How to set up affiliate campaigns and commissions

Your commission structure is the single biggest decision in an affiliate program: it sets how hard partners work to promote you and how much margin you keep on every sale they drive. Set it too low and good affiliates ignore you; set it too high and you lose money on each order. The right structure pays enough to motivate promotion while staying inside your product margin — and the best model depends on what you sell.

Affiliate campaigns with mode, value and number of affiliates

In Bloop, every affiliate belongs to exactly one campaign, which holds that structure. When a customer buys through an affiliate’s link, Bloop reads the campaign rules to calculate the commission.

Campaigns live on Affiliate → Campaigns. Open one to set its commission structure, or add another campaign to run different economics for a different group of partners.

Commission types

A campaign uses one commission type at its core. Bloop supports three:

Commission type	Internal value	How it pays
Percentage of sales	`percentage`	A percent of the qualifying sale amount (e.g. 15% of the order)
Fix per order	`amount_order`	A fixed amount for the whole order, regardless of size
Fix per item	`amount_item`	A fixed amount multiplied by the number of qualifying items

The default campaign uses a 15% percentage commission. Change the type and value under the campaign’s commission structure.

Percentage lets the payout scale with order size — a $200 basket pays twice what a $100 basket does — which is fair when your margin is roughly constant across order sizes. Flat per order decouples the payout from order size entirely, so a big order and a small order cost the same fixed bounty; that predictability makes it safe for thin or high-ticket margins. Flat per item tracks quantity rather than dollar value, which fits a product whose per-unit profit you know precisely and want to share unit-for-unit.

Which commission model fits your store

The right model follows your margins, average order value, and product range — see when and why to use each model below for the quick version, or commission-structure best practices for the full store-profile breakdown.

How to set the rate from your margin

Once you’ve chosen a model, the rate should come from your numbers, not a round figure that “feels right.” The default 15% is a sensible opening rate for most stores — treat it as a starting point to confirm against margin, not a default to ship blind.

A simple, repeatable rule:

Find your gross margin on an average affiliate order. If a product sells for $50 and costs $20 to make and fulfil, gross profit is $30 — a 60% margin.
Decide what share of that profit you’ll give away. A common range is a quarter to a third of gross profit. On a $30 profit, giving away $7.50–$10 keeps you comfortably ahead.
Convert that back into a rate. $7.50 on a $50 order is 15% commission; $10 is 20%. Both leave profit on every order an affiliate drives — affiliate spend should always be a cut of new revenue, never a loss leader.

This also explains why a flat 20% can be healthy or fatal. On the 60%-margin $50 order, 20% costs $10 and leaves $20 profit. On a thin-margin $400 item at 12% margin ($48 profit), a 20% commission is $80 — far more than the order earned. That order needs a flat per order bounty or a much lower percentage.

Start lower and raise it for proven performers. It’s far easier to reward a high-performing affiliate with a better rate than to cut a published one without souring the relationship.

Basic vs tiered (advance) commission

The commission structure runs in one of two modes:

Basic — a single rate applies to every qualifying order. This is the default.
Advanced (tiered) - the rate changes based on the order total. You define levels, each with an order minimum and its own rate. Bloop picks the highest level whose minimum the order total meets or exceeds.

For example, a tiered structure might pay 10% on orders, 15% once the order reaches $100, and 20% once it reaches $250. A $180 order earns the 15% rate, because $180 clears the $100 minimum but not the $250 one.

Tiered levels can each have their own commission type and value, giving you full control over how the curve rewards larger orders. Use it to nudge affiliates toward bundles or higher baskets. The key watch-out: the top tier must still respect your margin — a 20% rate on $250+ orders is only safe if a $250 order carries enough profit to cover $50 of commission.

Product-specific commissions

You can override the campaign rate for individual products. When product-specific commissions are enabled, any product on the list earns its own rate; everything else falls back to the campaign rate. This is the cleanest way to run one program across a catalog with mixed margins — a modest base rate everywhere, plus richer rates on the lines that can afford them.

Product-specific rates support percentage or flat per item (amount_item) — not flat per order, because the override applies at the line-item level.

To add products, choose Browse products, then pick Specific products or Specific collections under Apply to. Picking a collection saves the products it contains at that moment. Products added to the collection later keep the campaign rate, so pick the collection again after you grow it.

Product-specific commissions are included in the Free and Premium plans. Some older plans lock the switch, and on those the campaign rate applies to all products even if you saved product rates.

What the rate is applied to

The rate you pick above is only half the calculation. What it is applied to — which revenue counts, whether a cap limits the payout, and how long a click stays attributed — is covered in how to set what a commission is calculated on.

A worked example: pricing one campaign

Illustrative, not a measured Bloop result. A $60 skincare set costs $24 to fulfil ($36 profit, 60% margin), so a 15% percentage commission ($9) leaves $27 of profit, which is healthy. Shipping and tax are excluded from the base, and a maximum of 100 per customer caps what one loyal repeat buyer can earn the affiliate over time. The cookie stays at the 30-day default since skincare is a considered purchase. Once an affiliate proves themselves, move them to a second campaign at 18–20% rather than starting everyone high.

Running multiple campaigns

You can create as many campaigns as you need and assign affiliates to whichever fits. Common patterns:

A higher-rate campaign for top-tier creators and a standard one for everyone else.
A short-term campaign with a richer rate for a product launch.
A campaign with a longer cookie window for partners who drive considered, slower purchases.

One campaign is always marked as the default. When affiliate approval is set to Immediately, new self-registered affiliates join the default campaign automatically (as long as it is active). Applicants you approve by hand get the campaign you assign to them. So do manually added affiliates, except while affiliate approval is set to Immediately: then Bloop puts them on the default campaign (if it is active), so check their campaign after adding them.

Setting the default and deleting a campaign

To change the default, open another campaign and choose Set as default at the top of the page. The default campaign takes affiliates you approve automatically, and its rate is the one your registration form quotes. Affiliates already on a campaign stay on it.

Delete campaign is at the bottom of a campaign’s page. It is not available on the default campaign, and it cannot be undone.

Common mistakes to avoid

Setting the rate to a round number instead of to margin. “20% sounds standard” is how thin-margin stores lose money on every affiliate order. Work back from gross profit first.
Forgetting the cap. Without a maximum, a single large order can pay more commission than it earned in profit. Enable a cap on any percentage campaign.
Commissioning shipping and tax. This pays affiliates on money that was never yours to keep. Exclude them unless you have a specific reason not to.
Starting too high and cutting later. Cutting a published rate sours affiliates fast. Open lower and raise it for proven performers.

When and why to use each model

Use percentage when your margin is healthy and roughly consistent across order sizes and you want the payout to track basket value. The right default for most fashion, beauty, and general-merchandise stores.
Use flat per order when margins are thin or orders are high-ticket and you need a fixed, predictable cost per sale.
Use flat per item when you sell a single product or a tight range with a known per-unit profit and want to share that profit unit-for-unit.
Use tiered (advance) when you want to push affiliates toward larger baskets and your margin holds up at the higher tiers.
Use product-specific overrides when your catalog spans very different margins and you want a safe base rate everywhere plus richer rates only on lines that can afford them.
Run multiple campaigns when different partner segments deserve different economics — a standard rate for self-registered affiliates and a richer one for proven creators.

Getting started with affiliates — overview and onboarding.
Managing affiliates — assign affiliates to campaigns.
Affiliate sales tracking — see how each commission is recorded.
Commission-structure best practices — the strategy behind these settings.
How to set affiliate commission rates — the full margin-based reasoning.
Referral program vs affiliate program — choose the right channel for your goal.