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How To Start An Affiliate Program For Your Shopify Store (Full Tutorial) all right what's up guys th

Casual Ecommerce

Updated on Feb 19,2023

How To Start An Affiliate Program For Your Shopify Store (Full Tutorial)

The above is a brief introduction to how to start an affiliate program shopify

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How To Start An Affiliate Program For Your Shopify Store (Full Tutorial)

all right what's up guys this is jake,and in this video we're going to be,taking a look at how you can go ahead,and set up an affiliate marketing,program for your shopify e-commerce,store,so if you're not already familiar,affiliate marketing is where you have,other people that are out there actively,promoting the products on your store and,then whenever they successfully refer a,customer over to your store they will be,given a percentage of the sale so this,is another potential traffic source that,you can go ahead and use for your store,and it's cool because it doesn't really,cost anything upfront you're only really,paying people out once you already make,sales so it's definitely a good traffic,source to have,so what we're going to go ahead and do,is we're going to walk through how you,can set up this program step by step and,we're going to be using the up promote,affiliate marketing app right here,this is a good app for affiliate,marketing it has everything you need and,you can see right here it has a ton of,good reviews here on the shopify app,store so if you want to go ahead and,follow along with the video you can go,ahead and click the first link in the,description to,go ahead and install i'll promote on,your store and let's go ahead and get,started here so as soon as you go ahead,and install the app on your store you're,going to be brought to this dashboard,page,right here so we're going to go ahead,and walk through pretty much everything,you need to know to go ahead and set up,i'll promote so we're gonna be going,through everything inside of the app,here so the first thing we're gonna go,ahead and start with here,is the quick start option here so if we,click on quick start what it's going to,do is it's going to go ahead and show us,some basic steps to go ahead and get our,affiliate program up and running so,we're going to go ahead and click on,start quick setup right here,we can see here that we're going to have,general information here so,the,initial affiliate program is going to be,right here by default the standard,affiliate commission and right here this,is going to be the description of that,so you will get 10 commission on total,referral sales when a customer makes a,purchase so this is what the potential,affiliates are going to read when they,are signed up for your program here and,then we can see here we can set the,commission structure here and by default,it starts off with the percent of sale,at 10,so i'm going to just go ahead and leave,this at default but i will show you how,you can go ahead and make changes to,this later so i'm going to go ahead and,click next and save and then right here,we can go ahead and upload our website,logo right here so we're gonna just go,ahead and do that right now so once you,upload your logo we're gonna go ahead,and,go to the next page right here and we,can see that now we get to customize our,affiliate registration form,so this is going to be the form that our,potential affiliates see when they're,trying to sign up for our affiliate,program so you're going to get a link,that you can go ahead and send out to,potential affiliates or put on your,store and they're going to be brought to,this page right here and this is where,they can enter their information to go,ahead and join your affiliate program,here so we can go ahead and edit some of,this if we want,so right now the page heading which,shows up right here just says join our,affiliate program and then we have the,different benefits down here that we can,go ahead and put in benefits of our,affiliate program so by default it,autofills all of this with this,information right here which is fine you,don't have to change any of this but if,you do want to change some benefits in,here you want to put in some,custom benefits you can go ahead and do,that right here,or you can even change this it doesn't,have to actually save benefits you can,literally change it to whatever you want,but normally by default it's easier to,just kind of keep it,how it's already set up,and then right here we can go ahead and,change our colors right here,so we have our submit button color which,is this button right here we have the,page background color here which is,white and then we have,the check mark color and then we have,the login button color right here so,what i recommend doing is just going,ahead and changing these buttons to,whatever color the buttons are on your,store so if your storage primary colors,are like blue then you want to make sure,you put that same blue hex code in here,for these buttons just because you want,the affiliate signup page to go ahead,and match that of your store's branding,so once you go ahead and do that you're,going to just click next save,and then,that lastly we can go ahead and select,our available payment method below,so you can pay out your affiliates via,paypal bank transfer debit card check,venmo and these other options right here,now i am going to recommend that you use,paypal because paypal allows you to do,automatic payments which we're going to,be taking a look at later so paypal is,definitely the easiest one to go ahead,and use so i'm going to just keep that,selected and i'm going to click next,and now we can go ahead and see here,that the setup process,has been all but complete and it's going,to go ahead and give us a list of,suggestions of things that we need to go,ahead and do,to go ahead and make sure everything is,set up,so what i'm going