Your affiliates earn a commission when someone they referred pays for one of your Offers. Each commission waits 30 days in case of a refund, then becomes due and is paid either as credit on the affiliate's subscription, which Heartbeat applies for you, or through PayPal, which you send yourself.
This is about the affiliate program you run in your own community. For referring people to Heartbeat itself, see our Partner Program. To set up a campaign, see How can I create an Affiliate Program.
What Heartbeat tracks
In Settings > Revenue > Affiliates, each affiliate's row shows their Visits (clicks on their link), Leads (people who signed up through it, free or paid), Conversions (people who paid) and their commissions, split into Pending, Due and Paid. New payments can take up to 6 hours to show up.
When commissions become due
- Pending: for 30 days after the referred member first pays, so refunds can be caught. If a payment is fully refunded while its commission is unpaid, the commission is removed. A partial refund lowers a Percentage commission.
- Due: from the 1st of the month after those 30 days.
- Paid: once it's been paid as credit or you've marked it as paid.
Heartbeat processes due commissions on the 1st of each month, so tell affiliates to expect a payout within about 60 days of a referred purchase.
How affiliates get paid
When members join a campaign, they choose where their payouts go:
- Credit: their subscription to your community is discounted by the amount due. Heartbeat applies it on the 1st of the month, and you don't need to do anything. This option only shows to members with a subscription in your community.
- PayPal: they enter their PayPal email, and you send the money yourself.
Paying PayPal payouts
On the 1st of each month, you get an email with the total of PayPal payouts due.
- Go to Settings > Revenue > Affiliates and open the Due tab under Payouts.
- Copy the affiliate's PayPal email and the amount.
- In PayPal, choose Send Money and send the amount to that email.
- Back in Heartbeat, click Mark as paid next to the affiliate.
Mark as paid only records that you've paid. Heartbeat doesn't check how the money was sent, so you can use it when you pay an affiliate another way, such as a bank transfer.