Create your own private sales team that will sell your products for you with the SamCart Affiliate Center.
Welcome to the documentation for SamCart’s Affiliate Center: a powerful, simple tool that allows others to promote your products for you.
Below are a few video tutorials that will help you get the most out of your Affiliate Center.
Let's start by getting your Affiliates signed up and approved.
Note: this article contains videos that utilize a previous navigation bar design. Most functions have remained unchanged, but you can always reference this guide which covers the update and differences.
1) Affiliate Signup and Approval
In order for your Affiliates to begin promoting your products, they must first sign up for your program. SamCart automatically generates you an Affiliate Signup Page where others can apply to become an affiliate for you.
You can find the link to your Affiliate Signup Page by opening the Affiliates tab in your top navigation bar, then scrolling down the page until you see the box in the pictures below.
Copy the link to your Affiliate Signup, and send it to potential affiliates, paste it onto your website, etc.
Once your affiliates visit this page, they will be required to fill out the following form to be approved. Your Marketplace Name will appear at the top of this page.
Once the Affiliate fills out and submits this form, they will be shown a message that their account is Pending Approval.
The account owner of your SamCart account will receive a notification of this application via email. The message will include buttons to approve or deny the application.
You can also approve or deny applications under the “Affiliates” table. Approving the application sends the Affiliate an email containing a link to sign into their account.
Automatically Accept Affiliates
You can also have each application approved automatically. At the bottom of your “Affiliates” tab, you will find the slider pictured below. Toggle this slider to “Yes”, and your affiliate applications will automatically be approved.
Instead of receiving a pending approval notification and email, the affiliate will immediately be taken to their dashboard and be sent a message with a login link for the future.
2) Creating Media Links & Emails
Your entire Affiliate Center runs through the Affiliate Links & Emails you create.
Create a link, choose the destination URL, and click save. When your affiliates login, they get their own version of that link on their dashboard.
Creating Private Affiliate Links
Your SamCart Affiliate Center also lets you create an Affiliate Link for a single affiliate, or a select group of affiliates.
Watch the video below to see how to assign any link to specific affiliates.
It may be necessary to begin typing a name or email to get a specific affiliate to populate. It is necessary to type a name if you are creating a new private affiliate link.
Cookies Give Credit To The Right Affiliate
Each time someone clicks on an affiliate link, a cookie is created on their browser. That cookie will follow that visitor around the web for 30 days (by default - you can make it longer).
Anytime that visitor hits one of your SamCart checkout pages, your checkout page looks for the cookie, and provides the right affiliate credit for that order.
You can create links & emails that send visitors to any page on the web! Blog posts, landing pages, webinar registration pages, sales pages, and everything in between.
Skip forward to the 1:10 mark of the “Creating Media Links & Emails” video in Step 2 above to see exactly how SamCart’s Affiliate Tracking works regardless of what URL you send visitors to.
Choose When Cookies Expire
Choose how many days your cookies will stay active. The default setting is 30 days (like you see in the screenshot), but you can change it up to 999 days maximum.
Make sure you watch the video above, so you understand the role cookies play in how SamCart tracks your affiliate’s sales.
3) Commission Structure & Affiliate Payouts
We've recently added a ton of versatility to commission plans, allowing you to further customize multiple commission structures. To learn more about this, check out our article on Affiliate Commission Plans.
By default, your affiliates will earn 0% commission for every product in your SamCart account. However, you can customize your commission rates if you’d like to.
To change your commission structure, visit your “Affiliates” tab, and scroll down to the table marked “Commission Structure”.
You will see each of your SamCart products listed in this table.
Using the toggle, decide whether you want affiliates to earn a Percentage or Flat Rate Commission when this product is sold. Then enter the specific percentage or flat rate commission you want affiliate’s to earn in the far right column.
Examples
Percentage = 50%: Affiliates earn 50% of this product’s sale price. Meaning a $50.00 product will earn an affiliate $25.00 in commission.