to go ahead and do now,is i'm going to just click on exit and,we're going to go through setting up the,rest of the app here so the first page,that we're going to be brought to here,is our dashboard and then here on our,dashboard here we're just going to be,presented with a bunch of different,options of,information and things that we can do so,we can see it just shows some updates,here about new features we have,we can see performance of our affiliates,and we can sort it by different dates,right here and we can sort it by,different programs that we may have and,then we can see who our top affiliates,are right here,and etc also here on the dashboard page,is going to be our registration form so,we can see that this is the link to our,registration form that we went ahead and,just created so if i were to go ahead,and copy this registration form right,here,and open up a new tab we can see that,now we are brought to this page here,where it says to join our affiliate,program and if somebody were to go ahead,and fill this out they can go ahead and,join our affiliate program just like,that,so what i would recommend doing here is,you're going to essentially be taking,this link and creating either a page or,a link on your shopify store so that way,people can actually click to this so the,easiest thing you can do actually is you,can go ahead and come down here,to navigation under online store,you can just go to your footer menu,and you can go ahead and click add menu,item,and you can,call it something like become an,affiliate,and then you can go ahead and just paste,the link in right here and then you can,click add and then it's added to the,menu right there and then you save your,menu and now if we come over here to the,store real quick you can see that we,have the become an affiliate option and,if you look down in the bottom left of,the screen here we can see that we now,that this leads to the registration page,that we created earlier so one thing you,can do also besides just putting it as a,link in your footer menu is you can,create a whole page for your uh,affiliate program if you want like a,custom page on your shopify store that,like kind of describes the affiliate,program or whatever however that's kind,of what your registration page already,does so that's why the link in the,footer or you can put it in your main,menu if you want works fine and then you,can also share this link,via email and you can obviously just,give it to potential affiliates directly,as well,so with that said now we're going to go,ahead and take a look at these different,options here to go ahead and edit our,affiliate program so if we come down,here to programs here we can see this is,where,our affiliate programs show up right,here so by default we have this program,here the standard affiliate commission,which is 10 of all sales so anytime an,affiliate refers someone they're going,to get 10 of the overall sale or we can,see that it's active right here,now if we wanted to add a new one we,could just click on add new so we'll,just name it twenty percent,twenty percent here,and,give it a description,and then we can see here that we can set,it as the percent of sale once again you,can also change it to a flat rate per,item or flat rate per order however,percent of sale is most likely what,you're going to be doing most of the,time and we can change the rule from a,fixed commission or a commission on,order values but we're just keep it as a,fixed commission,and we're going to make this one 20,and we're going to exclude shipping and,taxes when,calculating the commission and then if,you do want to take a look at advanced,options you can go ahead and do these so,you can go ahead and have automatic,discounts for customers but to do this,you need to enable coupons which we'll,be doing a little bit later you have,lifetime commissions so this means if,affiliate refers a customer they're,gonna get a percentage of all of their,sales over the lifespan of that customer,so not just,the one time the initial referral,they'll get,if that same customer to come back and,buy something else the affiliate would,also get a commission of that,so i'll go ahead and enable that for,this specific account and then you can,come down here and enable coupon code,commissioning here to have a different,commission rate if the coupon code is,used and then you can go ahead and,disable commissions for self-referral so,this essentially means that affiliates,can't go through their own link to buy,stuff on your store,and then i can go ahead and just click,add once we've went ahead and created,all this right here,and then i'm going to go ahead and go,back to programs once again and we can,see that now the 20 tier is showing up,however the default here is the 10,percent deer so let's say i wanted to go,ahead and make the 20 tier for special,affiliates only so maybe affiliates,after they have generated 20 or more,sales get boosted from a 10 commission,to a 20 commission you can do that by,coming over here to auto tier commission,we can see that this is a feature that,helps automatically level up that helps,affiliates automatically level up to a,new program when they reach a specific,minimum value so if i go ahead and turn,this on here,and we can go ahead and change this via,the total referral order value so if,they've referred maybe over a thousand,dollars they level up in this case i'll,do total referral order number,and we can see that the level one,condition here our standard commission,starts at zero but i'll add a new level,here which would be the 20 tier and this,means that after an affiliate refers 20,orders they get boosted to the 20 tier,right here and i click save so you can,go ahead and create a bunch of different,tiers if you wanted to,so each time an affiliate meets a,performance benchmark they get a boost,in performance so that's definitely,something pretty cool that you can set,up so now we're