How to Start an Affiliate Program

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 7% platform fee works for how the fee fits inside that number rather than adding to it.

For the arithmetic behind picking a specific number, see how to choose a commission rate.

Which products to put in the programme

A common instinct is to list everything. It usually works better to start with a few products chosen on purpose, because affiliates judge a merchant by the first listing they see rather than by the catalogue.

• Products with enough margin to fund a rate worth promoting, rather than your thinnest lines.
• Products that sell already. Affiliate traffic amplifies a page that converts, it does not rescue one that does not.
• Products with a clear reason to choose them, since an affiliate has to explain that reason to their audience in a sentence.
• Ideally something with repeat purchases, because a referred customer who comes back is worth several times the first sale.

Setting it up on Decolinker

1. Create a merchant account and list your product with a price and commission rate.
2. Connect your store so tracking installs itself and sales report automatically.
3. Your listing appears in the marketplace where approved affiliates browse for products to promote.
4. Affiliates generate a tracking link and share it. Clicks and sales are tracked automatically.
5. You see sales and affiliate performance in the merchant dashboard as they happen.

The connection step is the one worth being careful about. If tracking is not live on your storefront, the sales still happen and the affiliate simply never gets credited, with no error to warn either of you. See how affiliate tracking works for what to check.

What the first few months actually look like

Affiliate programmes start slowly and this is normal rather than a sign something is broken. An affiliate who picks up your product has to make something, publish it and wait for it to find an audience, which takes weeks before a single click arrives.

• Expect a long gap between listing a product and the first tracked sale.
• Expect most affiliates who take a link to produce nothing. That is the normal shape and not a judgement of your product.
• Expect a small number of affiliates to eventually produce most of the revenue. Finding and keeping them is the whole game.

The temptation at the two month mark is to cut the rate because the programme has not paid for itself. That is usually backwards: a rate cut lands hardest on the few affiliates who are working, which is the group you least want to lose.

Mistakes worth avoiding

• Setting the rate from a competitor rather than your margin. Their costs are not yours.
• Listing a product whose page does not convert. You will pay for clicks in effort and get nothing back.
• Going quiet. Affiliates deciding what to promote next month pick the merchant they have heard from.
• Changing terms retroactively. It is the fastest way to lose the affiliates already producing for you, and word travels.