Which Is The Best WooCommerce Affiliate Plugin To Run Affiliate Program?

There are discount campaigns and offers that help us mint money on auto-pilot. But there’s another effective and money-spinner way for WooCommerce users. And that’s setting up your own affiliate program. Affiliates bring you qualified leads, and you keep minting money by offering them some sweet commission.

If your products are great, but marketing doesn’t yield results, an affiliate program is what you need.

People don’t know you yet, but if some influencers (can be your affiliates) promote your brand to these people, you are assured of more conversions. Another benefit is you only pay after a sale is made.

It is very easy today to set up your own affiliate program if you have a WooCommerce store, thanks to the Affiliate for WooCommerce plugin.

Is the plugin easy to use? Does it come with all the bells and whistles? Let’s have an in-depth review of this WooCommerce affiliate plugin.

 

Affiliate For WooCommerce Plugin

Affiliate for WooCommerce extension reduces your setup time and costs. You also don’t need to rely on any third-party WordPress affiliate programs or plugins that are complex and provide different paid add-ons.

The plugin comes from the StoreApps team, the official WooCommerce plugins developer. It’s the same team that brought you Email Customizer Pro, Smart Coupons, Cashier, and other plugins.

Tracking referrals and sales, setting up commission plans, creating marketing campaigns, managing payouts, etc., the plugin offers a plethora of benefits.

 

 

To unleash the true potential of affiliate programs, you need to know what the plugin offers. Let’s dive into Affiliate for WooCommerce plugin features.

Features:

• Registration forms for affiliates. Approve them manually or automatically.
• Allow an unlimited number of affiliates to join and promote.
• Allow affiliates to promote via both referral links and coupons.
• Modify affiliate referral ID and parameter.
• Store owners can manage everything from a single dashboard – commission plans, campaigns, affiliate tracking, etc. You don’t need to switch to multiple dashboards as you do for other WordPress affiliate plugins.
• Set up a multi-tier affiliate program with a ‘n’ number of tiers. Example – Chris refers to Anna, and Anna refers to Dan. All three will earn a commission here when Dan sells a product.
• Set up a store-wide affiliate commission rate.
• Set up commission plans for different affiliate commission rates based on affiliates, products, product categories, tags, etc. Examples –  Set store-wide commission rate of 20%, but allow Jenny a 30% commission on best-sellers allow Matt 25% commission, etc.
• Provide unlimited marketing material to affiliates for promoting your brand/products. Create campaigns – images, videos, PDFs, swipe files, anything you want that your affiliates can use for promotion.
• Real-time, accurate reports to track commissions, sales, referrals, etc.
• Dedicated dashboard for store owners to track each affiliate’s progress – orders placed, commissions earned, products sold, etc.
• Dedicated dashboard for affiliates to monitor their performance – commissions, payouts, marketing materials, etc.
• Track affiliate progress and adjustments: commissions are calculated based on order status changes and recurring subscription payments.
• Make payout to partners easily using PayPal API.
• Mark payouts using points and rewards, store credits, manual methods like direct bank transfer, cheque, etc.
• Assign tags to affiliates. It makes it easier to search and filter affiliates.
• Predefined filters to search affiliates.
• Assign or unassign order to an affiliate.
• Export affiliates data to CSV – all or filtered data.
• Compatible with official WooCommerce Subscriptions, and Smart Coupons extensions.
• Regular improvements and updates.

That’s quite a solid list of features. Now let’s dive into these features and how to set up your WooCommerce affiliate program.

 

How To Set Up Affiliate Program?

The first step is installation and activation:

• Purchase the Affiliate for WooCommerce extension from WooCommerce.com.
• Next, under your WordPress Admin panel, go to Plugins > Add New and upload the affiliate plugin zip file.
• Activate the extension.

Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Affiliate. You’ll find all the settings related to registration forms, affiliate approval, store-wide commission rate, and other details here:

• The form page is automatically created on plugin activation. You can use the shortcode [afwc_registration_form] to show the form to visitors on any other page of your site if needed. You can also edit the form to show/hide some form input fields.
• Tick the checkbox under ‘Approval Method’ to approve all affiliate submissions via the form. If not, you need to manually approve each affiliate.
• If you want your customers or other users to automatically become your affiliates, enter those user roles in the box provided. Some of your customers may turn out influencers as well.
• Set a global commission rate, exclude products from affiliate commission if you wish to, allow coupons for referrals and others settings related to cookie duration and emails.
• Payout via PayPal option will be enabled/disabled if these requirements are met.
• You can also choose to offer commission one-time or regularly if you use WooCommerce Subscriptions.

 

Affiliate Referral ID/Coupons

All your approved affiliates will find their referral ID under their My Account > Profile section. Affiliates can use the Referral URL generator to create a link for the products they want to promote. The plugin also allows to modify referral link.

 

 

Instead of the ID, affiliates can also promote products via a coupon. Affiliates can request a referral coupon from the store admin. They’ll find it under their My Account > Profile section itself.

 

Creating Affiliate Commission Plans

This is where the plugin shines. You have full flexibility to create commission plans based on your requirements. It can be a product-based commission, affiliate-based commission, tag-based commission, or others. Some examples:

• 20% commission on the best-seller only to specific affiliates.

 

 

• 35% commission on low-selling products to all affiliates.
• $15 flat commission on a branded laptop only to one affiliate.
• $20 flat commission to all affiliates belonging to the ‘Gold’ tag.

 

 

• 25% commission on product category ‘Jewellery.’
• Apply commission only on the first product and zero commission on upsells in the purchase order.

 

 

• Apply 25% commission on the first product and store-wide commission of 20% on other products in the purchase order.
• Set up a commission plan with three tiers for exclusive products.

You can pause any commission plan any time, delete plans and make new ones as and when required. Commissions based on product type, price, quantity, taxonomy, total referrals will be rolled out soon.

 

Creating Marketing Campaigns

Make it easy for your affiliates to showcase your products/brand. Provide them with the helpful resources they need. With the Affiliate for WooCommerce plugin, you get your familiar WordPress editor to create marketing campaigns.

 

 

Set a title, slug, destination link, descriptions for your campaigns. Add images, banners, email content, creative descriptions, videos, audio files, etc., whatever you wish to.

I recommend using banners for physical products and short videos for digital products for more conversions. Your affiliates will find these campaign resources under their My Account > Profile > Campaigns section.

You can pause any marketing campaign plan any time, delete campaigns and make new ones as and when required.

 

Real-Time & Accurate Reports

Store owners get to know the performance of each affiliate – net affiliate sales, refunds, unpaid commissions, pending payouts, order date, commission paid, payouts, products sold, tags, visitors, conversions, conversion rate.

 

 

Using the dashboard, store owners can also export affiliate data with or without filters and also the unpaid commission for mass payout.

 

 

Every affiliate also gets a dedicated dashboard to monitor their performance – gross and net commission, a commission earned from each customer, total sales and conversion rate, payout history, and product-wise commission. They can find it under their My Account > Profile > Reports section.

 

Payouts

The plugin allows you to make a mass payout via PayPal or do a manual payout.

 

 

You can also assign reward points or store credits for that commission. All these you can do using the manual payout option. But for manual payouts, you can only mark the commission status as paid.

 

To send actual payments, rewards, and store credits, you can do it via other plugins, a bank transfer, or other payment methods. For each payout made, refer to the Payouts tab.

 

Pricing

The plugin is priced at $129/year that includes one year of support and updates.

 

Is Affiliate For WooCommerce Worth Purchasing?

With more than 80% of the marketers moving towards affiliate marketing, it won’t be late to see almost all WooCommerce store owners setting up their own affiliate programs to grow their business.

And it’s high time if you haven’t set up one for your store. Reviews and recommendations are very powerful. With an affiliate program besides you, you can make them work for you.

A solid feature set, cost-effective, ease-of-use, no clumsy UI, no site slowdowns, manageable from a single place, four-star average ratings, improvements based on user feedback, etc., this WooCommerce affiliate plugin is a complete package. You are in full control of your affiliate program.

But if you feel this plugin is not the right choice for your needs, then I suggest checking Tapfiliate review. Tapfiliate is asoftware tool that aids businesses in creating, tracking and managing their affiliate marketing programs.