As you consider how you'll recognize your affiliates and manage their payouts, you'll want to head to the Reward Structures area of the app in order to define your Commission Plans - specifying how your affiliates are compensated for each desired action that they take. The following guide will outline the basic features and options for creating commission plans within Reward Structures.

 

What Are Reward Structures?

Commission plans can be found by visiting the Commissions - Reward Structures section. 

You will be presented with an overview displaying your Default Reward Structure, along with its settings, and the opportunity to add commission plans within the Default Reward Structure. Consider Reward Structures as consisting of multiple Commission Plans, with each plan having its own customization around who will receive the commission, at what cadence and for what action.

When a purchase or other specified commissionable event comes in, each Commission Plan will be checked to see if it applies, depending on the ruleset you have defined. Then all relevant calculations will be made, and you will be able to view your commission under Pay Commissions in the sidebar.

Outside of your Default Reward Structure, you may want to consider using Additional Reward Structures if you want to manage commission plans in multiple currencies (i.e. for those with multi-currency stores), if you want to test your REST API tracking implementation, or set up custom commission plans not supported by our built-in commission plan options. We'll touch on Additional Reward Structures in more detail lower in this article.

The currency will determine what currency the commissions will represent. For more on this, please see our currency control document.

Note: The plan code is useful if you are using Additional Reward Structures.

Creating a Commission Plan

To create your first Commission Plan, please find the Add Commission Plan button.

You will then be presented with the basic settings, which allow you to control the core functionality of your plan.

Payment For

The first aspect to consider is what will generate an affiliate's commission. Commissions can be paid out based on a variety of events and can include special rules. The below options allow you to determine which events trigger affiliate commissions:

• Purchases 
• Leads - When someone enters their email on your site and becomes a potential customer
• Visitors - When a unique, first-time visitor is generated by the affiliate
• Line Items - Seamlessly track commissions from individual products within purchases. See our guide on Per Product Commissions - available for Advanced and Unlimited plan customers only
• New Customer Bounty - Generates a one-time commission for affiliates for any new customers they refer you. See our guide on New Customer Bounty - available for Unlimited plan customers only
• Affiliate Specific Products - For Shopify, BigCommerce, Ecwid, Stripe, and Infusionsoft users, seamlessly track commissions from individual products within purchases - allowing you to specify which products create commissions, the amount of commission per product, and exclude certain products from commission plans - available for Advanced and Unlimited plan customers only

How Much

Once you've confirmed what event will result in the affiliate commission for the plan, next you should set how much commission will be paid out to the affiliate when the commission is activated.

• Percentage - With percentage, an affiliate's commission will be a specified % of the price of the purchase. Note: if the purchase has a discount, the discount is removed before the commission is calculated.
• Amount - Paying an affiliate an amount allows you to set a flat value for the commission payment. This amount would be in the currency that is set in the Reward Structure the commission plan is tied to.

When

This setting determines when the commission becomes "due" to an affiliate. We recommend setting it to at least 1 month so that if the purchase is canceled within that month, you won't end up paying a commission for a purchase that is no longer being fulfilled. You may also want to consider tying it to outside of any return windows for a similar reason.

Note: Setting up when the payment becomes due does NOT automatically pay your affiliates. For more information on paying affiliates, please view our guide on affiliate compensation.

Who

The last piece of setup is specifying who the commission plan will apply to. You can choose "All Affiliates" if you want any affiliate who is part of your program to earn this commission (given they meet the above criteria). If you have a new account, you will see an option called "Affiliates" - this is your default group/type that affiliates will be listed under until you customize your Affiliate Groups further. Consider defining your Affiliate Groups to apply specific commission plans based on geography or types of contributors (i.e. customers, ambassadors, influencers etc). Learn more about Affiliate Groups here. 

Note: As you get multiple commission plans in place, you'll want to double-check your plan settings to ensure you aren't rewarding affiliates more than once for the same event (for example, if you have one commission plan that applies to All Affiliates that gives a 5% commission for every purchase, you wouldn't want a separate commission plan that applies to ambassadors and gives them a 10% commission for every purchase as the ambassador would receive both the 5% and 10% for the same purchase).

Advanced Options

In addition to the above basic setup options for commission plans, you may also want to consider some advanced options to ensure your plan meets your business goals. 

Commission Tiers

Commission Tiers allow you to set up limits within which the commission will apply. Customers often use the commission tiers setting to create stepped or tiered-based payment plans. Base commissions on product count or combined purchase totals.

Count

When a purchase is made, a counter will be incremented. This counter is used within the commission tiers feature to determine when to pay which commission. An example would be paying a bonus to affiliates when they get a certain amount of purchases.

In the example below, we have set up a commission plan that starts at 10, credits every 1 purchase, up to 10 purchases. What that will result in is that at only the 10th purchase, this commission will be applied.