going to take a look at,affiliates and coupons section right,here so if i click on affiliates this is,where we can see an entire list of all,of our affiliates right here,and whenever somebody fills out the,affiliate registration form that we saw,earlier they're gonna show up right here,and you're gonna have to click a little,check mark to go ahead and approve them,however you can go ahead and,automatically activate approval if you,don't want to manually go through and,vet people if you just want to,automatically approve everyone that goes,through the form you can go ahead and,set that up in settings right here which,we'll be taking a look at a bit later,now really quickly we can see that here,in this demo store i've created an,affiliate account i've registered myself,in here and we're going to take a look,at what it looks like on the other side,so if we go over here to the dashboard,this is actually what it's going to look,like for your affiliate when they sign,up you can see they're going to see,their,metrics of performance right here,they're going to see their orders down,here and they can go ahead and get their,affiliate link right here so this is,going to be their tracking link they can,use and they can go ahead and look,through all this different stuff right,there so they have a lot of information,they can use right here,so that's what it's going to look like,for the affiliate and you can go in here,and deactivate affiliates here at any,time just by clicking this so you can,activate them or deactivate them,right there and then now we're going to,take a look at the coupons section right,here,so coupons this is where you can give,your affiliate specific coupons that,customers can use,and it will give them a discount on,their order plus it will also register,the sale,to the affiliate whose coupon it is so,if i were to click on add coupon we can,see here that to use this feature we,need to enable tracking by coupon on the,settings page so i'm going to go ahead,and do that right now so if we go over,here,we can see the coupon section right here,tracking by coupon is going to be,enabled and what i'm going to go ahead,and do as well is enable auto generate,coupon because this is going to save us,a lot of time instead of having to,manually,generate a coupon for every single new,affiliate that times up we want it to be,done automatically so i'm going to click,on auto generate coupon and i'm going to,click set up,so right here what it's going to do is,we're going to be able to select a,program that the coupon is going to work,for so it's going to work for our,standard affiliate commission,and then we can go ahead and change the,coupon name format here,so what this can go ahead and do,is this is going to give them,a coupon based on the affiliate's name,the affiliate's first name random lover,letters or you can have the affiliate,select their own coupon code while code,while registering so you can choose,whatever option you'd like to do right,here,and now right here we have to go ahead,and enter in the sample coupon so this,actually has to be a real coupon from,within shopify here so if we come back,over here to shopify and go to discounts,we can go ahead and just create a,discount code really quick,and let's say i'll just make it 10 off,and,make it a 10 discount percentage,on all products and go ahead and click,save,so 10 off and then we come back over,here,and we put in,that coupon right there,and just like that we can go ahead and,put in a description right here then we,can go ahead and just click add and now,we have a coupon that's going to be,automatically added every single time a,affiliate,signs up they're going to have access to,this coupon so now i'm going to go ahead,and just click save the changes and if,we were to come back here to coupons,we're going to see that there's no,coupons created yet because no one has,signed up for our affiliate program,since we've created the auto generated,coupon but once someone does it would,show up right here or we could go ahead,and manually create a coupon right here,by,creating it right here so let's say just,say 10 off,we could do a percentage of 10 and then,we could assign it to an affiliate right,here,so if we wanted to assign it to a,specific affiliate we could go ahead and,do that so i will assign it to the one,affiliate we have and then we just click,on add coupon right here,and then we can go ahead and see if i go,over to the affiliates dashboard now and,i refresh we can see that now they have,the,affiliate coupon that they can go ahead,and use right here just by copying it,and it will be associated with this,account,so it's easy to set up coupons that's,how you can go ahead and do it and like,i said we've already set it up to be,automatic so the next thing we're going,to take a look at here is referrals,so this is just going to be where all of,your referrals are,stored all of that data is stored so,anytime someone places an order through,shopify through one of your affiliates,links or with their coupon codes that,data is going to show up here and the,tracking here without promote is very,reliable so you're going to get a lot of,accurate data in here so you can go,ahead and see all the different orders,in here and you can go ahead and,manually approve,the referrals if you want so you're,going to have,orders show up here and right here it's,going to give you a green or red and you,can choose to approve the order so,approve the payout or you can go into,settings here to go ahead and re approve,orders automatically so if you want to,manually approve orders you can do that,in here or you can go to settings and,turn on auto approve which is probably,going to be faster and save time so the,next thing we're look at here is payment,processing,so in here once again so it's a,recurring theme you can either go ahead,and manually pay out people in here,or you can go ahead and automate