I'm confused on how to go about paying affiliates. I use Stripe for my business. I need to download the CSV and upload to... where? I've never done this before and I guess I never realized that payment was sent from the platform -- makes sense though because there's not a processor connected. Anyways, I have no idea how to do the CSV thing and pay my affiliates. I don't get a ton - in fact I only have one right now - but it's still a pain.

I'm still waiting for automatic or self directed payouts before I switch over to FluentAffiliate. Any timeline on that?

But in the meantime, I tried to look into how they currently work but the docs don't explain it.

It explains how to set a minimum amount, etc. then it says
"Once everything is filled out, click the Next (Review Payout) button to proceed."

Ok, so next I'm expecting it next to say something like click a button to pay the affiliate.

But instead, we jump to:

"Now, on the Payout dashboard, you'll see your newly created payout listed." "...Here, you can see the total amount paid to your affiliates"

But how does the actual payment happen?

Do I have to copy each PayPal email address, go over to PayPal and manually send each affiliate the money owed? Do I get a csv file I can upload to PayPal for bulk payment?

This incredibly important step is not in the docs.

We just released a minor update of FluentAffiliate. We had a JS file loading issue for the registration page. This minor update fixed the issue.

Release changelog:

• Improved: reCAPTCHA Keys Validated Automatically on Save
• Fixed: Affiliate Registration and Login Forms in Production Builds
• Fixed: Affiliate Portal Not Loading With Cookie Consent Blockers

I'd like to suggest adding support for maximum commission caps and more flexible commission rules.

A very common use case for agencies, consultants, service providers, and businesses selling custom projects is rewarding referrals with a percentage of the revenue while also limiting the maximum commission that can be earned from a customer, referral, or contract.

For example:

Accepted referrals for consulting, implementation, mentoring, or other custom projects generate a 10% commission on the amount actually collected, with a maximum payout of $1,500 per customer or contract.

Percentage-based commissions already work well, but there doesn't seem to be a way to define a maximum commission amount. For businesses that sell custom-quoted projects, this is a significant limitation.

It would be great to support options such as:

• Percentage commission (e.g. 10%)

• Maximum commission amount (e.g. $1,500)

• Apply the cap per product, customer, referral, or contract

• Configure each product to use either:

  • a percentage commission, or
  • a fixed commission amount

This is especially useful because many service providers sell through "open price" products in their e-commerce platform. They simply enter the agreed project value when invoicing the client.

With commission caps, they could safely reward affiliates using a percentage while knowing the payout will never exceed a predefined maximum, making customer acquisition costs much more predictable.

This would make FluentAffiliate far easier to recommend not only to businesses selling software or digital products with fixed pricing, but also to agencies, consultants, and other professionals who work with custom quotes.

It would become as simple as saying:

"Set the commission percentage that makes sense for your business, knowing you'll never pay more than $1,500 for a successful referral."

Without commission caps, affiliate programs can become difficult to implement for custom projects. Every proposal is different, margins vary, and businesses need to carefully manage acquisition costs before deciding what they can afford to pay affiliates.

For example, an agency selling a $30,000 implementation project may not be comfortable paying a $3,000 commission simply because the affiliate rate is set to 10%. That same 10% might be perfectly reasonable for a $500 online course or a $2,000 coaching program.

After all, 10% on a digital product with almost no marginal cost is very different from 10% on a high-ticket service that requires significant time, people, and operational resources.

Likewise, allowing each product to use either a percentage or a fixed commission would provide much greater flexibility. Some offers naturally fit a percentage model, while others are much better suited to a flat referral fee.

FluentCart vs. SureCart Integration

I haven't yet checked whether FluentCart already supports assigning a fixed commission or percentage on a per-product basis (instead of relying on a single global commission setting). I couldn't find this option in the SureCart integration.

If FluentCart already supports per-product commission rules, that would already be a strong advantage for service-based businesses.

However, regardless of the integration, commission caps are, in my opinion, the missing piece that would make FluentAffiliate a much more compelling solution for agencies, consultants, and businesses selling custom services.

We just shipped FluentAffiliate 1.5.0, and the headline feature is something a lot of you have been asking for: Lifetime Commissions.

Here is the idea. Your affiliate refers a customer. That customer comes back six months later and buys again, this time directly, no referral link. With Lifetime Commissions (pro), the affiliate still earns on that purchase. You are finally rewarding the affiliates who bring you real long-term customers, not just the one-off click.

You stay in full control. Set a dedicated lifetime rate, percentage or fixed amount. Apply it to everyone, or per affiliate group. Want it to expire after a set number of days? Add an expiration. Leave it empty and it never lapses. The first sale still uses your normal rate. Only the later no-link purchases earn the lifetime rate.

There is also a new Customers tab on every affiliate profile, so you can see exactly which customers are tied to which affiliate. Filter by active or expired, search the full list, and as an admin you can link or transfer a customer when you need to. Past commissions stay with the original affiliate. Only future purchases follow the move.