Flat Rate = $5.00: Affiliates earn $5.00 in commission anytime this product is sold. Meaning regardless of what this product costs, your affiliate will earn $5.00 in commission.
Recurring Commission Type
If you're selling subscription Products, you can control whether your Affiliates receive a single commission (for the initial purchase) or commissions for each recurring charge.
You can control this by scrolling to the Commission Structure table and selecting either Recurring or One-Time in the Recurring Commission Type column.
4) The Affiliate Center Dashboard
At SamCart, we are always looking to deliver powerful features in an easy-to-use way. Our Affiliate Center is no different.
Watch the video above to get familiar with the Affiliate Center Dashboard, and see exactly how you can use the dashboard to easily find your affiliates’ Earnings Per Click (EPC), identify your top-selling affiliates, download a history of your past payouts, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does affiliate tracking function with all SamCart checkout experiences (sales pages, express checkout, embedded checkout)?
A: Yes, affiliate tracking now functions with all SamCart checkout experiences! See the following graphic for all the scenarios where affiliate tracking works as expected:
If you need affiliate tracking to work with the Affiliate Link Click->third party non-SamCart Page->third party page with SamCart Embed option to work, we do have a workaround! Please visit the FAQ section of our Checkout Anywhere article for more information.
Q: What happens when an order is refunded?
A: Anytime you refund an item in SamCart, any commissions for that item is deducted from the Affiliate’s Ledger. So you’re only paying affiliates for products that stay sold!
Q: Do I have to pay my affiliates through PayPal MassPay?
A: No you do not! When you click “Payout”, SamCart spits out a CSV file with a line item for each affiliate being paid, and the total amount of money owed to each affiliate. This file is perfect for uploading directly into your PayPal account, and send a “MassPay” with just a few clicks.
However you can take this CSV and dish out commissions however you would like to via check, individual PayPal payments, Venmo, or anything in between. All SamCart provides is the CSV, so you know exactly what amount each Affiliate has earned.
Q: Can I use UTM Parameters with Affiliate Links?
A: You can indeed! You and your Affiliates can add UTM Parameters to your Samcart Affiliate Links. Any UTM Parameters will be passed through to the affiliate link's destination URL.
If those UTM Parameters are present when the order is placed, SamCart will record your parameters and store them with the order. Your affiliates can use this information to attribute their sales back to specific emails, social media posts, advertising campaigns, and more.
Q: Can I point my affiliate links to an opt-in page?
A: Absolutely! SamCart’s cookie-based tracking (shown in Video #2 above!) means that regardless of where you point your Affiliate Links, when those visitors eventually reach a SamCart checkout page, the right affiliate will receive credit for the sale.
Q: Can I track how many opt-ins each affiliate has sent?
A: Yes, if you can capture a custom field! SamCart passes your affiliate’s unique Affiliate Token (which is usually a long alpha-numeric string, ex: 1YU8alV4y3yJKz8K) through to the destination URL after someone clicks on an affiliate link.
So if someone clicked on an affiliate link with SamCart.com set as the destination, the URL bar will look like this: https://samcart.com/?sc_ref=[AffiliateToken].
If you can capture that unique Affiliate Token as a hidden field on your landing page, then you can track how many opt-ins each affiliate has sent.
If any of those terms don’t sound familiar to you, don’t sweat it. Whatever tool you’re using to collect email subscribers, reach out to them and ask, “How do I capture a URL parameter as a hidden field?”. They should be able to help out!
But the end result is that you would be able to run searches in your email marketing tool to find out how many subscribers came in under a specific Affiliate Token. Information you can then relay back to your affiliates.
Q: Can I use a Custom Domain for a referral link?
A: You absolutely can! The support article on Custom Domains will guide you through setup as well as adding it to your referral links in the Affiliate Center. It is important to note that this needs to be done in a certain way or else the link will not track - specifically, the Custom Domain needs to be applied to the URL on both the checkout page AND referral link. For example:
