How to Set Up an Affiliate Program for Your Online Shop

I have set up affiliate programs several times - for my own online shops and for clients - and for years I have also stood on the other side as a publisher promoting other shops' programs. That gives me a view of both sides of the table: I know what a shop neglects when launching a program, and I know why a publisher stops promoting it after three weeks and never comes back. This article is a guide to building a program that pays off for you and that publishers actually want to promote. No fluff, with the numbers that are really used on the Czech and Slovak market.

When affiliate makes sense for an online shop

Affiliate is a performance channel: you pay only for a completed order. That sounds attractive, but a program is not free - it costs time, network fees and a commission that your margin has to absorb. Before you set up anything, answer three questions.

Margin. If your gross margin is around 15 % and you want to offer an 8 % commission, almost nothing is left after the network fee and shipping costs. A program makes sense where the margin can carry a commission of at least 5 % and still leave room for profit. In electronics, with margins of 6-8 %, commissions therefore sit between 1 and 4 %, and programs still work - but only thanks to high order values.

Average order value. A publisher calculates how much they earn per conversion. A 5 % commission on a 16-euro order is 80 cents, and nobody will write a review for that kind of money. When the average order is 100 euros or more, even a lower percentage gives the publisher a reasonable income. With a low basket value you either need to set a higher percentage or think about a fixed reward per order.

Repeat purchases. When customers stay with you after the first purchase (supplements, pet food, cosmetics, subscriptions), you can afford to pay more for the first order because you treat it as an acquisition cost. For one-off goods (a mattress, a washing machine) the first order has to be profitable on its own.

When it does not make sense: a very low margin without repeat purchases, a narrowly local service where publishers have nobody to address, or a shop that has not yet tuned its conversion rate. Affiliate will not bring customers to a site that converts below 0.5 % - publishers do the math quickly and move their links to a competitor. Fix the site first, then launch the program.

Network or in-house solution

The second big decision: where the program will run. You have two routes and each has its trade-offs.

Affiliate network

On the Czech and Slovak market the main networks are eHUB, Dognet, CJ Affiliate (managed for CZ/SK by VIVnetworks), Affial and AffiliatePort. A network gives you ready-made tracking, payouts to publishers, invoicing and above all a database of publishers who are already registered and will see your campaign in the listing. That is the biggest added value - at launch you do not have to look for anyone, and the first applications to the program usually arrive within a few days.

You pay for this with a fee on commissions (roughly 20-30 % of paid-out commissions), sometimes a setup fee and sometimes a monthly minimum. If you pay publishers 2,000 euros a month, the network takes about 400-600 euros on top. For smaller programs the monthly minimum is precisely the thing to check in advance.

In-house system

An in-house solution is either standalone software such as AffilBox or the affiliate module of your e-commerce platform (Shoptet, Upgates and others have add-ons or third-party integrations). You pay a fixed monthly amount regardless of commission volume, so at higher turnover it is considerably cheaper than a network. You have full control over terms and data.

The price for that is recruitment. In an in-house program nobody delivers publishers to you - you have to find them, approach them and convince them yourself. You also handle payouts: publishers invoice you and you pay dozens of small invoices a month, or you set a minimum payout threshold. If you do not have a person dedicated to the program, an in-house system often ends up as an empty page with a form.

From my own experience: a smaller shop without an affiliate manager starts in a network. When after a year it has dozens of active publishers and affiliate turnover in the tens of thousands of euros a month, it is worth calculating whether switching to an in-house system or running both pays off. Many large shops run in two networks at once to reach more publishers - but then you have to make sure a publisher does not collect the commission twice.

Setting the commission

The commission is the number by which a publisher compares you with the competition. Rough ranges on the Czech market: fashion and accessories 5-12 %, electronics 1-4 %, cosmetics and drugstore goods 5-10 %, furniture and home 3-7 %, services and software 15-30 %. If you offer noticeably less than competitors in the same sector, publishers will skip you in the network listing.

Commission base. The standard is a commission on the order value excluding VAT and shipping. State it clearly in the terms; publishers notice it when they accept and it saves you arguments later. Some shops calculate the commission on the price including VAT and offer a lower percentage - the result is similar, but it looks worse in the catalog.

New and existing customers. Good practice is to differentiate: for example 10 % for a new customer and 4 % for an existing one. The publisher is motivated to bring in new people and you do not pay the full commission for a customer who would have bought anyway. Technically this requires the tracking code to pass a new-customer flag - most networks and AffilBox can do it.

Volume bonuses. Tiered commission (8 % up to 20 orders a month, 10 % above 20 orders) keeps strong publishers with you. An alternative is a one-off bonus for reaching a threshold. The advantage of tiers is that they are calculated automatically and the publisher sees them in their dashboard.

