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Affiliate Onboarding Checklist

Invite affiliates or share your campaign signup link. Review applications, confirm portal access, and help partners share their first referral link.

Table of Contents

AffiliateBase supports three onboarding paths: share a public campaign signup link, invite an affiliate to create their own login, or create the affiliate record directly when you already know who should be active in the program.

Use a public signup link when affiliates should be able to join a campaign without a one-off email invitation.

  1. Open Campaigns.
  2. Choose the campaign affiliates should join.
  3. Open Invitations.
  4. Copy the Public signup link.
  5. Share that URL with prospective affiliates.

If someone creates an account from the account-level affiliate portal instead of a campaign-specific link, they join your default campaign. An affiliate account belongs to one campaign at a time; if an existing affiliate joins through a different campaign signup link or accepts an invitation to another campaign, AffiliateBase moves that affiliate to the new campaign and gives them a new primary link for that campaign.

Affiliates who join from a public signup link start as Pending so you can review them before approval. Pending affiliates can access their portal and use their referral link, but active-only features remain unavailable until you change their state to Active.

Option 2: Invite Flow

Use the invite flow when the affiliate should accept an email invitation and finish their own portal access.

  1. Open Affiliates or Settings -> Team -> Affiliate Invitations.
  2. Choose Invite Affiliate.
  3. Enter the affiliate email.
  4. Choose the campaign they should join.
  5. Send the invitation.

Pending invitations can be resent or revoked before acceptance.

Because you chose the recipient, an affiliate becomes Active when they accept a private invitation. Accepting an invitation never overrides a disabled, suspicious, or rejected state.

Option 3: Direct Onboarding

Use Affiliates -> Onboard Affiliate when you want to create the affiliate immediately from the merchant dashboard.

Direct onboarding is useful for:

  • founders or internal partners
  • migrated affiliates from another platform
  • affiliates you are helping during setup
  • test affiliates used for launch verification

After direct onboarding, open the affiliate record to copy their generated referral link.

Directly onboarded affiliates default to Active. Choose Pending on the form only when you want a separate review step.

What Happens Automatically

On successful onboarding, the app creates:

  • Affiliate record
  • Primary referral link token for the selected campaign
  • Active affiliate coupon when the campaign has Stripe coupon configuration and the affiliate is active
  • Affiliate portal access path tied to your account’s affiliate subdomain

Affiliate States

Common states:

  • pending
  • active
  • disabled
  • suspicious
  • rejected

Only affiliates in trackable states can drive new attribution. Disabled, suspicious, rejected, archived, or deleted affiliates should not be used for new referral links.

Before You Invite

Confirm:

  1. The campaign destination is correct.
  2. The tracking script is installed on the destination or checkout-start page.
  3. The affiliate portal subdomain is saved in account settings.
  4. The account default campaign is set when you want the account-level portal signup to place affiliates into your main campaign.
  5. Your payout method and affiliate payout-detail expectations are clear.

Next steps

Before an affiliate starts promoting

  • Confirm the affiliate is in the intended campaign and review their status.
  • Explain the commission rules, attribution window, refund handling, and payout timing.
  • Confirm they can sign in to their portal and copy their generated referral link.
  • Provide a short product explanation and examples suited to their audience.
  • Agree on a first promotion, then check for a real referral and attributed sale.

Use the affiliate link guide and tracking verification checklist to check the handoff. If you are still planning the offer or recruiting partners, start with how to launch a SaaS affiliate program.