How to start an affiliate program

1. Decide who your partners are

Publishers who review products, customers who recommend you to friends, creators you brief, ambassadors who represent you, and businesses that bring you clients all want different things. A creator may expect a brief and a fee; a customer, a reward for a friend. Decide which you are starting with, because it shapes everything below. A referral program for customers is a different promise from an affiliate program for publishers.

2. Decide what you pay, and when

• A percentage of the sale, or a flat amount.
• Once, or on every renewal, and for how long.
• Whether a sale with a discount code pays a lower rate, since the discount already cost you something.
• How long a commission waits before it can be paid. Match it to your refund window, so a refunded sale cancels before any money moves; see refunds and clawbacks.

3. Write the terms, including disclosure

Say what is paid, when, and what happens on a refund. Say whether partners may refer themselves, and whether they may bid on your brand name in search ads. Then say how they must disclose that they are paid.

In the US, the FTC's Endorsement Guides say a connection that could affect how people weigh an endorsement, such as a commission, must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously¹. They give the example of a blogger paid through affiliate links, whose reviews should disclose it¹. The brand has a part too: the Guides say advertisers should give their endorsers guidance, monitor what they publish, and act when it falls short¹.

4. Decide how a sale finds its partner

Give each partner a link and a code. The link credits the visitors who click; the code credits the buyers who type it, even with no click at all. Decide whether the last partner to send a buyer gets the sale, or the first, and for how many days after a click. Where you ask visitors for cookie consent, read cookies and consent first.

5. Decide how partners are paid

Pick a schedule, a minimum below which a payout waits, and how you pay: a bank file, PayPal, or store credit. Collect tax forms before the first payout; for US partners, see W-9, W-8BEN and the 1099-NEC.

6. Get the first partners going

Send each new partner their link and code in their first days, with one concrete place to use them, and check back after two weeks. Why affiliates go quiet covers what to do at each stage.

7. Moving from another tool?

Bring your partners and their codes with you, run both side by side for a while, and switch when the numbers agree. How migration works.