How to Start an Affiliate Program for Your SaaS

An affiliate program is a commission arrangement in which outside promoters send buyers to a product and earn a share of each payment. How to start an affiliate program for a subscription product comes down to 8 steps.

First, set the commission you can afford. Second, choose tracking that reads your billing system. Third, write the terms. Fourth, set up payouts and tax forms. Fifth, build a sign-up page and starter kit.

Sixth, recruit your first affiliates by hand. Seventh, onboard them in week 1. Finally, test a full purchase before anyone promotes you. Commission comes first because margin limits every later choice.

According to the benchmark tables TrackRev compiled from public Impact, PartnerStack and Awin research, the median B2B SaaS program pays 20% for 12 months.

Published entry plans run $29 to $69 a month, and the larger costs are commission and your own recruiting time.

Is your product ready for an affiliate program?

A SaaS product is ready for an affiliate program when 3 conditions hold. First, customers pay on a recurring plan, so one referral earns revenue for months.

Second, checkout is self-serve, so a click can become a charge without a sales call. For a sales-led product, name the CRM event that counts as the conversion. Third, gross margin absorbs a 15% to 30% commission for 12 months.

A $49 plan at an 80% gross margin leaves $39.20 of gross profit a month, so a 20% commission costs $9.80 of the total.

Beyond the 3 conditions, you should be able to name 20 people who write or talk about your category, starting with customers. If you cannot, start with a customer referral program and add outside affiliates later.

How do you start an affiliate program, step by step?

Step 1: What commission can you afford?

The right commission is the highest rate your gross margin can carry for the term affiliates expect.

In our benchmark data, 39% of programs pay recurring commission for a fixed term of 3 to 12 months and 18% pay for life, against 33% paying once at the sale.

A one-time bounty on a monthly plan loses to a rival's recurring percentage. Take a $49 monthly plan with an 80% gross margin, which leaves $39.20 of gross profit a month.

The one-time row pays an eighth of the 20% recurring row ($14.70 against $117.60), so affiliates comparing programs pick the recurring one. Recurring commission stops when the customer cancels, so a customer leaving after 4 months costs $39.20 at 20%.

For a starting rate, the benchmark tables put the median B2B SaaS program at 20% for 12 months and B2C SaaS at 15% for 6 months, and commission benchmarks by category go further. Then test the rate against acquisition cost.

If a paid customer costs $300, a $117.60 commission is 39% of the figure, and the payment arrives only after the customer pays.

Step 2: Which tracking reads your billing system?

Affiliate tracking is the software layer connecting a click to a charge, so put 4 questions to every tool.

• Does the conversion come from billing events (paid invoice, renewal, refund) or from a thank-you-page pixel missing month-2 renewals?
• Which attribution window does the tool allow? In our benchmark data, 28% of programs use 30 days or less, 41% use 60 and 24% use 90.
• Is the referral cookie written by JavaScript or by your server? WebKit says Intelligent Tracking Prevention deletes script-created cookies after 7 days of no user interaction, so a 60-day window set by script can shrink to 7 days for Safari visitors who do not return.
• Can the tool track coupon codes, flag self-referral and reverse commission on refunds and disputes?

Which entry plans cap affiliate revenue?

Entry plans cap different things, so compare limits as well as prices.

On Stripe, tools tie a visit to a purchase through a value passed at Stripe Checkout, such as the Checkout Session's client_reference_id or metadata (how affiliate tracking works shows where the link breaks).

Rewardful Starter caps affiliate-attributed revenue at $7,500 a month and FirstPromoter Starter at $5,000 a month. Tolt Basic allows $10,000 a month earned from affiliates, with manual payouts only.

For example, a program tracking $12,000 a month of affiliate revenue would exceed the Rewardful Starter cap and need Growth at $99 a month. TrackRev has no cap on affiliate revenue or commission tracked on either plan.

Tolt charges a 2% processing fee on automatic payouts on its Growth plan and above.

Step 3: Which terms should the program write down?

Program terms are the one-page rules that settle every disputed payout, so write them before recruiting. One page should settle 5 points.

• The rate and term (20% for 12 months, say), and whether upgrades and downgrades change either.
• The attribution window, and which touch earns credit when two affiliates share a customer.
• A hold period before commission becomes payable, matched to your refund policy: a 30-day refund window means a 30-day hold. Refunded or disputed charges reverse the commission.
• Banned tactics: bidding on your brand name in Google Ads, buying through your own link, spam, and coupon or deal-site placement if you do not want it.
• A disclosure rule. The Federal Trade Commission wants a disclosure hard to miss and placed with the endorsement itself, so one buried in a profile or behind a "click more" link falls short.

Have a lawyer read the finished page once, and see FTC, GDPR and consent rules for affiliates.

Step 4: How should payouts and tax work?

A payout setup is a schedule, a minimum and a method, picked before the first sale. Monthly payouts after the hold period are a sensible default, and a $50 minimum means you never send a $4 payment.

PayPal and Wise both accept bulk payment files, and Wise takes up to 1,000 payments in one batch, so a monthly run can be one upload. Collect tax forms first.

US affiliates send a Form W-9, and non-US individuals send a Form W-8BEN. For tax years beginning after 2025, the IRS instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC set the minimum reporting threshold at $2,000, with inflation adjustments possible from 2027.

Form 1099-NEC is due to the IRS on January 31. Ask your accountant how your commissions are classified. Paying affiliates lays out methods and forms.

Step 5: What goes on the sign-up page and in the starter kit?