the,payout process,so if you are using paypal if you,integrate with paypal what you can go,ahead and do is you can set up to where,the payments are automatic so every time,a referral has been approved,paypal will automatically pay out the,commission to your affiliate but if you,don't use the automated processing,you're gonna have to manually pay out,people,outside of the app and mark them as paid,so i would highly recommend using paypal,because it's the easiest and it's the,fastest but if paypal is something you,can't use then you can use some of the,other payment options available and this,is where you'll be able to see all of,that payment information right here the,next thing we're going to take a look at,here is emails here so this is going to,be the emails that are sent out,to your affiliates here,so we can see here this is for pending,affiliates so this is when somebody,signs up for your affiliate program and,they're not approved yet they're going,to be sent this email right here so your,account is being reviewed and thank you,for registering we're reviewing your,information,so,if you have auto approve on then this,email won't even be sent but if you have,manual review on then this email will be,sent and you can go ahead and edit the,email in here just by clicking on it and,typing whatever you want however all of,these default emails are mostly fine you,don't really have to change them but if,you do want to go ahead and customize,them to your brand that is definitely,something you can go ahead and do,and then we have the other email so this,is what happens when someone's approved,they get this email right here they get,the login to their affiliate account,this is the denial email,this is when someone's been added to the,affiliate program and this is a,verification email for their email,address so the next email here this,shows,uh this is the email that your,affiliates get sent,every single time they,get a referral so we can see that,congratulations our system has recorded,a new referral so this is just letting,them know that they have successfully,referred a customer and then this lets,them know that one of their referrals,has been approved and this would let,them know that one of the referrals has,been denied and then we have a payment,email here,so this lets them know that we just sent,out a payment and then this lets them,know to go ahead and fill in their,payment information for the affiliate,program so you can go ahead and,customize all these emails if you want,or you can leave them by default that's,going to be up to you so we can see here,that also up here it says we will send,emails to your affiliate via their email,address right here but if you want to go,ahead and use your emails to send their,email you can go ahead and click here to,enable that features that's definitely,something you're going to want to do,you're going to want emails to be coming,out from your branded email because it,just looks more professional so you're,definitely going to want to click here,to go ahead and do that right here so,this is where you just go ahead and put,in,right here you can just click use your,email address as senders if this is the,one that you're using associated with,your store so you just go ahead and,click on that and click save,and you would be good to go,so the next thing now we're going to,look at here is creatives,so this is where if you have any types,of creatives that could potentially help,the affiliate promote your store you can,put them in here so let's say if your,affiliate were to be sending out a bunch,of emails or,if you're affiliates like a blogger,maybe you could upload some types of,images or media some promotional media,that affiliates can actually use,to go ahead and promote your products on,their website or any of their platforms,maybe you have,media that goes well for like instagram,stories or snapchat stories or tik tok,etc you can go ahead and upload these,files right here so you can upload video,files images,and any types of other files that your,affiliates could potentially use to,promote your products in here,so i would recommend going ahead and,uploading any media here that you think,would be helpful in promoting your,product because obviously the easier of,a time that your affiliates have,promoting your products uh the more,money they're gonna make and the more,money you're gonna make so this is,definitely something you wanna spend,time doing so you can do that right here,and lastly here we're gonna take a look,at grow affiliate tools,so they give us three options here so if,you are struggling to grow,your affiliate program as a whole so if,you're trying to find more affiliates,they give you three options you can use,right here to kind of help you out so,the first one here,is converting customers to affiliates so,you can do that via a post purchase,pop-up,so let's say after somebody buys one of,your products they're going to be,notified and show hey do you want to,join our affiliate program so this is,one option that you can go ahead and,enable,so you can turn your customers into,affiliates or you can go ahead and try,and convert an existing shopify customer,right here and then right here this,option allows you to go ahead and,automatically create an affiliate,account and send an email notification,to any customers who have registered on,your store so this will mean anyone that,registers to your shop becomes an,affiliate so you can choose which one of,these options you'd want to go ahead and,use,and then right here you can enable,multi-level marketing for your affiliate,so essentially what this will do is this,will allow,one of your affiliates to go ahead and,refer other affiliates and then if,there's other affiliates,send referral orders to your store the,affiliate that referred that affiliate,will also get a percentage of the,commission so this essentially just,allows your affiliates to build out