How to start an affiliate program

Your product is live, you have a handful of customers, and you have heard that an affiliate program is marketing you only pay for when someone buys. To start an affiliate program that sells, set a commission you can afford, give each affiliate their own link and code, and spend most of your time asking the right people to join and helping them post. Most founders buy affiliate software, wait for people to sign up, and find that the few who join never post.

Do these three things

About 4 hours a day, every day. Judge your messages after 2,800 (4 weeks), and judge each affiliate 60 days after they join.

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1. 1Today: set your commission: 25% of each customer's first 12 months for a SaaS, or 15% of the first order for a store. Give each affiliate their own link and discount code, for free, with UpPromote's free plan or Stripe promotion codes.
2. 2Every day: send 100 personal messages to customers, creators and list writers who already talk to your buyers. Offer your commission, a free account or product, and a ready-made kit. Follow up 3 times.
3. 3Every Sunday: count messages, affiliates who joined, affiliates who posted, sales and commission. After 2,800 messages, fix the first number below its line.

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ChatGPT or Claude reads this guide and works through it with you.

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1. Decide if an affiliate program fits, and set your commission

An affiliate program pays people outside your company a share of each sale they send you with their own link or code. It fits when a stranger can buy without talking to you: a self-serve SaaS or an online store. Decide that first, then write down your commission, how long a click counts, and when you pay.

The rule. If buyers pay online without a call, start an affiliate program. If your deals close on a call, as in most B2B companies and agencies, set up referral partnerships instead: other businesses introduce buyers to you by email. If you want your own customers to bring friends, that is a referral program. Many businesses run both later. Start with one.

Check your page before you pay anyone to send people to it. If fewer than 1 in 100 visitors buy or start a trial, affiliates will send people who leave. Fix your store or SaaS site first, in the same weeks you recruit.

The commission. Most SaaS programs pay 20% to 30% of what the customer pays, every month, for a set time. Pay 25% of each customer's first 12 months. For stores, beauty and personal care programs pay about 10% to 18% of a new customer's first order, and fashion 8% to 15%. Pay 15% of the first order. Then check it against what one customer is worth to you: your price minus your costs, over the time they stay, which is their lifetime value. The commission on one customer must be less than half of the profit you keep from them.

The rest of the terms.

• What counts as a sale: a first payment after the trial for a SaaS, and a first order for a store.
• How long a click counts: 60 days. This is the "cookie window", the time after someone clicks an affiliate's link in which a purchase still counts for that affiliate. Under 14 days looks unfair to affiliates.
• When you pay: once a month, on a fixed date, for sales older than 30 days, so refunds come out first.

If you run a D2C store: add up the commission, the discount on the affiliate's code, the product cost, shipping and payment fees. They must stay below the order price, the same check as your break-even ROAS. If the first order loses money, raise your price, pay less, or count the customer's second order in your repeat purchase numbers before you decide.

If you run a SaaS: paying for 12 months rather than forever keeps the cost known. If many customers leave in month one, fix churn first, or pay only after the second payment. If you also sell a lifetime deal, pay one fixed commission on it, not a monthly one.

• Tool: Google Sheets.
• Time: 45 minutes.
• You will have: a yes or no on the program, and one short set of terms with the numbers.
• It worked if: the commission on one customer is less than half of the profit you keep from them, and you can say each term in one sentence.
• Common mistake: copying a 40% or 50% rate from a course seller, whose costs are near zero, or offering 5% because it feels safe. 5% is below what most programs pay, so few people will bother.

2. Give every affiliate their own link and discount code for free

Every affiliate needs their own link and their own discount code, so you know who sent each sale. You can start for free. Pay for affiliate software only once 10 affiliates have made a sale, or once tracking by hand takes more than an hour a week.

You need both. A link counts people who click, but many people hear about you in a short video or a podcast and type a code at checkout instead. Tracking only links misses those sales.

If you sell on Shopify. Install UpPromote from the Shopify App Store. Its free plan has unlimited affiliates, tracks by link or code, and covers up to $3,000 of affiliate sales a month. You pay affiliates yourself. Its Growth plan is $29.99 a month plus 2% of affiliate sales. If you would rather use no app, make one code per affiliate in your Shopify admin: Discounts, then Create discount, then Amount off orders, method Discount code, and under Maximum discount uses tick Limit to one per customer.

Shopify's own Collabs app is free to install, with a 2.9% fee on automatic payouts. But Shopify's help page says "Collabs isn't accepting new creator signups at this time", so most creators you find cannot join it. Use it only for creators who already have a Collabs account.

