Setting up Affiliate Marketing

The Affiliate Marketing extension lets partners promote your store with their own referral links and earn a commission on the sales they drive. It tracks referral clicks, attributes conversions, calculates commissions, and gives you tools to approve affiliates, review earnings, and record payouts. This guide takes about twenty minutes.

1. Activate and enable the extension

1. Go to TitanCart → Extensions → Installed Extensions and enter your Affiliate Marketing license key to activate it.
2. Open Growth → Affiliates and, on the Settings tab, switch the master Enabled toggle on.

Note: the Enabled toggle stays locked until a valid license is active — that’s expected. Activate your license first, then enable.

2. Set your commission structure

On the Settings tab, choose how affiliates are paid:

• Percent — a percentage of each referred sale (the default is 10%).
• Flat — a fixed amount per referred sale.
• Tiered — higher rates as an affiliate drives more sales, defined as a set of tiers.

This is the program-wide default; you can override the rate for an individual affiliate on their detail page (step 6).

3. Configure attribution and approvals

• Cookie window — how many days a referral is credited after the click (default 30). Attribution is last-click: the most recent affiliate link wins.
• Approve affiliates automatically — off by default, so you review each application. Turn it on to approve applicants instantly.
• Approve commissions automatically — off by default, so earned commissions sit as pending until you approve them. This gives you a window to catch returns or fraud before money is owed.
• Block self-referral — on by default, so an affiliate can’t earn a commission on their own purchase.

4. Set payout rules

• Payout minimum — the approved balance an affiliate must reach before a payout can be created (default $50).
• Payout currency — the currency payouts are recorded in (default USD).
• Default payout method — how you pay affiliates (PayPal by default).

Note: in this version, payouts are recorded and managed inside TitanCart — you create a payout, send the money through your provider, then mark it paid (and can export a CSV for your records). TitanCart does not move the money itself, so always complete the actual transfer on your provider’s side.

5. How affiliates join and share links

Logged-in customers see a Join Affiliate Program entry in their My Account area. Once you approve them, that area expands into their affiliate dashboard with Dashboard, Conversions, Payouts, and Assets sections. Affiliates share their referral link — your store URL with their ?ref= code — and any visitor who arrives through it is tracked for the length of your cookie window.

6. Review affiliates and earnings as an admin

Under Growth → Affiliates you manage the whole program:

• Affiliates — the list of applicants and active affiliates, with status actions (approve, reject, suspend). Open one to see their profile and set a per-affiliate commission override.
• Conversions — referred orders and the commission each earned, where you approve or reverse them.
• Payouts — create payouts for affiliates over the minimum, mark them paid, and export a CSV.
• Analytics — program performance, a top-affiliate leaderboard, and trends over time.

How to verify on PayPal’s side

Because TitanCart records the payout but you send the money through PayPal, confirm each transfer in your PayPal account:

1. Sign in at paypal.com and open your Activity (transaction history).
2. Find the payment to the affiliate by their PayPal email and the amount you recorded in TitanCart.
3. Confirm the transaction completed rather than showing as pending or unclaimed — an unclaimed payment usually means the recipient’s PayPal email was wrong or they don’t yet have an account.
4. Once the PayPal payment is confirmed, mark the payout paid in TitanCart so your records match.

Troubleshooting

• The Enabled toggle won’t switch on — activate your license first under TitanCart → Extensions → Installed Extensions.
• A referral didn’t earn a commission — confirm the visitor arrived through the affiliate’s ?ref= link within the cookie window, the order completed, and (if self-referral blocking is on) the buyer isn’t the affiliate.
• Commissions stay pending — that’s by design unless Approve commissions automatically is on; approve them on the Conversions tab.
• Can’t create a payout — the affiliate’s approved balance is below your payout minimum, or they have no approved commissions yet.
• A payout shows paid in TitanCart but the affiliate says they didn’t get it — check your PayPal activity (see “How to verify on PayPal’s side”); the payment may be unclaimed due to a wrong PayPal email.

See also

• Activating a license key
• How the Extensions Marketplace works
• Setting up the Multi-Vendor Marketplace