Affiliate Marketing: Setting Up a Multi-level Affiliate Program

A multi-level affiliate program is a widely used strategy for recruiting affiliates, facilitating rapid store growth by harnessing a broad network of affiliates. With such a multi-level program, every affiliate has the opportunity to recruit more affiliates, thus broadening your store's outreach to more customers across various channels and activities.

Once you establish a multi-level affiliate program, each affiliate can invite others as their sub-affiliates. As these sub-affiliates generate referral orders, the affiliates themselves earn commissions corresponding to their level.

Affiliate Marketing offers data on the multi-level affiliate network, allowing you to access information about the sub-affiliates invited by each affiliate. This feature provides valuable insights into your affiliate teams, empowering you to make informed decisions regarding your network structure and strategies.

How The Commissions for Your Multi-level Affiliates are Allocated

Each of your affiliates can invite multiple individuals to join as their sub-affiliates. In this setup, you can establish up to 20 levels and specify the commission rate for each.

Example:

Mary, a Level 3 affiliate in the image below, joins as an affiliate by registering through your recruitment link. She then proceeds to invite Vivian, who becomes a Level 2 affiliate. Vivian, in turn, invites Janey, who becomes a Level 1 affiliate. Finally, Janey invites Susan, who becomes a direct affiliate in the image below.

If a customer places an order through Susan's affiliate link, totaling $1,000, and the basic commission rate is set at 5%, Susan, as the direct affiliate, will receive a commission of 5% x $1,000 = $50.

The other affiliates, acting as Susan's superior affiliates, will earn multi-level affiliate tracing commissions as follows:

• Level 1 (Susan's superior affiliate, who invited Janey), can receive a commission of 10%.
• Level 2 (Janey's superior affiliate, who invited Vivian), can receive a commission of 20%.
• Level 3 (Vivian's superior affiliate, who invited Mary), can receive a commission of 30%.

If your multi-level commissions are dispensed based on the referral order amount (see the next section for details), the commission that Susan's superior affiliates can expect to receive are as follows:

• Level 1 (Janey): 10% x $1,000 = $100
• Level 2 (Vivian): 20% x $1,000 = $200
• Level 3 (Mary): 30% x $1,000 = $300

Setting Up Your Multi-level Affiliate Program

Follow the steps below to establish your own multi-level affiliate program:

1. In Affiliate Marketing, go to the Coupons & Reward page and select Multi-level.

2. Under Multi-level settings, set up the calculation method for multi-level affiliate commision. Currently, there are three available options:

   • Based on commissionable amount from referrals: Calculate commission based on the customer's order amount.
   • Based on commission from referrals: Calculate commission based on the commission earned by direct affiliates from referral order.
   • Fixed commission: Affiliates receive a specified commission regardless of the referral order amount.

3. In the Multi-level rule section, set the commission rules for the levels.

   • Commission level: You can set a maximum of 20 levels.

     • The levels you set here determine the number of levels below each affiliate and the number of levels traced upwards after an order is placed.
     • Lower-level affiliates can invite multiple people. If you only set one level, you will only see the first-level sub-affiliates of each affiliate when viewing the multi-level affiliate network.
     • If you only set one level, when a customer places an order through a specific affiliate's link, the multi-level affiliate commission will only be allocated to that affiliate's immediate superior and won't be further traced upwards.

   • Commission rate: Set a rate for each level.

     • If you have only one level and the rate for Level 1 is set to 0, the multi-level program will be considered closed.
     • To enable a multi-level program:
       • If your store has only one level set, ensure that the commission rate or amount is not zero.
       • Or your store has multiple levels.

4. Click Update.

Display of Multi-level Affiliate Network

Once you've enabled a multi-level affiliate program, you can view the multi-level affiliate network on each affiliate's profile.

1. Go to Management > Affiliates page, click on any affiliate, and enter the affiliate's profile.

2. On the affiliate's profile page, scroll down to the Affiliate network section to view the multi-level affiliate network for that affiliate.

   • Total invited people: The total number of people this affiliate has invited under the current multi-level affiliate settings.

     • The affiliate system will tally the number of individuals who have registered as affiliates through this affiliate's invitation link and have been approved.
     • The affiliate him/herself is not counted.

   • Total sales: The combined sales generated by all sub-affiliates (total invited people) of this affiliate under the current multi-level affiliate settings.

   • Total commissions: The affiliate's total commission earned from all sub-affiliates (total invited people) under the current multi-level affiliate settings.

   • Upper-level distributor: If this affiliate is registered through another affiliate's link, his or her upper-level affiliate's name will be displayed. Clicking on the name will redirect to the upper-level affiliate's profile.

   • Multi-level data (display in sheet):

     • Distribution level: This indicates the corresponding level of the affiliate's sub-affiliates. The affiliate's directly invited sub-affiliates are classified as Level 1, while those invited by Level 1 affiliates are classified as Level 2, and so on.
     • Total people: The number of affiliates within this level.
     • Total sales: The combined sales brought in by affiliates within this level.
     • Total commission fees: The total commissions earned by affiliates within this level.
     • By clicking on the icon under the Operate column, you can see detailed information about affiliates at this level. This includes their names, emails, number of orders, sales, and commission earned.

Display of Multi-level Affiliate Orders

When your store receives multi-level affiliate orders, you can locate the corresponding data on the Orders page. These orders will share the same order number and are grouped. The primary order belongs to the direct affiliate, followed by the multi-level affiliate orders in descending order.