How to Set Product-Specific Affiliate Commissions

Want to set product-specific affiliate commissions in WordPress?

Product-specific rates help you get the most out of your affiliate incentives, and they’re extremely easy to set up.

Let’s take a look at how to set product-specific affiliate commissions in WordPress.

Why Set Product-Specific Affiliate Commissions?

Affiliate commissions aren’t always as simple as setting a global rate and forgetting about it – they’re a work in progress, something you can constantly tweak.

Your commissions need to work for your affiliates (bloggers, influencers, SEO experts, and more), but they also need to work for you, the retailer. You’ve got to be able to make good margins, even after you’ve factored in the affiliate payouts.

This is where product-specific affiliate commissions are so useful.

Different product categories have different margins and sales figures, so they should have different affiliate commission rates.

For instance, you might have a product with a small margin that makes a lot of sales. The chances are you don’t want to offer a 30% commission on this product because it’s just not viable.

On the other hand, you might have a top-of-the-line product where you make a big margin but aren’t making many sales. This would be a perfect product to move away from the flat rate commission and offer a greater reward for top affiliates.

To do this, you need the ability to set higher and lower commission rates based on the type of product you’re selling, and this is where product-specific affiliate commissions come in.

We’re going to show you how to set product-specific affiliate commissions in WordPress, and even how to set product-specific commissions on a per-affiliate basis.

How to Set Product-Specific Affiliate Commissions

It couldn’t be easier to set product-specific affiliate commissions in WordPress, and we’re going to show you exactly how to do it.

Here are the steps we’re going to look at:

Install AffiliateWP
Set product-specific affiliate rates
Set product-specific affiliate rates for individual affiliates

Read on to find out how you can set different commissions for specific products in minutes.

Step 1: Install AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP: Best WordPress affiliate management plugin

AffiliateWP is the best affiliate software for WordPress.

It makes it incredibly simple to set up your own affiliate program (even for complete beginners) and manage your commission structure.

Simply go to the pricing page and choose the plan that best fits your needs.

Once you’ve installed the plugin (follow this handy tutorial if you need help), you can open the setup wizard from the Settings page and sync your products.

There’s no technical knowledge or coding skills needed, and the wizard will walk you through every step of the setup. The best part is you can sync your products, courses, and forms in just a single click, and your affiliate program will be ready to go in under 10 minutes.

You’ll be asked to set a global commission rate during this step, but don’t worry, we’re going to show you how to edit this on a per-product basis in the next step.

Step 2: Set Product-Specific Commission Rates

AffiliateWP offers one-click integrations with many of your favorite WordPress plugins (e-commerce, LMS, membership software, forms, and more), but for this example, we’re going to use WooCommerce. To find out how to set product-specific rates for your chosen integration, check out our handy documentation.

Setting product-specific affiliate commission rates couldn’t be easier in WooCommerce.

Simply click on Products in the left-hand sidebar of your WordPress dashboard, and choose the product you want to edit.

Once you’ve integrated AffiliateWP with WooCommerce you’ll see an AffiliateWP tab in the Product Data box. Click on the AffiliateWP tab and you’ll see options to:

Edit the affiliate rate type
Edit the affiliate rate
Disable referrals

Choose the rate type (percentage or flat rate) you’d like to use for this product and set your commission.

That’s it, you’ve now set up different commissions for all your products on an affiliate level. AffiliateWP will now work in the background to assign attribution to the correct affiliate and ensure they get paid the correct amount.

Step 3: Set Product-Specific Rates for Individual Affiliates

You can take product-specific affiliate commission rates a step further with AffiliateWP.

Rather than simply setting a commission rate for each product, you can also adjust them for individual affiliates using the Affiliate Product Rates addon.

Just go to AffiliateWP > Addons and use the toggle button to install and activate the Affiliate Product Rates addon.

Once you’ve activated the Affiliate Product Rates addon, navigate to your Affiliates page and click on the name of the affiliate whose commissions you want to adjust. Scroll down until you see the Product Rates box, and here you will be able to enter product-specific commission rates for that affiliate.

Start typing the product you want to edit into the Select Product box and select it from the dropdown list. You’ll then be able to set higher commission rates for individual affiliates based on the products they sell.

Note: Affiliate Product Rates is only compatible with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.

Now Unleash AffiliateWP’s Best Marketing Tools

Once you’ve got your product-specific affiliate commissions set up you want to make it as easy as possible for your affiliate partners to make referrals.

For AffiliateWP’s Professional plan customers, there are tons of innovative ways to do this. With these conversion-focused tools, you’re going to help turn visits into sales, keeping your affiliates and influencers happy and boosting your return on investment:

Vanity Coupon Codes: Enable affiliates to create their own branded coupon codes to stand out in digital marketing campaigns like social media and email marketing.
Personalized Affiliate Landing Pages: Create affiliate-specific landing pages to maximize social proof and create a more structured customer journey.
Affiliate Portal: Upgrades the affiliate dashboard to make it even easier to track performance and optimize affiliate marketing campaigns.
Recurring Referrals: Recurring Commission is another type of commission where affiliates get a payout every time a customer renews a subscription. This incentivizes affiliates to increase the customer lifetime value.

This functionality can make a significant difference to your conversion rate and help you grow your affiliate marketing strategy more quickly.

Quickly Set Up Product-Specific Affiliate Commission Rates

With AffiliateWP, you own your own program (rather than an affiliate network owning your data), so you have complete flexibility over your commission rates.

This helps you to attract new affiliates, and means you can afford to offer rewards that are much higher than the average affiliate commission rates.

It’s extremely easy to set product-specific affiliate commission rates and even do it on a per-affiliate basis, but there’s even more you can do to inspire your affiliates:

Now there’s only one thing left to do.

Get AffiliateWP today!