In this tutorial video, I’ll show you how to set up a simple affiliate program on your WordPress website, without spending a dime.
Whether you’re a blogger, small business owner, or e-commerce store owner, this video will give you the tools you need to start your own affiliate program and increase your website’s revenue.
So sit back, grab a notepad, and get ready to learn how to create a lightweight affiliate program in WordPress for free!
If you want to create the checkout form you saw, here is the video for that (it’s also free)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vYHPafQe_0
Table Of Contents
00:00 – Overview
02:14 – Add Automation
04:03 – Create Affiliate Coupon
05:08 – Google Sheets
05:29 – Create Automation
08:16 – Create Automation
11:31 – Test Everything
14:52 – Tips
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All of the opinions expressed in this video are my own, I was not paid to make this video. Whenever there is a link in any of my videos, if there is a referral program available, please assume that you are clicking on a referral link.
If you've been wanting to test having an Affiliate platform for your e-commerce Store but you don't necessarily want to Commit to buying some expensive plug-in Installing it configuring it and all That stuff you want a lightweight Affiliate tracking system that doesn't Cost you anything and is super simple to Set up I'm going to show you how to do That right now in this video this right Here is what we're gonna do John has a business selling skateboards Matt is a famous skateboarder on YouTube And John wants to give Matt a 20 off Coupon for his audience and pay mad 30 Percent of what his subscribers spend in Exchange for promoting John's Skateboards this is a very typical Affiliate type relationship and you're Going to see how to set that up what We're going to do right now is we're Going to create a unique coupon format To give out to his subscribers and then When someone uses that coupon we're Going to use automation to send the Order number the order amount and the Coupon code to Google Sheets you can Actually send whatever you want that's a Real I mean that's just the information You need and then we're going to do this All automatically and free now there's Lots of automation options for example Zapier has a free plan they only let you Do a 100 things per month that's not
Going to work for something like this You're going to need something that Offers more we're going to use Shore Triggers in this example it seamlessly Connects to your WordPress website has a Very generous free plan that's going to Be all that we need in fact at the time Of this recording they're giving away a Bunch of their Pro features for a Limited time I can tell you the free Tier you're going to be able to do a Thousand things per month this plugin is Super easy to add to your website Seamlessly integrates with sure card Woocommerce hundreds of apps and Services and plugins but all we're going To use it for is e-commerce to Google Sheets but you could just as easily send It to maybe notion or airtable or Whatever kind of spreadsheet tool that You prefer to use the first step is to Add sure triggers to your website you Can just go to plugins and then go to Where it says add new now over here on The right do a search for short triggers Here it is you can see I've already Installed an activated sure Triggers on My website you'll just need to do that And it's going to take you to a screen To create an account and then verify Your email it just takes you one minute To connect here is the shore triggers Dashboard I'm already logged into my Account so the next step is to go to
Where it says apps and then we need to Connect it to wherever you want to send This data to in this example we're going To send it off to Google Sheets so You'll click right here where it says Add new connection And let's just go ahead and type sheets There it is you'll click on that now I've already connected to my Google Account what you'll do is choose the Google account that you want to connect To and just go through the several Prompts when you're done you should see A box here that says Google and this Will let you know that you are connected To that Google account now you can Connect to multiple Google accounts you Can connect to multiple WordPress Websites as a matter of fact you can Connect to all of these WordPress Plugins and these different services That you use to power your business you Don't have to connect to individual Plugins once you just connect your WordPress site you'll immediately be Able to access all of the automations Available for the plugins on that site Sure triggers also has a settings menu You can go to settings and the option is Right there for sure triggers now the Next step is to create a coupon code This is very simple in whatever ECommerce tool that you use I'll show You how to do it right now in short cart
