The Affiliates plugin provides the right tools to maintain an Affiliate Marketing Program.

Important features include automated affiliate registration, an unlimited affiliate management section and the ability to integrate Affiliates with virtually any E-Commerce platform. Free integrations with eShop, Jigoshop and WooCommerce are available.

The Affiliates plugin provides an affiliate system for sellers, shops and developers who want to get started with their affiliate program right “out of the box”.

It also provides a solid framework for developers, who wish to build customized solutions based on a sound data model. With unlimited affiliate program management tools available on the back end and a set of shortcodes to provide Affiliates information on their performance on the front end, there is everything you need to start an affiliate program.

Affiliates Pro and Enterprise provide additional features for sellers, shops and developers.

If you need to manage an Affiliate Marketing Program, track visits to your site with affiliate links, the affiliates plugin is right for you. It provides the tools to maintain a partner referral program.

Simply put, the affiliates plugin is used to manage affiliates, create referrals and track visits to your site through affiliate links.
Referrals are stored and attributed to an affiliate, for example if clients place orders on your site and you need to credit your affiliates.

Consulting and customization services are available upon request.

Integrations

Free and contribution-based Integration packs are available. Please check below if your e-commerce, membership, etc. platform has already been integrated. Integration packs are also developed upon request.

Premium Integration Packs

These Affiliates Pro Integration Packs are available for immediate download:

Light Integrations

These integrations are based on the Affiliates plugin. You need to install and activate the free Affiliates plugin to use them.

• Affiliates Ecwid Light
• Affiliates eShop Integration Light
• Affiliates Jigoshop Integration Light
• Affiliates Ready! Ecommerce Integration Light
• Affiliates WooCommerce Integration Light

Documentation

Please refer to the Affiliates Documentation pages.

These pages provide additional information:

• Introduction
• Installation
• FAQ
• Screenshots
• Shortcodes
• API
• Download
• Videos

What this plugin is not

It is not intended to keep track of links to other sites that you as a member of an affiliate program may have.

Existing users may also join your affiliate program. The registration form will show the appropriate options for users who are logged in.

You will need to provide affiliates with their affiliate links to your site. You can do so manually or create an Affiliate Marketing Resources page for your affiliates, where banners and links and their respective codes can be provided to your affiliates when they are logged in. These features are currently part of the Affiliates Pro contributor release. The Affiliates Pro plugin also provides statistics and referral views for your affiliates. Please visit the Affiliates Pro plugin’s page for more information.

The default options should be suitable for many, but there are some options you might want to consider before you really start.

Although the options are documented on each page and are generally intuitive or self-explaining, a quick introduction is useful …

The ‘Affiliates’ menu provides these sections:

Affiliates

Here an overview is provided with summarized statistical data, including your currently operative affiliates, total hits, visits and referrals.

Manage Affiliates

This is where you add, remove and manage your affiliates. For each affiliate, the appropriate affiliate links are shown so that these can be conveniently employed on your affiliates’ sites.

Visits & Referrals

Provides per-day information:

This page shows a summary of unique Visits, Hits and Referrals as well as a Ratio that shows the conversion rate (Referrals/Visits) on a daily basis.
Extended information can be shown, including information about pages or posts that produced referrals as well as their date and time and IP addresses that produced hits.
Data can be conveniently sorted and also filtered by affiliate and time period.

Affiliates & Referrals

Provides per-affiliate information:

For each affiliate, the number of unique Visitors, Hits, Referrals and Ratio (Referrals/Visitor) are shown.
Detailed information about each referral can be expanded as well as for hits.
Data can be conveniently sorted and also filtered by affiliate and time period.

Referrals

This section is where referrals are displayed and maintained, it provides per-referral information:

For each referral, the date and time, corresponding post, the credited affiliate, referral amount and currency are shown along with the referral’s current status.

