A written manual for the founder running their first affiliate program: a live product, paying customers, a Stripe account, and no partnerships team. Every module is open, ungated and indexed. No email address required, ever.
Most of what exists on this subject is written for an affiliate manager at a company whose program already works, with hundreds of partners to segment and a dashboard full of numbers worth analysing. You've probably got 40 customers, no budget, and 90 minutes on a Sunday. This manual is staged for that reader: whether to start at all, then the mechanics of money, then the rest of it, in the order the problems actually arrive.
One thing worth saying before you read anything here: we sell affiliate program software, and the first module below argues that some of you shouldn't buy any. We'd rather lose a trial than gain a merchant whose program was never going to work.
The modules
The disqualifier. Four questions to answer before you invite a single partner, what to do instead when the answer is no, and the honest threshold for coming back. This module is allowed to tell you no, and for a lot of readers it will.
Module 1 · About a 6 minute read The commission number, worked out rather than copiedWork the rate from your own margin, churn and payback instead of copying an average with an eight-point spread. Recurring vs one-time, the cookie window, and why trials pay on money.
Module 2 · About a 5 minute read The six rules you write before the first affiliate arrivesThe six clauses that earn their place: brand bidding, coupon sites, incentivised traffic, self-referral, attribution, refunds. Plain-English wording included, and how to make acceptance provable.
Module 3 · About a 15 minute read Rails: how you actually pay a person in another countryThe part every guide skips. Who is legally paying your affiliates, what PayPal and Wise really cost, the tax forms and the reporting threshold that changed in 2026, invoices and VAT, and why a $50 minimum payout quietly kills small programs.
Module 4 · About a 5 minute read Your first ten affiliates are people you already knowFive places your first partners are already hiding, two outreach messages that sound like a person, and why most of the ten doing nothing is the median, not a failure.
Module 5 · About a 5 minute read One first action, and the four assets you make in an afternoonPartners go quiet. Nobody named the first move. One clear first action, the four assets you can build in an afternoon, and a founder-sized 30-day rhythm.
Module 6 · About a 5 minute read Reading the numbers without lying to yourselfWhy a conversion rate on eleven clicks is an anecdote, the published benchmarks that show what normal looks like, and the incrementality question the category avoids.
Module 7 · About a 5 minute read Fraud, leakage, and the polite way to say noThe signature of each abuse in data you already have, the defences to switch on day one, and the three awkward messages, written out, for saying no without burning the relationship.
Module 8 · About a 4 minute read When to stop paying attention to itMost programs settle, and that's fine. What autopilot really means, the ten-minute monthly check, and how to tell a plateau from a ceiling.
Read them in order the first time. After that, each module stands on its own, and the numbered sidebar takes you anywhere.
Who writes this
Jimi Barkway, the founder of AffiliateRail. Before building affiliate software I spent years on the other side of it as an affiliate, an email marketer and a paid-ads operator, which is why the manual keeps coming back to what the person holding the link actually experiences. Where a module touches tax or law it says so plainly and tells you when an accountant is the right next call, because a software founder isn't that.
Corrections are welcome at support@affiliaterail.com. Every figure in the manual carries the date it was last checked.