In this next example, we are starting at 5, crediting every 5, up to 100. The result will be that the customer gets commission at 5, 10, 15, 20 (in steps of 5) and they will get the final commission at 100.

Purchase Totals

For Purchase Totals, when a purchase is made, the price will be added to a running total of all purchases that have been sourced by the affiliate. That total can then be used to decide whether to pay a commission and if so, how much.

In the example below, all purchases generate commissions. Once an affiliate's generated purchases reach $100, they will cease to receive further commissions. 

In addition to that example above, we might want to add a plan that applies after $100 - to continue keeping affiliates engaged. We build on the above example below to demonstrate. You can continue creating commission tiers in this way to create a stepped or tiered commission plan.

Reset Monthly

If you have the reset monthly checkbox active, then any accumulated Count or Purchase Totals will be reset to zero at the end of the month, and affiliates will have to climb through the commission tiers again.

Price Range

Price Range allows you to set up a minimum or maximum amount from which commissions start being generated for each purchase referred by your affiliates. You can set up a minimum amount, a maximum amount, or both.

Custom Payouts

Custom Payouts allow you to grant commissions that are not monetary. Consider things like store credit, bonus gifts, free items, and so on. Use the Amount setting to determine how many of these items your affiliate will get.

Our system can not automatically allocate the Custom Payouts. It just logs them as a value. Store credit, bonus gifts, or free items must be managed manually by yourself to the affiliates.

Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)

MLM allows commissions to be shared between tiers of referred affiliates. For more on this, please see our two MLM guides:

• MLM - Multi-Level Marketing Setup
• MLM - Step By Step - 3 Level Affiliate Chain

This is a feature available for Essential, Advanced, and Unlimited plan customers.

Time Boxed Commissions

Time Boxed Commissions allow you to define a time range within which a commission will apply. For example, 01/11/20 to 31/12/20 would make the commission plan available from the 1st November 2020 to the 31st December 2020. After that, a commission will not be generated.

When you have set the values and saved your commission plan, you will also see these dates reflected in the plan overview.

You can also leave out one of the dates. If you leave out the start date, it will last from today until the end date. If you leave out the end date, it will begin from the start date and then be available indefinitely.

Recurring Commissions

Recurring Commissions is a feature used to allow a purchase to renew itself each month and pay commission again. This should be used with caution. It is only necessary for some subscription integrations. For more information see our guide on recurring commissions. If unsure if you require the setup of recurring commissions, please reach out to support@leaddyno.com, we are here to help.

Additional Reward Structures

Advanced and Unlimited plan customers can create multiple Reward Structures, each with their own Commission Plans.

For those selling in multiple currencies, creating multiple Reward Structures will be essential in the setup of your affiliate program, as these structures will allow you to generate affiliate commissions in all of the currencies your store or website accepts.

You also may want to consider unlocking Additional Reward Structures for the following purposes:

1. REST API Tracking Testing: If you set tracking up using REST API, use Additional Reward Structures to ensure your REST API tracking implementation works correctly.
2. Per Product Commissions: If for some reason you are not able to set up SKUs for products from your store or website, you can utilize these additional Reward Structures to do so via REST API.
3. Custom Commission Plan Scenarios: If you are looking to create complex commission scenarios not supported in our built-in commission plan options, you can create these using Additional Reward Structures via REST API.

If you are unsure if our built-in commission plan options might meet your needs, or unsure whether you require the use of Additional Reward Structures, please contact support@leaddyno.com and we will be happy to explore the best options for you.

Affiliate Bonuses

It’s possible to set up affiliate bonuses based on the affiliate's performance. To do so, create a Commission Plan to set what the payment is for, how much, when will the payout occur, and who is eligible.

Next, use Commission Tiers to determine the number of sales required to achieve a certain bonus. The bonus requirements can be set to a defined period of time using Time Boxed Commissions. The bonus can be a set $ amount or a Custom Payout such as a gift or store credit.

Commission Description for Affiliates

Global Commission Description

In terms of your affiliate's visibility into commissions, this editor allows you to describe the compensation you offer your affiliates and you can have it appear above the affiliate’s commission information in the Affiliate Website. To edit the Global Commission Description visit Website Commission. Simply enter your content and click 'Save all Changes'. As long as you do not have specific commissions by Affiliate Group, you can use the Global Commission Description. 

Custom Commission Description for Affiliate Groups

You can also set up custom commission descriptions for each Affiliate Group. To do this, you need to first go to Affiliate Groups and select the desired group. You'll see the Affiliate Group Details section where you will have to select the 'Edit Affiliate Group' button. 

Here you'll have the Commission Description area where you can add your custom description. As mentioned there as well, if blank, the Global Commission Description will be displayed.

If you have any questions along the way as you set up your Reward Structures and Commission Plans, we are always here to help and have many examples of set up that we can share to ensure your affiliate program vision becomes a reality. Reach out to us at support@leaddyno.com at anytime.