An affiliate program, sometimes called a referral program, lets your members earn a commission when people they refer buy your Offers. You run it as one or more campaigns in Settings > Revenue > Affiliates, and it needs Heartbeat Payments set up first.

Affiliate programs are included in the Grow, Scale and Custom plans. On Build, the Affiliates page shows Upgrade to Grow. A community that moves to Build after creating campaigns still sees them, but Create Campaign, Edit and Unarchive are greyed out. Communities on the older Starter plan keep their affiliate programs.

Looking to earn by referring people to Heartbeat itself? That's our Partner Program.

Setting up a campaign

Go to Settings > Revenue > Affiliates and click Create Affiliate Program. Once you have a campaign, new ones start from Create Campaign. If Heartbeat Payments isn't set up or you have no Offers yet, the page asks you to do that first. A campaign has these settings:

• Name and Description: what your members see when they decide whether to join.
• Private: turn it on to let only the members or Access Groups you choose become affiliates. With it off, any member can join.
• Sign Up Link: where people who click an affiliate's link land. If a Page is connected to that Sign Up Link, they see the Page first. If not, they go straight into the sign up flow.
• Offers: the Offers that earn a commission, either specific ones or any Offer. Event tickets don't earn commission, so to pay affiliates on an Event, sell access to it through an Offer.
• Coupon: an optional discount for the people your affiliates refer. It applies to the campaign's Offers during their first 60 days in your community, and the lower price only shows at the payment step.
• Currency: the currency commissions are counted and paid in. You choose it with your first campaign, and every campaign after uses it. Payments in another currency are converted.
• Commission Structure: how much affiliates earn, as a Percentage or a Fixed amount.

Commission types

• Percentage pays a share of what the referred member actually pays, after any coupon on the campaign and at whichever price they're on, including a yearly payment. On a membership, it pays on every payment while Pay Indefinitely is on, or for the number of months you set in # Months (12 to start). On a one-time purchase, it pays once.
• Fixed pays a set amount once, on the referred member's first payment. Renewals don't earn anything more, which is why Fixed has no duration setting. The affiliate keeps the amount even if the member cancels later.

A fixed amount every month isn't available yet. To pay monthly for a set time, use Percentage with # Months and pick the percentage that matches your amount: 26% of a $19 monthly price is $4.94 a month. Keep in mind the same percentage applies to every price on the Offer. Or use a Fixed amount that covers the whole period in one go.

To reward affiliates with free months instead of cash, set a Fixed amount equal to what members pay each month. Affiliates who choose credit get it taken off their next payment, so each referred member who pays covers about a month for them.

Commissions only come from payments, so someone who joins for free through an affiliate's link earns the affiliate nothing until they buy something.

How affiliates join and get paid

Members click their profile picture at the top right, then Account Settings, then Affiliate Program, where they join a campaign and get their link. They choose to be paid through PayPal, which you send yourself, or as credit on their subscription to your community, which Heartbeat applies for you. How affiliate payouts work covers when commissions become due and how to pay them.

Testing your program

1. Join your own campaign from Account Settings > Affiliate Program and copy your link.
2. Open the link in a private browser window. You should land on the campaign's Sign Up Link, or the Page connected to it.
3. Sign up with an email that isn't a member yet. On a paid Sign Up Link, that means paying. Your Leads count in the Affiliates table goes up by one right away, and purchases can take up to 6 hours to show.
4. When you're done, refund the test payment and remove the test member.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do affiliates have to be members of my community? Yes, but they don't have to pay. Affiliates join a campaign themselves from inside your community, so someone from outside has to join it first. You can't add anyone as an affiliate yourself. Any member can join unless the campaign is Private, and only the credit payout option needs a subscription to your community. To let someone join a paid community without paying, add them as a payment exemption first.

Can I pay some affiliates a different rate? Yes. Create a campaign for each rate, turn on Private, and choose who can join it. Affiliates get a separate link for each campaign they join.

Can I see each affiliate's link? No. Each member sees their own link in Account Settings > Affiliate Program.

Can a free member credit an upsell purchase to an affiliate? Yes. It happens automatically as long as they buy within 60 days of joining. A membership bought in that time keeps earning on its renewals as the campaign's commission is set. Members who joined without the link aren't credited automatically, but you can add them as a referral yourself.

How can I see which members belong to which campaign? Click the member count next to the campaign's name.

Can I create a multi-level affiliate program? No. Heartbeat doesn't support multi-level programs.

Can I use my own landing page instead of Heartbeat's for affiliate traffic? Not with affiliate credit. An affiliate's link always opens in Heartbeat: on the Page connected to the campaign's Sign Up Link, or straight into sign up. The affiliate is credited from the link itself, not a cookie, so someone who reaches you through your own website isn't credited, even if an affiliate sent them there. To give affiliate visitors a designed landing page, connect a Page to the campaign's Sign Up Link. If you use an outside page anyway, each affiliate needs their own copy of it, with their own link on the button.

Can I use the same Sign Up Link or Offer in more than one campaign? Yes. Each campaign calculates commission on its own settings.

My affiliate links aren't going to my custom Page. Why? The campaign is usually pointing at a different Sign Up Link than the one your Page is connected to. Open the Page in Settings > Content > Pages and check its connected Sign Up Link, then edit the campaign to use that same Sign Up Link. Your affiliates' existing links keep working and start landing on the Page right away.

If a member is in two campaigns, will their links conflict? No. Each campaign gives the member a separate link, and a purchase through one of them is credited to that campaign only.

Can I delete or archive a campaign? You can delete a campaign until someone has been referred through it. After that, open the campaign's menu and click Archive. Members can no longer join an archived campaign and its affiliates stop earning new commissions, but its stats stay and commissions already owed can still be paid out. Archived campaigns move to the Archived tab, where Unarchive brings them back.