Affiliate programs sound simple—partners promote your products, and you pay them for successful referrals. But, many online businesses rush into it without a clear plan, which leads to low-quality partnerships and wasted marketing budgets.

A successful affiliate marketing program requires more than just signing up influencers or bloggers. You need the right tracking tools, commission structure, and ongoing engagement to keep affiliates motivated.

If you’re serious about launching an affiliate program in 2025, here’s everything you need to know to set it up the right way.

What is an affiliate marketing program?

An affiliate marketing program is a performance-based partnership where businesses reward affiliates (individuals or other businesses) for driving sales or leads. 

Here’s how it works:

• Incentivize content creators and influencers with a sizable following to promote your products in exchange for commissions.
• You can highlight specific products you’d like affiliates to share and give them a discount for their audience to avail to nudge sales.
• Affiliates promote your products by creating content and sharing unique tracking links with their audience. 
• They earn a payout when someone clicks on their link and makes a purchase.
• Since affiliates are only paid for actual results, businesses can scale marketing efforts without high upfront costs.

For example, Triquetra Health has an affiliate program where affiliates can gift their audience 15% off while earning 15% cash commissions on every referred sale. This incentivizes both the affiliate and the customer, creating a win-win model that drives consistent growth.

Types of affiliate commissions or payouts

When planning your affiliate program, how you pay out affiliates is the first thing you need to decide. Your payout structure varies based on your business model, goals, and preferences.

Affiliate programs typically use one of the following payout models:

Fixed fee (Cost per action): 

Affiliates earn a fixed fee for driving specific actions, such as generating leads, signups, or sales. Many ecommerce brands even use a tiered structure with fixed fees. 

For example, Duradry, a deodorant brand, pays affiliates $10 per sale and increases it to $15 per sale after three successful referrals.

Commission per sale

Affiliates receive a percentage of each sale they generate, which incentivizes them to drive higher-value purchases. For example, as a She’s Birdie Brand Ambassador, affiliates earn a 10% commission per sale and can offer a 15% discount code to their audience. 

Fixed fee + commission

Some affiliate marketing programs combine a flat fee with a commission, offering affiliates a base payout plus a percentage of sales.  For example, an affiliate might get $300 cash as a base fee for posting about a specific brand, plus a 10% commission for each sale they generate.

Benefits of affiliate programs 

Unlike traditional marketing, where you need to pay upfront, affiliate marketing is more cost-effective, has higher trust, and drives better sales. 

Here’s why affiliate marketing works:

• Low-risk, performance-based marketing: You only pay commissions when affiliates generate sales or leads. This makes your marketing costs more predictable and eliminates wasted spend on ineffective campaigns.
• Access to trusted audiences: People trust recommendations from creators that they follow. When your affiliate network—whether influencers, bloggers, or industry experts—promotes your product, their audience is more likely to trust and act on the recommendation.
• Higher conversion rates: Since affiliates target relevant audiences that align with your brand, conversions are often higher compared to broad digital marketing ads. This means better ROI for every marketing dollar spent.
• Expanding your customer base: Affiliates promote your brand through social media platforms (like TikTok or LinkedIn), blogs, email lists, and affiliate websites, helping you reach a new segment of your target audience that might not have discovered your brand otherwise. 
• Minimal upfront investment: Unlike PPC ads or influencer collaborations that require advance payments, affiliate programs operate on a pay-for-performance model, keeping initial costs low.
• Real-time tracking & insights: Affiliate marketing platforms provide detailed analytics, allowing you to track sales, commissions, and customer behavior in real-time. This gives you more control, letting you refine your strategy and focus on top-performing affiliates.
• Easy Scalability: There’s no cap on the number of affiliates you can partner with. As your brand grows, you can onboard more affiliates without increasing costs, making this a scalable marketing strategy.

Read our blog on the benefits of affiliate marketing to get a better understanding of why an affiliate program is an important channel within your marketing strategy.

