Grow an affiliate army with sub-affiliates
Turn your best affiliates into recruiters. With a second tier, they bring in other affiliates and earn a small override on every sale their team makes, so your reach compounds and you only pay for a new affiliate once they sell. Two tiers, included from the Growth plan.
You can only recruit so many affiliates yourself. Your best affiliates know dozens of people who could sell your product, and right now they have no reason to introduce you. A second tier gives them one.
Why a second tier is worth offering
- Your best affiliates become your recruiting team. Pay them a small override on every sale their recruits make, and your top performers start bringing in people from networks you'd never reach with cold outreach.
- Reach compounds. Ten recruiters who each bring in five affiliates is fifty new sellers, each with their own audience. And because the sub-affiliate link opens your signup page, not your product, recruiters can bring in marketers who have never bought from you.
- You pay for results, not recruiting. The override is only paid when a sub-affiliate makes a real sale. A recruit who never sells costs you nothing, which makes it one of the cheapest ways to acquire productive affiliates.
- Recruits arrive pre-qualified. Someone who already earns from your program picked them and has a reason to help them make their first sale. That's onboarding you don't have to run.
- Top partners stay. A recruiter with an active team earns on other people's sales every month. That's a strong reason not to drift to a competitor.
The full argument, with rate-setting advice and recruiting copy you can hand your affiliates, is in why a second tier is the smartest way to grow your program.
The math on a $100 sale
Say your commission is 40% and your sub-affiliate override is 5%.
- The sub-affiliate earns $40, their normal 40% commission. Nothing is taken from it.
- Their recruiter earns $5, the 5% override, on top.
- You keep $55.
A recruiter with ten active sub-affiliates who each make five $100 sales a month earns $250 a month in overrides. That's what keeps a recruiter coaching their team instead of signing people up and forgetting them. And because the override only applies to sub-affiliate sales, sales from everyone else cost you exactly what they cost today.
How it works
- Turn on Sub-affiliates and set an override. Switch the feature on for your program, then set a sub-affiliate override on each campaign, as a percentage of the sale. A richer override on one campaign, a smaller one (or none) on another.
- Affiliates share their sub-affiliate link. Every affiliate gets a second link that opens your affiliate signup page, not your product.
- Customers who become affiliates are linked automatically. Someone who bought through an affiliate's link and later signs up as an affiliate with the same email lands under that affiliate. No form, no claim to approve.
- Every sub-affiliate sale pays twice. The sub-affiliate earns their commission. Their recruiter earns the override, on top.
Fair by default
Recruiting only works if affiliates trust that they'll get credit. So the rules are simple:
- First recruiter wins. The first affiliate to bring someone in is their recruiter.
- Links are remembered for 60 days. Someone who clicks a sub-affiliate link today and signs up next month still lands under the right person.
- Nobody gets moved later. Once a sub-affiliate is linked, clicking another affiliate's link doesn't move them.
- Admins can fix mistakes. You can change a sub-affiliate's recruiter by hand.
Refunds and chargebacks claw back the override along with the commission, the same way every other commission on affixo works.
What your affiliates see
Once their campaign pays an override, affiliates get a Sub-affiliates tab in their portal. It shows the rate they'll earn ("Earn 5% of every sale your sub-affiliates make"), their sub-affiliate link ready to copy, and the people they've recruited. Their home page gets a card with the same link and rate, and override earnings are labelled "From your sub-affiliates" so they can see what their team brings in. Recruiting is one step, not a support ticket.
Affiliates on a campaign without an override don't see any of this, so nobody is promised money your program doesn't pay.
What you see
Each affiliate's profile shows who recruited them and how: through a sub-affiliate link, from a purchase, or set by an admin. Recruiters get a Sub-affiliates tab listing everyone they brought in, what each one sold, and the override they earned from each. The affiliates list can filter to recruiters or to sub-affiliates.
The Top recruiters report ranks recruiters by what their teams actually sell, with sub-affiliates joined, active and selling, team revenue and override earned, so you can reward the people building real teams and spot the ones padding sign-ups.
Two tiers, on purpose
affixo supports exactly two tiers: the recruiter and the sub-affiliate. There's no third level, no buy-in, and no override on a recruit's recruit. The only way for a recruiter to earn more is to bring in people who actually sell, which is the whole point.
Coming from FirstPromoter
If you run sub-affiliates on FirstPromoter today, the idea is the same and so is the name: a sub-affiliate earns their commission, and their recruiter earns a cut of the sale on top. The FirstPromoter import brings your sub-affiliate hierarchies across with your affiliates and links. One difference worth knowing: on FirstPromoter, sub-affiliate features sit on the Business plan and above. On affixo they're on Growth, at $49/mo.
Pricing
Sub-affiliates are included on the Growth plan ($49/mo) and every plan above it, with zero transaction fees. See pricing for what each plan covers.
Common questions
Because your best affiliates can recruit better than you can. An override on their recruits' sales turns your top performers into recruiters, reaches networks you can't reach yourself, and costs you nothing until a recruit actually sells. It also keeps your best partners engaged, because they earn from their whole team.
Two: the recruiter and the sub-affiliate. A recruiter earns an override on sales made by the affiliates they brought in. Nobody earns on a recruit's recruit. That's deliberate; affixo is built for affiliate programs, not MLM.
Of the sale. On a $100 sale with a 5% override, the recruiter earns $5, whatever the sub-affiliate's commission is. The sub-affiliate's commission is paid in full and isn't reduced.
Two ways. They sign up through an affiliate's sub-affiliate link, which opens your affiliate signup page. Or they bought through an affiliate's link and later become an affiliate with the same email, in which case they're linked to that affiliate automatically.
The first recruiter wins. A sub-affiliate link is remembered for 60 days, and once someone is linked to a recruiter they stay there. Nobody is moved under a new recruiter later. Admins can change a recruiter by hand if a mistake needs fixing.
It's clawed back along with the sub-affiliate's commission, so you never pay an override on revenue you didn't keep.
Growth ($49/mo) and every plan above it.
The FirstPromoter import brings sub-affiliate hierarchies across along with your affiliates and links. affixo pays on two tiers, so if your current program pays on more levels than that, talk to us before you switch.
Turn your best affiliates into recruiters.
Sub-affiliates are included on Growth and up. Turn them on, set an override per campaign, and your affiliates get a link to build their own team.