-text (max 255 characters) voluntary disclosure of any relationships which could be interpreted as affecting your work on this source, augmenting any disclosure in your Helper editorial policy statement that applies to all your sources. |
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| indexing_wanted | N |
Set to "Y" if you want this source to appear in results of Rbate's purchasing help search engine. |
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When a source is sucessfully created or edited, the response status will be 200 and the response body will be the source's Rcode. Otherwise a different status is returned and the response body will contain an error-message string.