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How to Set Up a Referral Program for Your Ecommerce Store in 6 Steps
Setting up a referral program should not be hard. Here's how you can do it in six steps and start getting referrals!
We are often asked by merchants how to go about creating an FTC Affiliate Disclosure and why you even need one. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires by law to disclose relationships that could influence the endorsement or promotion of products.
No matter how big or small the promotion, all affiliate marketers are required to do this. FTC Affiliate Disclosure is designed for this purpose and helps ensure transparency with audiences and legal compliance.
This article teaches you what an FTC Affiliate Disclosure is, why you need one, who needs one, and best practices for creating one. With this information, you can easily create an affiliate disclosure for yourself.
Note: If you want to start your own affiliate program for your ecommerce brand, I’d suggest using ReferralCandy. It offers a 30-day free trial and can help you start and scale your first affiliate or referral program.
An FTC affiliate disclosure is a mandatory statement set by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that affiliate marketers use to inform their audience about any financial relationships or incentives they have with the products or brands they promote.
For example, if a beauty blogger writes a review about a new skincare product and includes affiliate links to purchase that product, they must disclose that they are earning a commission from any sales made through those links.
As an affiliate marketer, you may get compensated in many ways, such as:
No matter what compensation you receive, it must be disclosed to consumers through the affiliate disclosure.
Anyone who promotes products/services online and receives compensation must use affiliate disclosures. This often includes bloggers, social media influencers, content creators, website owners, podcasters, YouTubers, and anyone else promoting products or services.
An FTC affiliate disclosure is a must-have for a few reasons:
Creating an effective FTC affiliate disclosure involves several steps to ensure transparency and compliance with regulations. The following steps are based on the FTC website, which shares the best practices for creating affiliate disclosures.
FTC mentions that you should position the affiliate disclosure where consumers are likely to see it, such as near affiliate links or prominently within the content. Ensure consumers can easily connect the disclosure with the specific product or service being promoted without searching for related information elsewhere.
For example, here is how Forbes has selected their placement:
As you can see, affiliate disclosure is one of the first things readers see when reading a Forbes article.
Avoid placing it in obscure locations, such as the bottom of a webpage, or in areas where consumers are less likely to look, such as sidebars or footnotes.
This is what the FTC mentions about the importance of clear disclosures:
Their main point is that you should use clear and simple language that consumers can easily understand. Avoid jargon or dense blocks of text that obscure the disclosure's message.
While font size isn't any deciding thing, you should still ensure the disclosure is large enough to be easily read without requiring consumers to zoom in or strain to see it.
Avoid using fonts that are too small or placing the disclosure where it can be easily overlooked, such as in the fine print or against a busy background.
Integrate the disclosure seamlessly into your content to complement rather than disrupt the user experience.
Ensure it's clear and readily understandable, helping consumers make informed decisions without feeling misled.
Next, let's examine examples of affiliate disclosure in different channels. You can use these ideas as an inspiration for your own affiliate disclosures.
This is how Smart Bark showcases its affiliate disclosure in its blog articles. The disclosure is at the start of the post, making it easy for readers to understand and read.
Smart Bark also links to a specific page, where they explain more about the affiliate disclosure.
GLAMOUR uses a simple and effective text for its affiliate disclosure.
The font differs from the other text on the site, which is something you may want to try when creating your affiliate disclosures. Similarly to Smart Bark, they also link to an additional page, where they explain the process in more detail.
If you want a a highly minimalistic way of displaying your affiliate disclosure, consider taking inspiration from Cosmopolitan. On every product page, they showcase this small piece of text:
This falls within the low end of the FTC's recommendation in terms of how visible affiliate disclosures should be. However, many brands use the same disclosure style, so there should be no problem.
Similarly to Cosmopolitan, Byrdie uses a minimalistic style to showcase its affiliate disclosure. It is visible on every blog article page, on top of the primary heading:
Byrdie also links to an external page, where they explain their evaluation and affiliate process in more detail.
Forbes uses highly visible FTC affiliate disclosure text in its blog articles. Here is one example from their best kitchen sink brands article:
One interesting point you can pick from Forbes' example is that they say the commissions don't affect their editors' opinions or evaluations. This increases customers' trust that the Forbes editors make unbiased decisions.
Here is an example of how Digital PR Tips does their affiliate disclosure in their newsletter. It's simple, to the point, and follows all the required guidelines.
The last line of the paragraph also mentions the author does not recommend products he doesn't believe are useful, which increases trust in customer's eyes. The disclosure is also done naturally in the text, which is good since it doesn't interrupt the reader's flow.