Coming over from Ultimate Affiliate?

You can now import your affiliates, referrals, visits, and payouts straight into FluentAffiliate. Your history stays intact and your affiliates keep their stats. That joins the importers we already had for AffiliateWP, Solid Affiliate, SliceWP, and Affiliate Manager. Run it from the Migrator screen, or use WP-CLI if you want the smooth path for a big program.

The boring but important stuff

We hardened input sanitization, removed some risky HTML-rendering paths in both admin and the portal, and closed a CSRF gap on the manual update-check trigger. Behind the scenes, but it keeps your data safer.

A handful of fixes too: FluentCart no longer doubles commission on a setup fee, self-referrals are properly blocked when you have that turned off, and some other improvements.

Please read the full release note article here: https://fluentaffiliate.com/blog/fluentaffiliate-v1-5-0/

Hi everyone!

I've been testing Fluent Affiliate and I have a couple of questions.

Is it currently possible to configure different commission types depending on the product? For example:

• Product A → 20% commission
• Product B → €50 fixed commission

At the moment I can only see a global commission setting, but I can't find an option to mix percentage and fixed commissions on a per-product basis.

Also, regarding the SureCart integration, I couldn't find where to customize the commission for individual products (or where those settings are, if they already exist).

Having the same commission for every product greatly reduces the flexibility of an affiliate program. In many businesses, different products have very different margins, so being able to define commissions per product is almost a requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

Am I missing something, or is this not supported yet?

Thanks!

It is possible to allow commissions just for specific products? And customize the %?

I can not see anything of this in the integration.

Rather than using the affiliate's WP user ID (mine is set to user email) or a generic referral ID number, it would be great for them to be able to specify their own custom referral code.

Hi there,

I'm currently a FluentCRM user and I'm planning a bigger migration of my WordPress setup. Here's my situation:

• I currently use WooCommerce to sell my digital products (PDFs, online courses)
• I'm planning on moving my courses from LearnPress to FluentCommunity
• I also want to launch a paid membership (monthly subscription) inside FluentCommunity
• I'd like to set up an affiliate program with FluentAffiliate to let partners promote this membership, as well as my other digital products

Before I commit to this stack, I have a few questions:

1. For a paid membership/subscription inside FluentCommunity, is FluentCart required, or can I keep using WooCommerce as the payment engine instead?
2. Does FluentAffiliate track referrals and commissions for subscription/membership products tied to FluentCommunity, whether the payment engine is FluentCart or WooCommerce?
3. Is recurring commission supported on renewals (i.e., can an affiliate keep earning a commission on each monthly renewal, not just the first payment)?
4. Is this integration already stable/production-ready, or still in development?

I want to make sure I can run courses + community + affiliate program all within the Fluent ecosystem, ideally without having to run two separate payment systems (WooCommerce for my existing products and FluentCart for the membership) if that can be avoided. Thanks a lot for your help!

Where it came from

It started as a client project. They were running affiliate campaigns tied to specific landing pages, bringing affiliates over from ThriveCart, and sending regular emails to those affiliates — each one needing their own referral link for each campaign. Handling that by hand doesn't scale, so I built a campaign layer to do it.

It's now packaged up and available to anyone with the same workflow.

What it solves

• Campaigns as a unit of work. If you promote several landing pages and want to track them separately — with their own marketing materials and their own affiliate list — AffiliateManager gives each campaign its own home.
• Getting affiliates in from elsewhere. Moving from ThriveCart or another platform means creating WordPress users and FluentAffiliate affiliates one at a time. CSV import does it in one pass.
• Talking to affiliates. Emailing partners with the right referral link for the right campaign is fiddly manual work. AffiliateManager generates each affiliate's links automatically and lets you target who receives what.
• Affiliates finding their own links. Rather than fielding "what's my link again?" over email, there's a front-end page where they look it up themselves.

Features

• Campaign dashboard — create and manage affiliate campaigns with landing pages and marketing materials
• CSV bulk import — bring affiliates in from ThriveCart or any other source, creating WordPress users and FluentAffiliate affiliates in one pass, with an optional welcome email
• Audience targeting — send to all affiliates, to selected affiliate groups, or to specific affiliates you pick by name
• Email workflow — compose, preview, and save drafts, with per-affiliate referral links generated automatically for every campaign landing page
• Manage Affiliates — per-campaign affiliate list with a click-to-copy referral link for each one
• Reports — campaign performance and an affiliate leaderboard
• Campaign portal shortcode — a front-end page where affiliates see their own campaign links

Requirements

FluentAffiliate (free or Pro). AffiliateManager sits on top of it rather than replacing anything — your affiliates, commissions, and payouts stay where they are.

More details here: https://store.johnmac.pro/item/faext-affiliatemanager-for-fluentaffiliate/

This was built for one specific set of needs, so I'm genuinely interested in hearing how others run their affiliate programs and where this falls short. If you pick it up, tell me what works and what's totally crap — I'd rather hear it than not.

John