If you’re using Restrict Content Pro to power your membership site, you can use SliceWP to start an affiliate program for your business.
Because SliceWP integrates deeply with Restrict Content Pro, you’ll be able to reward affiliates for referred payments, set custom commission rates, enable commissions for recurring payments, track affiliate commissions using coupon codes and much more.
Before you get started, make sure you have SliceWP installed on your website. This step-by-step article will walk you through the installation process.
Enabling the integration
To start generating commissions for referred payments you will firstly need to enable the integration. To do this:
- Navigate to SliceWP > Settings > Integrations (tab).
- Turn on the switch next to Restrict Content Pro and save the settings.
Once the integration is enabled, whenever a referred visitor subscribes to one of your membership levels, the affiliate that sent the visitor to your website will be rewarded a commission.
Setting the commission rates for a subscription’s first payment
With SliceWP you can reward affiliates both for the first payment and also for recurring payments of a subscription.
Let’s see how you can set up the commission rates for the first payment, the one that is generated when a referred customer signs up for one of your memberships.
Global commission rates for a subscription’s first payment
With SliceWP you can customize the commission rates both globally and also for each membership level individually.
Global rates will be used if no other commission rate rules apply. For example, if you set a 20% global commission rate, whenever a new referred member signs up for any of your membership levels, the affiliate will be rewarded a 20% commission based on the membership level’s price.
However, if you set a 30% commission rate for a particular membership level, whenever a new referred member signs up for this level, the affiliate will be rewarded a 30% commission based on the level’s price. If the referred member signs up for any other membership levels, but the one with the custom rule, the 20% rule will be taken into account.
Now that you have an overview of how the global and the per membership level commission rules work, let’s set them up. Follow the steps below to set up the global commission rates:
- Navigate to SliceWP > Settings > General (tab) > Commissions Settings (section).
- Set the rate value and the rate type (discussed below) to the values you wish.
Commission rates types can be:
- percentage based – the commission’s value will be calculated based on the price of the membership level’s price. For example, if your level’s price is $45, a rate of 20% will lead to a $9 commission.
- fixed amount – the commission’s value will be the amount set, regardless of the membership level’s price. For example, if you set a rate of $10 fixed amount, your level can be $45, $75 or $100 and your affiliate will always be rewarded $10 commissions.
Per membership level commission rates for a subscription’s first payment
As mentioned above, you can overwrite the global commission rates on a membership level basis. If you do this, whenever a new referred customer signs up for a level that has custom rates set, these custom rates will be used to calculate the commission’s amount.
Here’s how you can set custom commission rates for a membership level:
- Download and install the Product Commission Rates add-on. If you’re not sure how to do this, please follow the instructions from this article.
- Then, navigate to your WordPress dashboard > Restrict > Membership Levels and click to edit the level for which you want to set custom commissions.
- Scroll down to the Commission Settings section and select the Subscription Rate Type (percentage or fixed amount) and then set the Subscription Rate.
- Lastly, save/update the membership level.
Setting the commission rates for a subscription’s recurring payments
As mentioned above, with SliceWP you can set a custom commission rates for a subscription’s first payment and also for recurring payments. This way, you can reward your affiliates recurrently, which is a great incentive for them to join your affiliate program.
Let’s see how you can set up recurring rates.
Global commission rates for subscription recurring payments
- Download and install the Recurring Commission Rates add-on. If you’re not sure how to do this, please follow the instructions from this article.
- Then, navigate to SliceWP > Settings > General (tab) > Recurring Commissions (section). Here, switch on the Enable Sitewide option. With this option enabled, for all recurring payments, regardless of membership level, a commission will be generated for the affiliate that initially referred the member.
- In the same section, set the Recurring rate value. This will be used to calculate the commission’s amount. As with the subscription’s first payment, you can set both a percentage or a fixed amount value. The calculation of the amount will be based on the membership level’s price.
- By default, commissions will be rewarded for all future recurring payments, until the end of a member’s subscription. However, you can limit the number of commissions an affiliate can receive. To do this, from the Recurring Commissions section, set the Recurrence option to Limited. Then, in the Recurrence Limit option set the number of recurring payments that should generate commissions for the referring affiliate.
- Lastly, save the settings.
Per membership level commission rates for subscription recurring payments
You can overwrite your global recurring commission rates for each one of your membership levels. This means that for each one of your levels you can offer a different commission rate for recurring payments. Here’s how you can do this:
- Navigate to your WordPress dashboard > Restrict > Membership Levels and click to edit the level for which you want to set custom rates for recurring commissions.
- Scroll down until you find the Commission Settings section. Here, from the Recurring Commissions drop-down, select Custom.
- Then, set the Recurring Rate Type and Recurring Rate to the values you wish. These will overwrite the global values you’ve set in SliceWP > Settings.
- Lastly, save/update the membership level.
Disable recurring commissions per membership level
In some situations you may want to disable commissions for recurring payments for certain membership levels.
For example, you may want to offer recurring commissions for all levels, but one. In this case, you’d enable recurring commissions globally (described above) and disable this type of commissions only for this particular level. Here’s how you do this:
- Navigate to your WordPress dashboard > Restrict > Membership Levels and click to edit the level for which you want to disable recurring commissions.
- Scroll down until you find the Commission Settings section. Here, from the Recurring Commissions drop-down, select Disabled.
- Lastly, save/update the membership level.
Disabling commission for a particular membership level
In certain situations you may want particular membership levels to be excluded from your affiliate program.
In this case, you can simply disable commissions for these membership levels. Here’s how:
- Navigate to your WordPress dashboard > Restrict > Membership Levels and click to edit the level for which you want to disable referral commissions.
- Scroll down to the Commission Settings section and check the Disable commissions option.
- Lastly, save/update the membership level.
If a membership level has commissions disabled, whenever a referred member signs up for it, no commissions, of any type, will be rewarded to the affiliate that referred the member.
Setting up affiliate coupon tracking
With SliceWP you can tie Restrict Content Pro discount codes to affiliates. This way, when a visitor signs up to a membership level using a discount code, the affiliate will automatically be rewarded a commission rate.
We went into more details about this strategy in this article.
To tie an affiliate to a discount code, please follow these steps:
- Download and install the Affiliate Coupons add-on. If you’re not sure how to do this, please follow the instructions from this article.
- Then, navigate to Restrict > Discount Codes and click to edit the discount code you want to associate with an affiliate.
- Scroll down to the Affiliate Name field. Begin by typing the name of the affiliate you wish to connect to the discount code. Once the list of affiliates shows up, select the affiliate from the list.
- Lastly, save/update the discount code.
With the add-on active and the discount code updated, any time this code is redeemed the connected affiliate will be rewarded a commission.