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Affiliate FAQ

Meaning of Affiliate State

An affiliate can be in one of four distinct states:

  • New: The affiliate has applied, and you haven’t yet decided whether to let them in or not.

  • Approved: They can refer new customers and continue to receive commission on past referrals

  • Rejected: We are not accepting new referrals from this affiliate, and any past referrals will no longer incur a commission.

  • Retired: We are not accepting new referrals from this affiliate, but any past referrals with installments or recurring payments will still produce a commission.

Can We Offer a Flat Fee Instead of a Percentage for Our Affiliate Commissions?

Yes, you can! (there’s an if though… if you are on Scale, Skyrocket, or the deprecated Rule The World Plan).

You can set it up in several places across the platform at the Affiliate Program Level >> Configure tab (this will apply to all affiliates new purchases unless they have a different setup at the product or specific affiliate level).

At the Affiliate level >> Edit page >> Commission section. If you choose an option different to inherit from the affiliate program, we will override the settings for this affiliate's new purchases only.

At the Product Level >> Selling tab >> Affiliate Settings section. You’ll again have the option to either use the affiliate program settings (first option) or to override the value with a fixed amount that will apply to purchases of this product only.

Note! FREE purchases won't get credited Fixed Amounts. They will if the price is $0.

Can I customize the affiliate % by purchase? What happens when I change the affiliate commission after purchases have been made?

Each purchase can now have its own affiliate commission percentage.

That means that if you change the commission for an affiliate, this will only affect new purchases, not existing ones. This is great if you want to change commissions over time without affecting what's already purchased.

It also means that if you want to reward a particular affiliate with an extra commission for a certain referral, you can just change the percentage for that purchase alone, and it won't affect anything else.

This change also means that your affiliates may now show a difference of a cent or two from what it was. The reason for this is that the commission is now calculated—and thus rounded to nearest cent—per charge. Whereas before the total amount was summed first, and then the percentage was calculated. Sorry about that, but that's an unavoidable side-effect.


When and How Are My Affiliates Paid?

You can pay your affiliates anyway and any time you want.

We support PayPal MassPay as a way to do it automatically, that works if you had already set up Masspay in the past, since it's now a deprecated feature in PayPal.

Soon we will also have PayPal Payouts available through Simplero.

Click here to know more about Paypal Payouts Mass Payment option.

PayPal requires you to sign up for that service specifically. You will need a Paypal Business Account.

However, if you want to pay your affiliates cash, check, wire transfer, western union, anything else, you can totally do that too. And you don't have to pick just one method, by simply choosing Manual.

If you pay your affiliates manually, just make sure you register the payment on that affiliate, so we know how much has been paid out and how much is still owed. We have a handy manual payout screen that lets you easily see all the people to whom affiliate commission is owed, and lets you check them off as they're paid.

If you want to use PayPal MassPay, you hit a button whenever you want us to pay out what's owed to affiliates and if you have given us their PayPal email address, we'll email you a report of how it went when we're done.


Paying Affiliates

You have three options to pay out Affiliates. Paypal Masspay, Paypal Payouts and Manual Pay. 

Paypal MassPay

It's only available on accounts where it had been previously installed, since it's a deprecated feature in PayPal.

If you already had it in your account, then follow the steps below:

  1. Open your Affiliate program 

    • Select Affiliate programs from your Simplero Dashboard

    • Select the Affiliate program

    • Select the Summary tab within your Affiliate program

  2. Select the Pay via PayPal Payouts Mass Pay... button in the right sidebar

Paypal Payouts Mass Payment

  1. Set up Payouts Mass Pay in your PayPal Account

  2. Open your Affiliate program 

    • Select Affiliate programs from your Simplero Dashboard

    • Select the Affiliate program

    • Select the Configure tab within your Affiliate program and Scroll down to the Payout Settings > choose PayPal Payouts

  3. Go to the Affiliate Program > Summary tab.

  4. Select the Pay via PayPal Payouts Mass Pay... button in the right sidebar

Note: Some users may not be able to use Payouts Mass Pay per PayPal's Terms of use. (That includes Simplero) If this is you, then you will want to use the Manual payment option.  

Manual Payment

  1. Go to PayPal 

  2. In another browser, open your Affiliate program 

    • Select Affiliate programs from your Simplero Dashboard

    • Select the Affiliate program

    • Select the Summary tab within your Affiliate program and click on "See payable affiliates and run manual payout"

  3. Locate and select the Affiliate you want to pay

  4. Copy the Email address and note the Amount you are paying.

  5. Go to PayPal and make payment

  6. Click the green Mark Paid button in the far right next to the Affiliate name

  7. Repeat steps 3-7 until all are paid out

Retiring vs Rejecting an affiliate

Reject action will stop the affiliate from getting a commission on current active purchases. New purchases created using their affiliate link will no longer link the new purchase to a rejected affiliate.

If an affiliate is Retired new purchases using their affiliate link will no longer attach the new purchase to the retired affiliate. Existing commissions currently active to a retired affiliate will continue.

Existing contacts and Affiliate links

In some cases, you might have an existing contact in your account (without being attached to an affiliate) that eventually purchases one of your products using an affiliate link.

The new purchase in this case will be credited to the affiliate while the contact will not.

Contact record:

Purchase:

Can Affiliates use their own link to buy and therefore be awarded for their own purchases?

Disabled by default, but available to enable this functionality on the Affiliate Program >> Configure >> Advanced Settings.

Sidemenu FAQ

Below we'll go through what the different sections for the right side menu means:

Sold: The total amount sold for the affiliate.

Received: The total amount received for the affiliate.

Delayed: You can setup a delay period for the payout, which you control in the settings. The amount here, is what hasn't passed the delay period yet.

Incoming: Future payments on other purchases.

Comission

Delayed: Is the delayed commission which has not passed the payout period setup yet.

Earned: Total amount earned of commission for the affiliate.

Paid: Total amount paid to the affiliate.

Owed: What the affiliate is owed.

Last updated 3 May 2023.
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