Each referral’s status can be conveniently set. The status is used to track whether referrals need further attention:

• Accepted – referrals that are approved and pending payment to the affiliate
• Pending – if a referral needs further review or approval before being accepted
• Closed – a referral is closed when payment to the affiliate has been issued
• Rejected – a referral that has not been approved and will not be credited to the affiliate

Additional data and referral descriptions that have been recorded using the plugin’s API can be expanded for each referral.

Data can be conveniently sorted and also filtered by affiliate and time period.

Options

Referral timeout

The referral timeout determines for how long a visit via an affiliate link will produce a referral.
This setting can be adjusted to range from the individual session to a number of days.

Direct referrals

The affiliates plugin can be used to store transaction data even if no affiliate was involved.
This settings determines if ‘direct’ referrals are stored. This are accessible through a ‘Direct’ affiliate who represents the site’s owner or organization.

Robots

Hits from affiliate links that have originated from robots listed here will not be taken into account.

By default there are no entries but you can start with this example:

Yahoo! Slurp
YandexBot
Googlebot
DotBot
discobot
MJ12bot
proximic
Baiduspider
bingbot
Exabot
AMZNKAssocBot

Affiliate ID encoding

Either plain or MD5-encoded affiliate IDs can be used. These are appended to your affiliate’s link.

Permissions

For each role these permissions can be set:

* Access affiliates: to be able to see information accessible through the *Affiliates* menu in WordPress.
* Administer affiliates: to add, remove and manage affiliates.
* Administer options: grants access to make changes on this *Options* page.

Deactivation and data persistence

A convenient option is provided to delete all data that has been stored by the affiliates plugin.
This option is useful if you just need to start clean while you run tests.

The default options should be suitable for many, but there are some options you might want to consider before you really start. Please read the Affiliates Documentation for additional information.

[1] To allow visitors to sign up, you need to allow them to register on your site. Otherwise you will see a message saying Registration is currently closed. Go to Settings > General, tick the checkbox close to Membership that says Anyone can register and hit Save Changes.

Embed this shortcode on a page:

[affiliates_url]

This will render a link to your site with the affiliate ID appended.

If you want to link to a certain page, you can use this shortcode:

[affiliates_url]http://www.example.com/somepage[/affiliates_url]

If you want to show how a link would look like, you can use the shortcode within HTML as well, for example:

<a href=”[affiliates_url]”>[affiliates_url]</a>

Remember to use HTML entities for < and >.

Earnings … How can I show affiliates information about their performance?

Your affiliates will want to know how much they will and have earned and how many referrals they have made.

Use the [affiliates_referrals] shortcode to show how many referrals an affiliate has made and how much the affiliate has earned.

The [affiliates_referrals] shortcode will show the total number of referrals that have been accepted or closed for the affiliate.

To show the number of referrals for an affiliate by status, embed it like this:

Examples:

- Accepted referrals: [affiliates_referrals status=”accepted”]
- Closed referrals: [affiliates_referrals status=”closed”]
- Pending referrals: [affiliates_referrals status=”pending”]
- Rejected referrals: [affiliates_referrals status=”rejected”]

If you add the show=”total” attribute to that shortcode, it will make a list of earnings by currency:

Examples:

Total amount for paid and unpaid referrals: [affiliates_referrals show=”total”]

- Total for unpaid referrals: [affiliates_referrals show=”total” status=”accepted”]
- Total for paid referrals: [affiliates_referrals show=”total” status=”closed”]
- Total for referrals pending approval: [affiliates_referrals show=”total” status=”pending”]
- Total for rejected referrals: [affiliates_referrals show=”total” status=”rejected”]

Is it possible to show content for affiliates or non-affiliates only?

* Embed the content that you want to show to affiliates like this:

[affiliates_is_affiliate]

This is visible to affiliates who are logged in only.

[/affiliates_is_affiliate]

* For content to show to non-affiliates use this:

[affiliates_is_not_affiliate]

You can see this if you are not logged in as an affiliate.

[/affiliates_is_not_affiliate]

Can we generate affiliate links for our partners?

Yes.

This is one of the most important features.

