How to Set Up Lifetime Affiliate Commissions in WordPress

An affiliate sends you a new customer, the first order goes well, and that customer comes back next month for more. In a standard affiliate program, the affiliate is paid once, for that first order, and every reorder after it is yours alone.

Lifetime commissions pay the affiliate on those later orders too. In AffiliateWP, the Lifetime Commissions addon links each referred customer to the affiliate who sent them, so their future purchases earn that affiliate a commission, at a lower lifetime rate if you choose, for as long as you decide. It’s part of the Pro plan.

That gives affiliates a reason to send you customers who stay, not just customers who buy once. In this post, I’ll show you how lifetime commissions work, walk through a “40% on the first order, 20% after” example with real numbers, set it all up step by step, and help you decide whether it suits your store.

How lifetime affiliate commissions work

Here’s the mechanism in one paragraph. When an affiliate earns a referral on a customer’s order, AffiliateWP links that customer to the affiliate by their email address. From then on, any order placed with that email is credited to the same affiliate, even when the customer arrives with no affiliate link and no coupon.

A customer can be linked to an affiliate in four ways:

• A referred order: they buy after clicking the affiliate’s referral link.
• An affiliate coupon: they use a coupon assigned to the affiliate at checkout, with or without a link.
• Registration: with Link Customers To Affiliates On User Registration checked, a visitor who arrives through an affiliate’s link and creates an account is linked before they buy anything.
• By hand: you add a customer’s email to an affiliate yourself, for example after an offline sale.

Each customer belongs to one affiliate, and the first link sticks. If that customer later clicks a different affiliate’s link, the order still goes to the affiliate they’re linked to. The one exception is an affiliate coupon: when a customer uses another affiliate’s coupon, that order is credited to the coupon’s affiliate.

Now that you know how a customer gets linked, let’s put real numbers on what it’s worth.

A worked example: 40% on the first order, 20% after

A common way to set this up is a generous rate to win the customer and a smaller one to keep the affiliate interested. Picture Alf’s Flowers and Gifts, a flower and gift shop that pays affiliates 40% of a first order, then a lifetime referral rate of 20% on every order after it, for a year.

Here’s what happens when one referred customer places four orders over five months:

Order	How the customer arrived	Order total	Rate	Affiliate earns
1. Luxury Rose Hamper	The affiliate’s referral link	$120.00	40%	$48.00
2. Garden Rose Bouquet	Came back on their own	$85.00	20% (lifetime)	$17.00
3. Sunflower Sunshine Bouquet	Came back on their own	$64.50	20% (lifetime)	$12.90
4. Orchid and Chocolate Gift Set	Came back on their own	$96.00	20% (lifetime)	$19.20
Total		$365.50		$97.10

Without lifetime commissions, that affiliate would have earned $48.00. With them, they earn $97.10 from the same customer.

From your side of the ledger, you paid $97.10 on $365.50 of sales, an overall rate of about 26.6%. That’s the number I’d look at before choosing your rates, because it’s what lifetime commissions really cost you per customer. In this example, commission is worked out on the order total with shipping and tax left out, which is what the Exclude Shipping and Exclude Tax settings do.

What you need

Before you start, it helps to check two things:

• An AffiliateWP plan that includes the addon: Lifetime Commissions comes with AffiliateWP Pro and with the Growth Bundle, which includes AffiliateWP Pro. It isn’t part of the Personal or Plus plans.
• A supported store or membership plugin: WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, Restrict Content Pro, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms or PayPal Buttons, enabled at AffiliateWP » Settings » Integrations. Referrals from other integrations aren’t credited as lifetime orders.

How to set up lifetime commissions in AffiliateWP

There are six steps, and steps 2 to 4 all happen on one settings screen, so most of the work is choosing your numbers.

Step 1: Install the Lifetime Commissions addon

Lifetime commissions live in an addon, so that’s where we’ll start. Head over to AffiliateWP » Addons and find Lifetime Commissions in the list.

Click Install Addon, then Activate. It moves to the Activated Addons section, and a Lifetime Commissions tab appears at AffiliateWP » Settings.

Now that the addon is active, let’s decide which affiliates can earn lifetime commissions.

Step 2: Turn on lifetime commissions for your affiliates

You can offer lifetime commissions to everyone, or only to the affiliates you pick. Go to AffiliateWP » Settings » Lifetime Commissions and look at the first row, Enable For All Affiliates?

• Checked: every affiliate earns lifetime commissions on the customers they refer.
• Unchecked: only the affiliates you choose earn them. You’ll turn it on for each one in step 5.

If you’re new to lifetime commissions, I’d start with a handful of your best affiliates and see what it costs before opening it to everyone. Next, we’ll set the rate those later orders pay.

Step 3: Set a lifetime referral rate

By default, a customer’s later orders pay the affiliate their normal rate. To pay a different rate on those orders, as in the 40% and 20% example, check Enable Lifetime Referral Rates on the same screen.