Different commissions by category. If you sell goods with very different margins, set commissions per category. It requires passing the item category in the tracking code, but it spares you the situation where you pay 8 % on a television with a 5 % margin.

Cookie duration and approval period

The cookie determines how long after a click on the publisher's link an order is attributed to them. On our market 30 days is common, with a range of 7-60 days. The more expensive and considered the purchase, the longer a cookie makes sense - with furniture or electronics people compare for weeks. For impulse goods 14 days is enough. A long cookie signals to publishers that you take the program seriously, and it costs you very little: most conversions happen within 48 hours of the click anyway.

The approval period is the time a commission waits for confirmation before you credit it to the publisher. Tie it to your returns period: customers have 14 days by law, you add a buffer for processing returns, so 30 days is a sensible standard. In sectors with high return rates (fashion) it tends to be 45 days, for services without returns 14 is fine. On the market you will encounter a range of 14-45 days; publishers tolerate long periods, but only if you approve regularly and do not cut commissions without explanation.

This also covers what happens to a cancelled or unpaid order: reject the commission with a reason (cancellation, uncollected cash-on-delivery parcel, return). Publishers expect this, but they want to see why. Rejecting half of the commissions without explanation is the fastest way to kill a program.

Program terms

Terms written at the start save you disputes later. A few things you need to decide.

Brand PPC. May a publisher advertise on your brand name in search engines? Most shops forbid it, because the publisher would be taking over customers who were already looking for you and driving up the price of your own keywords. Ban the brand and its misspellings, allow generic terms. If you do want PPC specialists in the program, agree on individual rules.

Coupon sites. Coupon portals bring volume, but often at the end of the buying process - the customer already has a full basket and just goes looking for a discount. Decide whether you want them and at what commission. Common practice is a lower commission for coupon sites and a ban on publishing codes you did not give them.

Cashback. Cashback portals return part of the commission to the customer. They suit goods with repeat purchases and price-sensitive customers. Again: a lower rate and a clear rule that cashback may not be combined with your codes unless you want that.

Publisher discount codes. When a publisher has their own code (MAGAZINE10), you can attribute commission even to orders without a click - the customer saw the code on YouTube and typed it on their phone a week later. This is essential for influencers and video creators, and both networks and AffilBox support it through so-called code tracking. State in the terms where codes may be distributed.

Further points: a ban on misleading product claims, a ban on spam, rules for e-mail campaigns, the obligation to label affiliate links according to current advertising rules, and your right to reject a publisher without giving a reason. Write the terms in plain language and keep them to one page.

Technical integration

The technology decides whether publishers get paid correctly. Three things have to work from day one.

Tracking code. The network or AffilBox gives you a code that you place on the order confirmation page. It reads the publisher identifier from the cookie and sends the order to the system. On most platforms this is a matter of inserting a script or switching on a module. Test it: click your own affiliate link, place an order and check that it appeared in the system with the correct amount.

Passing the order value. The code has to pass the value excluding VAT and shipping, the order identifier, and possibly the item category and the new-customer flag. A mistake here shows up as publishers seeing commissions on amounts including VAT, which you then cut at approval - and they do not like that. Set it up correctly from the start.

Deduplication with other channels. A customer clicks an affiliate link, then a PPC ad, and buys. Who gets the order? Without deduplication you pay the publisher a commission on top of the paid-ad click. The solution is an attribution rule (e.g. last paid click wins) implemented in the tracking code, which does not send the affiliate conversion if the last source was another paid channel. For direct and organic traffic, on the other hand, keep the affiliate conversion - otherwise publishers get nothing from purchases that rightfully belong to them.

Today you also have to reckon with restrictions on third-party cookies and with blockers. Most networks already use first-party tracking via their own URL parameter; check this with your provider. And if you run a consent banner on your site, classify the affiliate cookie as necessary if your legal interpretation allows it, or expect that some conversions will go unmeasured.

Fraud and how to prevent it

Fraud exists in affiliate, but it is not as common as shops fear. Typical cases: a publisher orders through their own link and returns the goods, cookie stuffing (planting a cookie without a real click), fake cash-on-delivery orders that nobody collects, or spreading coupon codes intended for another channel.

The defence is mostly simple. Approve commissions only after the returns period has passed, not immediately. Watch for suspicious patterns: a publisher with dozens of orders and zero traffic on their site, a sudden high cancellation rate with one partner, orders from the same IP address. Reject commissions on unpaid and returned orders automatically. Approve new publishers manually and look at their site before letting them into the program. And reserve the right in the terms not to pay commissions when the rules are broken.

