Affiliate marketing strategy for web shops: a practical guide

An affiliate marketing strategy for a web shop is about four things: what you are willing to pay for a sale, which terms and rules your affiliates work under, how you find the right partners, and how you measure whether the program creates sales you would not otherwise have had. Programs that grow have made those decisions deliberately. Programs that stall have let the default settings make them.

The guide is written for you if you run a web shop and want to start or improve an affiliate program. If you are completely new to the subject, first read our guide to affiliate marketing, which explains how a sale is tracked from click to payout. The examples here use Affilyflow's settings, because we can show exactly how they work – but the questions apply whichever network you choose. How the networks differ on price and terms is in the comparison of Partner-ads, Adtraction, Awin and Affilyflow.

Start with the maths, not with the rate#

The most common mistake is choosing a commission because a competitor uses it. Instead, start with what a new sale may cost you in marketing. Take your gross margin, subtract the fixed costs per order, and consider what a new customer is worth over time – a customer who buys again is worth more than the first order (LTV). Compare with what you pay for a customer in other channels today (CAC).

At Affilyflow you set a total price per sale. The network fee is 20 % of it, and the affiliate gets the other 80 %. An example: an average order of DKK 600 excluding VAT and a total price of 15 % costs DKK 90 per sale – DKK 72 to the affiliate and DKK 18 in fee. If you are a Danish store, VAT is added on top, and it is also drawn from your balance. Rejected sales cost nothing, and there is no subscription.

Affiliates only see their own rate. That is what they compare with other programs, so think in the affiliate's rate when you judge whether your program is competitive – and in the total price when you judge whether it pays off for you.

Choose the right commission model#

Most web shops should use a percentage of the sale (CPS), because the commission follows the size of the order. There are three situations where another model is better:

• A fixed amount per sale, when your products cost roughly the same, or when the margin in money is similar across the range.
• A fixed amount per lead, when what you want to buy is a sign-up or a trial – for example a subscription that is only paid later. At Affilyflow this requires you to enter your thank-you page under Setup.
• Recurring commission, when you sell subscriptions. The affiliate earns on every payment for 6, 12 or 24 months or the customer's whole lifetime. It requires the Stripe integration, which records the renewals.

Recurring commission is the strongest argument a subscription program has with affiliates: they invest in content about you because a customer keeps paying. At Affilyflow the number of promised renewals is locked on the click, so an ongoing agreement cannot be cut back afterwards.

Never lower the rate as your first move

It is easy to raise a rate and expensive to lower it. Affiliates remember programs that have cut the commission, and they move their best placements to someone they trust. At Affilyflow a new rate only applies to new clicks (rate lock), and the affiliate's rate can only be lowered once every 30 days. Better to start a little lower with a plan to raise it for the affiliates who deliver than the other way round.

Cookie window and approval period#

The cookie window is the period after a click in which a purchase still earns commission. At Affilyflow you can choose 14, 30, 45, 60 or 90 days, and we recommend 30. A short window rarely saves you money, but it costs you affiliates: content such as tests and guides rarely sells the same day, and many affiliates opt out of programs with short windows.

Be realistic about what the window means in practice. On desktop and Android the whole period applies. In Safari and on iPhone the browser deletes cookies set by JavaScript after about 7 days without a visit – that applies to every network that tracks with a script. That is why tracking from your own server is part of the strategy (see below).

The approval period is the time you have to reject a sale, for example because the item is returned. At Affilyflow you choose 30, 45, 60 or 90 days, and the rule of thumb is simple: set it to your return period. The period is locked on each sale, a rejection requires a reason the affiliate can read, and a sale you have not rejected is approved automatically when the deadline has passed. Read more about approval of sales.

If you use the WooCommerce plugin or Stripe, you do not need to reject returns by hand: a refunded order is rejected automatically, and a partial refund reduces the commission in the same proportion. For other platforms you must reject the sale yourself within the period.

Write the rules before the first affiliates arrive#

At Affilyflow programs are open: affiliates join without applying, and you control quality with clear rules instead of an approval queue. That demands rules that are thought through from day one. Decide on three things:

• Coupon and cashback sites: they catch customers who were often already on their way to buy from you. Our default is no. If you say yes, work out what a sale costs with both discount and commission.
• Paid search: allowed, allowed without your brand name, or not allowed. If you let affiliates bid on your name (brand bidding), you pay commission for customers who searched for you, and you risk bidding against your own ads.
• Channels: which channels your links may be used in – SEO, blogs, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, email. The link generator rejects links marked with a channel you do not allow.

