A partner program, also called an affiliate or referral program, lets other people promote your products and earn a commission on the sales they refer. Those partners might be your customers, your fans, or influencers in your market. In this lesson, you'll see how Ontraport partner programs work, whether one is right for you, and how to get started.
Every partner gets their own unique affiliate link. When someone clicks it, Ontraport sets a cookie in their browser that remembers which partner sent them. When that visitor opts in or buys through an Ontraport form, Ontraport reads the cookie and adds the partner to their contact record. On Ontraport pages, that happens automatically. If you sell through a third-party shopping cart, you add the partner tracking pixel to its checkout confirmation page.
Each contact has two referral fields. First referrer is the partner who brought them in as a new contact, and it never changes. Last referrer is the most recent partner whose link they clicked before filling out an opt-in or order form. You decide which one earns the commission. Paying the first referrer locks in credit for finding new leads. Paying the last referrer rewards partners who keep promoting and help close the sale.
Here are three common ways to use one. For high-ticket lead generation, partners send people to free content, like a whitepaper or a consultation form, and you pay the first referrer. For evergreen customer referrals, every new customer gets their own affiliate link in a welcome email, and again you pay the first referrer. For influencer promotions, like a product launch, you pay the last referrer, so the partner who drives the final purchase earns the commission.
Here's what you'll set up in this section. First, global settings, like how you pay partners and which referrer gets credit. Then you create a program and choose its type. In a 1 tier program, partners earn on purchases by people they refer. In a 2 tier program, they also earn a usually smaller commission when someone they referred becomes a partner and makes sales.
Next, you pick which products pay commission. Only products you mark as commissionable do, and you set each one as a percentage or a flat amount. For example, you might pay partners a percentage of each course sale. Then you add your partners, create promo tools like affiliate links, and send each partner their own link using a merge field.
As referrals come in, you'll see them on the program's Referrals tab and on each partner's contact record. Each commission appears under Partners, then Commissions, then Pending commissions, where you approve or cancel it. Keep in mind that Ontraport doesn't send the money for you. You pay partners yourself, by PayPal or check, and then mark their commissions as paid.
Your partners also need a place to log in and see how they're doing. That's a partner center. Partner data is now available across Ontraport, so you can build your partner center right in Ontraport, without WordPress. The quickest way is the Partners app. It gives you a registration page, a home page with referrals and commissions, a Promo tools page with each partner's affiliate links, and a page for updating their PayPal address. A partner center built in Ontraport needs the Dynamic CMS package. If you prefer WordPress, the PilotPress plugin still offers a partner center.
To get started, turn partner programs on. Click your profile icon, then Administration, then Advanced Features, and switch on Partner programs. Then hover over Partners in the main navigation to find your programs and settings. Before you promote your program, test it. Sign up as a test partner, open your own affiliate link in an incognito window, opt in or buy, and check that the commission shows up.
So a partner program pays people for the sales they refer, Ontraport tracks each referral to the right partner, and you control how commissions are approved and paid. Next up: setting up your partner global settings, the first step in building your program.