Create a Program in Siren

Prefer AI-guided setup? Beacon is our free AI assistant that can design and generate a complete program configuration for you. Just describe what you want and it’ll create a recipe you can install with one click. Connect Beacon to get started.

Just want the fastest path? The quick start guide installs a recipe in about ten minutes and skips most of the configuration walkthrough below.

What is a program?

A program is the rule set that defines how collaborators earn rewards. It controls which actions get tracked, how commissions are calculated, and which parts of a transaction count toward the payout. Every incentive you run in Siren starts here.

To create one, hover over Siren in the WordPress sidebar, click Programs, then click “Add Program” and choose “Start from scratch”. The same screen offers “Browse ready-made recipes”, which starts you from a recipe instead, as Working with Recipes describes.

On Siren Cloud, go to Create > Programs, click “Add Program”, and choose “Start from scratch”. The form holds the settings this guide walks through. Siren Cloud differs in three places: the currency you pick, the “Where does it run?” card, and how you enroll collaborators. Each one has a Siren Cloud note below. Run Your First Program on Siren Cloud shows where this step fits in the whole setup.

Basic settings

Give your program a name and optional description. A handy convention is including the commission rate in the name (like “Affiliate Program 15%”) so you can tell programs apart at a glance.

Set the status to Active and pick your payout currency. On Siren Essentials and up, a custom currency pays in store credit, and Pay in Store Credit and Custom Currencies explains how to pick its exchange rate. A percentage program holds each reward for review when a sale is in a currency the program doesn’t pay in. If you’ve already created a program group, assign this program to it. If not, leave it as “No Group” and revisit after reading about program groups.

On Siren Cloud, pick the currency your Shopify shop or Stripe account charges in. Sales arrive in the store’s currency and Siren Cloud doesn’t convert them, so a percentage program in another currency holds every reward from that store for you to review.

Expiration time

The expiration time (in days) is how long a collaborator’s engagement stays valid. If the customer doesn’t convert inside the window, the collaborator won’t get credit.

Thirty days is a reasonable starting point for a standard affiliate program. A shorter window like seven days creates a conversion-focused incentive. You can run two programs together: a high-commission short-window program for conversions and a lower-commission long-window program for lead generation.

On Siren Cloud, the “Where does it run?” card comes next. A new program runs on every Property, including Properties you add later. To limit it, choose “Runs on the properties you choose” and click “Add properties”. Visits and sales on any other Property don’t count toward the program.

Program structure

The program structure decides which collaborator wins when a conversion happens. Siren offers six on Siren Essentials and up and on Siren Cloud. The free Lite plugin offers the first two.

• Newest engagement wins rewards the most recent engagement. This is the “last click wins” model most affiliate programs use, and it’s the right default if you’re unsure. It also handles coupon codes naturally.
• Oldest engagement wins does the opposite and rewards whoever first brought the customer in.
• Shared engagement pool splits the commission evenly among every collaborator who engaged the customer.
• Performance weighted pool splits by points rather than equal shares, rewarding sustained effort.
• Top score wins pays the full commission to whoever accumulated the most points.
• Every engagement wins pays the full commission to every collaborator who engaged the customer. Use it to pay each product owner in an order.

For most affiliate programs, pick newest engagement wins.

If you want a single sale to credit a collaborator’s upline or downline across multiple layers (a tiered or sales-override structure), bind this program to a collaborator group on the program’s Group tab and use a cascade calculation strategy. See Configure cascade payouts for the full walkthrough.

Engagement tracking events

Engagement tracking events are the actions Siren measures on the path to a conversion. Enable the ones that matter for your program:

• Site visited fires when a customer arrives through an affiliate link. Standard affiliate tracking.
• Coupon code used fires when a customer applies a coupon assigned to a collaborator. See Coupon Code Tracking for integration support.
• Blog post visited fires when a customer reads a post authored by a collaborator. Useful for content-driven programs.
• Collaborator product sold fires when a product owned by a collaborator is purchased. The foundation of royalty programs. See Assign Product Owners.
• Course completed and lesson completed are LMS-specific and reward instructors when students finish their material.
• Opportunity Bound To Collaborator fires when a customer linked to a collaborator buys again. On Plus and Pro, it pays lifetime commissions. The “Post-Conversion Actions” card can link each customer to the collaborator who wins their sale, with “Bind collaborator to opportunity on approval”.

For a simple affiliate program, enable site visited and coupon code used. Point values only matter if you’re using a point-based structure like performance weighted pool or top score wins.

Incentive structure

The incentive structure decides how rewards are calculated:

• Percentage of transaction pays a percentage of the transaction total. Standard for affiliate programs.
• Fixed per transaction pays a flat amount per sale regardless of value. Common for high-ticket products or referral bonuses, like hosting companies paying $200 per signup.
• Fixed per product pays a flat amount for each qualifying product in the cart. Useful for targeted promotions on specific inventory.

With any of these three incentive structures, you can credit conversions for sales, renewals, or both under “Credit Conversions For”. Sales covers initial purchases. Renewals covers later charges on a subscription, and each one pays the collaborator who earned the subscription’s first sale. Whether to include renewals depends on whether this program rewards acquisition or retention. A program that pays only renewals pays a collaborator only if they earned the first sale in another program and were engaged in this one when that sale happened, so a renewal-only program you add later pays on subscriptions sold after it exists, not on older ones. See who a renewal pays.

“Auto Approve Completed Transactions” starts unchecked. Checked, it approves this program’s conversions the moment an order completes, which makes their obligations payable. A reward held because the sale is in another currency waits for you instead. It’s offered for sale incentives. Leave it unchecked if you’d rather review each one, as Approve and Reject Conversions describes.

Commission pool settings

These control which parts of a transaction feed the commission calculation.

Line items should almost always be checked. They’re the actual products purchased.

Discounts should usually be checked too. When checked, Siren subtracts discounts before calculating. A $120 product with a $20 coupon calculates on $100 rather than $120.

Fees covers things like WooCommerce signup fees or subscription fees. Include them if they’re part of what you want to pay commission on.

Shipping and taxes should almost never be checked. You don’t want to pay commission on tax owed to the government or pass-through shipping costs.

When you check line items, filtering options appear. You can restrict the program to specific product categories (by slug), SKUs, or product types like subscriptions versus simple products. There’s also “Collaborator Owned Products Only” for royalty programs, which pays each product owner on their own products. See Line Item Filters for a full reference.

Once everything is set, click Create. Your program is live and ready for collaborators to start earning.

On Siren Cloud, a collaborator earns from the program once you enroll them. Go to Manage > Collaborators, tick the collaborators, choose “Add to Program” in the bar above the table, and pick the program. You can also open a collaborator’s edit form and use “Add Programs” in its “Programs” card. People who apply through an application form join the programs the form lists, and the program’s page has an “Application forms” card with “Add application form”.

Delete a program

Deleting a program moves it to the Trash, where it earns nothing new, as Delete, Trash, and Restore describes.