Also write your guidelines in free text: requirements for ad labelling, which claims about your products must not be used, and whether affiliates may use your trademarks in domain names. Under Danish law, affiliate links are advertising under the Marketing Practices Act, and the Danish Consumer Ombudsman recommends writing "Reklamelink" or "Annoncelink" (ad link) next to the link – see ad disclosure. If you sell in other countries, their disclosure rules apply there.

When you later tighten a rule, at Affilyflow the tightening only applies 14 days after you save it, while a relaxation applies immediately. Affiliates who have built content under your old rules therefore get time to fix it. Our rule monitor checks every click for ad clicks from Google Ads and Microsoft Ads and for referrals from known coupon and cashback sites – but we cannot see the search term. See what you can set under program terms.

Discount codes: general and personal#

Discount codes are one of the strongest tools in affiliate marketing, especially for influencers – but they work in two different ways. A general code for all affiliates makes the purchase cheaper for the customer, but does not tell you who the customer came from. It therefore does not earn commission on its own; it is the click on the affiliate's link that does.

A personal code that you give a specific affiliate, on the other hand, earns that affiliate commission – even without a click. It catches the sales a link cannot: the customer who declined cookies, or who saw the recommendation on their phone and bought on their computer. A valid click always wins over a code. Use personal codes for the creators whose audience shops across devices, and give them a discount that fits your margin – the discount comes on top of the commission. How the code is linked to an affiliate on your platform is in the docs under personal discount codes, and how codes work for influencers is covered in our guide to influencer marketing.

Recruit the right affiliates#

Five active affiliates with the right audience are worth more than 500 who never send a click. Spend the time finding partners whose audience already buys what you sell: content sites and niche sites in your category, creators who use products like yours, and newsletters your customers read. How to assess each partner is covered in the article how to choose affiliates for your program.

At Affilyflow your program becomes visible to affiliates once your website is set and tracking is running. After that you have several ways to bring them in:

• Your own invitation link and a QR code that lead directly to the program. An affiliate with an account joins with one click, and a new one is joined once their email is confirmed.
• Your program page on affilyflow.com, which shows your terms openly before anyone joins.
• A widget for your own website – for example a page about your partner program – that always shows the current terms.
• Invitation emails that Affilyflow sends on your behalf. Under section 10 of the Danish Marketing Practices Act they may only go to recipients who have asked for the program themselves – never to a whole customer list.

Under Recruitment you can see how many visited the invitation, created an account, joined, sent the first click and generated the first sale – broken down by source. Make it easy to promote you too: upload banners under Materials, and let affiliates find your products with price and stock via your product catalogue or your Google Shopping feed.

Make the tracking robust#

A sale that is not measured is lost twice over: the affiliate does not get their commission and loses trust in your program, and you get no data about what the marketing delivered. Choose the most robust route your platform allows:

• WooCommerce: the plugin stores the click and reports the order from your own server, and refunds reject or reduce the commission automatically.
• Stripe: sales and renewals are reported server to server via a signed webhook.
• Smartweb, DanDomain, Shoporama and custom-built web shops: a script on the page. If you have a developer, your own server can store the click as a first-party cookie, so tracking holds for the whole period – also in Safari, on iPhone and with ad blockers.
• Shopify: the app is in review with Shopify and is not in the App Store yet. How the integration is built is explained in affiliate marketing for Shopify stores.

Decide on consent too. An affiliate cookie is used for marketing, and you own your cookie banner. Our script can wait for marketing consent and reads Cookiebot, Cookie Information, IAB TCF, Google Consent Mode v2 and the built-in banners of Shoporama, DanDomain Classic and Smartweb itself. If the customer says no, a personal discount code can still earn the affiliate commission. Read more about affiliate tracking and tracking at Affilyflow.

Test before you invite anyone: the test link under Setup gives a click from our test affiliate, and a purchase through it becomes a test sale that costs nothing. Then follow the tracking coverage panel: how many clicks from affiliates reached a page with the script, were stored and became a sale – and what can recover the rest.

Measure what matters#

The number of affiliates is a vanity metric. These five numbers tell you whether the program works:

Under Results you can follow each click from the page the link was on, via the source, to the sale and the commission – grouped by source and affiliate. Use it to find the few partners who create most of the value, and give them more attention. Also keep an eye on sales flagged for review, for example when the buyer appears to be the affiliate themselves (self-referral).

Work with your affiliates#

The best programs treat affiliates as partners, not as an ad channel. In practice that means three things:

A plan for the first 30 days#

Ready to get going? See terms, pricing and integrations on start an affiliate program, or read the whole foundation in the guide to affiliate marketing.