Managing Collaborators (Affiliates)

What is a collaborator?

A collaborator is anyone who participates in one of your incentive programs. Siren uses “collaborator” instead of “affiliate” because affiliates are just one type. A collaborator might be an affiliate sharing referral links, a course creator earning royalties, a blogger paid when their content contributes to a sale, or a salesperson closing deals through your site. The label changes, but the mechanics are the same: they perform tracked actions, and they earn rewards when those actions lead to a conversion.

The steps below give the WordPress menus. On Siren Cloud, go to Manage > Collaborators and click “Add Collaborator”. Enter their “Full Name” and “Email”, which are required, and a “Nickname” if you like. Siren fills in a “Referral Code”, the code in their referral links, and you can type your own or click the shuffle button for a new one. Status starts on Active. In the “Programs” card, click “Add Programs” and pick the programs they earn from, then click “Create”. To invite them to their portal, tick them on the Collaborators list and click “Send Signup Email” in the bar above the table. They get an email titled with your organization’s name, such as “Acme added you as a collaborator on Siren”, with a “Set up your account” link that works for 7 days. The link opens “Set up your collaborator account”, where they choose a password and land in their portal, as Sign In to Siren Cloud describes. To let people apply instead of adding them yourself, share an application form. Siren Cloud has no registration setting to switch on, so skip the WordPress steps under “Sending login credentials on WordPress”.

Creating a collaborator manually

Go to Siren > Collaborators in the WordPress sidebar and click Add New. Fill in the collaborator’s name, nickname, and email.

Each collaborator gets a tracking ID, which is the unique code used in their affiliate link. Siren generates one automatically, but you can change it to anything memorable. Old tracking IDs keep working even if you change them later, so existing links won’t break.

The status starts on Active, so they can start creating engagements immediately. Choose Pending to hold them until you activate them from the Collaborators list. Pending or Inactive collaborators can’t generate engagements or earn anything, so visits through their link before you activate them never count. Sign-up forms and applications set their own starting status. On Siren Cloud, the collaborator form under Manage > Collaborators also starts on Active. On a WordPress site connected to Siren Cloud, a collaborator you add there arrives in Siren Cloud as Pending for you to approve.

Finally, pick which programs to enroll them in. They only earn from programs they’re in, so double-check before clicking Create.

A collaborator can also be reached through a collaborator group instead of, or in addition to, direct program enrollment. When a program or distributor is bound to a group, every member of that group becomes eligible for it without per-collaborator enrollment. See Create a collaborator group to set one up.

Manual creation vs. self-registration

Manual creation is for inviting specific people you already know. Self-registration uses a registration form on your site where anyone can sign up, which is how you run an open program. Both paths create the same collaborator record. The difference is who starts the process and whether approval is automatic or manual. On Siren Cloud, people apply through application forms, which Siren Cloud hosts for you. Your Admins review applications under Manage > Applications, as Review Applications describes.

Sending login credentials on WordPress

This section applies to the WordPress plugin only. Siren creates collaborator records separately from WordPress user accounts. A collaborator can exist and earn commissions without ever logging in. If you want them to access the collaborator dashboard for stats and referral links, they need a WordPress user account.

Before you can create user accounts, WordPress has to allow registrations. Go to Settings > General and check “Anyone can register.” Without this, Siren can’t create accounts for your collaborators.

Then go to Siren > Collaborators, tick the collaborator, and click “Send Signup Email” in the bar above the table. They’ll get “Finish Setting Up Your Account”, with a link to create a username and password. Siren skips collaborators who already have a WordPress account, and sends nothing while “Anyone can register” is off. Applicants you approve get a setup link in their approved email already, as Sign-Up and Approval Emails describes.

Managing status and program enrollment

Click any collaborator on the Siren > Collaborators screen to edit their profile. You can change status between Active, Pending, Inactive, and Rejected, and adjust program enrollments. Approving or declining someone who applied through a sign-up form emails them the approved or declined email. Deleting a collaborator moves them to the Trash, where they stop earning until you restore them, as Delete, Trash, and Restore describes.

Setting a collaborator to Inactive stops new engagements immediately but leaves existing obligations and unpaid payouts alone. Commissions they’ve already earned stay put regardless of current status.

Deleting a collaborator permanently removes them from every collaborator group they belonged to. If that collaborator sat in the middle of a chain or tree feeding a cascade, removing them re-shapes the chain for everyone below before the next sale fires. A collaborator in the Trash stays in their groups, and cascades skip them without moving anyone up. For how membership changes affect a live cascade, see Operating a cascade program.

On Siren Plus and Pro, the profile also has a “PayPal payouts” card, where you can add or change the PayPal email that automatic payouts go to, as Set Up Automatic Payouts describes.

You can also view engagement history and obligations from the profile for a complete picture of their activity. The profile’s activity feed is the fastest place to read that picture chronologically. Every conversion, obligation, and payout tied to the collaborator is listed there in order, which is especially useful when someone emails asking about a specific transaction.