If you promote products/services on a YouTube video, you also need to disclose the brand relationship. Here is an example from Emily Norris on how to do it:
As you can see, the disclosure is added to the product description, which is an ideal place for it. She also mentions the affiliate disclosure during the video, which further increases customers' trust.
Here is an example from an Instagram account, Themeparkmomlife, of how to add your affiliate disclosure to a social media post.
The text simply outlines how they were gifted the toys for free, which they do a review on. While it’s simple, it has all the necessary information for an affiliate disclosure.
FTC affiliate disclosure is a must for all marketers who receive compensation for the products/services they recommend.
While creating an affiliate disclosure isn't the most fun task, it's vital to comply with regulations and increase customer trust. Plus, if you use the advice and examples we provided in this article, creating an affiliate disclosure is relatively quick and easy. You can also read directly from the FTC website for more information about the affiliate disclosure.
Hopefully, our guide was informative to you! If you feel like our article is missing something, you can always get in touch with us! If you want to create your own affiliate program, you can use ReferralCandy to do that. It has a 14-day free trial available and you can also use it to create referral programs.
P.S. If you enjoyed reading this article and want to start your own affiliate program, subscribe to our newsletter to get our latest articles and roundups.
WordPress affiliate marketing plugins help ecommerce merchants launch affiliate programs and track their performance. While many affiliate plugins are available, a few stand out with their high-quality features.
In this article, we will review the best WordPress affiliate marketing plugins for running your affiliate program. Some plugins cover the all-in-one needs of managing an affiliate program; some help you create affiliate links, and some help track affiliate performance. For each plugin, we will highlight who it is best for to make choosing easier for you.
Before we review the plugins, let's look into what WordPress affiliate plugins are, why you need one, and what features you should look for.
A WordPress affiliate marketing plugin is a tool designed to help merchants start, manage, and optimize their affiliate marketing programs. These plugins include various features that simplify creating, managing, and tracking affiliate links and programs.
One example of such a tool is ReferralCandy. Not only can ReferralCandy help create affiliate programs, but also referral programs.
The main reasons why you should invest in an affiliate plugin include:
The top WordPress affiliate marketing plugins include specific features essential for creating a successful affiliate marketing program. You should look for the following features:
Next, let’s review the top WordPress affiliate plugins. For each plugin, we will break down the key features, customer reviews, who it is suitable for, and the pros and cons. This will help you make more informed decisions when choosing your own software.
Pricing: Paid plans start from $59/month, and a 14-day free trial is available.
Best for: Best WordPress affiliate management plugin for starting an affiliate program
ReferralCandy offers an affiliate program plugin for WordPress. With it, merchants can create, manage, and automate their affiliate and referral programs for their WooCommerce stores. ReferralCandy's key features include all-in-one affiliate and referral management, post-purchase popups and emails, automated customer rewards, and fraud detection.
You can also use ReferralCandy's editor to design affiliate and referral programs to match your brand colors. ReferralCandy offers extensive analytics and tracking for following the performance of your affiliate and referral programs. You can also compare your performance against industry benchmarks.
ReferralCandy is available in the WordPress Plugin Directory as well as in the Shopify App Store. It also offers various other third-party integrations, such as with Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Google Analytics, and ReCharge.
WordPress rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (1,200+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $99.60/year, no free trial is available
Best for: Displaying affiliate links in a clean, short, and cloaked way
Pretty Links is an affiliate marketing tool for WordPress store owners. With it, you can turn long and unclean URLs into short, cloaked affiliate links using your own domain name. The links can be added to any page you want, including emails, websites, social media, and more.
Here is an example of how the cloaked links look with Pretty Links:
Pretty Links automatically creates 3-4 random characters to the cloaked link, but you can create your own custom slug if you want. In addition to link cloaking, Pretty Links provides tracking and analytics features. You can see where the link traffic comes from, the browser, OS, and the host. You can also create reports showing the number of clicks per day in a configurable chart.
Pretty Links is available in the WordPress Plugin Directory. While it can be used on any other ecommerce platform, it does not offer specific apps for them, such as for Shopify.
WordPress rating: 4.7 out of 5.0 stars (200+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans starting from $99.60/year, free plan available
Best for: Affiliate link cloaking and management for WordPress store owners
ThirstyAffiliates is a free affiliate plugin solution for managing affiliate links and cloaking them into shorter and cleaner formats. While the platform also has a paid plan, the free version suits ecommerce brands and bloggers who want simple features for utilizing cloaked affiliate links.