The opposite extreme is a paranoid approach where the shop cuts commissions over every doubt. Honest publishers, who are the overwhelming majority, see this as distrust and leave. Resolve disputes individually and communicate.

Recruiting publishers

A program without publishers is just a form, so recruitment is work that never entirely ends.

In a network some publishers will apply on their own, but you have to spot the best ones and approach them actively. In an in-house program outreach is the only way. Where to look: content sites and magazines in your sector (search for articles like "best X", "X review" - their authors already work with affiliate links), comparison sites and catalogs, YouTube channels and influencers with an audience matching your customers, newsletters, topical communities and groups. On AffilPlanet you will find a catalog of publishers filterable by type and topic, where you can approach a publisher directly through the portal without hunting for contact details.

What to offer publishers so they say yes:

• Products for review. For content sites and YouTube this is the strongest argument. A product worth a few dozen euros pays for itself with the first article, which will sit in search results for years.
• An exclusive code. A dedicated discount code for the publisher's readers lifts conversion and at the same time lets you measure orders without a click.
• A higher commission at the start. A doubled commission for the first 2-3 months motivates the publisher to create content right away. Then the rate returns to standard and the content keeps working.
• Materials. High-resolution product photos, banners, a product feed, a short brief on what you sell and to whom. A publisher who has to chase materials often never starts with you.
• A quick response. Answer messages within two days. A publisher nobody replies to goes to a competitor.

Keep your outreach short and specific: who you are, why their site fits you, what you offer, what the next step is. Templated mass e-mails get a very low response rate and publishers recognise them instantly.

Keeping the program alive

Most programs are killed by silence, not by a poor commission. A publisher sets up a link, commissions come in for a few months, then the shop changes its product URLs, the links lead to 404 pages and nobody tells the publisher anything. For them the program is dead.

What helps: regular news for publishers (new products, seasonal campaigns, commission changes), up-to-date discount codes, advance communication about changes and above all timely approval of commissions. If you approve on the same day every month, publishers get used to it and plan with you. If you approve irregularly or after three months, they stop promoting you before you notice.

Once a quarter, go through the statistics: which publishers are growing, which have gone quiet, where the best-performing links point. Thank the active ones and offer them something extra; approach the dormant ones with a specific offer. Ten active publishers do more than a hundred registered ones who never added anything.

Listing the program in the AffilPlanet catalog

Once the program is set up, make it known outside the network too. AffilPlanet is a free catalog of affiliate programs and publishers for the Czech and Slovak market. It is not a network - we have no tracking and no payouts, just an overview of programs and publishers who search for and approach each other. Listing is free and takes a few minutes: the page for online shops explains the steps, registration creates an affiliate manager account, and you fill in the program in a form - network, commission, cookie, approval period, terms, your offer for publishers and discount codes visible only to logged-in publishers.

The catalog already contains over 1,700 programs imported from networks, so there is a good chance your program is already there. In that case you do not create it again but claim management of the existing listing: on the program detail click the claim button, we verify that your e-mail belongs to the shop's domain, and after approval you can edit the listing, add your offer and reply to publishers. After the claim the program receives the Verified badge, which tells publishers that a real manager stands behind the listing and that someone reads the messages. Imported programs without a manager have no badge, and publishers only see a link to the network.

With a managed program you gain access to the publisher catalog: you see the addresses of their sites, project type, topics and audience, you can express interest in cooperation or write a message directly through the portal. Publishers in turn follow programs and receive notifications when you change the commission or terms or add a code - so a piece of news you write into the listing reaches everyone who has shown interest in your program. For an affiliate manager who runs a program alongside the day-to-day operation of a shop, it is the cheapest way to be visible where publishers are looking.

Pre-launch checklist

1. Margin calculated and a commission you can carry, including the network fee.
2. Network vs. in-house decision made and the contract signed or the licence paid.
3. Commissions by customer type and category, tiered bonuses.
4. Cookie of 30 days or more, approval period tied to returns.
5. Program terms: brand PPC, coupons, cashback, codes, ad labelling.
6. Tracking code deployed and tested with a real order, deduplication configured.
7. Materials for publishers: photos, banners, feed, brief, launch offer.
8. A list of the first 20 publishers to approach and the program listed on AffilPlanet.
9. A date in the calendar for regular commission approval and a publisher newsletter.

A program that passes this list has a chance, even if it is not perfect: the publisher on the other side will see a shop that has thought things through, pays fairly and on time, and answers messages. That is still rarer in Czech and Slovak affiliate than it should be, and it is the cheapest competitive advantage you can have.