How to list your affiliate program for free

Listing an affiliate program here costs nothing, and there is no form to fill in and nothing to buy. The directory is built by reading the terms pages companies already publish on their own sites. Your part is making that page easy to find and easy to read, then claiming the listing so you can correct anything we got wrong.

This guide covers both halves. If your program does not exist yet, start with how to start an affiliate program, because a listing can only ever be as good as the terms behind it.

What a free listing shows

Every listing carries the facts an affiliate checks before joining, and where we read them:

• Commission. A percentage, a fixed amount per sale, or a recurring share, with anything that qualifies it.
• Cookie window. How long after a click a sale still counts, in days.
• Payout terms. When and how affiliates get paid.
• Network. Whether the program runs in-house or through an affiliate network.
• Where to apply. The page an affiliate signs up on.
• Source and date. The URL each term came from and when we fetched it.

We store facts, not marketing copy. Your own description of the product stays on your site.

Check whether you are already listed

Search the program directory for your company name before doing anything else. If you are there, skip ahead to claiming the listing. If you are not, the next two sections are what gets you read.

Put your terms at an address people expect

Our crawler does not wander through your whole site. It reads a short list of conventional addresses on your domain, the ones most companies already use:

• /affiliates, /affiliate, /affiliate-program, /affiliate-programme
• /partners, /partner, /partner-program, /partnerships
• /referral, /refer, /referral-program, /become-an-affiliate
• the Shopify shapes, such as /pages/affiliates and /pages/affiliate-program

It also tries subdomains like affiliates. and partners., and it follows a link from your homepage when that link is clearly labelled as your affiliate page.

If your terms live somewhere else, the simplest fix is a redirect from /affiliates to the real page, plus a plain "Affiliates" link in your footer. Both help human affiliates too. Most people looking for a program try the same addresses first.

Write terms a machine can read

A rate we cannot read without ambiguity is stored as unknown and shown as "Not published". We never estimate one. So the way you write the page decides how complete your listing is:

• Write the numbers as text. A commission that only appears inside a banner image cannot be read by a crawler, or by a screen reader.
• Give the cookie window in days. "60-day cookie" is clear. "Generous tracking" is not a term.
• Say what the rate applies to. If it differs by plan or by first and repeat orders, name each case once.
• State the payout schedule. How often you pay, the minimum balance and the payment methods. Affiliate payout terms explained lists what affiliates look for.
• Keep the page public. Terms behind a login or inside a signup flow are invisible to us, and to most affiliates comparing programs.

A clear page does more than fill a listing. It is the same page that does your recruiting, as how to recruit affiliates explains, and the rate on it should come from what a customer is worth to you, which how to set an affiliate commission rate works through.

Let the crawler in, or tell it to stop

Our crawler identifies itself honestly on every request, respects robots.txt and any Crawl-delay you set, and never pretends to be a browser. If your robots.txt blocks it, we simply do not have your data.

That cuts both ways. If you would rather not be listed, one line in robots.txt is enough, and how our crawler works shows the exact rule. If you do want a listing, check that a broad block is not keeping it out by accident.

Does claiming a listing cost anything?

No. Claiming is free, and it will stay free. It does not put you in a paid tier and it does not change where your program ranks. A paid tier will exist later. It does not exist yet.

To claim, open your listing and choose to claim it. You sign in with Google, then prove you run the domain in one of two ways:

• an email address on your company's domain, or
• a TXT record published on the domain.

We check both against the domain itself, not against anything typed into the form. A TXT record can take a while to show up, so the claim page keeps the same value for you if you need to come back later.

What you can correct once it is yours

A claimed listing lets you set the commission type and rate, the cookie window, the payout terms, anything that qualifies the rate, the page where people apply, and whether the program is open, paused or closed.

Every field you correct is marked as yours. The crawler is not allowed to write those fields again on any later run, and that rule lives in the database rather than in anyone's memory. If you change those terms next year, update the listing yourself, because the crawler will not.

Complete terms help your listing get found

Every open program with a working link is listed in the directory. Search engines are another matter. We keep a listing page out of search results until it has a commission we can actually read, because a page of blanks helps nobody. Claiming the listing and filling in the missing terms are the two quickest ways to make your page one we show.

Where to start this week

Look yourself up in the directory. If you are listed, claim it and check every figure against your current terms. If you are not, make sure your terms page sits at one of the addresses above, states its numbers in plain text and is not blocked in robots.txt.