ThirstyAffiliates comes with a dashboard to manage existing affiliate links and create new ones. If you want, it is also possible to add images and banners to the affiliate links. ThirstyAffiliates also has reporting and analytics, where you can see how many clicks your links have gotten over time.
As for integrations, ThirstyAffiliates can be integrated with MonsterInsights to push data into Google Analytics.
WordPress rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (80+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $229/year, no free trial available
Best for: WordPress store owners looking for an all-in-one affiliate management plugin
SliceWP aims to be an all-in-one plugin for managing your affiliate program on a WordPress site. Some of its key features include an affiliate dashboard for managing affiliate signups, real-time tracking for clicks, referrals, and conversions, and scheduled automatic payouts to affiliates.
SliceWP makes the setup process easy, and you can create and customize custom pages for affiliates to sign up on. The commissions of affiliates can either be set at a percentage or at a fixed rate.
Many of SliceWP's features are available as add-ons, which you have to pay extra for. The add-ons include third-party integrations, PayPal payouts, custom affiliate slugs, affiliate landing pages, and recurring and lifetime commissions. The extra cost is a slight disadvantage compared to competitors, such as ReferralCandy, who offer many of the features as part of the standard plan.
WordPress rating: 4.5 out of 5.0 stars (2,900+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $99.60/year, free plan available
Best for: Brand owners wanting to set up Google Analytics for their affiliate program
MonsterInsights is a WordPress plugin designed to simplify the integration and management of Google Analytics on your WordPress website. While it isn't designed only for affiliate programs, it is a great option for tracking affiliate link performance.
The integration process to Google Analytics is simple. After that, you can track the performance of your affiliate links, as well as your customers' age, device, gender, and other information that can help improve your affiliate performance. You can also see more conversational statistics, such as top revenue sources, conversion rate, average order value, and top referrals.
All of the data is available in the numerous reports MonsterInsights provides you, such as ecommerce reports, audience reports, publishers reports, content reports, landing page reports, and more. MonsterInsights has a Pro version available, but the free version gives you access to many of its beneficial features.
WordPress rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (60+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $19.99/month, 7-day free trial available
Best for: Managing a coupon-based affiliate program on a WooCommerce store
Coupon Affiliates is a WordPress affiliate platform designed to help merchants create and manage affiliate programs. It's unique in that it focuses specifically on coupon-based affiliate marketing, allowing store owners to assign unique coupon codes to their affiliates. To manage the affiliate program, you get access to an admin dashboard.
Affiliate users can track and submit payout requests through the available affiliate dashboard. From the same page, affiliates can generate referral URLs, set up link tracking, create referral campaigns, do link cloaking, and share links on social media.
Coupon Affiliates also offers different reports and analytics to track affiliate coupon performance. Although Coupon Affiliates does not have the most advanced referral program features, you can still create one with them.
WordPress rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 stars (50+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $79/year, free plan available
Best for: Shortening and tracking the performance of affiliate links
BetterLinks is a URL-shortening solution for WordPress sites. With it, you can create, shorten, and track the performance of any URL, including affiliate link URLs. The platform isn't made specifically for affiliate links, but it works great for them as well.
You can split-test different links with dynamic redirects, create 301, 302, and 307 redirects, check broken links, and track your performance. BetterLinks provides reports on the click-through rate, top referral links, top social media links, and more.
If you want more advanced features, BetterLinks has a Pro version that includes more advanced analytics, Google Analytics integration, Facebook Pixel tracking, the broken link checker, and the ability to control and manage user roles.
WordPress rating: n/a
Pricing: Free to join, Skimlinks retains a specific percentage on every sale you get
Best for: Turning regular product links into affiliate links for content creators
Skimlinks is a content-to-commerce platform designed to help merchants monetize their content through affiliate marketing. It converts regular product links into affiliate links, allowing content creators to earn commissions on sales generated through their content.
Its key features include automatic product link converter, reporting and analytics, content monetization tools, geotargeting, and integrations with third-party software.
Skimlinks is unique in that it is free to use, but they charge a percentage of the sales you make. This can be a disadvantage for brands with high sales volumes, but it can also be advantageous for merchants with low sales volumes.
WordPress rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 stars (20+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $139/month, 30-day free trial is available
Best for: Starting and scaling an affiliate program through WooCommerce
Post Affiliate Pro is an all-in-one affiliate marketing software for WordPress store owners. It helps them to create, manage, and optimize affiliate programs through features, such as an affiliate dashboard for management, tracking, reporting and analytics, and commission and fraud protection.
One of Post Affiliate Pro's standout features is the marketing materials it provides to all new customers. The marketing materials include ready-to-use banners, discount coupons, and smartlinks, which all aim to increase your sales.
