WooCommerce for Affiliate Products

The shift from traditional to digital sales created many new methods and strategies for selling products and services. One of the most popular, since it offers benefits to both the customer and the seller, is what is known as Affiliate Marketing.

In this article, we will explore what affiliate marketing is, how you can implement it in your online business, and what benefits it offers. We will also see how to easily implement an affiliate marketing program in an online store built using WordPress and WooCommerce.

Let’s get started.

What Is Affiliate Marketing, and Why Is It Essential for Products on WooCommerce?

Affiliate marketing is a specific way of promoting and selling products. Customers become affiliate partners and receive benefits based on the number of sales they generate.

Many online businesses, such as Amazon, use this technique and benefit greatly from affiliate sales.

On these sites, any user can register as a new affiliate and get their own custom affiliate dashboard where they can check their statistics and access a link generator with custom code. There, the affiliate can generate referral links by entering any page from the online store (usually specific product pages) and a URL containing that user’s cookies will be generated. Any purchase made by a user who gets to the site through that link will then be assigned to the affiliate.

The admin can choose to reward affiliates with either a fixed amount for each sale or, the most common and convenient option, a percentage based on the value of the cart total.

As you can see, this tool is useful for both the store owner and the affiliate.

For store owners, the benefits translate into:

• Low-cost promotion.
• No investment in promotion since you only pay for the actual sales obtained.
• A very broad range of promotion, since there are real websites that are based entirely on promoting affiliate products.

For the affiliate, it means having the opportunity to earn a profit (sometimes even a considerable one) without having to deal with anything related to product management. They won’t need to have a warehouse, ship products, or deal with customers after the sale.

Next, we will explore how to use WooCommerce for affiliate products and we will cover the two main ways to use affiliates on your eCommerce site: by selling external products from another website or creating your own affiliate program to have users promote your products.

Selling External Products: Adding Them to Your WooCommerce Store

The easiest way to take advantage of affiliate marketing is to become an affiliate yourself. An affiliate is a person who sells products from another website.

So, how do you do that? There are direct methods, but they are not particularly effective. For example, you could recommend a product directly to someone or take advantage of social networks.

While this may help you make some sales, this approach generally has obvious limitations.

What can you do then? You can use a WooCommerce feature to promote affiliate links as if they were products sold directly by you.

When creating a product on a WooCommerce site, you can choose from various types in the “Product data” section; in this case, you will need to select “External Product/Affiliate” :

If you select this option, certain sections and fields will disappear (such as the “Shipping” section), and others will appear:

As you can see, creating an external product is very simple. You will need to provide a featured image, title, and description, just as you would for any product you are selling. The only significant difference lies in the two new fields added to the creation page:

• Product URL – Here, you must enter the link to the original product sales page. Make sure this URL contains your affiliate code; otherwise, you will not be recognized for the sale.
• Button text – Where you can decide what the button will say. Instead of “Buy,” you could enter “Take me to the site to buy” or something similar. You can strike a balance between encouraging clicks without misleading customers into believing that the sale will take place on your site.

There are numerous advantages to this type of sale: no inventory management and the ability to diversify your offerings and reach different markets, all in one place.

Additionally, we recommend integrating a blog to offer quality articles and recommend products and services in response to your visitors’ needs.

While this solution is ideal for those who don’t have an actual business, let’s look at how you can leverage affiliate marketing to benefit your own eCommerce store.

Affiliate Products with WooCommerce: The Benefits

If you already have an online store, you may be wondering whether it’s worth it to invest in setting up an affiliate program. Here are some benefits that might help you make up your mind:

• Cheaper marketing – As mentioned before, the affiliate program only pays promoters if a sale is made. Although this reduces your profit margin, it saves you from making blind investments without knowing their profitability.
• Greater reach – Having multiple affiliates results in a more widespread and diverse promotion. They can reach Facebook groups, Telegram chats, and daily conversations.
• Principle of social proof – Gaining the trust of potential customers is difficult because your words and promises of quality are often perceived as coercion. Having affiliate partners dedicated to promoting your products makes it easier to convince more customers.
• More sales – It may seem obvious, but all of this translates into more sales, customer retention, lower promotion costs, and less management effort if you create an automated affiliate program.

The Essential Plugin: Key Features for Your eCommerce Site

By default, WooCommerce doesn’t offer the functionality to run an affiliate program. While you could manage one manually (assigning unique discount codes to each affiliate) this approach is time-consuming and prone to error.

That’s why we recommend installing a plugin specifically designed to add affiliate capabilities to your eCommerce store.

There are numerous WordPress plugins available (both free and premium), so it’s important to choose one that suits your needs. Here are key features to look for:

• Ease of use: A user-friendly interface is crucial. Not only during setup, but also for your affiliate partners. Many WordPress users lack advanced technical skills, so a simple affiliate dashboard and link generator can help you scale quickly and attract more affiliates.
• Flexible commissions: Fixed-percentage payouts are popular for their simplicity, but the best affiliate plugins let you tailor commission rates by product category or user role (similar to Amazon’s dynamic commission model). This customization can help incentivize affiliate performance.

• Accurate tracking: To ensure affiliate satisfaction, the tool must work flawlessly. A good plugin should be accurate and transparent, showing clicks, sales, and various reports.
• Affiliate management: management and approval should be fast and automated so that it doesn’t take additional work from you.
• Simplified payments: The plugin should allow you to create automated processes and payment thresholds based on your preferences.

As we mentioned earlier, there are many types of plugins. The one that meets all the requirements listed above is YITH WooCommerce Affiliates. Next, we will see how to create an affiliate program in just a few clicks using this plugin.

Get Started Today! Set Up Your Affiliate Program

Once you install the YITH WooCommerce Affiliates plugin, you’ll see how simple it is to configure. Let’s look at a few examples.

First, the control panel provides an immediate overview of your affiliate program, including total commissions, commissions paid and refunded, number of sales, and total conversions.

The left-side menu contains numerous settings that allow you to customize the plugin’s functionality. You have the Commissions section:

There, you can see all commissions generated for your affiliates. By clicking on General Options, you can create rules regarding products and/or users.

As you can see above, you can exclude certain products from affiliate commissions. You can also do the same for specific users and user roles:

In addition to excluding products and users, you can create custom commission rules with different percentages based on products or product categories. Priority allows you to decide what type of percentage has priority over others that might apply.

As you can see, managing the plugin is really easy, and you can have your affiliate program up and running in minutes.

Your Next Step to Success with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective and sustainable strategies for growing a WooCommerce-based online business.

It helps expand your product visibility without the need for upfront advertising investments, which can often be out of reach for new sellers. Plus, it lets you build a network of enthusiastic promoters who can reach audiences that traditional advertising may miss. This creates a virtuous cycle: the more affiliates promote your products, the more your sales and online reputation grow. In turn, more potential affiliates can reach you.

With WooCommerce’s flexibility and tools like YITH WooCommerce Affiliates, you can easily start and manage an affiliate program tailored to your online business. Whether you want to reward your most loyal customers, collaborate with bloggers and influencers, or create a team of digital marketers, you now have all the necessary tools.

What are you waiting for? Start building your affiliate network today!