The affiliate system explained

The affiliate system lets you have others sell your products in return for commission. In this article, you'll read what the affiliate system is and how Plug&Pay keeps track of which affiliate has generated a sale.

Affiliates are partners who promote your products to their own audience. For every sale they bring in, they earn a commission that you set in advance. That way, you expand your reach without paying upfront for ads: you only pay when something actually sells.

Picture a blogger or an entrepreneur with a large newsletter recommending your online course. If they sell your course through their own link, they get a percentage of it. The rest stays with you.

Every affiliate gets a unique promotion link (also called an affiliate link). They use this link to put your product in front of their audience.

When a visitor clicks on it, a cookie is saved in their browser. If that same visitor then buys your product, Plug&Pay uses that cookie to recognise which affiliate brought in the sale, and the affiliate automatically receives commission.

An affiliate cookie has a limited lifespan. If someone doesn't buy within 24 hours of clicking, for example, the cookie can expire. Some cookies stay valid for a year, others indefinitely: in that case, it doesn't matter when the customer buys, the affiliate gets their commission regardless. In Plug&Pay, you decide per profile how long a cookie stays valid.

If someone first fills in a form through a promotion link, the affiliate is linked to that submission. If the same person then places an order with the same email address within two weeks, and there's no longer a cookie present at that point, Plug&Pay still links the affiliate from the original submission to that order.

Ready to get your own affiliate system going? The next article walks you through how to set it up. 👇