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An affiliate is a customer of your store with a link of their own. When somebody buys through it, the affiliate earns a share of the order.

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Switching it on

The programme is off until you switch it on, in Settings, under Affiliates. There you set:
  • The commission and the buyer’s discount a new affiliate gets.
  • Whether a customer may join by themselves from the customer panel.
  • Whether an affiliate may change the code their link ends in.
  • Whether they may move commission to their store balance, and whether they may ask for a payout.
While it is off, no link takes anything off or earns anything, and the customer panel says nothing of affiliates. An affiliate’s link is your store’s address with their code: ?ref=ada, /ref/ada and /ref=ada all work. A click counts for 30 days, and the last link clicked wins. A buyer who comes through a link gets the affiliate’s discount, on top of any coupon.

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What an affiliate earns

Commission is a percent of what the buyer paid for the products: after every discount, before a payment method’s fee and tax. It lands on the affiliate’s balance when the order is paid.
  • An affiliate earns nothing on their own orders, and gets no discount from their own link.
  • When an order is refunded or charged back, its commission is taken back, as far as the affiliate’s balance still covers it.
  • A switched off affiliate earns nothing new, and keeps what they earned.

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Payouts

Shoply moves no money to affiliates. A payout is a request and a record: the affiliate says how they want to be paid, you pay them yourself, and press Mark as Paid, or decline with a reason they can read. The amount leaves their balance when they ask, and comes back if you decline. You are told of a request by email, and in Discord if your store’s alerts go there.

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With the API

See Affiliates. The webhook events affiliate.created, affiliate.payout_requested and affiliate.payout_answered tell your server as it happens.