Keeping an affiliate program running smoothly is a big task. Inviting new affiliates, keeping track of the referrals they’ve earned, and finally paying everyone you owe can become a management nightmare without the right plugin. In addition, there’s a distinct lack of high-quality affiliate plugins specifically designed for WooCommerce. That is, until Solid Affiliate hit the market.
The premium affiliate management plugin was built from the start with WooCommerce in mind. It has everything you need to stay on top of your affiliates and their earnings, making sure everyone’s getting paid on time.
Let’s dive into Solid Affiliate and take an in-depth look at its best features.
Solid Affiliate: The Basics
There are many popular, well-established affiliate plugins out there already. Having launched in only 2021, Solid Affiliate is here to shake up the competition. What exactly makes it stand out so much?
- Manage your affiliates, referrals, and payments in one powerful but intuitive dashboard.
- The lifetime pricing, rather than the standard per-year model, is much friendlier to people on limited budgets.
- You can use it on an unlimited number of sites, including client sites.
- There are no pricey addons to inflate the cost. Everything is included in the base plugin.
- It’s very clean and easy to get the hang of, as it strongly resembles the WordPress UI you’re used to. You also don’t need to log into any third-party sites; everything is in your back end.
- It includes an admin dashboard which collects all important reports and notifications into one convenient panel.
- An affiliate portal allows your affiliates to manage their account and see statistics.
- Powerful Paypal integration offers total control over how and when you pay, and even protects you from refund fraud.
As you can see, Solid Affiliate has a lot to bring to the table. Though it hasn’t been around as long as the more popular affiliate plugins, it outdoes the competition in quite a few areas, and it does it for a lower price.
Why Use Solid Affiliate?
There are several reasons why Solid Affiliate is worth trying. Other affiliate plugins are difficult to set up, not as feature-rich, and can struggle once you have a lot of people to manage.
If you realize down the line that your affiliate plugin isn’t working out or doesn’t have the features you need, it can be extremely difficult to switch over to a new one. You need to know from the start that you’re choosing a plugin that makes the process of adding affiliates, setting up referral links, and managing payments as painless as possible.
In addition, Solid Affiliate’s WooCommerce integration isn’t just an extra tacked on at the last second, but a core feature of the plugin and what it was built around.
Finally, it has very fair pricing. With a one-time fee of $99, you get lifetime updates and support on an unlimited number of websites. If you’re designing client sites but can’t afford the expensive, site-limited plans of other premium affiliate plugins, Solid Affiliate is the way to go.
Solid Affiliate’s Features
This plugin has quite a lot to offer. And without any paid addons, everything is available in the base plugin. Let’s look in detail at all its major features.
Easy Setup, Easy Learning
One thing that really differentiates Solid Affiliate from the competition is just how easy it is to get started with. The plugin includes a setup wizard which shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. Most steps are as easy as clicking a button.
From there, you’re free to explore the interface, add new affiliates, and set up referrals. The UI is simple, intuitive, and comes with nifty tips and explanations, so you’re never left wondering what a certain setting does or where you should go next.
If you do get stuck, check out Solid Affiliate’s clean and navigable documentation, which should put you on the right track.
Integrate with WooCommerce
Unlike other affiliate plugins which barely focus on WooCommerce or even hide support behind a paywall, Solid Affiliate was designed specifically for WooCommerce, and in fact won’t work properly without it.
In addition, it also integrates with WooCommerce Subscriptions, something even rarer in other plugins.
Here are a few examples of how Solid Affiliate is WooCommerce-aware:
- Track clicks and purchases on any kind of product, including subscriptions and virtual goods.
- Let affiliates provide a WooCommerce coupon code and pay them when it gets used.
- Reject referrals if the product is refunded within a certain timeframe.
- Change your commission rate depending on the product, category, or coupon.
- It flags referral purchases and inserts an order note to mark them.
Manage Affiliates
Getting affiliates is easy with Solid Affiliate. You can direct them to signup on the Affiliate Portal page or wherever you’ve placed your signup shortcode, set existing users on your sites as affiliates, or manually create accounts.
