Enabling your members to become affiliates for your products is easy to do inside of MemberVault. The below shows you the front end of the affiliate center (what your affiliates will see), and then under that, the back end (what you'll use to manage your affiliates).
This step-by-step guide will show you how to set everything set up and how to track/pay your affiliates!
Quick Tip: Want to send a link to your Affiliate Center out to your audience? Any time you are in the Affiliate section of your dashboard, you can click the Gear Icon in the top right corner, and this will display a direct link to your Affiliate Center as well as a one-click link to use in your email service to automatically log someone into your account.
Set Up your Affiliate Settings
Go to Affiliates in your left-hand navigation menu and select Settings.
You have the option to add text in your Affiliate Center, which will appear above your affiliate product links in your members' profile menu. This is a great place to remind them of their benefits in sharing your products, when you process payouts, etc.
You also have the ability to set Terms for your affiliates to agree to. See how to set these up here. When you include Terms in your settings, this will automatically generate a field that allows your members to enter in their email address where they would prefer to receive payouts (generally done via PayPal).
Finally, you can choose whether or not to email your affiliate when they make a successful conversion. This is set to "Yes" as a default, but you can change this if preferred.
Quick Tip: You now have the ability to tag affiliates in your email tool when they accept your terms. To set this up, go to Members > Actions and select "Agrees to Affiliate Terms" from the "When this Happens" menu.
Setting Up Products
Under Affiliates in the left-hand navigation menu, select Products.
By default, all the products that you created will be added to the 'Products' Not Shared Area':
To activate your Affiliate Center and accept affiliates, you'll need to click the Edit icon next to the products you want to enable your affiliates to share.
Set the status to "Active" to activate that product for Affiliate Tracking.
Next, select your payout type, amount, currency and even supply a message for affiliates about that product.
Payout Type "None" is best used for any of your free products as it will allow your affiliates to share the product and have their affiliate cookie set, but there is no financial payout for conversions on that product.
Payout Type "Percentage" will calculate the payout based on how much the user actually paid for it. So if they used a coupon, the percentage is taken post-coupon.
This only works for products that are using the MemberVault payment system.
Each product has a dedicated payout amount. At this time, you cannot customize your payout amounts by Affiliate - everyone receives the same payout set for that product.
Once you have these settings in place and have at least ONE active product, your users can start sharing your product.
To have access to the affiliate links for your active affiliate products, a person only requires that they have an account within your MV Site. They do not need to 'own' the product they are promoting on your behalf.
Any person who has an account within your MV Site can access your Affiliate Center and promote your products for you using their unique affiliate link for the product (see Affiliate Link Customization below for more options).
To learn more about how your people/affiliates access your Site's Affiliate Center and their links, please reference this article:
A few additional notes:
If someone has been shared a link to your product by multiple affiliates, the credit will be given to the affiliate whose link was last clicked.
MV tracking only applies to purchases made using the MV checkout cart. If you are using an external checkout cart system such as ThriveCart, SamCart etc, you will need to use their Affiliate Links in order to track your Affiliate sales.
Setting Up Offers
You can now share your Offers with your affiliates as well in addition to Products and track conversions to your Offers!
Navigate to your Affiliate menu and select Offers.
By default, all Offers will be inactive in your Affiliate menu unless you choose to activate them.
Follow steps 3-5 in how to Set Up Product affiliates above to activate your Offers!
How to See a List of Approved Affiliates
To view a list of affiliates who have accepted your terms, go to Affiliates > List in your left-hand navigation menu.
This will contain a list of your affiliates who completed the terms, including their name, email address, and the date they agreed to your terms.
Affiliate Link Customization
You can now apply affiliate tracking cookies to any link you're sharing with your MV affiliates! (ie MV Pages, blog, etc)
Go to "Affiliates" > "Links" and add a new link to share with your affiliates. Anyone clicking this affiliate link on your MV will have an affiliate cookie applied to their browser and your affiliates will receive credit for any conversions on products these people purchase.
You can also add external links here that aren't hosted on your MV sites. Keep in mind, these won't track conversions. However, they will track clicks for you.
Generating Reports / Payouts
To access the reporting area for your Affiliate Tracking, go to Affiliates > Reporting in your left-hand navigation menu.
From this area, you can generate a CSV which will allow you to easily bulk pay affiliates via Paypal, or whatever payment system you use.
Payouts are not processed from within your MV site.
In this reports section, you will also see an icon linking to more information on the payment linked to that conversion, including if any coupon codes were used. You can also see the affiliate linked to the sale, and delete that affiliate if needed (eg. if an affiliate violates your terms and relinquishes their affiliate status).
Once you've paid everyone, simply click "Mark as Paid". This will clear out your pending commissions, AND your members will see them as paid on their end as well.
"How do I grow my list/increase my sales" is one of the most challenging business puzzles, and one of the most popular answers to that puzzle is an affiliate program. In our Grow with Affiliates toolkit (included in all paid plans), you'll get advice on running your first short term affiliate promotion and pros/cons of a short term vs an ongoing affiliate promo.
Want to become an affiliate for MemberVault? Get started here!
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Questions? Reach out to us at hello@membervault.co, within our Facebook group, The MV Collaborative, or via chat support within your admin account (not sure how to log in? look up your account here).