Setting up an affiliate program

Availability

The affiliate module is in beta. It appears for everyone under Audience → Affiliate, but the interactive surfaces are locked until your organization is enabled — you'll see the layout with an overlay explaining what unlocks.

What it does

An affiliate program rewards partners for every paying customer they send your way. You set the commissions, hand out referral links, and pay everyone from one place.

A project can run more than one program — for example a standard partner rate and a higher rate for a named agency — with one marked as the default.

Creating a program

Go to Audience → Affiliate → Programs and start a new program. Creation runs as a five-step wizard.

1. Basics

Name your program and set where its referral links land. The slug is generated from the name.

2. Commission

What affiliates earn, and for how long. First pick a commission type:

• Percentage of revenue — pays a share of every sale, so it scales with deal size.
• Fixed amount per sale — pays a flat amount regardless of price.

Then pick a duration:

• Pay once — a single commission per conversion.
• Recurring — paid for a set number of months on the same subscription.
• Lifetime — paid on every renewal, indefinitely.

Commissions are denominated in USD, EUR, or GBP.

3. Tracking

How referrals are credited when more than one affiliate touched the customer:

• First click wins — the affiliate who introduced the customer gets the credit.
• Last click wins — the affiliate who closed the visit gets the credit.

You also set the cookie window in days — how long after a click a conversion still counts. The default is 30 days.

4. Affiliates and payouts

• Auto-approve applicants — when on, new affiliates become active the moment they apply. When off (the default) they wait in your queue for manual review.
• Minimum payout — the balance an affiliate must reach before they can be paid. The default is 50.00.
• Payout schedule — currently manual. Scheduled batch payouts (weekly, monthly, net-30) are planned; for now you trigger payouts from the affiliate row.

5. Review

Confirm the terms and create the program. You can revisit all of it later under the program's Settings.

Managing affiliates

The Affiliates list holds everyone who has applied, filterable by status:

• Awaiting approval — applied, not yet reviewed.
• Active — approved and earning.
• Rejected — turned down.
• Suspended — paused, for example during a fraud investigation.

Pending applications across every program are also surfaced on the affiliate overview, so nothing sits unreviewed for weeks.

What affiliates see

Affiliates get their own portal on your public site, separate from your dashboard. They can apply, sign in, view their dashboard and earnings, set up a payout method, review their payout history, and read notifications you send them.

Choosing terms

• Percentage plus recurring is the standard for subscription products — it aligns the affiliate with retention, not just the first sale.
• Fixed plus pay-once suits one-off purchases and keeps your cost per acquisition predictable.
• Leave auto-approve off until you know what kind of applications you attract. Approving manually for the first month is cheap insurance.
• A 30-day cookie window is a reasonable default. Longer windows favour affiliates; shorter ones favour you. Whichever you choose, publish it — partners notice.