Can we track visits to our site through our partners’ sites?

Yes.

This is also one of the most important features and what the plugin is intended for, besides recording referrals and transaction data.

Can we record referrals automatically when, for example, an order is placed?

Yes.

The API provides the means to suggest referrals and record them.

I am an affiliate of ACME and they provided me with an affiliate link. Is this plugin for me?

No it isn’t.

This plugin is for sites that need to manage their affiliates.

Can I automatically store additional referral and transaction data?

Yes you can do that through the plugin’s API functions.

I need to keep track of all transactions, including those that have not been initiated via an affiliate. Is this possible?

Yes!

Referrals that are not attributable to an affiliate can be stored along with arbitrary transaction data and associated with the site owner.
There is a dedicated entry for that, called *Direct* in the affiliates list, representing the site owner.

What about timezones?

The plugin provides timezone-independent recording and retrieval of hits, visits and referrals.
Data is stored with reference to the server’s settings and shown adjusted to the timezone settings in your WordPress site.

How flexible is data recording and retrieval for referrals?

You can store any information you need along with referrals.

How ugly are affiliate links?

Not very and there are several options including pretty permalinks.

Automatic affiliate id removal : the affiliate id is removed from your site’s URL after the visitors land on your site.

Is it possible to have permalinks that include affiliate data?

Yes.

Is it possible to have affiliate links to specific posts?

Yes.

How fine-grained are permissions?

The plugin provides role-based permissions to access gathered affiliate data, administer affiliates and administer options.

The overview shows summarized information based on current and historic data.

2. Manage Affiliates

This section is where the site’s affiliates are maintained.

They are related to users automatically when affiliates are allowed to sign up on your site. Once an affiliate has signed up, she will appear in this section.

Here you can also add new affiliates manually and edit or remove existing affiliates. An affiliate can also be associated manually to an existing user.

3. Visits & Referrals

This offers a per-day view of information about visits and referrals generated through affiliate links.

4. Affiliates & Referrals

The provides a per-affiliate view of information about visits and referrals generated through affiliate links.

5. Referrals

This section is where referrals are displayed and maintained.

The status is used to track whether referrals need further attention:

• Accepted – referrals that are approved and pending payment to the affiliate
• Pending – if a referral needs further review or approval before being accepted
• Closed – a referral is closed when payment to the affiliate has been issued
• Rejected – a referral that has not been approved and will not be credited to the affiliate

6. Referrals

This screenshot of the Referrals section is showing detailed information stored along with referrals obtained through the Affiliates Contact widget.

7. Options

Where general settings are maintained.

8. Menu

The Affiliates menu as seen from the administrative back end.

9. Affiliates Contact Widget

Usable example widget for lead generation and referrals with applied commission rate.

10. Affiliates Contact Widget

A Visitor’s view of the contact widget using the Twenty Eleven theme.

11. Affiliates Registration Widget

Lets visitors sign up to your affiliate program, fully automated. Also available as a shortcode to embed on pages.

12. Affiliates Registration Widget

Visitor’s view of the form. Also available as a shortcode to embed on pages.

13. Affiliates Registration Widget

View of a visitor’s successful form submission to join the site’s affiliate program.

14.  Generated Affiliate Area page

This is what an affiliate sees on the page when logged in.

Requesting referrals

affiliates_suggest_referral( $post_id, $description = ”, $data = null, $amount = null, $currency_id = null, $status = null )

Suggest to record a referral. This function is used to actually store referrals and associated information.

Parameters:

• int $post_id the referral post id; where the transaction or referral originates
• string $description the referral description
• string|array $data additional information that should be stored along with the referral
• string $amount the referral amount, e.g. commission credited to the affiliate for the referral, if an $amount is given, the $currency_id is required an vice-versa.
• string $currency_id currency id (three upper case letters, e.g. USD, EUR, … )
• string $status referral status, must be one of AFFILIATES_REFERRAL_STATUS_ACCEPTED, AFFILIATES_REFERRAL_STATUS_CLOSED, AFFILIATES_REFERRAL_STATUS_PENDING, AFFILIATES_REFERRAL_STATUS_REJECTED

Returns:

- affiliate id if a valid referral is recorded, otherwise false

If a valid affiliate is found, the referral is stored and attributed to the affiliate and the affiliate’s id is returned.
Use the $description to describe the nature of the referral and the associated transaction.
Use $data to store transaction data or additional information as needed.

