Basic Affiliate Program

What This Recipe Does

This recipe creates a single affiliate program with percentage-based commissions. Affiliates share unique referral links to your store. When a visitor clicks an affiliate’s link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns 20% of the transaction total.

This is the most common affiliate program structure and the recommended starting point for most stores. If you are new to affiliate marketing or just want a straightforward, proven setup without tiers or special partner tracks, this is the right recipe.

Who It’s For

• E-commerce store owners who want to drive more sales through word-of-mouth referrals
• Digital product sellers looking to incentivize bloggers, influencers, or existing customers to promote their products
• Anyone new to Siren who wants a simple, proven program structure to learn the system

How It Works

When you apply this recipe, Siren creates a single program that watches for referred site visits. Every time someone lands on your store through an affiliate’s unique link, Siren notes who sent them. If that visitor goes on to buy something, the affiliate who referred them earns a commission of 20% of the order’s line item total.

If a customer clicks links from multiple affiliates before purchasing, the most recent referral gets credit. This “newest engagement wins” approach keeps things simple and fair: the affiliate whose link was freshest in the customer’s journey is the one who gets paid.

Commissions are calculated on line items only, so shipping, taxes, and fees are excluded. This gives you a clean, predictable cost structure for your affiliate program.

Setting Up Recurring Commissions on Subscriptions

If you’re running a membership site or selling subscriptions, you can extend this recipe to pay affiliates on every renewal, not just the first sale. Siren handles this through a dual-program pattern: install this Basic Affiliate Program as your first-sale reward, then create a second program manually that fires only on renewal conversions at whatever recurring rate you want to pay.

Both programs target the same engagement triggers, so the affiliate who referred the customer earns on the initial purchase and on each recurring payment afterward. The two programs stack on the first sale, which lets you pay a higher rate up front and a smaller rate on renewals. For example, the initial sale might pay 25% total (this recipe’s 20% plus 5% from the renewal program), and each renewal pays just the 5% from the renewal program.

To build the second program, create a new program with the same engagement tracking events and program structure as this one, set the incentive to your preferred recurring rate, and check only the “renewals” conversion box so it doesn’t fire on the initial sale. The affiliate stays attributed through Siren’s binding system, so renewals that happen months later still credit the original referrer.

For a longer walkthrough of subscription affiliate programs and the configuration details, see Subscription Programs.

{
  "version": 1,
  "name": "Basic Affiliate Program",
  "description": "A standard affiliate referral program. Affiliates share links and earn 20% commission on referred sales.",
  "programs": {
    "affiliate": {
      "name": "Affiliate Program",
      "description": "Earn a 20% commission on every sale you refer through your unique affiliate link.",
      "incentiveType": "saleTransactionPercentage",
      "incentiveResolverType": "newestBindingWins",
      "units": "USD",
      "status": "active",
      "incentiveArgs": { "transactionPercent": 20 },
      "engagementTypes": [
        { "type": "referredSiteVisit", "value": 100.0 }
      ],
      "transactionCompilers": ["includeLineItems"]
    }
  }
}