Step-by-step guide on how to set up your affiliate program for beginners

A well-structured affiliate program lets you partner with content creators, influencers, and customers who promote your affiliate products to their audience in exchange for a commission.

However, to make it work, you need the right strategy—choosing the right products, selecting quality affiliates, and optimizing your program for long-term success. Here’s a step-by-step guide to building an effective affiliate program.

1. Choose the right products to promote

The success of your affiliate program starts with selecting the right products. Affiliates are more likely to promote products that are high in demand and offer real value to their audience. Consider the following:

• Bestsellers: Products with a strong sales history are more likely to convert.
• High-value products: If your products have a high price point, you can attract affiliates interested in earning higher commissions.

Change the rewards and the products you’re pushing within your affiliate program as you see changes in popularity and trends. 

To get more insight into the kind of products that are working, listen in on how audiences are talking about products they need. Use tools like Google Trends and keyword research to find products in your category that have steady or increasing search interest, allowing you to understand market demand. 

Once you start working with affiliates, their audience is also likely to share specific problems they have and products they are looking for.

2. Select your affiliates 

Next, choose the right affiliates for your campaign. Your research involves understanding affiliates within your niche, which ones are likely to recommend your products, and whether their audience matches your target customer base. This way, you can create partnerships that truly complement your brand.

Where to find affiliates

Affiliates can be found across multiple platforms, but it’s important to focus on the ones that best fit your brand’s industry and audience. Some of the best ways to find affiliates include:

• Social media platforms: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube channels are great for finding influencers who create high-quality content around your niche.
• Blogs and niche websites: Bloggers with an established readership in your industry can drive traffic to your products.
• Affiliate networks: Platforms like ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, and Rakuten help you connect with professional affiliates.

Focus on channels where your potential customers are most active. If you sell beauty products, Instagram and TikTok are your best options. Fashion brands find a lot of success with Pinterest. If you sell products that cater to working professionals, blogs and LinkedIn might be more effective.

How to assess potential affiliates

Once you find potential affiliates, assess their content and audience engagement to determine if they’re a good fit for your program. Here’s what to look for:

• Content quality: Their content should be professional, engaging, and relevant to your industry. You can also prioritize affiliates who create content that varies in style and topic.
• Engagement rate: A good engagement rate on social media is 1-3%, while anything above 3% is considered great. Lower engagement (under 1%) could mean their audience isn’t very active.
• Audience trust: Look for genuine interactions in comments and reviews rather than just high follower counts.
• Blog traffic: If they run a blog, check their monthly visitors and domain authority (tools like Ahrefs or SimilarWeb can help). 

This will help you find those who have a strong influence over their followers and have gained their audience's trust.

Tip ⛄: Turn your customers into affiliates. Since they already trust your brand, they will happily refer your products to their friends and family. 

3. Offer competitive commissions

To attract high-performing affiliates, two things are extremely crucial— clear payment terms and competitive commissions. 

Your commission should motivate them to partner with you. The standard commission rates most merchants set are between 5% and 20%, depending on your marketing budget, AOV, and profit margins.

Since commission rates can vary widely among merchants, research the rates set by brands similar to yours.

If you want to make your affiliate program more enticing, aim to set your commission slightly higher than your competitors. With a higher commission paid out to them, creators will have the budget to create quality content and prioritize your brand over others. 

Here are the incentives that Gains in Bulk, a natural supplements brand, has set up to acquire ambassadors for its brand.

Many brands also send their products for free to affiliates to drive word-of-mouth marketing and authentic content from affiliates. Read how product seeding works and how you can leverage it.

