How to Start an Affiliate Program for Your Business in 2025
When it comes to launching and managing an affiliate program, having the right tools makes all the difference. At Partnero, we’ve built a platform designed to help businesses easily create, track, and scale their affiliate and referral programs. But rather than just tell you what Partnero can do—we’ll show you.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the key features of Partnero using our own affiliate program as a real-life example. From onboarding affiliates and setting up commissions to tracking performance and optimizing payouts, you’ll see how Partnero works in action—and how you can use it to grow your own partner network.
Designing Our Commission Structure: A Strategic Approach
When setting up our affiliate program, we started where most should—with a competitor analysis. We looked closely at what others in our space were offering and aimed to match or exceed it in ways that would attract, motivate, and retain top-performing partners.
Our base commission is 30% recurring for 24 months, which is on par with—or in many cases more generous than—what comparable platforms offer. We wanted this to be both competitive and sustainable for long-term affiliate relationships.
To help partners get early wins and stay motivated, we introduced a 50% commission on the first sale. This provides new affiliates with a strong incentive to take immediate action after signing up, thereby boosting both engagement and initial conversions.
For our most loyal and high-performing partners, we offer an elevated 50% commission for those who refer 50+ clients. It’s our way of rewarding consistency and commitment, while also encouraging affiliates to push further once they’re gaining momentum.
Both of these can be set up using our Advanced commissions feature, which allows you to create rules for Dynamic rewards.
Lastly, we implemented multi-level rewards, allowing partners to earn 10% from affiliates they bring into the program. This creates a natural incentive for growth through network effects, empowering our most enthusiastic partners to help scale the program itself. Here’s how to set it up for your program.
Further reading:
→ How to Attract and Motivate Partners with Competitive Commission Rates
Partner Portal & Resources: Empowering Our Affiliates
A seamless partner experience was a top priority when setting up our affiliate program—because when affiliates have the right tools, they’re far more likely to succeed.
With Partnero’s white-label capabilities, we designed a fully branded partner portal using our own colors, logo, and fonts. The live designer makes it easy to tweak design, copy, and settings on the public pages, with real-time updates shown instantly in the editing modal.
The partner portal is placed under our domain to ensure a consistent experience from the moment partners sign up, reinforcing trust and professionalism.
→ Design & customize a white-label partner portal
→ Connect a partner portal domain
To reduce friction and boost sign-up rates, we enabled Google social login to simplify the onboarding process. We also collect marketing permissions to ensure we can keep our affiliates in the loop with helpful updates, newsletters, and campaign announcements.
→ Enable Google Social login
→ Collect marketing permissions
Inside the portal, the dashboard serves as a central hub—but we took it a step further using Partnero’s dashboard customization feature. We tailored it to prominently display our full commission structure and the benefits available at each tier. This keeps partners continuously reminded of the rewards they can unlock and what’s possible as they grow their referral activity. Of course, affiliates can also easily access their referral link and track their progress and performance in real time.
→ Customize the partner portal dashboard
We also made full use of Partnero’s Resource page builder to equip our partners with everything they need to promote us effectively. The resource library includes:
Logos & symbols
Product images
Product descriptions
Brand colors
Helpful resources
Comparison articles
Links to key feature descriptions
To further support their marketing efforts, we allow affiliates to generate additional branded referral links, making it easy to share and track content shared across different channels.
By providing both the tools and the creative assets, we ensure that our affiliates can focus on what matters most: driving high-quality referrals.
Further reading:
→ Affiliate Marketing Assets: The Ultimate Guide for Growing Your Program
Bringing Partners Onboard: Tools That Simplify the Process
Our goal is to get new partners up to speed quickly and effectively. That’s why we’ve created a streamlined onboarding flow that ensures every new partner understands the program, sees the value, and knows exactly how to get started.
We use Partnero’s Signup Popup Forms to collect affiliate signups directly from our website, making it easy for interested visitors to join our program without unnecessary friction.
→ Create partner registration popups
Once someone signs up, they’re immediately sent a welcome email via our email service provider. The message guides them through the use of the partner portal, highlights our commission structure, outlines the key benefits, and includes links to helpful resources and articles. We also offer assistance, encouraging new partners to reach out with questions so they feel supported from the start.
For teams that want to streamline onboarding even further, Partnero offers onboarding cards—customizable in-portal cards that guide new affiliates through the essential steps.
Another valuable feature is partner approval, which gives program owners more control over who joins. You can build a custom application questionnaire to screen applicants and ensure a good fit for your brand.
By combining thoughtful onboarding with smart recruitment tools, we make sure our partners feel confident and equipped from day one.
Further reading:
→ Partner Onboarding 101: Onboarding with Confidence
Promoting the Program: Driving Visibility and Signups
Once your affiliate program is live, promotion is crucial for attracting high-quality partners. We’ve taken a multi-channel approach to ensure our program is easy to discover and simple to join.
On our website, we have a dedicated page promoting our affiliate program, which is accessible directly from the footer, giving it consistent visibility across all pages.
For a more targeted experience, we also built a dedicated program landing page using Partnero’s Program Page feature. This stand-alone white-labeled page provides all the essential information about our program, featuring clear calls to action and a streamlined signup flow that makes it easy to share and simple for prospective partners to get started.
Beyond our website, we promote the program through social media, email newsletters, and other owned channels to regularly drive awareness and new signups.
Additionally, our program is listed on PartneroList, a directory of affiliate programs. This provides us with exposure to a broader network of potential affiliates who are actively seeking programs to join.
→ Publish your program on PartneroList
By combining visibility across multiple touchpoints with a clear and compelling landing page, we continuously attract new, high-quality partners to our program.
Affiliate Payouts: Simple, Efficient, and Flexible
Paying affiliates should be seamless—not a time-consuming manual process. With Partnero, we’ve set up an efficient payout system that saves time and ensures reliability.
For our own program, we process payouts through PayPal Mass Pay, which integrates directly with Partnero. We connected our PayPal account and configured a custom payout schedule, enabling us to process multiple payments simultaneously on our preferred timeline. It’s quick, automated, and hassle-free.
→ Integrate PayPal Mass Pay
→ Payout automation
While we currently use PayPal, Partnero also supports wire transfers and cryptocurrency payouts, providing our clients with flexibility to choose the method that best suits their workflow and partner preferences. Alternatively, we offer our clients Intermediary payouts, where Partnero handles partner payments directly, consolidating all affiliate payouts into a single invoice and charge to the client’s company.
By streamlining the payout process, we’re able to keep our affiliates happy and focus more time on growing the program—not managing transactions.
Ready to Build Your Own Program?
Everything we’ve shared in this article—from setting up a flexible commission structure to customizing the partner portal, streamlining onboarding, promoting the program, and simplifying payouts—is powered entirely by Partnero. It’s built for automation, ease of use, and scalability, so you can launch and grow your own affiliate or partner program without the overhead.
And that’s just the beginning. Partnero includes many more features designed to help you manage and optimize every stage of your partnership journey.
Explore what you can do with Partnero: sign up for freeand get started today.