Affiliates
The affiliate section turns other people into a sales channel: they get a link and materials, you pay a commission on what they bring in.
Five pieces fit together:
- Program — the deal: who can join, what they earn.
- Offer — a specific thing to promote, with creatives.
- Affiliates — the people in your programs.
- Earnings — what they’ve earned.
- Agreement — the terms they accept.
Programs
Section titled “Programs”A program is the commercial arrangement. Creating one:
The basics — program name, description, cover image and a list of features (what you’re offering an affiliate, in their words).
Permissions — who gets in and what they see:
- Tags — tags that grant access to the program.
- Private Group — a group affiliates in this program belong to.
- Redirect if user does not have access — where to send someone who lands on program pages without access: a Genesis page, a Legacy page, or a Custom URL.
Commissions — what they earn. A program earns on products:
| Field | |
|---|---|
| Actual Commissions (%) | What you really pay |
| Commissions (as displayed to an affiliate) | What’s shown on their side |
| Included in commissions | The products this program pays on |
| Ecosystem | Keeps a buyer with the affiliate who first brought them: a later purchase in this project made without a referral link is credited to that same affiliate |
| Active | Whether the program is running |
A product only pays out if it’s marked commissionable and attached to the program — see the Commission tab on the product.
How a sale’s commission is worked out:
- It’s a percentage of what the buyer actually paid for the product — after any coupon, not the list price. A free order earns nothing.
- An affiliate never earns on their own purchase.
- When an affiliate belongs to several of your programs, the one highest in the Priority order pays.
- A buyer whose purchase applies a program’s access tags is added to that program as an affiliate.
Affiliate Programs lists them with their Priority, creation date and status. Drag rows to change the priority order.
Offers and creatives
Section titled “Offers and creatives”An offer is a specific thing to promote. It carries a name, description, cover, the program it belongs to, and optionally a Redirect to upgrade program. Beyond that:
- Offer Details — a title, subtitle, content and video for the offer’s details page.
- Referral links — one or more links, each with a Referral Link Title and a Redirect: a page of your site, a Custom Link, or No Link. Add Another Link adds the next.
- Active — whether the offer is live.
The valuable part is the creatives — the material affiliates actually use, in four tabs:
| Tab | |
|---|---|
| Banners | Images you upload, per banner size |
| Videos | From your video library, grouped into categories |
| Ready-made subjects and content to send to their list | |
| Social | Post copy for social channels |
Videos, emails and social posts are organised into categories you create as you go.
Affiliates
Section titled “Affiliates”The Affiliates list is everyone in your programs:
| Column | |
|---|---|
| Affiliate | Who they are |
| Program | Which program they’re in |
| Agreement | Whether they’ve accepted the current agreement |
| Commissions | What they’ve earned |
| Refunds | What was clawed back |
Sort by commissions to see who’s actually driving revenue. Click through for the individual’s full record: the same metrics as the dashboard for that person (by period or a custom range, and by offer), a chart, and their Referred users — who they brought in, the product, type, when they joined and the commission.
Remove affiliate (in the record’s ⋯ menu) ends their role in this project: they leave every program here and their signed agreement goes with them. Their contact, their community membership and the commissions already earned are untouched.
The dashboard
Section titled “The dashboard”Affiliate Dashboard is the program-wide view:
| Metric | |
|---|---|
| Visitors / Unique visitors | Traffic your affiliates sent |
| Referrals | People they brought in |
| Sales | Purchases from those referrals |
| Commissions | What you owe or paid |
| Refunds | What came back |
Pick a period — today, the last 7 or 30 days, 3 or 12 months, or a custom range. A chart plots these over time, and three tables sit underneath: Top Affiliates, Top Referrals (date, name, product) and Latest Activity (date, name, commission).
The pairing to watch is visitors against sales. A lot of traffic and few sales usually means the offer page, not the affiliate.
Earnings
Section titled “Earnings”Affiliate Earnings is the line-by-line record: affiliate, product, type (Sale, Refunded, Cancelled, Chargeback and so on), commission and date. Totals for Sales, Commissions, Refunds and Referrals sit above it. Narrow it by offer and period (up to All time, or a custom range), group it by week, month, quarter or year, and sort by affiliate, commission or date. This is what you reconcile against when it’s time to pay out.
The agreement
Section titled “The agreement”Affiliate Agreement holds the terms affiliates accept, kept as versions so you have a record of who agreed to what.
- New version — a title and the document, uploaded as a PDF.
- Mark as current — the version affiliates accept from now on. Affiliates who haven’t signed it are asked to on their next login. The current one is badged Current.
- Each version can be opened as a PDF or previewed in place.
- Old versions stay in the list, with their published date, until you delete one — which can’t be undone.
The Agreement column on the Affiliates list tells you who has accepted — worth checking before a payout run.