4. Help your affiliates create valuable content

Affiliates perform best when they have the right tools and support. Instead of expecting them to figure everything out, provide them with:

• Product information: Share a product catalog with features, benefits, and unique selling points.
• Incentives for their audience: Offering discounts, free samples, or early access to new products can encourage affiliates to promote more actively.
• Content resources: High-quality product images, videos, and ready-to-use marketing materials make it easier for affiliates to create engaging content.
• Content ideas: Suggest different formats like product reviews, unboxing videos, how-to guides, and gift guides to help affiliates market your brand effectively.
• Training and guidelines: A short onboarding session or brand guidelines can help affiliates maintain a consistent message across their content. 
• FAQs: Provide affiliates with answers to common questions that come up about your products, so that they can respond to their audiences without having to find the information themselves.

Tip ⛄: The best affiliate programs also host live webinars to make sure affiliates understand the brand positioning and the best content marketing strategies to leverage. This will help them maintain consistency when creating affiliate content and build trust with their shared audiences.

5. Analyze the results of your affiliate marketing program

Once your affiliate program starts running smoothly, you need to understand the effectiveness of your campaigns and optimize your approach for better performance. 

To do this, examine key metrics such as:

• Sales generated: Identify which affiliates bring in the most revenue.
• Conversion rates: Measure how well affiliate traffic translates into actual affiliate sales.
• Engagement levels: Look at clicks, shares, and audience interactions with affiliate content.

Use these metrics to compare results to understand what works best and what can be improved:

• Marketing channels: Evaluate how different platforms (social media, blogs, email, etc.) perform in driving affiliate sales.
• Content types and formats: Analyze how different content types (like product reviews or tutorials) and different formats (images or videos) convert better. 
• Affiliate size and type: Compare micro-influencers, content creators, and brand ambassadors to see which drives the most valuable traffic. 

Based on this data, you can make informed decisions, such as:

• Re-allocate resources: Invest more in high-performing channels and affiliates while scaling back on underperforming areas.
• Refine affiliate selection: Identify new affiliates similar to existing affiliates that drive quality traffic and high conversion rates.
• Improve commission structures: Adjust payouts to incentivize top performers better and build a long-term relationship with them.
• Refine content strategies: Recommend content formats and messaging that resonate most with audiences. 

What features should your affiliate marketing software have? 

Tracking your affiliate program manually is a challenge, especially as the number of affiliates and referrals grows. You need an affiliate marketing software that does this for you. 

When evaluating your options and figuring out the right affiliate marketing tool for you, check whether the tool has features that simplify the work for you. These are five features your affiliate marketing app needs:

#1: Simplified affiliate enrollment

The tool you pick should have an easy system to onboard your influencers, content creators, and affiliates onto the program.

Ensure that it gives you multiple affiliate acquisition options to pick from—a custom sign-up form or landing page, automated customer-to-affiliate conversion, a CSV list upload, or even the ability to add them manually.

Social Snowball lets you do all this easily.

• Create a fully branded referral sign-up page to match your store, giving potential affiliates a consistent brand experience. 
• Set up third-party sign-up forms and embed them onto your landing page to capture new affiliates easily. 
• Automatically turn every customer into an affiliate the moment they buy from you, letting you nudge more referrals from them and grow your pool of affiliates without extra effort.

#2: Easy payouts

Manually calculating and sending out payments to every affiliate within your program is time-consuming and a waste of resources. 

Your affiliate management tool should have the option to automate cash payouts to your creators as per your preferences. Here are 3 ways the tool should support you:

• Let you pick how often affiliates are paid out.
• Support different types of payment methods like PayPal, direct bank transfers, Venmo, etc so that you can cater to the different needs that your affiliates have. 
• Allow bulk payments to pay out all your creators as quickly as 2 clicks. 

Here’s how easy it is to payout creators on Social Snowball:

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• Send automated email notifications whenever a payment is sent.
• Allow affiliates to track the total passive income they earned from an easy-to-access dashboard.

Here’s how to set up payments with Social Snowball ⤵️

(Embed Video: How To Set Up Payouts In Social Snowball - Full Tutorial)

#3: Referral tracking

Referral tracking lets monitor payouts, attribute sales correctly, understand which of your affiliate marketing campaigns are working, the kind of influencers to invest more in, and track the effectiveness of the program so that you can make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategies.