If you take payments with Stripe. In the Stripe Dashboard, open Products, then Coupons, and create one coupon. Turn on Use customer-facing promotion codes, make one code for each affiliate, and tick Eligible for first-time order only. Give each affiliate a link to your site with UTM parameters, such as ?utm_source=affiliate&utm_campaign=maya, and add a "Who sent you?" box to your signup form, which is self-reported attribution. Log every signup with a code, link or answer in your sheet. Once you need software, Rewardful's Starter plan is $49 a month for up to $7,500 of affiliate revenue a month, with no fee on sales and a 14-day free trial. It connects to Stripe and tracks both links and coupon codes, and each affiliate gets their own dashboard.

The sign-up form. Make a Google Form with: name, email, where they post, a link to their best post, their audience size, and a tick box for your terms. Put it on a page called "Affiliates" in your website's footer. Approve people by hand.

Then test it. Click a test link, buy with a test code, and check the sale shows under the test affiliate. Set up conversion tracking too, so you can see affiliate visits next to your other traffic.

• Tool: UpPromote's free plan or Shopify discount codes, or Stripe promotion codes; Google Forms; Google Sheets.
• Time: 1 hour.
• You will have: a sign-up form, a page that links to it, and one test link and code that record a test sale.
• It worked if: the test sale shows up under the test affiliate, by both link and code.
• Common mistake: paying for software, then waiting for affiliates to find you. Software counts sales. It does not bring affiliates.

3. Write your affiliate terms and a one-page kit

Write two short pages: the terms, so affiliates know the rules, and a kit, so they can post in 10 minutes. Affiliates who are handed something ready to post are the ones who post.

The terms. Ask ChatGPT or Claude to fill the template below with your numbers, then read every line yourself. Two rules matter most:

• Affiliates must say they are paid. In the US, the FTC says the disclosure must be clear and close to the link, like "I get a commission if you buy through this link". "Affiliate link" alone may not be clear enough, and short tags like "sp" or "spon" are not. In the UK, the ASA expects "#ad". The FTC also says the brand must train and check its affiliates, so you check their posts every Sunday (step 6).
• Some ways of getting sales are banned. Coupon sites and browser extensions often take credit for sales you would have had anyway. In March 2025, Google changed the Chrome Web Store rules so extensions may only add affiliate links after the user acts. Ban coupon sites and extensions, ads on your brand name, spam, fake reviews, and buying with your own code. Ban posting links where community rules do not allow it, as in many subreddits.

[Your company] affiliate programWhat you earn: [25% of what each customer pays in their first 12 months / 15% of each new customer's first order].
What counts: a [first payment after the trial / first order] from someone who used your link or code. Your own purchases do not count.
Cookie window: 60 days from the click.
When you are paid: on the [1st] of each month, for sales older than 30 days, by [PayPal / Wise]. Refunded sales are taken off. US affiliates send a W-9 before the first payment; others send a W-8BEN.You must: say you are paid, near the link, in plain words, like "I get a commission if you buy through this link" or "#ad".
You must not: run ads on [your brand name], list our codes on coupon sites or in browser extensions, send spam, write fake reviews, buy with your own code, or post links where a community's rules do not allow it.
What you can say: [2 true claims about your product]. Do not promise results we do not promise.We can end this at any time and remove commission earned by breaking these rules. Contact: [name], [email]

This is a starting point, not legal advice.

If you are in the US: collect a W-9 from each affiliate before you pay them. If you pay one person $2,000 or more in a year, send them a Form 1099-NEC by 31 January. That limit was $600 until the end of 2025. Outside the US, ask your accountant how to record commission payments.

The kit. One page or one shared folder. Build it from your value proposition and the words your customers used in interviews. AI drafts the five posts in a few minutes. You fix each one so it sounds like a person.

Who it is for: [kind of person or team], when [the moment the problem hurts].
What it does, in one line: [your value proposition].
3 angles that work: 1. [the problem it fixes] 2. [a before and after] 3. [how it compares with doing it by hand, or with a named alternative]
5 ready posts: [one short video script, one Instagram or LinkedIn post, one email to a newsletter, one paragraph for a "best tools" list, one reply for a question in a community]
Images: [3 product screenshots or photos, a short demo clip, your logo]
Your link: [link]  Your code: [CODE] gives your audience [offer].
Say you are paid: "I get a commission if you buy through this link." or "#ad"

• Tool: Google Docs or a Google Drive folder, and ChatGPT or Claude.
• Time: 1 hour 30 minutes, once.
• You will have: a terms page linked from your sign-up form, and a kit link you can send in every welcome.
• It worked if: a friend can pick one ready post from the kit and post it in 10 minutes.
• Common mistake: a kit of logos and banners with nothing to say. Affiliates need words and angles more than graphics.

4. Find affiliates: add 100 names a day

Find affiliates by listing 100 people a day who already talk to your buyers: your own customers first, then people who write about your kind of product. To send 100 messages a day you need about 3,000 names a month in your lead list.

