How to Start an Affiliate Program
An affiliate program pays people commission for sales they refer to your store. Here is what has to be in place before you recruit anyone.
What an affiliate program actually is
A merchant sets a commission rate on a product, and affiliates promote a tracking link for it. When someone buys through that link, the affiliate earns the commission and the merchant keeps a sale they would not otherwise have had. The merchant only pays when a sale happens, there is no upfront media spend.
What you need before you start
- A product or store people can actually buy from, with working checkout.
- A commission rate you can sustain on every sale, since it applies to every affiliate sale automatically.
- A way to track clicks and attribute sales to the right affiliate, so commission is paid correctly.
- A way to pay affiliates on a predictable schedule once a sale is confirmed.
Building the tracking and payout pieces yourself is the hard part, most merchants use existing software or a network instead of writing it. See Affiliate Program Software Compared for how the main approaches differ.
Setting your commission rate
The rate is what decides whether affiliates bother promoting you. Too low and nobody picks up your product over a competitor's, too high and you lose money on every sale. On Decolinker, merchants set any rate between 15% and 90%, and that rate is the entire cost of the sale to the merchant. See how the 6% platform fee works for how the fee fits inside that number rather than adding to it.
Setting it up on Decolinker
- Create a merchant account and list your product with a price and commission rate.
- Your listing appears in the marketplace where approved affiliates browse for products to promote.
- Affiliates generate a tracking link and share it. Clicks and sales are tracked automatically.
- You see sales and affiliate performance in the merchant dashboard as they happen.