Digital word-of-mouth happens across all consumer types. One tried-and-true word-of-mouth technique is affiliate marketing.
In affiliate marketing, brands can rely on fellow consumers’ advertising and sales skills. To maximize the impact of affiliate marketing, brands can strategically learn how to recruit affiliates. Here’s a quick guide to how it works.
Understanding affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing allows consumers or third-party professionals to sell your products or services in exchange for a commission.
Brands can work with affiliate networks or directly with affiliates. To qualify, affiliates usually have to apply or submit an affiliate request. Most affiliates have to meet specific criteria and agree to terms and conditions before they can start selling.
What is a typical affiliate program workflow?
There are different types of affiliate programs. For example, an eCommerce affiliate program allows an affiliate to direct consumers to a product page on the brand’s website. For every store transaction that that affiliate generates, the affiliate gets a “cut” from the sale as their commission.
B2B affiliate programs sometimes present a more formal set of expectations for affiliates. For example, some online lenders often empower qualified affiliates to act as account managers and build a loan package for the borrower in exchange for a higher commission.
Regardless of what kind of affiliate program it is, there are typical milestones (or stages) that every program demands.
First, brands must build their affiliate team with individuals meeting a brand’s basic requirements.
Next, affiliates must agree to terms and conditions so that they advertise and sell in a way that complements the brand rather than detracts from it.
Third, the affiliate publishes their affiliate materials (such as an affiliate link) on their channels (usually a website or social channel). As that affiliate attracts and converts consumers, the brand processes those transactions fulfills the order and then pays the affiliate their commission.
Is affiliate marketing the same as influencer marketing?
There is some confusion about the terms “affiliate” and “influencer.” While it is true that some influencers are affiliates and some affiliates are also influencers, these two roles are not the same.
Influencers have large followings online due to the quality of their content. Additionally, influencers are only sometimes selling products. Their priority is to build and maintain an online community through compelling content.
Affiliates, on the other hand, may or may not have large followings online. Additionally, only some affiliates are interested in building online communities. Their chief goal is to convert customers and collect a commission. That said, many affiliates are highly knowledgeable about their industry and function as consultants who don’t charge their consumer clients (since they get paid by the brand for converting customers).
Setting Up the Right Foundation to Run an Affiliate Marketing Program
If you’re interested in creating an affiliate program, there are a few things that you should have in place before launch.
Affiliate Terms and Conditions
You don’t want just any individual promoting your brand. There are many affiliate spammers out there that harass consumers, violate privacy laws, and damage brand reputation.
Also, your affiliates will want to know what they can and cannot do to bring you, customers if you don’t mind. As such, you need standards and rules. In your terms and conditions, you should state clearly all the dos and don’ts of your program.
These terms and conditions should be in writing, and you should ensure that every affiliate agrees to these standards before selling your products or services.
Accurate Price Point
In most affiliate programs, you have the cost of goods sold (COGS), discounts, and commissions. After subtracting all of these costs, you still need a profit.
Some brands get into trouble by launching an affiliate program before closely examining their price point. Then, they find out too late that each affiliate sale costs money rather than making money.
To prevent this, ensure your price point is where it needs to be to sustain a healthy profit margin after considering all costs.
Platform for Performance Tracking and Attribution
Manually tracking your affiliate sales will overwhelm your staff and likely result in mistakes. Instead, you need a platform that automatically keeps track of your affiliate relationships and sales.
There are affiliate program plugins, coupon code generators, and more for smaller affiliate programs. But for more extensive affiliate programs, you will need a platform that integrates with your payment system or eCommerce platform and can keep track of affiliate performance, sales, communication, terms, and more.
Attribution is critical to an affiliate program. You must credit your affiliates with a hard-earned sale to avoid souring your relationships and building a reputation for mistreating affiliates.
Commission Structure
Your commission structure must be high enough to incentivize affiliates and low enough to maintain a reasonable price point.
Also, you’ll need to define when an affiliate qualifies to receive a commission (that is, define commission-worthy conversions), as well as when you issue affiliate payouts.
The Rise of Voice Commerce in Affiliate Marketing
Voice-activated shopping through smart speakers and virtual assistants is becoming a game-changer for affiliate marketers in 2025. With voice commerce projected to grow significantly, affiliates need to optimize their content for voice search and create voice-friendly shopping experiences. This shift means focusing on natural language patterns and conversational keywords that match how people actually speak when searching for products.