Where to find them, best first:

• Your customers and trial users. They already like the product. Ask every one, including the people behind your first reviews and testimonials.
• People who review you or your rivals. Search Google and YouTube for "[competitor] review", "[competitor] alternative" and "[competitor] vs". The rivals from your competitor analysis give you the names to search. People who review one tool will review another.
• Writers of "best [category]" lists. Search "best [your category] for [your buyer]". These lists matter twice. In a December 2025 Ahrefs study of 750 ChatGPT prompts, "best X" lists were 43.8% of the pages ChatGPT cited as sources. A list writer who adds you can put you in AI answers too.
• Newsletters your buyers read. Search "[your buyer's topic] newsletter". Small newsletters count: every reader chose to hear from that writer.
• Creators with 1,000 to 50,000 followers who teach or entertain your buyer on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or LinkedIn. These are micro-influencers. Small accounts answer their own messages.
• People who answer questions in the communities where your buyers talk.

If you run a SaaS: add freelancers, consultants and small agencies who set up tools like yours for clients. Look for them in the partner lists of the tools your product connects to, the same places you would use for integration marketplaces.

If you run a D2C store: add creators who post routines, hauls and reviews in your category, and people who already tagged your product. Some creators want free product first; send it, then offer the code. If you sell on TikTok Shop, use its own system for TikTok Shop affiliates there, and this program for your own store.

Let AI do the reading. Paste 10 profiles, channels or list pages at a time into ChatGPT or Claude. Ask, for each: who their audience is, how big it is, whether they already earn affiliate commission, and one recent post. Open each one and check the fact before the row goes in. That is about 30 seconds a row. Keep it like any free lead list: one row per person, and no one twice.

Name | Where they post (link) | Kind (customer / reviewer / list / newsletter / creator / freelancer) | Audience size | Email or how to reach them | One true line | Try 1 | Try 2 | Try 3 | Joined (date) | First post (date) | Visits | Sales | Commission owed

• Tool: Google Sheets, Google, YouTube, the social apps, and ChatGPT or Claude.
• Time: about 1 hour 30 minutes a day.
• You will have: 100 new rows a day, about 3,000 a month.
• It worked if: 9 in 10 rows have a name, a way to reach them, and one true line about something they made.
• Common mistake: listing only famous accounts. They get dozens of offers a week and rarely answer. Small creators and customers do.

5. Message 100 possible affiliates a day

Every day, send 100 personal messages to people on your list. Open with something true about their work, offer a free account or product so they can try it, then give the commission and the kit. Follow up 3 times.

How 100 a day is possible. Paste 20 rows at a time into ChatGPT or Claude with the template below. It drafts each message from the row's true line. You check the fact and fix the first line: about 30 seconds a message. Send each one by hand.

Spread the 100 over channels, inside each one's limits. Many creators put a business email in their bio, so email first. Send cold email from a second domain you have warmed up, at most 30 emails a day from each mailbox, follow-ups included. LinkedIn allows about 100 connection requests a week, so message people you are already connected to there. Send Instagram, TikTok and X messages by hand, one at a time. Customers get a short warm note from the founder.

Subject: your [post / list / video] on [topic]Hi [first name],I [read / watched] your [one true line: the post, list or video, and one thing in it].I make [product]. It helps [your buyer] [what it does]. I'd like you to try it free: [free account / I'll send you one].If you like it and tell your [readers / followers], you get [25% of what each customer pays for 12 months / 15% of each first order], and your code gives them [offer]. I'll send a short kit so a post takes 10 minutes.Want me to set up your account?[Your name]

Hi [first name], one more line on this. [New true thing: "Your readers asked about [problem] in the comments last week, which is exactly what it fixes."] Happy to set up a free account today if you want to try it.

Hi [first name], thank you for using [product] for [time]. If you ever recommend it, I can give you your own code: your friends get [offer] and you get [commission]. Want one?

Answer every reply the same day. If few people answer, fix the message before you send more. A common estimate for messages to creators is 5 to 15 replies per 100, a reply rate of 5% to 15%.

• Tool: Gmail or Google Workspace on a second domain, LinkedIn, the social apps, and ChatGPT or Claude.
• Time: about 2 hours a day.
• You will have: 100 messages sent a day, each logged, and new affiliates joining through your form.
• It worked if: after 2,800 messages you have at least 5 replies for every 100 messages.
• Common mistake: one mass email saying "Join our affiliate program!" with a link. It reads as spam, and nobody knows why you picked them.

6. Get every new affiliate to post within 14 days

Many people who join an affiliate program never post. Write to every new affiliate within 24 hours with their link, code, kit and free account or product, and ask when and where they will post. Check again on day 7 and day 14.

