What is an affiliate program?

Get to know about an affiliate program

1. What is an affiliate program?

An affiliate program is where affiliates use their own marketing channels to promote merchants' (sellers or product creators) products or services, with a reward system in which merchants pay affiliates a commission for each sale they generate.

2. Roles in an affiliate program

There are three parties: Merchant, Affiliate, and Customer. The customer pays for the products. Both merchant and affiliate receive a portion of that money by following a win-win situation where the merchant can increase revenue and the affiliate receives a commission.

• Merchant: Also referred to as the vendor, seller, advertiser, product creator, brand, or retailer. This is the party that creates the product. Anyone can be a merchant, from a single entrepreneur, or a small business, to a large corporation. Merchants join an affiliate marketing program to boost revenue by advertising their goods to customers.

• Affiliate: Also referred to as publisher, influencer, partner, or ambassador. A person, a business, a professional affiliate, a blogger, a YouTuber, or a client who made an order on the seller's website can all be affiliates. The primary role of an affiliate is to demonstrate the value of a merchant's products to potential customers and convince them to make a purchase.

• Customer: Customers are the lifeblood of any business and their actions determine the company's success. They keep the entire affiliate system going since there will be no revenue to share or no commissions to hand out without sales.

As a result of an affiliate program, potential customers can engage with the merchant's products more easily. Orders placed by customers thanks to an affiliate's advertising action will be considered referral orders and will be the basis for calculating the affiliate's commission.

3. What can be achieved with an affiliate program?

From which types of affiliate assets should be available to the reward system where commissions are calculated and given, or how the affiliate portal should be displayed to affiliates and store visitors to increase engagement - everything can be set up with an affiliate program.

You can take a quick look at how a program appears in our demo store!