Running a WooCommerce store is no longer just about listing products and waiting for customers to show up. Today, the WooCommerce businesses are growing through affiliate marketing, turning customers, creators, and partners into active promoters of their brand.
Yet if only starting an affiliate program isn’t as simple as installing a plugin and hoping for results.
Many WooCommerce store owners struggle with common challenges, such as:
However, that’s exactly why in this guide, we’ll walk you through how to start your own affiliate marketing program with WooCommerce website, step by step.
From walking through a quick checklist and choosing the right affiliate management plugin to setting commissions, onboarding affiliates, and tracking performance, you’ll learn how to start a WooCommerce affiliate marketing program that’s built for long term success, not short-term experiments.
Before jumping straight to setup, why not make sure you’ve got the right foundation?
Here’s a quick checklist to make sure you’re ready to start your own affiliate marketing program in WooCommerce:
You must have a WooCommerce site that is fully set up with ready-to-sell products, a smooth working checkout, and reliable payment gateways.
Afterall, affiliates can only promote products that are ready to sell.
As we know, the affiliate program is a marketing strategy where people (known as affiliates) promote your brand’s products and earn commission when they drive a sale successfully.
So whenever you plan to start your own affiliate program, make sure your goals are crystal clear.
Define what you want from your affiliate program: more sales, recurring subscriptions, traffic growth, or influencer partnerships.
In the end, clear goals help shape commissions and promotional strategies.
Decide how affiliates will earn:
This makes sure you and your affiliates both get a clear idea of what to expect, leading to long-term affiliate motivation.
Choose a WooCommerce compatible affiliate plugin that can:
The right plugin will save you hours of manual tracking, ensure accurate payouts, and give you insights into affiliate performance as well as take your complete affiliate marketing program on autopilot.
Now, before you get ahead of yourself, make sure to prepare key legal and policy pages, such as:
Having clear policies protects your business and builds credibility with affiliates. Plus, it also helps you make a professional and trustworthy program from the start.
How can you expect your affiliates to promote the right way unless you show them the right way? By giving promotional assets, you make sure your brand’s voice and message stays intact always.
Thus, equip your affiliates with ready-to-go marketing assets such as:
The second you make sure all these things are ticked, you’re ready to move on to the setup phase and start building a successful WooCommerce affiliate program that drives growth and rewards both you and your affiliates.
There are surely many affiliate marketing plugins for WooCommerce as of 2026. But not all of them are the same, thus here are some of the most popular affiliate plugins for WooCommerce :
AffiliatePress is the best affiliate plugin that is compatible with WooCommerce and 23+ other WordPress plugins. It lets you start your own affiliate program effortlessly with a modern approach and reliable feature set; thus, it has emerged as the fastest-growing, award-winning affiliate solution trusted by WordPress businesses in 2026.
Affiliate for WooCommerce is a powerful affiliate marketing extension built specifically for WooCommerce stores. It lets store owners run referral, influencer, and affiliate programs directly from their WooCommerce dashboard, without relying on any third-party platforms or tools.
Relay is a WooCommerce affiliate marketing plugin for how online store owners run and manage affiliate programs. It offers quick setup, easy affiliate onboarding, flexible commission structures, real-time performance tracking, and one-click payouts, all in one place.
Coupon Affiliates is a coupon-based affiliate plugin for WooCommerce that makes it easy to run affiliate, influencer, and referral programs using discount codes. Plus, it allows you to give your partners an easy dashboard to track stats, commissions, and payouts.
Once your WooCommerce store is ready and the checklist is ticked, the next step is setting up an affiliate marketing system that’s easy to manage, accurate in tracking, and attractive for affiliates.
And this is exactly where AffiliatePress fits in perfectly.
AffiliatePress is one of the most reliable WordPress affiliate plugins for creating and running your own affiliate program with no technical hassle. Best of all, AffiliatePress smoothly integrates with WooCommerce with tax and shipping control to track sales and payouts with full precision.
So here’s a quick action plan:
The first step is installing AffiliatePress, a WooCommerce-ready affiliate management plugin built for online store owners who want to skyrocket their sales via affiliate marketing.
Here’s how to install and activate AffiliatePress:
After activation, AffiliatePress automatically launches a guided onboarding smart setup wizard.
This removes the complexity usually associated with other affiliate plugins’ setup and lets you configure essential settings within minutes.
AffiliatePress allows you to enable affiliate self-registration which makes it super easy for partners to join your program in no time. And if you still insist on doing it manually to personally ensure the quality of affiliates, you can do that as well.
Although you might have already set it up during AffiliatePress’s smart setup wizard, we’ll still show you how to do it just in case you might have skipped it.
Simply go to AffiliatePress → Settings. Inside the General panel, you’ll see the options such as:
……and many more! AffiliatePress lets you create a dedicated affiliate signup page for smooth onboarding. Also, you can fully customize it as per your business model.