a,network of other affiliates so this is,something you can activate here just by,toggling it on,and you can go ahead and set up the,commission structures for this as well,and you can add up to 20 different,levels and lastly here we can take a,look at the marketplace listing so what,you can go ahead and do here is you can,list,your affiliate program in up promotes,marketplace,so all you have to go ahead and do is,fill out the information about your,products so you have your affiliate,commission you have your slogan,website a description and then you,choose your categories right here and,you put up all of your information you,choose the payment method etc,and you can put in like information like,average earnings per sale and if we,click on view the marketplace really,quickly we can see that this is where,your affiliate program would show up so,you can see there's a bunch of different,stores with affiliate programs showing,up right here so potential affiliates,looking for products to promote,we'll go ahead and be able to see your,stores listing here in the marketplace,now in general advice for getting,affiliates,no matter what method you're using is to,make the program attractive to,affiliates so obviously the more it pays,and the better your product sells the,better of a product you have the more,likely someone's going to want to become,an affiliate for your product so,if you have a product that's not very,good or it's not it doesn't sell very,well or it's hard to sell it's going to,be harder for affiliates to promote it,but if you have a good product and a,good commission structure then,affiliates are going to be excited to,promote it so that's definitely um,the two things you want to focus on for,getting more affiliates so lastly we're,going to go ahead and go through some of,the settings now here,so we have our basic brand settings,right here,we have the affiliate link and coupon,settings that we looked at earlier we,can go ahead and allow,affiliates to edit a custom link if they,want and we can allow them to shorten,the affiliate link with bitly as well so,i would say that allowing them to edit a,custom link is a good idea,because this link isn't the prettiest,and we can go ahead and click save,and then we come down here to chat with,affiliates here,so what we can go ahead and do if we,enable this this just allows us to go,ahead and actually chat directly with,all of our affiliates so this will allow,us to keep an open line of human,communication with them which is,definitely something that's beneficial,if you're trying to cultivate a,long-term profitable relationship for,both parties we can come down here we,can see product analytics,we can enable product analytics to be,shown in the dashboard right here if we,want and we can show it on the affiliate,dashboard as well,down here we have the payment settings,here so we can go ahead and see this is,where we can go ahead and set up the,paypal integration so this is what i,would recommend doing it's pretty,self-explanatory you just click on this,and you follow the instructions in,paypal,down here we have other integrations if,you want to go ahead and integrate this,with like email marketing services like,klavio you can go ahead and do that here,we have some advanced settings down here,like staff accounts that you can go,ahead and do if you want to add some,potential other people that are working,on your store within the affiliate,program right here you can do that,and you can connect multiple stores,and then down here with the affiliate,admin we can go ahead,and,take a look and re-edit our registration,page which we did earlier but this is,where you can go ahead and edit it once,again we can go ahead and edit all of,the stuff in here you can even add,custom css code if you want to,and then we have a guide page right here,so what this is going to do is it's,going to be our affiliate guide kind of,like the emails we're looking at earlier,so we can go ahead and edit this to,include different suggestions and tips,on how to go ahead and promote our,product and our brand in this,um affiliate guide right here we can see,by default it gives us templates you can,edit this template to make it more,personal if you want it has the link to,the marketing tools here which is going,to be the creatives that you upload,make sure they set up their payments and,they're on and they understand the,commissions and everything right here,and then you can go ahead and make sure,that you include as much helpful,information in here as possible the,easier the affiliates job is the more,money they're gonna make and the more,money you're gonna make,so then now here we can edit the login,forms so this is just going to be the,form that affiliates see when they log,in so you can go ahead and edit this the,same way you can edit the registration,form you can go ahead and change your,account language if you want you can,allow the affiliate to select their own,language as well,and then you can go ahead and change,some of the information in here with,account text but you're probably not,going to really be messing with any of,this,and then account customization right,here select the page that our active,affiliates will see when they log in for,their affiliate accounts for the first,time so by default you start out a,payment setting so they can set up how,they will get paid,so with that said we're going to head,back to the dashboard here and that's,how you can go ahead and set up an,affiliate program within shopify,using up promote step by step so once,again if you want to go ahead and use,i'll promote and set it up within your,own store be sure to click the first,link in the description down below to,get started but that said if you did,enjoy this video be sure to leave a,thumbs up subscribe to this channel for,more videos and i will see you guys in,the next one

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