It's just as easy in woocommerce so I'll Go to Sure cart and there's an option Right here that says coupons I'll click On add new and I'll give this coupon a Name I've given it the name Matt YouTube Now we need to give him a unique Promotional code I put just for Matt and Then down here we're going to choose the Percentage discount in this case I Believe we said 20 percent off let's go Ahead and see what we said yep 20 off That's what we're going to do so it's Going to be 20 off and there's some Extra options here same in woocommerce There's going to be some options for That coupon you can configure the coupon However you want I'm going to go ahead And click on create coupon so now this Coupon is created and when it's used It's going to take 20 percent off the Entire order now what we need to do is Make it so whenever someone uses this Coupon code it's going to send that data Off into a Google sheet this is where Shore triggers comes in I'll click right Here where it says create a new Automation uh this word automation most Likely is going to get changed to Workflows and let's go ahead and give it A name I'm going to name it affiliate Tracking and the way automation works is Very simple there's a trigger this is Something that happens and then there's Actions this is what happens after that
Trigger occurs so in this case the Trigger is someone placing an order so I'll click on ADD trigger and here is All of my apps I'm going to be selling This with short cart so if you're using Woocommerce you would choose woocommerce Right down here so I'll choose sure cart And the event for this I'm going to Choose order created and there's a Description of all of the different Triggers here what they do and it's Going to be the same for woocommerce or Any of the plugins or services that You're using so I'll choose order Created select connection I'll choose This right here and then I'm going to Click this button here that says fetch Data what this does is it goes and tries To retrieve the last order that was Placed on your e-commerce system so it Can see all the data that's collected so We can just pick and choose what we want To send off to Google Sheets now in the Case where it's a brand new eCommerce Store and you haven't placed an order Yet you might have to place a test order So that there's data to pull from so it Knows exactly all the data that you get To use in that trigger so here's the Long list of it right here and there's a Ton of data that I can use so we're Going to do that in a sec for now let's Just go ahead and click on save so we Have our trigger and then we just need
To add our action but before we add our Action let's go ahead and create that Google sheet most people already have a Google Sheets account whether you know It or not I mean I got to tell you I Didn't use Google Docs or Google Sheets For the longest time but I've been using It like crazy for the last two to three Years I love it and so you just need a Gmail account and it's completely free So here is a new Google sheet let's go Ahead and give the sheet a name here it Is affiliate tracking now when we're Setting up shirt triggers to connect to This sheet it's going to also ask you Which work tab or whatever these things Are called you want to use so you can Leave this as sheet1 down here or you Can double click on it and give it a Different name I've just put in orders Now we're gonna just put in here in These different columns some of the Field data titles so for me that's going To be the order number order amount and Coupon there it is and it's just like Any spreadsheet app you can make these Wider if you want perfect so these are Going to be our column names right here Order number order amount and coupon so Now let's go to Sure triggers and make The connection to that Google sheet so We did our trigger and to add an action I can just click on this plus and here Again is all of the apps plugins and
Services that are available to you plus Some special fancy features up here but What we want is right here that is Google Sheets great and I'm going to Select an event and it's going to be to Add a new row and I'm going to select a Connection and this is going to list the Account that you connected just a moment Ago perfect and now it's going to show Me a spreadsheet list so I'll go like This and the first one right here is Affiliate tracking I'm blurring out the Rest For my own privacy and then for Worksheet that's going to be that tab Remember I named it orders I guess those Are called worksheets I named it orders Perfect and guess what did you see what Happened it automatically pulled in Those different column titles that I Created so now I just need to pair these Up with the data we're getting when Someone places an order so the way we do That is we click on this little icon Here to the right of the field And then let's go ahead and expand this Right here and we can scroll through and See all the different types of of data That is available to us so this field is The order number and this is what it's Called right here number now that is set Let's do this let's click right here and We're going to do the same thing for the Order total now if you don't want to
