Running an Affiliate Program

An affiliate program pays other people a cut for bringing you clients — the classic growth channel of subscription software, and from the Growth plan up you can run your own. Done right, it is marketing you pay for only after it works. Done carelessly, it is margin quietly promised away for years. This lesson covers the machinery you get, the settings that protect you, and the recruiting work the machinery cannot do for you.

What the machinery does

When you enable your program, your service grows an affiliate side under your brand: a public application page at /join on your dashboard domain, and a cabinet where each approved affiliate sees their referral link, promo code and live statistics — clicks, sign-ups, conversions, balance. Attribution runs on two channels at once: the referral link (a visit sets a server-side cookie for your program's attribution window, last click wins) and the promo code, which needs no cookie at all — a code redeemed at checkout credits its owner, which is what makes podcasts, videos and offline promotion attributable.

The money mechanics are the part to internalise, because your affiliates will ask:

• Commission accrues on payments, never on registrations. A sign-up earns nothing; a paid invoice from a referred client earns the percentage. This single rule removes the incentive to flood you with fake accounts.
• Each commission matures through a holding period before it becomes payable — insurance against refunds. If a payment is refunded after payout, the amount goes negative on the affiliate's balance and nets against future earnings. Partial refunds recalculate proportionally.
• Payouts are prepared by the system and executed by you. The dashboard builds the payout queue of matured commissions above your minimum and exports a CSV in the format PayPal Mass Payments and Wise batch transfers accept. You send the money from your own account and mark the batch paid — consistent with the whole BYO money model: your revenue, your payouts, the platform never holds funds.

Anti-abuse is built in where automation beats vigilance: self-referral is blocked, disposable-email sign-ups are flagged, and matching payout details across "different" affiliates are detected. Every settings change and status transition is logged — when a dispute comes (one eventually does), the audit trail settles it.

Settings: generous enough to move, bounded enough to keep

You configure: the rate, one-time or recurring accrual (with a duration), the cookie window, the holding period, the minimum payout, and whether applications need your approval. The defaults are the market's mainstream — 25% recurring for 12 months, 60-day window, 30-day hold, $50 minimum, moderation on — and they are defensible exactly as they stand. Three notes from the sharp edges:

• Recurring duration is capped at 24 months, and the default 12 is usually right. "Lifetime" commissions sound like a great recruiting pitch and are precisely how partners discover, in year three, that their oldest revenue carries a permanent 25% drag. On a product this sticky, duration is the setting that matters most.
• The rate applies to payments, so your margin math is direct. At a $19 client and 25%, an affiliate earns ~$4.75/month of the client's first year; your per-client margin that year drops from ~$18 to ~$13.25 — for a client you did not spend acquisition effort on. Run the same numbers at 40% before you promise 40%.
• Keep moderation on. Reviewing an application takes a minute; unwinding a coupon-site "affiliate" that hijacks your own brand searches takes considerably longer.

Recruiting: the program does not fill itself

Enabling the program produces zero affiliates. Recruiting them is ordinary outreach, aimed at people who already have your niche's attention:

1. Your own clients, first and always. They know the product, their referrals arrive pre-sold, and a recurring cut turns "happy customer" into "motivated distributor". A two-line note to your five best clients is the highest-yield recruiting you will ever do.
2. Niche voices. The consultant restaurants hire, the newsletter your affiliate-marketer prospects read, the agency-owner community moderator. One such person can outperform fifty anonymous sign-ups — approach them personally, with the promo-code channel as your pitch (their audience listens and watches more than it clicks).
3. Complementary service providers. Web designers, SMM freelancers, print shops making QR signage — people asked weekly "and what about the links?" A recurring commission gives their existing answer a payment rail.

Give recruits an honest one-pager: rate, duration, window, hold, minimum, examples in dollars. Affiliates promote what they can predict — and the cabinet's live numbers keep the prediction honest afterwards.

Running it: an hour a week, most weeks

The steady-state ritual is small: process applications (minutes), answer affiliate questions, run the payout batch on a fixed day each month — reliability here is your program's reputation among affiliates — and once a month, read the per-affiliate table. Expect the classic skew: a few names produce most referred revenue. Spend your attention there — early access, a custom promo code, a rate bump you can afford — rather than nursing the long tail of zeroes. And watch quality, not just volume: if one affiliate's referrals churn abnormally fast, their traffic is mismatched with your positioning; talk to them before the holding period stops protecting you.

Referred clients still churn like any others, which makes the next lesson — retention — the multiplier on this whole channel: commission you pay for a client who leaves in month two is your worst spend, and for one who stays two years, your best.

Checklist

• [ ] Confirm you are on Growth or above; open the affiliate section and walk through /join as an applicant would.
• [ ] Set your terms — the defaults (25%, 12 months recurring, 60/30 days, $50, moderation on) unless you have a costed reason otherwise — and write the one-pager.
• [ ] Compute your margin per referred client at your average price, first year and after commissions end. Keep the number where you negotiate.
• [ ] Send the program to your three best clients and one niche voice this week.
• [ ] Put the monthly payout day in your calendar now — the first affiliate you pay late is the last one who promotes you enthusiastically.