Then enter the rate in Lifetime Referral Rate (20 in our example) and choose a percentage or a flat amount in Lifetime Referral Rate Type. The first order still pays the affiliate’s usual rate, which comes from Referral Rate at AffiliateWP » Settings » Commissions, or from the affiliate’s own rate if they have one.

Good to know: on WooCommerce, the lifetime referral rate also replaces any product-specific rate on later orders. A product that normally pays a flat $10 pays 20% of its price once the order is a lifetime order.

Step 4: Choose how long “lifetime” lasts

“Lifetime” doesn’t have to mean forever. The Lifetime Length field sets the number of days a linked customer keeps earning their affiliate commission. Leave it at 0 for no end date, or enter a number such as 365 for one year.

The days are counted from when AffiliateWP first recorded the customer, which is usually their first referred order. Once the length runs out, their orders are no longer credited automatically. When you’re happy with the settings, click Save Changes.

With the defaults in place, let’s look at the affiliates who should get something different.

Step 5: Give individual affiliates their own terms

Your best partners may deserve a better deal, such as a higher lifetime rate or a longer window. Go to AffiliateWP » Affiliates, click the affiliate’s name to open Edit Affiliate, then scroll down to the Lifetime Commissions section near the bottom.

Here’s what you can set for that one affiliate:

• Enable Lifetime Commissions: shown only when Enable For All Affiliates is unchecked. Check it to include this affiliate.
• Lifetime Referral Rate and Lifetime Referral Rate Type: shown when lifetime referral rates are enabled. They take priority over the rate on the settings screen.
• Lifetime Length: this affiliate’s own number of days, which takes priority over the default.
• Lifetime Customers: every customer linked to this affiliate, each with an Unlink option.
• Add New Customer Email: type a customer’s email and click Add Email to link them by hand. A customer who is already linked to another affiliate can’t be added.

Click Update Affiliate to save. Now let’s look at what your affiliates see.

Step 6: Let affiliates see their lifetime customers

Lifetime commissions motivate affiliates most when they can see them. Back at AffiliateWP » Settings » Lifetime Commissions, check Lifetime Customers Access to give every affiliate a Lifetime Customers tab in their Affiliate Area. To give it to selected affiliates only, leave it unchecked and use the matching row on each affiliate’s edit screen.

The tab lists each linked customer’s first name, last name and email. If you’d rather affiliates didn’t see customer email addresses, for privacy reasons or to meet GDPR, check Lifetime Customers Hide Emails and the email column disappears.

Affiliates also see which of their referrals came from a lifetime customer. Their Referrals tab gains a Lifetime Referral column with a check mark on each one, and their Statistics tab shows a count of their lifetime customers.

On your side, at AffiliateWP » Referrals, a small link icon sits next to the ID of each lifetime referral, so you can see how much of an affiliate’s income is repeat business.

When lifetime commissions aren’t the right fit

Lifetime commissions work best when customers reorder because of what the affiliate showed them. Here’s where it stops being a good deal:

• Customers who’d come back anyway. If most repeat orders come from your own email list or a product people simply run out of, you’ll pay commission on sales the affiliate didn’t influence. A lower lifetime rate or a shorter Lifetime Length keeps that cost in check.
• Programs where several affiliates reach the same people. The first affiliate keeps the customer, so a reviewer or creator who reaches them later won’t be credited for those orders through their link. If your affiliates often overlap, that can feel unfair to the ones who arrive second.
• Subscriptions and memberships. If what you sell renews automatically, Recurring Referrals is built for paying commission on each renewal, and our guide to affiliate programs for subscription products covers it.
• Stores on other platforms. Lifetime Commissions only credits orders from the integrations listed in “What you need” above.

None of these rule it out, but they’re the cases where I’d start with a modest lifetime rate and a fixed length, and raise them once you’ve seen the numbers.

Frequently asked questions

Does the first order pay the lifetime rate?

No. The order that links a customer pays the affiliate’s normal rate, and the lifetime rate starts with the next one. The exception is a customer linked at registration: because they’re linked before they buy, their first order is already a lifetime order and pays the lifetime rate.

What happens when the Lifetime Length runs out?

The customer’s orders stop being credited to the affiliate automatically. If the customer comes back through an affiliate’s link or uses an affiliate coupon, that order earns a normal referral, just as it would for any other customer.

Can I move a customer to a different affiliate?

Yes. Click Unlink next to the customer on the current affiliate’s edit screen, then add their email to the new affiliate with Add Email. For a customer with a WordPress account, you can change the Linked Affiliate field on their user profile instead.

Is Lifetime Commissions included in my plan?

It’s included in AffiliateWP Pro and in the Growth Bundle, which comes with AffiliateWP Pro. Personal and Plus don’t include it. Install it from AffiliateWP » Addons so it updates with your license.

Next, decide what your affiliates earn on the first order

Now that later orders are taken care of, the rate that matters most is the one that wins the customer in the first place. Our guide to what commission to pay affiliates walks through typical rates and how to choose yours.

And if some affiliates should earn more than others from the start, see how to set different commission rates for affiliates, or the Lifetime Commissions documentation for every setting in detail.