Post Affiliate Pro has automation features, including email sending, social media posting, and automated commissions based on your commission settings. For analytics, you can see impressions, click-through rates, conversions, sales, and more.
WordPress rating: 4.2 out of 5.0 stars (30+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans start from $99.60/month/year,
Best for: Creating and managing a WordPress-based affiliate program
Easy Affiliate is an affiliate program plugin for WordPress store owners. According to their team, their features include all the necessary tools to manage the entire affiliate program process. The key features are affiliate and commission management, tracking and reporting, fraud protection, custom link generation, and affiliate payout management.
One unique feature of Easy Affiliate is the ability to create an affiliate application process. It requires visitors to apply for your affiliate program before they are eligible to join.
WordPress rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars (30+ reviews)
Pricing: Paid plans starting from $29/month, free plan available
Best for: Ecommerce store owners who want to run affiliate and influencer marketing campaigns
Goaffpro is an affiliate marketing app for ecommerce stores and it offers a WordPress plugin. With it, ecommerce merchants can launch and manage their affiliate programs. The platform has features such as a custom-branded affiliate portal, different commission options, affiliate tracking, and link sharing.
Goaffpro not only offers affiliate marketing tools for WordPress stores, but it is also one of the most downloaded Shopify apps. From the affiliate dashboard, affiliates can share their links and coupons on different social media platforms.
The available real-time tracking shows data such as clicks, sales, new signups, net and gross revenue, cost per conversion, and more. The data is quite extensive and one of Goaffpro's standout features.
Affiliate programs are known for bringing high ROI for ecommerce brands who already have an existing customer base. While there may be additional costs if you scale your affiliate program, the only real cost in the beginning is the selection of your affiliate marketing plugin.
ReferralCandy is mainly known as a referral program software for ecommerce merchants, but we also have strong affiliate program tools built in. With ReferralCandy, you can easily set up your first affiliate and referral program and enable post-purchase pop-ups, emails, and pages to enroll new customers.
Compared to many other solutions, one of ReferralCandy's strengths is its all-in-one solution for managing referral and affiliate programs. Plus, ReferralCandy has a 14-day free trial with no credit card required to test out the platform.
P.S. If you enjoyed reading this article and want to grow your affiliate and referral programs, subscribe to our newsletter to get our latest articles and roundups.
Here at ReferralCandy, we're excited to introduce something we've been working on: the Ecommerce Agency Industry Report!
Each month, we’re gathering information from ecommerce agencies: their results, thoughts, and predictions, and then sharing these insights in an aggregated and anonymous industry report.
Whether you're an agency owner or just looking for more information, this report can help you get a better understanding of the state of ecommerce agencies.
According to our June 2024 survey, with a steady increase in agencies' confidence in the past two months, most agencies expect their revenue to continue growing and that merchants will continue using their services. To stand out, agencies can use marketing methods that bring high ROI, such as referral programs using software like ReferralCandy.
We will now discuss our findings about ecommerce agencies in more detail.
As part of our survey, we asked ecommerce agencies to rate their confidence level from 0 to 500, which we turned into the below Ecommerce Agency Confidence Index. This index is based on aspects like how confident they’re about customer acquisition, market saturation, and changing consumer behavior.
Based on our survey, here are the overall confidence levels reported by ecommerce agencies over the past months:
As you can see from the above graph, ecommerce agencies' confidence in the state of ecommerce slightly decreased in March 2024 but picked right back up in April and May.
We asked ecommerce agency owners: Has there been any increase in your customer’s marketing budgets?
In May 2024, marketing budgets showed a slight increase compared to the previous 6 months, which can indicate some sort of “cautious optimism” among ecommerce merchants.
As Stefan Chiriacescu, CEO of eCommerce Today Agency, puts it:
We asked ecommerce agency owners: On a scale from 0 to 10, how have your customers’ budgets for investments in ecommerce apps changed?
In a nutshell, there has been no change. Investment in e-commerce apps remained relatively stable in May 2024, with only minor fluctuations from the last 6-month period.
This is one of the most consistent responses we’ve had over the months. It is evident that ecommerce agency clients are willing to spend money on ecommerce apps, provided the app provides a positive return on investment.
Jess Grossman, CEO of In Social, has a great explanation for this:
Ash Ome, CEO of MOTIF, also mentioned this:
We asked ecommerce agency owners: On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you rate the current price sensitivity of your customers towards spending on agency services?
Ecommerce merchants’ price sensitivity towards agency services remained moderately high in May 2024. This reflects ongoing cost concerns and the need for agencies to demonstrate clear value propositions compared to the merchants’ in-house teams.