The sign-up page is the single page answering what an affiliate earns, how tracking works and when payment arrives.

Put a worked example near the top (a $49 plan pays $9.80 a month for 12 months), then the cookie window, payout schedule, $50 minimum and approval rule.

Keep the application to 3 fields: audience URL, audience description and promotion plan. Approve the first cohort by hand. Assemble the starter kit before the first affiliate arrives, so the day-3 email has something to attach.

The kit needs the tracking link, a product description to paste as written, one customer result with real numbers, the terms in plain English, 3 post angles with drafts (a comparison, say), and an email address reaching a real person.

Step 6: Who should you recruit first?

The first recruits are the affiliates you pick by hand, because open applications tend to fill a roster with people who never produce a sale.

In our benchmark data, the top 10% of affiliates in a median program bring in 71% of affiliate revenue and the top 1% bring in 34%, so each hand-picked recruit matters more than the headcount. 3 sources produce good candidates.

• Customers who already write, post or speak about your category, since a personal note to them is a warm ask.
• Creators whose audience matches your buyer. A 3,000-subscriber newsletter read by your exact buyer can outsell a 100,000-follower generalist feed.
• Adjacent tools whose users hit your problem next, such as a billing tool and an analytics tool.

How do you screen candidates and send the first email?

A short screen saves hours of outreach. Check each candidate against 5 signals before you write.

1Subject: Idea for [newsletter name] readers2 3Hi [first name],4 5Your issue on [specific recent piece] made me think of your readers who6[what they are trying to do]. That is who we built [product] for.7 8We pay [rate]% recurring for [N] months on every plan, tracked on your9own link. Want me to send the details and a test account?10 11[Your name]12[Role], [product]

Write the email as a note to one person in under 100 words: a specific piece the person published, who in the audience the product fits, the offer with a number, and one easy question.

Backlinko's analysis of 12 million outreach emails found an 8.5% average response rate and a 32.7% better rate for personalized message bodies.

The study was last updated in April 2019 and measures link-building and guest-post pitches sent through Pitchbox, so treat the numbers as a starting guess.

If half of the people who reply join, 10 new affiliates takes about 235 emails at 8.5%. The same study found one follow-up produced 65.8% more replies.

Send one on day 4 and one on day 8, each with a new reason to reply.

Step 7: How do you onboard affiliates in the first week?

First-week onboarding is a 5-message sequence sent between approval and day 7. The benchmark median is 18% of new affiliates reaching a paid conversion within 30 days.

Top-quartile programs reach 31% and typically run a welcome sequence, ready-made creative and a first-week check-in, while programs approving people and never contacting them again sit near 6%.

Median time to a first commission is 14 days overall, 5 days for top-quartile affiliates, 9 for the second quartile and 27 for the third. The day-7 check-in therefore lands before most first sales and shows who is stuck.

For example, a three-sentence note from a real person asking whether the link is live usually surfaces the blocker in one reply.

Step 8: How do you test a purchase and launch a pilot?

A launch test is a full purchase made through a test affiliate before anyone promotes you.

Create the test affiliate, buy through its link in Safari and in Chrome, and confirm the click is recorded, the commission shows as pending at the right amount, and refunding the charge removes it.

Then buy through your own account's link to check that self-referral is flagged. Launch to the first cohort only and keep applications closed for 60 days.

The benchmark dataset puts an affiliate's lifetime chance of a first conversion at 3.7% once day 60 passes without one, so day 60 is the review point.

Check 30-day activation, days to first commission and how much revenue your top 5 affiliates drive. Past the pilot, scaling an affiliate program to $50K MRR covers the next stage.

What does it cost to create an affiliate program?

The cost of an affiliate program is software plus commission plus your own time.

Software is the fixed fee, $29 to $69 a month at entry level, and Rewardful and FirstPromoter both list $490 a year for their $49 plans and $990 for their $99 plans (12 months for the price of 10).

Commission scales with sales and comes out of revenue you would not otherwise have. Your own time costs something too, because recruiting is outbound sales and much of month 1 goes to writing emails.

The worked example below shows how the 3 add up for 40 referred customers.

What does TrackRev handle in an affiliate program?

TrackRev is SaaS affiliate software for indie hackers and small SaaS teams, with link tracking and revenue attribution built in. We built TrackRev so its Affiliate Program handles steps 2 and 4, with step 3's settings kept per program.

Partners get a portal on your domain. Commissions can be recurring, one-time or tiered, and a refunded or disputed charge takes its commission back out.

Each program sets its own hold period, from 0 to 180 days after a payout period closes (the default is 0, so set the value to match your refund window).

Payout periods can be weekly, every two weeks, monthly or quarterly. W-9 and W-8 upload is part of partner onboarding, and you pay from one PayPal or Wise CSV export, then mark each payout paid.

Revenue syncs from Stripe, Paddle Billing, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Creem and Dodo Payments.

Which TrackRev plan fits a new program?

The free plan covers testing link tracking, with 50 links, 1,000 tracked events a month and revenue figures hidden. The affiliate program is part of every paid plan. Indie is $29 a month for 1 workspace and 1 tracked domain.

Growth is $299 a year for up to 10 workspaces, up to 10 domains and unlimited team members. Neither plan caps affiliate revenue or commission tracked, and TrackRev takes 0% of it (see pricing).

TrackRev does not find affiliates for you, and PartnerStack runs a marketplace of existing partners, priced by demo. Pick PartnerStack instead when you want an existing partner network rather than recruiting by hand.