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Here’s what a referral tracking dashboard should provide to give you a clear picture of your affiliate program's performance:

• Automatically track using unique affiliate links and attribute them to the correct referrer. 
• View real-time reports on your referral program’s performance. Break down your metrics by affiliate, product, and time. Get insights into which referrers are driving the most sales, which offers are converting best, etc.
• Identify and flag suspicious activity, protecting your program from abuse.
• Create and customize referral offers to set different offers for different affiliate segments, and align everything with your affiliate marketing business goals.

#4: Integrations with other tools to enable different use cases

Integrations with other tools that you use can open up more opportunities to automate processes, launch campaigns, and track performance. Some useful integrations are:

• Email marketing (Klaviyo, Mailchimp): Automate onboarding emails and payout update emails to inform and motivate affiliates.
• Ecommerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce): Track affiliate-driven sales to your online store seamlessly.
• SMS marketing (Attentive, Postscript): Set up and automate SMS updates to affiliates.
• Customized payment solutions (Skio, Stay AI, Trolley): Set up custom payment preferences like bulk payouts or recurring commissions 
• Zapier: Connect affiliate marketing software with thousands of other apps for workflow automation.

For example, Fanjoy, an online merchandise platform, integrated Social Snowball with Klaviyo to add information about their affiliate program within the post-purchase emails they sent to customers, increasing sign-ups. They generated an extra $100K in just 4 months with the right affiliate tool.

#5: Avoid coupon leak

Affiliate programs commonly run the risk of coupon leaks and misuse. Without guardrails to protect them, your discount codes would spread beyond your affiliate’s audience and links could be tampered with, creating fake sales and causing you to make unnecessary payout without generating any revenue. 

Set up unique, one-time links to only count genuine referrals and avoid affiliate fraud.

Social Snowball's Safelinks feature does just this. It generates unique, single-use discount codes for every customer who interacts with an influencer's link, eliminating issues such as code leaks and safeguarding your profit margins. The best part? It looks and works like any other link you use. 

Ready to set up an affiliate program that increases your sales?

While paid ads are the most common way of acquiring new customers, it’s bound to increase your costs. Prioritizing and creating affiliate programs lets you focus on a low-cost way to acquire customers and effectively retain them for the long term. When done right, your affiliates increase your brand’s visibility, introduce you to new audiences, and drive more engagement and conversions to your ecommerce business. 

We hope this guide helped you understand how to create your own affiliate marketing program and scale it for success. While knowing the right process and strategy is crucial, the tools you use to set up and run your affiliate program are just as important.

Social Snowball is a Shopify app that lets you set up and streamline your entire affiliate marketing strategy in one platform. The app’s extensive features give you enough flexibility to customize your program, track referrals, manage coupons, and monitor your performance easily.

Frequently asked questions about affiliate marketing

What are the key features of effective affiliate marketing software?

When choosing affiliate marketing software, look for these important features:

• Easy onboarding process for affiliates.
• Ability to turn customers into affiliates. 
• Automated payouts to simplify commission payments. 
• Easy and real-time tracking capabilities with accurate metrics on clicks, conversions, and sales 
• Integration with third-party tools to enable specific workflows, email communication with affiliates, etc to make your processes smoother.

What strategies can increase your affiliate marketing ROI?

When you start affiliate marketing, prioritize building relationships with your affiliates and nurture them so that they are more likely to recommend your brand and your products. 

Once you do, try these strategies to maximize the ROI of your affiliate program:

• Set higher commissions for products that offer the most value, as this will motivate affiliates to drive more sales. 
• Provide your affiliates with valuable resources and promotional materials to make it easier for them to market your products effectively. 
• Run targeted promotions to boost conversion rates and average order values. 
• Analyze affiliate program data to identify your top affiliates and strategies, allowing you to refine your approach for maximum impact.

Read more about the strategies you can use to make your affiliate marketing program more effective.

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