Affiliates
Let other people sell for you — programs, offers and creatives, tracking the numbers, and the agreement affiliates sign.
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
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:
| Field | |
|---|---|
| Earns commissions on | Which parts of your catalog count |
| First / Second period commissions (%) | Different rates for initial and later payments on recurring products |
| Actual commissions (%) | What you really pay |
| Commissions (as displayed to an affiliate) | What's shown on their side |
| Included in commissions | What counts towards the total |
| 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.
Offers and creatives
An offer is a specific thing to promote. It carries a name, description, cover, a commission type, the programs it belongs to, and optionally a redirect to an upgrade program.
The valuable part is the creatives — the material affiliates actually use, in four tabs:
| Tab | |
|---|---|
| Banners | Images at standard ad sizes |
| Videos | From your video library, grouped into categories |
| Emails | Ready-made subject lines and bodies 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.
Tip
Affiliates promote whatever is easiest to promote. An offer with three good email templates will outperform one with a link and good intentions, every time.
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 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 |
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
Affiliate Earnings is the line-by-line record: affiliate, product, type, commission and date. Sort by commission or date. This is what you reconcile against when it's time to pay out.
The agreement
Affiliate Agreement holds the terms affiliates accept, kept as versions so you have a record of who agreed to what.
- New version — write or upload the next one.
- Mark as current — the version new affiliates accept from now on. The current one is badged.
- Each version can be viewed as a PDF or previewed in place.
- Old versions stay in the list, with their published date.
The Agreement column on the Affiliates list tells you who has accepted — worth checking before a payout run.