By default, you must manually approve sign-ups to reduce low quality referral spam, though this can be turned off and all submissions auto-approved.
When users are approved, they can use the Affiliate Portal to manage their referral links, see how many clicks they’ve got, and also monitor payments you’ve provided.
Finally, Solid Affiliate integrates with MailChimp so you can automatically sync your affiliates to a segmented list and easily contact them.
Set Up Referrals
Referrals are one area where Solid Affiliate gives you ultimate control. Here’s just a few of the settings you can change:
- You can set a referral percentage rate, or select a flat rate.
- Exclude shipping or tax from commission calculations.
- Change the referral rates for subscriptions and set a separate rate for subscription renewals.
- Only pay out for new customers; this is tracked with a cookie and you can change when it expires.
- Customize referral rates by individual affiliate, certain products, or even custom segmented affiliate groups.
- Generate a WooCommerce coupon and pay out when it’s used.
- Set up a refund grace period to prevent paying affiliates for refunded products, or turn this off entirely.
- If one user clicks multiple affiliate links, credit only the last link they click on.
On the Commission Rates page, you can track your various settings that may affect how affiliates get paid, and change the priority of certain custom rates you’ve set.
Referrals are handled automatically when anyone purchases a product, though they can also be added manually if needed. You can examine all your referrals from the dashboard to see exactly how each commission was calculated.
Pay Your Affiliates
Paying for referrals is a totally painless process with Solid Affiliates. You have two options: Either use the PayPal integration to directly pay your partners, or export a CSV of all pending payments so you can manually do it.
If you choose PayPal, you’ll find it very easy to use. You can pay for individual affiliates or bulk pay all outstanding referrals, and it properly uses Paypal Invoices. They also don’t take any transaction fees, though keep in mind that Paypal itself will still take a cut.
You can always track your past payments on the Payouts page to make sure that nothing is amiss.
Creatives: Marketing Assets
Ever had marketing content like a banner ad to share with affiliates, but no way to easily deliver it to all of them? With Solid Affiliate, this is no longer a concern.
On the Creatives page, you can upload an image, provide a description, and link to your product’s landing page. This can be used for a variety of assets or images, though you can even write up a simple text pitch for affiliates to embed.
Once you’re done, these assets will be available in a library for any of your affiliates to insert on their site if they wish. You can easily deactivate any outdated creatives and they’ll no longer appear in the Creatives library.
Detailed Statistics
Solid Affiliate keeps meticulous track of everything that happens in your affiliate program. When a link is clicked, a product is purchased, or an affiliate signs up, everything is logged and listed in the Reports section for easy viewing.
These reports operate in real time, though historical trends are also available. Everything is presented in easy-to-read charts, and you can also filter the data by specific or custom date ranges.
With these charts and tables, there’s no headache trying to decipher them. Everything is simple, clean, and concise.
Ongoing Development
Lastly we’d like to mention that Solid Affiliate is always working to add new features. The development team is active and readily adding new integrations to make managing your affiliate program easier. For example they are working on releasing an open API soon – and you can always check the changelog to see when new features are released.
Additionally, if there is a specific feature or integration you want all you need to do is reach out to the Solid Affiliate team. They are very responsive and receptive to suggestions (in fact, the MailChimp integration was added the same week it was requested by a customer – now that is fast).
Final Thoughts
Finding an affiliate plugin both affordable and high-quality is no easy task, but Solid Affiliate does its job well. From affiliate management to referral tracking to painlessly paying commission fees, it handles everything elegantly start to finish.
If you’ve been struggling to find an affiliate tracker with a WooCommerce integration that isn’t just an afterthought, this is exactly what you need.
Its payment plan is also one of the best on the market. Other plugins can get very expensive with yearly recurring fees, and may even take a cut of your commissions. Solid Affiliate’s relatively low-cost lifetime fee, lack of pricey addons, and support for unlimited sites makes it well worth the investment.
Get Solid AffilIate
Do you have any questions about Solid Affiliate that we didn’t cover? Or have you already given this affiliate plugin a try? Let us know your thoughts below!
Keep reading the article at WPExplorer. The article was originally written by Brenda Barron on 2021-09-27 11:52:37.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.