Scroll through this and I totally Understand that you can just search so I'm going to put total like that and you Can see it just pulls the field right up It's so much more convenient and for Coupon let's go ahead and click here Let's expand again let's just type Coupon and now that I've entered in Coupon let's scroll down just a little Bit there it is check out discount Coupon name perfect this is all set and Now we actually get an opportunity to Test it so it's going to pull out the Last order and it's going to send that Into this Google sheet just so we know It's working so here's the Google sheet You can see there's no data in it so Let's go ahead and do that test I'll Click on Test action it's going to spin And it looks like it went through let's Go here and you can see it worked here's The order number here's the order amount The way that short Cart stores it is in Cents so to convert this to a dollar This is just 79.20 and there's just a Coupon that was used so now let's finish Setting up our Automation and do a live Test so I'm going to click here where it Says save and it said when an order is Created we're just going to pass the Data off into the spreadsheet now I have To click on the publish button here on The top right and I'm literally good to Go so when I go to workflows right here
You can see this is my automation it is Active and there's zero total runs That's how many times it's actually run So I'm going to go to that checkout form In an incognito window here I am and Here's where I can enter my coupon code So let's go ahead and put that in I'll Just paste it click on apply coupon and There is the discount so let's go ahead And fill this out and see if the data Went inside of the Google sheet and if It worked fine now with sure card Everything you see here is fully Customizable I do have a tutorial on how To create this Shopify like checkout Experience and sure cart doesn't cost Anything so you can do all this without Spending a penny to set up just a little Bit of time and it's so easy to set up So I've gone ahead and I have added my Information here hey let's actually make This two skateboards how about that so We have a greater discount here I'm Saving this and all of that and this is Because uh stripes in test mode so I'm Going to go ahead and click click right Here where it says complete purchase and We should see this order here from John Skater complete purchase and here you Can see that the order is complete so Now let's go take a look at Short Triggers So remember it had zero total runs I'm Gonna do a refresh and we're gonna see
That all this data gets pushed around in Real time and it says here total runs One and this happens 17 seconds ago oops That's not what I wanted to do and just So you know sure triggers has Rich History so you can click on the history Tab you can see what automation ran you Can see when it ran you can even click Into it to see exactly what happened What data came in right here what data Went out you can see all of it right Here just in case you're debugging and Checking things and the status of the Automation is right there you can see it Was a success so let's go ahead and Click right here on our Google sheet and You can see right here is the order Number it says test because I was in Test mode here is the amount and here is The coupon which we know came from mat So Matt would get his Commission of 30 Percent of the total amount there's Actually a whole lot more you can do With sure triggers so when you go into Apps you can connect it to your email Service so I have it connected to an Email service right here Amazon SES to Send emails so I can do that so if I Wanted to do some cooler things I could Add another action right here to send an Email and I can send emails to different Places I can filter data right here so If I only wanted mats referrals in that Sheet there's also a filter inside of
The action so when I click on this it Pulls that back up I can click right Here where it says condition and I can Say the condition is if the coupon is And that coupon name in that case only The referrals from Matt would go on that Google sheet there's actually one more Thing I probably should have added which Was the or order date that would have Been nice as well as a link to go back To the store for the order so there's Other things that you can do to enhance This as well so there you have it it's a Very lightweight referral tracking System with a coupon and I can tell you As someone that has been an affiliate For different products I want the people Selling the product to give me a Discount code that I can then take and Give to the audience so they can save a Bit of money and it's more reliable Tracking for sure so what you want to do Though if you're having an affiliate Program is you want to wait until the Refund period expires and then maybe Have some buffer time in there for any Chargebacks before you process and pay Commissions on these orders so A good Rule of thumb is usually 45 days past The refund period so if you have a 15-day refund period you're looking at 60 days that you would process payments And you don't want to process payments Daily you just want to process payments
Payments once a month uh at most twice a Month but once a month is perfectly fine To do and just you know you could do This with any of the e-commerce Platforms that sure triggers works with Just as easily to do that with Woocommerce it's just as easy to do that With shirt card or any of the e-commerce Tools that it fully integrates with see I bet you it was a lot easier than you Thought if you can give this video a Thumbs up right now that will tell me That you like this kind of content on This channel where I'm showing you to do How to do things that would normally Cost big bucks but with just a little Bit of time you can get a better Solution that will be more lightweight And many times often be free give the Video a thumbs up and share it around Thanks for watching this video and I'll See you in the next one
