For brands
Getting started for brands
Create a brand account, build your program in the seven-step setup, connect your sales, send one test sale and go live. You approve each sale; ViralPayouts pays your partners and their recruiters for you.
1. Create your brand account
- Go to Start a program and create your account with your work email and a password.
- Confirm your email address from the link we send you.
- Optional but recommended: turn on two-step sign-in (an authenticator app) in the console. You get recovery codes when you do.
- Invite your team from the console. Each person is an owner, a manager or a viewer.
2. Build your program
The console walks you through seven steps, one decision per screen: About, Reward, Recruiters, Review, Tracking, Test sale and Go live. Steps 1 to 4 save a draft. Leave at any point and you resume where you stopped.
| Setting | What you can choose | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Commission (level 1) | 1% to 95% of each sale, or a flat amount of at least $1 per approved customer | You choose |
| Recruiter override (level 2) | Off, or 1% to 95% of the partner's commission or of the sale, or a flat amount. Optionally only for a set number of days after the recruit joined. | Off until you turn it on |
| Cookie window | 7 to 365 days | 30 days |
| Payment schedule (hold) | 15 to 30 days after the sale | 15 days |
| Minimum payout | $10 to $100 | $10 |
| Renewals | First payment only, 2 to 36 months, or lifetime | Lifetime |
| Who is credited | Last click or first click | Last click |
| Access | Open (anyone approved at once) or gated (you approve each application) | Gated |
Partner plus recruiter can never be more than the whole sale. Every setting is printed into the terms partners accept. See Program terms for the full list, the traffic-source rules and what no brand can change.
How the money splits on one sale
Take a $100 sale with a 20% commission and a recruiter override of 25% of the commission. The partner earns $20. Their recruiter earns $5. ViralPayouts' fee is a percentage of those $25 paid to partners, added on top (see Fees). You keep the rest of the sale. If the partner has no recruiter, no override exists and nobody else gets it.
3. Connect your sales
Pick one way to tell ViralPayouts that a customer paid or was refunded. Each program has its own addresses and secrets, shown on its Integration tab.
| You sell with | Use | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe Checkout | A webhook from your own Stripe account | Connect Stripe |
| Shopify | Two order webhooks | Connect Shopify |
| Anything else (your own server, an app) | Signed events to POST /api/v1/events | Event API |
4. Send a test sale and go live
On the live network a program goes live only after one real signed event has arrived from your event API integration or your Stripe webhook. It does not have to match a partner. The console button "Send test sale" runs the pipeline too, but it does not count: it proves nothing about your site. See Test sales.
Once live, share your program page and recruit link. Your program is listed in the program directory once your brand is active.
5. Run it day to day
- Approve or reject each sale. A sale starts as pending. Approved and past its hold, it becomes payable. You can reject a sale before then only with one of the listed reasons; after that, only for fraud.
- Pay your invoice. Brands are invoiced on the 1st and 16th; partners are paid as soon as the brand pays, at the latest on the 13th or 28th. See Payouts.
- Message partners, one at a time or all approved partners at once, from the console.
- Export payouts, the ledger, coupon codes and tax files as CSV. Tax files are for owners only.
Something here does not match what you see in the product? Email max@viralpayouts.com.