$data must either be a string or an array. If given as an array, it is assumed that one provides
field data (for example: customer id, transaction id, customer name, …) and for each field
one entry is added to the $data array obeying this format:

$data['example'] = array(
	'title' => 'Field title',
	'domain' => 'Domain',
	'value' => 'Field value'
);

This information is then used to display field data for each referral in the Referrals section.

- ‘title’ is the field’s title, the title is translated using the ‘domain’
- ‘value’ is displayed as the field’s value

Example:

A customer has submitted an order and a possible referral shall be recorded, including the customer’s id and the order id:

$data = array(
	'customer-id' => array( 'title' => 'Customer Id', 'domain' => 'my_order_plugin', 'value' => $customer_id ),
	'order-id'    => array( 'title' => 'Order Id', 'domain' => 'my_order_plugin', 'value' => $order_id )
);
if ( $affiliate_id = affiliates_suggest_referral( $post_id, "Referral for order number $order_id", $data ) ) {
	$affiliate = affiliates_get_affiliate( $affiliate_id );
	$affiliate_email = $affiliate['email'];
	if ( !empty( $affiliate_email ) ) {
		$message = "Dear Affiliate, an order has been made. You will be credited as soon as payment is received.";
		my_order_plugin_send_an_email( $affiliate_email, $message );
	}
}

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/affiliates/

The video below shows the old affiliate management section. Please refer to the Screenshots to see how it looks like now.

The affiliate management section has been completely revised and now provides a perfect solution to manage even huge sets of affiliates.

WordPress 3.2.1 & Affiliates 1.0.1 [outdated]

This shows the Affiliates plugin on a fresh WordPress 3.2.1 installation. First the Affiliates plugin is installed, then a new affiliate is added.

As some seem to have had problems when clicking the Add button in Affiliates – Manage Affiliates, this video is to show that it works as it should. If you encounter problems, I’d suggest to disable other plugins and use the default theme and try it again. If you encounter problems, please contact me stating what other plugins you have installed and activated along with your currently active theme.

There is one reported case of an Ad-blocker browser plugin interfering, so you should make sure to adjust their settings or disable such browser plugins.

Music : Kool Kats by Kevin MacLeod to be found at incompetech.com available under the Creative Commons License

Downloads

To obtain a SUSDL License for the Affiliates Pro plugin or an Affiliates Pro Integration Pack, please go to the appropriate page to contribute and download:

• Affiliates Pro
• Affiliates Enterprise
• Affiliates Pro for Contact Form 7
• Affiliates Pro for Easy Digital Downloads
• Affiliates Pro for Ecwid
• Affiliates Pro for eShop
• Affiliates Pro for Jigoshop
• Affiliates Pro for PayPal
• Affiliates Pro for s2Member
• Affiliates Pro for TheCartPress
• Affiliates Pro for WooCommerce
• Affiliates Pro for WP e-Commerce

After you have made your payment you will receive an email with download instructions. Decompress the downloaded file and follow the installation instructions in the file readme.txt.

Integration Packs

Please check below if your e-commerce, membership, etc. platform has already been integrated. Integration packs are also developed on request.

