How to Start a WordPress Affiliate Program: 7 Practical Steps

WordPress users often ask us: What are the steps involved in creating a WordPress affiliate program? And is it difficult to create one?

To give you a quick answer, creating an affiliate program is easy thanks to the available WordPress affiliate marketing plugins and good integrations. The harder part is marketing your affiliate program and generating revenue from it.

To help you with that, we’ve put together this article! We will go through the seven practical steps for setting up and running a successful affiliate program in WordPress.

Why should you start a WordPress affiliate program?

Before going through the steps, let’s sum up the main benefits WordPress affiliate programs can bring.

The main benefits include:

1. Access to a new pool of customers. Affiliate programs give you access to a new pool of customers you would’ve otherwise missed.
2. Affiliate programs provide amazing ROI. The cost of starting an affiliate program is extremely low.
3. Low effort marketing strategy. The best affiliate plugins offer automation tools, so you can easily manage and scale your program.
4. Increased customer loyalty. Affiliates often become brand advocates who promote your products to their networks and drive repeat business.
5. Cost-effective growth. Unlike traditional advertising, you only pay affiliates when they successfully generate sales, making it a highly cost-efficient way to grow your business.

How to start an affiliate program with WordPress: 7-step process

The seven steps to launching an affiliate program with WordPress are as follows:

1. Install your affiliate plugin
2. Import your existing customers
3. Select your referral incentives
4. Design your affiliate landing page and emails
5. Make an outreach plan
6. Track the performance
7. Manage the affiliate payments

Let’s look into each of these in more detail.

1. Install your affiliate plugin

Most WordPress affiliate plugins work inside of WooCommerce, which is the most popular ecommerce solution for WordPress.

For that reason, we recommend having WooCommerce installed before installing an affiliate plugin.

Installing WooCommerce is easy from the WordPress plugins directory:

After you have WooCommerce installed and activated, you can install the affiliate plugin.

One of the best WordPress affiliate plugins is ReferralCandy, which can be found from the WordPress plugin directory.

To start using ReferralCandy, click here to head into our website and you can start your 14-day free trial.

During the sign up process, you need to select WooCommerce as your ecommerce platform.

Fill in your store URL, email, password, and select your plan to access the ReferralCandy dashboard.

From the dashboard, head into the “Integrations” and “Woocommerce”. 

In the integrations page, you will find clear instructions for the integration process.

The next step simply involves going to WordPress plugin directory and searching for “ReferralCandy”. After this, you need to click “Install Now”. 

Once the plugin is installed and activated, you need to copy your API Access ID, APP ID, and Secret Key from ReferralCandy’s dashboard.

You will need to paste these into the ReferralCandy plugin settings on WordPress.

Once you save the changes, ReferralCandy will automatically sync order and customer information for automated affiliate management.

After this, you can move on to the next step! 

P.S. If you don’t use WooCommerce for WordPress, you can try alternative WordPress affiliate marketing plugins.

2. Import your existing customers

When launching an affiliate program, you have to ask yourself: who are you going to market it to?

The most common source is existing customers.

If you use WooCommerce, you can download the list of your existing customers and import them to your affiliate program tool. This can be done from the "Customers" page by clicking the "Download" button:

Once you have your customer list, you can import it into your affiliate plugin, such as ReferralCandy:

The top affiliate plugins also automatically sync customer information, so when a customer makes a purchase, they will be automatically imported into your affiliate campaign. 

Additionally, you can use campaign filters to determine who gets invited to your affiliate program. Here are three filter options ReferralCandy offers:

If you want to import customers from another ecommerce platform, such as Shopify, you can download your customer list and import it into your affiliate plugin.

The best affiliate program plugins make importing customer lists from various marketing and ecommerce platforms easy.

3. Select your referral incentives

Referral incentives are the key motivators that encourage affiliates to promote your products to their friends, family, and followers.

Choosing the right incentive is fundamental for a successful affiliate program.

To help you select the right incentives, here are a few examples from successful brands:

• Give $100, get $300 in return. Wing Assistant credits advocates $300 for successful referrals, and the referred friend receives a $100 discount.
• Give 15% off, get 10% commission. Toki Mats used a percentage-based referral incentive to generate over $500,000 through its affiliate program.
• Give 10% off, get 10% off. Branch Basics used a simple Give 10%, Get 10% incentive to generate over $1.5 million in referral sales.

As you can see, the two most common incentives are cash rewards and coupon codes.

These are proven to be the most effective, so we recommend you use them also.

The incentives can be modified through your affiliate program plugin. This is how it looks like within ReferralCandy:

You can choose between coupons, cash, and custom incentives. Custom incentives could include free gifts, for example.

From the friend offer settings, you can choose if the incentive is one-sided or two-sided:

You can also make more advanced changes, such as how much the customer has to spend to be eligible for the reward.