Will King, Strategy Director at EastsideCo mentioned this about price sensitivity:
Despite most agencies reporting high price sensitivity, some agency owners, such as Michael Melen from SmartSites, mention the following:
We asked ecommerce agency owners: How likely is it that your customers will bring their marketing teams in-house rather than outsourcing work to agencies in the upcoming months?
In February 2024, there was an increase in uncertainty or diversity in predictions about clients' strategies This pessimism seems to have tamed down in April and May, with almost half of our agencies reporting no change in their customers’ outsourcing behavior.
This stability indicates that while in-house capabilities are being considered, many businesses still rely on agency expertise – which is great news.
Bogdan Mihalache, Founder & CEO Email Kong mentions that agency outsourcing still remains essential:
Michael Melen, Co-Founder at SmartSites also mentioned this:
We asked ecommerce agency owners: On a scale of 0 to 10, how optimistic are you about your revenue increasing in the next six months?
Agencies expect a slight increase in revenue over the next six months, meaning that agencies are preparing for better financial performance in the near future.
If we could use one adjective to describe ecommerce agencies, it would be optimistic. Agencies continue to believe that it will be a positive year for them in terms of revenue.
As Michael Melen, Co-Founder at SmartSites mentions:
We asked ecommerce agency owners: On a scale of 0 to 10, how optimistic are you about the opportunities in ecommerce for the next 6 months?
To conclude the results for this question: Most ecommerce agencies see the next 6 months as an optimistic time period with new opportunities.
This is what Tim Masek, CMO of Storetasker mentioned about the current opportunities:
Despite the positive outlook of most agencies, AJ Sounders from Audacious Commerce, points out that the political situation is affecting the opportunities:
We believe that ecommerce agencies are the unsung heroes in the world of ecommerce. They’re the ones working closely with brands, crafting their online shopping experiences and, in many cases, doing the hard work so brands can focus on improving their products and services.
That's why their insights are pure gold. They have courtside seats to the world of ecommerce, and they see everything – the trends, the hits, and the misses.
We also believe that agencies are sometimes forgotten when it comes to analyzing the evolution of the ecommerce industry. We focus on metrics like merchandise volume and customer acquisition costs, but we never gather data about ecommerce agencies' revenue or their customers' price sensitivity to their services.
We're setting our sights high with this industry report. We're not just content with understanding today's trends; we want to get a sneak peek into tomorrow’s. The idea is to track these insights over time and start predicting where ecommerce is headed.
This isn’t just number crunching; it’s about getting a sense of the human element behind the data.
This index gets better with more voices joining in. It’s a community thing – the more agencies chip in, the richer and more insightful this index becomes. It acts as a growing, evolving knowledge base for all of us in the ecommerce sphere.
Some of our agency participants include: SeaMonster Studios, Swanky Agency, Thooja, Audacious Commerce, Ecommerce Today, For My People, RPF Agency, Pluro, Webcetera, SmartBug Media, Gloross, VT Labs, Motif, TatJones, Growth Heist, MageMontreal, GetVisible, StubGroup, Thooja, Gudu, TenThousandFootView and SEOWorks.
If you're an agency and would like to participate and receive the full report, you can email ReferralCandy's Partnerships Lead Raul Galera at raul [at] referralcandy.com
Setting up a referral program should not be hard. Here's how you can do it in six steps and start getting referrals!
Our article explains what FTC affiliate disclosure is, why do you need one, who needs to use it, and how to create one.
Looking for the top WordPress affiliate marketing plugins? Read on to find out our top choices.
Discover the innovative Ecommerce Agency Industry Report by ReferralCandy, a monthly aggregated and anonymous report providing invaluable insights from ecommerce agencies worldwide. Dive into the latest trends, predictions, and the unique perspectives of ecommerce experts shaping the industry. Join this collaborative effort to understand the real-time sentiment and future directions of ecommerce. Be a part of the evolving ecommerce narrative with ReferralCandy's groundbreaking index.
Looking for the best WordPress ecommerce plugins? Read on to find out our top picks.
Our guide helps you choose your referral program incentives (with 20+ real examples!) and explains referral offers vs rewards.
Creating a referral email campaign to promote your program? Here are examples of beautiful referral email designs from leading ecommerce brands so that you can draw inspiration from them!
Looking for the best referral marketing software? Our article reviews the 10 best solutions in the market.
Need some fresh ideas for your referral program? Here are 7 we recommend trying if you want to attract new referrals.
Looking for a word-of-mouth marketing guide? Our article discusses 7 best strategies you can implement today.