Premium Integration Packs

These Integration Packs are available for immediate download:

• Affiliates Enterprise
• Affiliates Pro Contact Form 7 Integration Pack
• Affiliates Pro for Easy Digital Downloads
• Affiliates Pro Ecwid Integration Pack
• Affiliates Pro eShop Integration Pack
• Affiliates Pro Jigoshop Integration Pack
• Affiliates Pro PayPal Integration Pack
• Affiliates Pro for TheCartPress
• Affiliates Pro s2Member Integration Pack
• Affiliates Pro WooCommerce Integration Pack
• Affiliates Pro WP e-Commerce Integration Pack

Light Integrations

These integrations are based on the Affiliates plugin and can be downloaded directly. You need to install and activate the free Affiliates plugin to use them.

• Affiliates Ecwid Light.
• Affiliates eShop Integration Light.
• Affiliates Jigoshop Integration Light.
• Affiliates Ready! Ecommerce Integration Light
• Affiliates WooCommerce Integration Light.

Documentation and Support

Please refer to the documentation pages and video tutorials for details.

Additional documentation and premium support is made available to contributors.

For consulting and development visit this page to forward your requests.

Important features have been added to the latest release, including automated affiliate registration and a completely revised affiliate management section. Referrals now directly support amounts and currencies and provide different states for their evaluation.

See all details on the plugin page.

A Contributor Release is now available. This release includes advanced features such as:

• Affiliate Statistics shortcodes and widgets for affiliates
• Configurable Referral Views for affiliates
• Embeddable Links and Banners for affiliates
• Premium support and special attention to feature requests for contributors

Read more on the Affiliates Pro plugin page.

While the Affiliates plugin provides the right tools to maintain an Affiliate Marketing Program, Affiliates Pro provides great extensions.

The Affiliates Pro plugin is available for immediate download here.

For complete details on shortcodes please visit the Shortcodes section in the documentation.

Information for affiliates

Affiliate link

Embed this shortcode on a page:

[affiliates_url]

This will render a link to your site with the affiliate ID appended.

If you want to link to a certain page, you can use this shortcode:

[affiliates_url]http://www.example.com/somepage[/affiliates_url]

If you want to show how a link would look like, you can use the shortcode within HTML as well, for example:

<a href=”[affiliates_url]”>[affiliates_url]</a>

Remember to use HTML entities for < and >.

Affiliate earnings & performance

Your affiliates will want to know how much they will and have earned and how many referrals they have made.

Use the [affiliates_referrals] shortcode to show how many referrals an affiliate has made and how much the affiliate has earned.

The [affiliates_referrals] shortcode will show the total number of referrals that have been accepted or closed for the affiliate.

To show the number of referrals for an affiliate by status, embed it like this:

Examples:

- Accepted referrals: [affiliates_referrals status=”accepted”]
- Closed referrals: [affiliates_referrals status=”closed”]
- Pending referrals: [affiliates_referrals status=”pending”]
- Rejected referrals: [affiliates_referrals status=”rejected”]

If you add the show=”total” attribute to that shortcode, it will make a list of earnings by currency:

Examples:

Total amount for paid and unpaid referrals: [affiliates_referrals show=”total”]

- Total for unpaid referrals: [affiliates_referrals show=”total” status=”accepted”]
- Total for paid referrals: [affiliates_referrals show=”total” status=”closed”]
- Total for referrals pending approval: [affiliates_referrals show=”total” status=”pending”]
- Total for rejected referrals: [affiliates_referrals show=”total” status=”rejected”]

Content visibility

* Embed the content that you want to show to affiliates like this:

[affiliates_is_affiliate]

This is visible to affiliates who are logged in only.

[/affiliates_is_affiliate]

* For content to show to non-affiliates use this:

[affiliates_is_not_affiliate]

You can see this if you are not logged in as an affiliate.

[/affiliates_is_not_affiliate]

Login and Logout

Use the following shortcode to allow users to log in and remain on the same page after having logged in. This shortcode also accepts an optional redirect_url attribute to redirect the user to a different page after logging in.

[affiliates_login_redirect]

[affiliates_login_redirect redirect_url=”http://www.example.com/where-to-redirect/”]

Use the following shortcode to embed a Log out link on a page:

[affiliates_logout]

Affiliate Registration

Shortcode tag

[affiliates_registration /]

Usage

Lets visitors sign up to your affiliate program in a fully automated process.

