What is an affiliate portal?

An affiliate portal is the place where your affiliates sign in to take part in your affiliate program. Many tools call it an affiliate dashboard. In the portal, affiliates get their referral links and discount codes, see the sales they referred and the commission they earned, and set up how they get paid. You decide what they can use there.

What you will learn

• How affiliates sign in to a portal
• What affiliates see and do in an affiliate dashboard
• Which parts of the portal the store controls
• What to check in the portal before you choose affiliate software

How affiliates sign in

An affiliate is a person who promotes your store and earns a commission, a share of each sale they refer. Before an affiliate can share anything, they need an account in your program. Affiliate software handles this sign-in in one of two ways.

• A separate login: the software runs the portal on its own website, and affiliates create a separate username and password for it.
• Your store's customer accounts: the portal is part of your store, and affiliates sign in with the same account they use as customers. They have one account and one sign-in, on your store's domain.

When affiliates sign in with your store's accounts, a customer who becomes an affiliate does not need to remember a second password. You also do not send affiliates to a different website to see their results.

What affiliates see in the portal

Referral links and discount codes

A referral link is a link to your store with a tracking code that identifies the affiliate. A discount code is a code that a customer types at checkout, and it can identify the affiliate in the same way. The portal shows each affiliate the links and codes that your program gives them, so they can copy them into a post, an email, or a message. To learn how the two methods differ, read Referral links vs discount codes.

Referrals and earnings

A referral is an order that the software credits to an affiliate. The portal lists the affiliate's referrals and shows their commission rate, their sales, and their earnings. A new referral can wait as pending until the order is paid or fulfilled, depending on your program rules. This lets affiliates check their own results, so they do not need to ask you for a report.

Payout details

A payout is the payment that sends an affiliate the commission they earned. In the portal, affiliates add the details that your payout method needs, for example a bank account for automatic payouts, and they update those details when they change. The portal also shows the payouts they already received. Learn more in How do affiliate payouts work?

Tax forms

In the United States, payments to an affiliate may need to be reported on a Form 1099, a tax form for income other than wages. Some software puts these forms in the portal when they are issued, so affiliates can download them. Read Do affiliates get 1099 forms? for the basics.

What the store controls

The portal shows affiliates the program that you set up. As the store owner, you usually decide:

• Who gets in: whether new affiliates join at once, or wait until you approve them.
• Commission rules: the rate each affiliate earns, often set for a group of affiliates, a set of affiliates that share the same rules.
• Referral methods: whether affiliates get referral links, discount codes, or both.
• Payouts: how affiliates get paid, and the payout threshold, the minimum balance before a payout.
• Where the portal is: its address, and a link to it in your store menu so affiliates can find it.

What to check before you choose software

The portal is the part of the program that your affiliates use. Before you choose software, check these points:

• Where affiliates sign in: on your store with their customer account, or on a separate website.
• What affiliates can do themselves: copy links and codes, check referrals, and update payout details.
• How payouts show: whether affiliates can see what they earned, what is unpaid, and what you already paid.
• Language: whether the portal shows text in the languages your affiliates use.

An affiliate portal on a Shopify store

Simple Affiliate puts the affiliate dashboard inside your Shopify store, and affiliates sign in with your store's Shopify customer accounts. There is no separate Simple Affiliate login. On new customer accounts, the dashboard shows in the customer account area, and affiliates sign in with their email address and a six-digit code that Shopify emails them. On classic customer accounts, the dashboard is a branded page on your theme. To see what affiliates see, open the affiliate dashboard demo and sign in with a customer account.

To learn where the dashboard is for each type of customer account, read How do affiliates sign in?