Shop affiliates

Let your customers promote your shop with a personal link and earn discount credit on every order they bring.

What it is

Shop affiliates are your own customers who promote your shop and earn a reward on the orders they bring. The reward is discount credit: store credit on your shop that the affiliate can spend as a discount on your products. It is not cash and it is never paid out. It is not the SellSpace referral program (that one rewards you for inviting other sellers) and not the partner program. SellSpace never moves money for affiliates. Available on the Premium and Pro plans.

Set it up

1. Open AffiliatesOn a Free plan you see an upgrade card. On Premium and Pro, open Settings and switch the programme on.
2. Switch on Customer balanceCredit can only be spent through the Customer balance payment method at checkout. If it is off, the Affiliates page shows a notice with a button that switches it on with one click.
3. Choose the rulesReward (the percentage of the order that becomes discount credit, 0 to 50%, default 10%), attribution window (1 to 90 days, default 30), refund window (default 14 days), automatic approval, self-referral blocking and which products are eligible. Tiers set a higher percentage for your best affiliates.
4. Get affiliatesInvite someone by e-mail, or let customers apply from their account page (the Affiliate tab). Applications are approved by you unless you switch on automatic approval.
5. They share their linkEvery affiliate has a personal code and a link: any address of your shop with ?aff=CODE (?ref=CODE works too).

How rewards work

• The visitor's browser remembers the link for the attribution window. The last link wins. Orders by the affiliate's own e-mail address never earn a reward when self-referral blocking is on (the default).
• The reward is the rate times the price after discounts, without payment-method surcharges. The server calculates it, never the browser.
• A reward is pending during the refund window. Then it is approved and credited automatically to the affiliate's customer account in your shop, as an entry in the customer balance with the reason affiliate_reward. Each reward is credited once.
• The affiliate spends the credit at checkout: they sign in with the same e-mail address and choose Use balance. It works in your shop only and only as a discount.
• If the order is refunded or disputed before the credit, the reward is cancelled. If it happens after, the credit is taken back as far as it is still unspent. A balance never goes below zero: if the affiliate already used the credit, the rest is recorded as not recovered and shown in the Rewards tab.
• Tiers raise the rate automatically when an affiliate reaches a revenue or order threshold (last 30 days or lifetime). Tiers never lower a rate. You can also set a tier or a custom rate by hand.
• If your plan drops below Premium, new orders stop earning rewards. Everything already earned stays.

No payouts

• There are no payout requests, no minimum payout and nothing to mark as paid. Affiliates cannot withdraw anything.
• The Rewards tab is a read-only history: rewards earned, credited and reversed. Every change is written to an append-only ledger, so the numbers always add up.
• Rewards paid out in the earlier version of this feature stay in the history as Paid out (legacy). Open payout requests from that version were cancelled and the amounts continue as discount credit.
• Discount credit is shop credit. It is not refundable as cash.

Affiliate e-mail addresses are personal data of your customers: handle them under your own privacy policy.