Approve and manage your partners

The Affiliates tab is your list of partners. Here you approve the people who apply, add partners yourself, bring in a list from another tool, and adjust one partner's deal without changing the whole program.

Before you start

• Your program set up and switched on. See Set up your affiliate program.
• The owner or admin role.

Steps

Approve or turn down an application

1. Go to Marketing › Affiliate program and open the Affiliates tab.
2. Find the partner. The table shows Name, Code, Status, Clicks, Refs, Pending, Payable and Paid.
3. Click Approve. They are emailed their link. Or click Reject.
4. Later, Suspend stops a partner earning, and Reinstate brings them back and emails them their link again.

Add a partner yourself

1. Click Add affiliate.
2. Type their Name and Email, for example a customer who keeps recommending you.
3. Click Add. They are added as active with a link code of their own and emailed their link.

Import partners from a spreadsheet

1. Click Import, then Choose file and pick a CSV file with one partner per row. Click Template if you want a file to fill in.
2. An email column is all it needs. Name, link code, status, payout method, PayPal email or payout details, a custom rate, a coupon code and who recruited them are read when they are there. Check each column is matched, or set it to Not in this file.
3. Read the preview and any rows it will skip, such as "Already a partner, left as they are" or "Not an email address".
4. Choose whether partners with no status in the file are Active or Waiting for my approval.
5. Turn Email active partners their link on or off. Emails go out at about 30 a minute.
6. Click Import [number] partners. When it finishes, click Download the report to keep a record, then Done.

Moving from another affiliate tool? Keep their link codes: links already shared with ?ref=, ?via= or ?fpr= keep counting.

Give one partner their own deal

1. On the partner's row, click Edit.
2. Turn off Use the program's rate and set a Custom rate, as Percent or Fixed amount.
3. Optional: type a Coupon code, such as "sarah20". When a store order uses this discount code, this partner is credited even without their link. It must match a discount code you have created in your store.
4. Click Save.

See which campaigns sell

Partners can add a campaign tag to their link, so the address ends in something like ?ref=sarah-4821&sub=youtube. In the partner's Edit box, Campaigns shows each tag with Clicks, Customers and Earned. To make a tagged link for them, type a tag such as "spring-email" and click Copy tagged link. Partners can also make their own on their partner page.

What happens next

• Other buttons on a row: Link copies the partner's link, Add a sale credits a sale made outside your store, and Pay out records a payment.
• If you require tax forms, a partner without one is marked "No tax form — their payout waits for one". Click View to see a form they have sent.
• Export downloads your partner list.

Troubleshooting

Saving a coupon code says it must be 2 to 40 characters. A coupon code is 2 to 40 lowercase letters, numbers, dashes or underscores.

The coupon code does not credit the partner. It must match a discount code in your store exactly. Create the code in your store first.

The import says "That file is over 5 MB." Split it into smaller files. One file can hold up to 5,000 partners.

The import skipped some rows. Download the report for the reason on each row. Partners who are already here are left as they are.

A partner says they never got their link. Check the email address on their row, then click Link to copy it and send it yourself, or ask them to request a sign-in link on the partner page.

Related

• Set up your affiliate program
• Pay your partners
• Every workflow trigger explained