For more information on incentives, read our in-depth guide on choosing the right referral incentives.

4. Design your affiliate landing page and emails

Once you have selected your incentives, it’s time to design your landing pages and affiliate emails.

The best affiliate program plugins offer you templates and make it easy to design them further.

For example, with ReferralCandy, you can start with an affiliate email template and customize it further to match your brand.

We also advise brands to use widgets such as sign-up forms and post-purchase pop-ups to attract more affiliates.

For more inspiration, check out our article on the best referral emails.

5. Make an outreach plan

To invite new customers to join your affiliate program, you need to have an outreach plan.

We recommend sending emails to all new customers and entice them to join your affiliate program.

When doing this, remember to send follow-up emails. According to Woodpecker, the first follow-up email receives a 40% higher reply rate than the initial email, and the ideal number of follow-ups is 2-3. 

Obviously, the main goal of affiliate emails is not to get replies but rather sign-ups for your affiliate program, but follow-ups help with that too.

With WordPress affiliate plugins, you can send affiliate emails to your customers:

ReferralCandy reminder email

Email might be the most powerful way to invite customers, but it’s not the only way.

Other great outreach strategies include:

• Influencer partnerships. Influencers can introduce your products to a new audience, and their endorsement can lend credibility.
• Content marketing. Write blog posts and create video content that highlights why readers should join your affiliate program and recommend your products.
• Social media. Advertise and share engaging posts and stories about your affiliate program on your social media pages.

6. Track the performance

After launching your affiliate program, you need to track the performance. 

Affiliate program plugins often include advanced analytics and reports that show you the performance.

Some important metrics to track include:

• Referral revenue. The total amount of money generated through your affiliate/referral program.
• Total amount of purchases. The total amount of purchases your affiliate program has generated.
• Affiliate email performance. Follow the open rate and how many new enrolled advocates you have gained from your affiliate emails.
• Industry referral rate. You can also compare your affiliate program performance against the average industry referral rate.

ReferralCandy affiliate and referral program analytics

Understanding these metrics can help determine whether your affiliate program provides a good ROI.

In addition, the top affiliate plugins offer A/B testing tools that help you test different variations of affiliate emails and landing pages. For example, you can A/B test between two email copies and see which performs better.

7. Manage the affiliate payments

Affiliate payment management is often integrated into an affiliate plugin.

Depending on your reward structure, the process varies a bit:

• Coupons and store credits. Coupons and store credits are often automatically applied to the affiliate’s account or the referred customer’s account after a successful referral.
• Direct cash payments. For cash-based rewards, the system will typically automatically calculate the affiliate’s earnings based on referrals and generate a payment report. Affiliates can be paid through PayPal and Stripe.
• Custom rewards. For custom rewards, such as free products or gift cards, you may need to track and fulfill these rewards manually

WordPress affiliate plugins, such as ReferralCandy, often guide you through affiliate payment management when onboarding.

You should also set clear payment thresholds and schedules, so affiliates know when and how they will be paid.

What additional things to consider when launching an affiliate program?

To help you further, we have listed additional things to consider below:

1. Compliance with regulatory requirements. Ensure that your affiliate program has clear terms and conditions and requires affiliates to disclose their affiliation with your brand (in line with FTC affiliate disclosure guidelines).

This is how Forbes complies with the guidelines by explaining that they're affiliated with several affiliate programs:

2. Fraud detection. Make sure your affiliate plugin has built-in fraud detection so your affiliates aren't using dishonest methods, such as self-referrals or fake leads. ReferralCandy is one of the plugins offering fraud protection.

‍3. Customer support. When launching your affiliate program, you must ensure that you have the resources to answer any questions customers may have.

4. FAQ section. Many brands add FAQ sections to their affiliate landing pages, where they answer the most common questions affiliates may have. This helps reduce the amount of customer service requests you get.

Here is an example from Nike:

5. Marketing resources for affiliates. You might consider offering your affiliates marketing materials, such as banners, email templates, product images, and promotional videos. This can be especially helpful if you use influencer marketing.

6. Affiliate tiers and bonuses. You can reward your best affiliates with higher commission rates, exclusive offers, or special bonuses based on their performance.

Launch your own affiliate program today

If you want to start your own affiliate or referral program, you can easily do that with ReferralCandy, which offers a 14-day free trial.

ReferralCandy offers all the key features you need to run a successful affiliate program, such as:

• Ready-to-use templates for affiliate emails and landing pages
• Integrations with the key e-commerce platforms, including WooCommerce, Shopify, etc.
• Integrations with the key marketing automation tools, such as Klaviyo, Mailchimp, etc
• Advanced affiliate segmentation
• Automatic affiliate payments
• Ability to send referral emails
• Fraud detection system
• And more

If you want to see how ReferralCandy customers, such as Wing Assistant have achieved a 27.9 x ROI through their affiliate program, check out our case studies.