How to manage affiliates

Who you let in matters more than how many apply. A focused roster of partners whose audience overlaps your customers will out-earn a crowd of casual sign-ups — and it spares you the work of reviewing sales from people who were never going to convert. Managing affiliates in Bloop comes down to two repeating decisions: who to bring on, and whose link stays live.

This page covers affiliate statuses, how to recruit (manual add or self-registration), how to evaluate and approve or reject applicants, a worked example, exporting your list, common mistakes, and “login as” portal preview. Open the Affiliates tab to see your full roster, each affiliate’s status, their assigned campaign, referral link code, and performance.

Your roster is on Affiliate → Affiliates.

Best practice

Approve for fit, not just volume. Check that an applicant’s audience plausibly buys what you sell — a relevant partner with a small following usually drives cleaner sales than a large but mismatched one. Use the pending queue as a real gate, and keep strong performers on a higher-rate campaign so they have a reason to keep promoting. The full playbook is in recruiting and approving affiliates.

Affiliate statuses

An affiliate is always in one of three statuses:

Status	Meaning	What to do
Pending	Applied (or was created as pending) and awaiting review. Cannot earn yet.	Evaluate and approve or reject. Don’t leave applicants waiting — a stale queue loses good partners.
Approved	Active. Their referral link is live and orders generate commissions.	Monitor performance; move your best to a higher-rate campaign. Reject only if they go inactive or break terms.
Rejected	Declined. Their link does not earn commissions.	Leave as-is, or set back to approved to reinstate a partner who has since become a good fit.

There is no separate “paused” status. To stop an affiliate from earning, move them to rejected; to reinstate them, set them back to approved.

Each status change sends the matching email to the affiliate (registration pending or approved), so they know where they stand. The denied email ships switched off; turn it on in affiliate emails if you want rejected applicants to hear from you. Approving someone makes their link live as soon as they also have a campaign (see Approving and rejecting) - treat the approval click as the real gate rather than clearing the queue on autopilot.

How to recruit affiliates

Two paths into your program:

• Manual add — for partners you already know: creators you reached out to, existing customers with an audience, agencies you have a relationship with. Vetting happens before they enter Bloop.
• Self-registration — for scale. You publish a form, applicants come to you, and your approval step becomes the filter.

Most healthy programs use both: manual add to seed strong partners at launch, then self-registration to grow once you have proof the program converts.

Adding affiliates manually

1. In the Affiliates tab, choose to add a new affiliate.
2. Enter their first name, last name, and email.
3. Assign them to a campaign.

The affiliate gets a unique referral link code and a notification email. Because you chose them, there is no pending review step.

Self-registration

Share your registration form and let affiliates apply on their own. Applicants land in your dashboard with pending status, ready for review, unless affiliate approval is set to Immediately in affiliate settings. Form fields are configured in the registration form editor. Self-registration scales recruitment, but makes your approval step the quality gate, so keep it deliberate.

During an unusual burst of sign-ups on one store, Bloop holds the extra applications as pending and sends them no email, even with automatic approval on, so a bot wave can’t fill your program with approved accounts. Review them like any other applicant.

Asking for an audience link, audience size, and a promotion plan turns a blind approval into an informed one.

How to evaluate an applicant

Judge pending applications on fit before reach:

1. Audience overlap. Does their audience plausibly buy what you sell? A skincare creator for a skincare store beats a generic deals account ten times the size.
2. Promotion plan. How do they intend to drive traffic — content, email, social, coupon sites? A clear, on-brand plan is worth more than a vague one with big numbers.
3. Reach, in that order. Audience size matters, but only after overlap and plan check out.
4. Brand safety. Spammy coupon farming, off-brand content, or undisclosed affiliate behaviour is a reason to reject regardless of reach.

Approving and rejecting

• Open an affiliate and change their status to approved or rejected, or
• Select several affiliates and apply a bulk status change.

Approving activates the referral link once the affiliate has a campaign. Only affiliates approved automatically at registration are given the default campaign, so for anyone you approve by hand, open their record and choose a campaign in the Affiliate campaign card. An approved affiliate with no campaign has a link that tracks nothing, and their orders create no sales. Bulk actions send the matching status email to everyone selected - useful for clearing a backlog, but check the selection first so a borderline applicant doesn’t slip through.

A worked example: vetting one application

Illustrative. “Maya” applies with her Instagram link (~8,000 coffee-enthusiast followers) and a note about weekly bean reviews — strong audience overlap, a credible on-brand plan, clean content. You approve and assign her to your standard campaign, using login as to confirm her portal before she starts sharing. Contrast an applicant with no audience link, a vague “I’ll share with my network” plan, and a coupon-site URL: reject, since the likely result is low-intent traffic you’d have to scrutinise later.

Exporting your affiliates

Export your roster to CSV from the Affiliates tab. The export includes first name, last name, email, status, assigned campaign, referral link code, discount coupon, join date, and any custom registration attributes. Export the full list or filter by status first.

There is no bulk CSV import — affiliates join by manual add or self-registration only.

“Login as” — preview the affiliate portal

Use Login as affiliate from an affiliate’s record to open their portal session and see exactly what they see. Useful for verifying their dashboard, troubleshooting a reported issue, or confirming branding before going live. A demo portal is also available without selecting a specific affiliate.

Each login-as link works once and expires after 5 minutes, and only for the store it was created in. If it has expired, click Login as affiliate again for a fresh one. The demo portal is read-only: you can look around, but you can’t change settings or passwords there.

What affiliates see about their customers

The portal shows affiliates the orders they drove, but not who bought. Buyer emails are partly hidden (for example j***@gmail.com), and the customer’s Shopify ID isn’t shared. You still see the full customer details on each sale in the admin.

Referral links and coupons

Every approved affiliate has a unique referral link code, generated automatically. You can also assign a personal discount coupon so they can offer customers a deal. Bloop prevents assigning a coupon already used by another affiliate or tied to a campaign, and notifies the affiliate when a new coupon is set.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Approving on reach alone. A big following with no audience overlap sends low-intent clicks. Approve for fit first.
• Treating the pending queue as a rubber stamp. If you approve everyone, the gate does nothing. Use it as a real filter.
• Letting the queue go stale. Good applicants lose interest. Review on a regular cadence.

Related

• Getting started with affiliates — program overview.
• Affiliate campaigns and commissions — what each affiliate earns.
• Affiliate sales tracking — the orders each affiliate drives.
• Recruiting and approving affiliates — the strategy behind the gate.