Attributes

is_widget

Must be set to true if the shortcode is used in a widget.

default: false

registered_profile_link_text

Profile link text to be displayed for registered users after signing up for the affiliate program.

registered_profile_link_url

Profile Link for registered users after signing up for the affiliate program.

redirect

Whether to redirect after registration.

default: false

redirect_to

Redirection URL.

terms_post_id

ID of the post with affiliate terms and conditions.

Notes

This feature is also available as the Affiliates Registration widget.

Affiliates Pro provides additional shortcodes for affiliate links, banners and stats.

Videos are currently being prepared, will be added shortly.

Download

Purchase to download the Affiliates Enterprise pack and obtain a license.

Multi-tier Affiliate Programs

Affiliates Enterprise provides all features integrated in Affiliates Pro and advanced features including support for unlimited multi-tier marketing programs.

Integrations

Affiliates Enterprise comes with all available integrations. Please visit Affiliates Enterprise for details.

Documentation

The documentation for the Affiliates plugin series is available here.

The video shows three main interactions for customers, admins and affiliates:

• how a customer makes a purchase through an affiliate link
• how an admin sees referrals and relates them to orders
• and how an affiliate sees an overview of his performance

The Integration Pack will be available for download this week.

Download

Purchase to download the integration pack and obtain a license.

Demo

The video shows three main interactions for customers, admins and affiliates:

• how a customer makes a purchase through an affiliate link
• how an admin sees referrals and relates them to orders
• and how an affiliate sees an overview of his performance

In addition to what is shown in the video, all features of the Affiliates Pro plugin are available.

Documentation

After following the steps to install the integration pack, please refer to the documentation available here: Affiliates Plugins Documentation.

Free Integration

The Affiliates Jigoshop Integration Light is based on the Affiliates plugin and can be downloaded directly. You need to install and activate the free Affiliates plugin to use it.

The pack includes the Affiliates Pro plugin with full features and extended settings to control the Jigoshop integration.

Download the integration pack here.

Affiliate Marketing Resources – Banners

This is an example of a page that provides affiliates their marketing resources. Any number of banners, links and url references can be used on one or more pages using shortcodes.

Affiliate Marketing Resources – Banners, Links, URL

This is another example of a page that provides affiliates their marketing resources. Any number of banners, links and url references can be used on one or more pages using shortcodes.

Detailed Affiliate Stats

This view is available as a shortcode and is used to show affiliates details about the referrals they have been credited with. If recorded, these are showing affiliates their earnings for each referral that has been accepted. Rejected or pending referrals will not be shown to affiliates.

Summary Affiliate Stats

This view is provided through a shortcode that can be embedded where needed and provides affiliates a quick view of their overall performance.

Summary Affiliate Stats Widget

This widget provides affiliates a quick view of their overall performance.

Affiliates Pro & Ecwid

Affiliates Pro & eShop

Affiliates Pro & WooCommerce

Affiliates Pro / Enterprise Jigoshop Integration

Affiliates – Example of affiliate signing up

Adding affiliates manually

Affiliates – Creating an affiliate registration page

Affiliates – How to set up an affiliate profile page

Affiliates Pro / Enterprise: How to create an affiliate banners page

Setting a default referral rate

Affiliates – setting a specific referral rate for an affiliate

Affiliates Pro WordPress plugin installation

Download

Purchase to download the integration pack and obtain a license.

Demo

Note: Although the following video was recorded with Affiliates Pro for Jigoshop, it also applies to Affiliates Pro for WP e-Commerce.

The video shows three main interactions for customers, admins and affiliates:

• how a customer makes a purchase through an affiliate link
• how an admin sees referrals and relates them to orders
• and how an affiliate sees an overview of his performance

In addition to what is shown in the video, all features of the Affiliates Pro plugin are available.

Documentation

After following the steps to install the integration pack, please refer to the documentation available here: Affiliates Plugins Documentation.