Cross-Border Affiliate Partnerships
The globalization of ecommerce has opened new opportunities for cross-border affiliate partnerships in 2025. Brands are increasingly looking to tap into international markets by partnering with local affiliates who understand regional consumer behaviors and preferences. The Asia-Pacific region is showing particularly strong growth, with a projected CAGR of 13% by 2026.
Blockchain Technology in Affiliate Marketing
Blockchain is revolutionizing how affiliate programs track and process commissions in 2025. About 10% of affiliate networks are integrating blockchain technology to ensure transparent, fraud-resistant transactions. This technology provides immutable tracking of referrals and commissions, building trust between merchants and affiliates while reducing payment processing times.
Subscription-Based Affiliate Programs
The subscription economy is transforming affiliate marketing strategies in 2025. Affiliates promoting subscription-based products or services are seeing a 20% increase in earnings. This model provides more predictable revenue streams for both merchants and affiliates, while encouraging long-term customer relationships rather than one-time purchases.
Top 17 Affiliate Marketing Terms (in alphabetical order)
Affiliate EPC
EPC, or earnings per click, is a PPC term that measures the value of each ad click (i.e., when an average of 5 clicks results in a $50 sale, then each click is valued at $10). In affiliate marketing, this metric tracks the value of each affiliate link click. You can follow EPC across your entire program or for each affiliate.
Affiliate Filtering
If you’re using affiliate marketing to grow your business, you don’t want just any individual to join your team. Filtering is the process of selecting which people can qualify as your affiliate.
Affiliate Network
An affiliate network is a “middleman” agency that helps brands connect with prospective affiliates and vice versa. These networks can help bring both sides together to form a long-term partnership.
Affiliate Payouts
Based on the terms of your affiliate partner agreement, you pay your affiliates once they have achieved a conversion. I think you should track your payouts carefully for attribution and budgetary purposes.
Affiliate Program Plug-in
A plug-in is a platform-compatible tool or add-on that provides a specific service to your website or eCommerce platform. In the case of an affiliate program plug-in (such as ReferralCandy on WordPress), the service exists to create affiliate links, track performance/payouts, and provide your affiliates with a dashboard from which to do the same.
Affiliate Slugs
In most affiliate programs, each affiliate receives a short code or user ID. That code or ID forms the end of that affiliate’s referral URL or landing page link.
Affiliate Spamming
Some affiliates do not use their creative efforts to nurture audiences and convert them according to your terms and conditions. They are more intrusive on consumers and aim to share their affiliate links and coupon codes on every discount site they can find. This is affiliate spamming and can harm your brand reputation.
Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates is the world’s most extensive eCommerce affiliate program. Affiliates can sign up and maintain an affiliate relationship by meeting certain performance minimums.
Assets/Asset Folder
For some affiliate partnerships, it works better if affiliates have brand logos, price sheets, and other collateral to drive conversions. Brands can provide those tools in an asset folder. All branded materials within that asset folder are referred to as assets. Many of the assets in that folder are proprietary, and as such, affiliates should agree to use those assets by the partnership terms and conditions.
Conversion
A conversion occurs when a customer does what you want them to do. In an affiliate program, the affiliates’ job is to convert customers on your behalf.
Cookie
Cookies are tracking codes that latch onto a user’s browser and track their activity for some time. Many brands use cookies to help them with affiliate attribution and to track prospect behavior as that prospect travels through the affiliate’s published content.
Coupon Codes
Most eCommerce platforms allow brands to create and customize coupon codes to discount a customer’s price at checkout. Brands sometimes provide affiliate-specific coupon codes to incentivize conversions and attribute sales.
Direct Link Tracking
Direct link tracking helps brands attribute conversions without the use of affiliate links. To do this properly, most brands must create a database (affiliate area) of approved websites from which web traffic automatically receives conversion credit.
Lead Generation
Not all affiliate programs rely solely on customer sales. Some programs reward “warm” leads (prospects that have received a pitch, essential client onboarding, and are ready to work with the brand to complete a transaction). Lead generation refers to the number of quality leads that a particular marketing tactic produces and is a common objective for B2B affiliate programs.
Publisher
The publisher is an affiliate’s online tool to attract and convert audiences. Examples include a blog and a social media channel.
Referral/Referrer
The referral is an affiliate’s customer or prospect to your brand. The referrer is the affiliate that sends referrals to your brand.
Referral URL
Sometimes referred to as an affiliate link or slug, the referral URL is the affiliate’s custom link that they can use to publish content and refer leads or customers.