Hi [first name], you're in. Thank you.Your link: [link]
Your code: [CODE] (gives your audience [offer])
Your kit: [link], with 5 ready posts you can edit
Your free [account / product]: [how to get it]Please say you're paid, near the link: "I get a commission if you buy through this link" or "#ad".When and where do you think you'll post first? If you tell me, I'll send an angle that fits your audience.

Day 7: send one idea made for them: "Your followers ask about [X]. A 30-second video of [the product doing X] would answer it." Day 14: if they have posted, thank them and share what it brought: "Your post sent 40 visits and 2 trials." If not, ask one question: "Is anything stopping you? I can send a different angle or set up a 10-minute call."

If you run a D2C store: ship the free product the day they join, and count the 14 days from delivery. Gifted creators need the same disclosure as paid ones. Ask in writing before you use their videos as UGC in your own posts or ads.

Every day: answer every affiliate within 24 hours. Once a month: pay every commission due on the same date, with a short note on their sales. Affiliates who are paid late stop posting. Every Sunday: open the newest posts from your affiliates. If one has no disclosure or makes a claim you do not make, ask them to fix it that day.

Ask your best affiliates what their audience asked, and turn the answers into new kit posts. One with real results can become a case study.

• Tool: email, your sheet, and PayPal or Wise for payouts.
• Time: about 30 minutes a day.
• You will have: a welcome sent to every affiliate within 24 hours, and a first post date for each one.
• It worked if: at least 3 in 10 affiliates who joined have posted within 14 days. Under 1 in 10 means the welcome or the kit is not working.
• Common mistake: approving people and never writing to them again. An affiliate who hears nothing assumes you do not care whether they post.

7. Count affiliates, posts and sales every Sunday

Every Sunday, fill in one row: messages sent, replies, affiliates who joined, affiliates who posted, affiliate visits tracked with UTM parameters, sales and commission. After 2,800 messages, about 4 weeks, check three numbers in order and fix the first one that is low. Judge each affiliate 60 days after they join.

Week | Messages | Replies | Joined | Posted | Affiliate visits | Trials or orders | Paying customers | Commission owed | Best affiliate this week

After 2,800 messages, check three numbers in this order:

1. Replies per 100 messages. Under 5: change the first line or the list. Test the new version on the next 500 messages. If it stays under 5, move more of the 100 to the source that replied most.
2. Affiliates who posted, out of those who joined. Under 3 in 10: the welcome or the kit is the problem. Ask 5 affiliates who did not post what stopped them, and fix what they name.
3. Sales (trials for a SaaS, orders for a store) per 100 affiliate visits. Under 1: affiliates are sending people, and your landing page is losing them. Fix the page before you recruit more.

For each affiliate, 60 days after they joined: posted and sold, thank them and ask what would help them post again. Posted with no sale, send a new angle. Never posted, send one last message, and at 90 days stop writing to them.

Be honest about results. Under 20 affiliates is too few to judge the program; 30 is better. Finding your first 10 good affiliates usually takes about 3 months. Compare what each affiliate customer costs you, commission and discount together, with your other marketing channels: that is your cost to win a customer. Look at it again in your monthly review. Once you have 10 affiliates with a sale, move from the sheet to software.

• Tool: Google Sheets, plus your UpPromote, Shopify or Stripe reports.
• Time: 20 minutes each Sunday.
• You will have: one row a week, and a clear answer on which number to fix and which affiliates sell.
• It worked if: you can name the number to fix next and your 3 best affiliates.
• Common mistake: counting sign-ups. Forty affiliates who never post are worth nothing; three who post every month can be a steady source of customers.

Your affiliate program checklist for the next 4 weeks

0 of 13 done

Work through this list with an AI assistant

It drafts the work and keeps track of what is done.

Do this with ChatGPT(opens in a new tab)Do this with Claude(opens in a new tab)

Step 1 · Decide if it fits and set your commission

• Decide whether an affiliate program fits how your buyers pay.
• Write your commission, cookie window and payout terms.

Step 2 · Give every affiliate a link and code

• Set up a link and code for each affiliate, test them, and publish your sign-up form.

Step 3 · Write your terms and kit

• Write your one-page affiliate terms and your one-page kit.

Step 4 · Add 100 names a day

• Every dayAdd 100 possible affiliates to your list.

Step 5 · Message 100 possible affiliates a day

• Every daySend 100 personal messages to possible affiliates.
• Every daySend today's follow-ups, up to 3 per person.

Step 6 · Get new affiliates to post within 14 days

• Every dayWelcome new affiliates and send the day 7 and day 14 notes.
• Once a monthPay every commission that is due.
• Every SundayCheck your affiliates' new posts for a clear disclosure.

Step 7 · Count every Sunday

• Every SundayFill in one row of your Sunday sheet.
• After 2,800 messagesCheck the three numbers in order and fix the first one below its line.
• After 60 daysReview each affiliate 60 days after they joined.

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