This way, AffiliatePress gives you full control over who joins your program while keeping the onboarding process smooth and professional.
The biggest motivation for affiliates to promote your product in the first place is commission. Since you’ve already decided on your commission structure, it’ll take you no time to create it using AffiliatePress.
AffiliatePress allows you to create multiple smart commission structures to suit your exact business needs. From simple flat rates, percentage, to multiple commission types such as:
After everything is set, you can easily manage commissions of every affiliate: Approved, Paid, or Rejected, and even add new ones.
Thus, you can reward affiliates fairly while aligning commissions with your business goals. Also, you can offer a signup bonus and a performance-based bonus to get more quality affiliates.
Affiliates promote the best when they have the right affiliate assets. As we discussed before, if you want affiliates to promote the right way, give them the right promotional assets.
The best part? AffiliatePress lets you give endless creatives to your affiliates. AffiliatePress includes a built-in affiliate asset management system, just go to AffiliatePress → Creatives, that lets you create, manage, and share promotional materials the second an affiliate joins in.
You can offer:
All promotional assets are automatically tracked, so you don’t have to worry about anything. This way, you can make promotions much easier and more effective across blogs, social media, and offline campaigns.
What’s more, AffiliatePress also lets you give each and every one of your affiliates their own affiliate panel. Here, they can keep a track of their total earnings, visits, and commissions as well as manage creatives and affiliate links with ease.
Handling affiliate payouts and ongoing communication can quickly become one of the most time-consuming parts of running an affiliate program…but not with AffiliatePress.
This WordPress affiliate plugin simplifies both by automating payouts and notifications.
You can pay your affiliates in just one click or automate payouts via PayPal or Stripe. Also, you can keep a track of all payments done under the AffiliatePress → Payouts panel.
Furthermore, you can send automatic custom email notifications for registrations, approvals, payouts, and more to keep every affiliate updated with a touch of personalization. Simply head over to AffiliatePress → Notifications and customize your email message as you want.
Thus, this automation makes sure to lower your workload by paying your affiliates accurately on time, keeping them motivated and loyal.
Finally, your affiliate program is ready to go live on your WooCommerce website!
However, one must know that ongoing performance monitoring is what separates a profitable program from one that stalls. And with AffiliatePress, managing and tracking affiliate performance becomes simple, visual, and actionable.
No need to rely on old-fashioned spreadsheets or third-party tools.
AffiliatePress offers a real-time commission and affiliate tracking via its main dashboard. From here, you can see the overview of your complete WooCommerce affiliate program. You can easily track:
What’s more, if you scroll down a little on the same main dashboard of AffiliatePress, you can analyse real time charts for Visits, Commission revenue, and affiliates.
Plus, you can get a clear picture of your top-performing affiliates, latest affiliate registrations, and recent commissions.
This real-time data helps you quickly understand what’s working and where fixes are needed.
Furthermore, AffiliatePress gives you detailed reporting and analytics to go deeper into performance insights if you feel something is off.
Simply head over to AffiliatePress → Reports and analyze:
By actively managing and monitoring performance via AffiliatePress, you can rest assured your WooCommerce affiliate program remains profitable and grows with your business.
Starting your own affiliate program is just the beginning. To make sure your affiliate program stays in the long run, you need ongoing optimization, motivation, and relationship building.
Thus, here are some expert tips for running a successful affiliate marketing program:
Starting your own affiliate program can turn out to be one of your most profitable marketing strategies ever, only if it is implemented the right way. Why? Because there’s no risk. You only pay commission when a sale actually happens. No sale = no commission.
And there’s no better way to start right than having a reliable affiliate management plugin – AffiliatePress. With deep WooCommerce integration, beginner friendly setup, powerful tracking and automation for commissions and payouts, AffiliatePress removes all complications that often holds most affiliate programs back.
In simple words, AffiliatePress gives you full-power features while keeping the experience simple for both you and your affiliates.
So what are you waiting for? Start your own affiliate marketing program on WooCommerce right away and watch your sales skyrocket!
Ever feel like managing appointments is taking up more time than actually serving clients? Service-based businesses that switch from manual bookings to online booking systems have seen a significant boost of 27% to 37% in revenue. Plus, 69% of customers are more likely to book with a company that offers online booking . With these […]
Are you planning to build an online food ordering website, but not sure where to start with WordPress? More customers now prefer ordering food online instead of calling. If your website does not support online orders, you risk losing customers to places that do. A well-structured food ordering website lets you show your menu clearly, […]
When you need to collect leads, there are many ways to do it, including paid marketing. However, if you already have a website with traffic, popup marketing is one of the most effective methods. You never know when your website’s organic traffic might decline. Also, a single visit doesn’t guarantee that a visitor will return. […]
