The people selling for you
shouldn't only exist inside
someone else's platformOne system holding both creators and dealers
Partner types
Two, one underlying system
Attribution
Decided at the moment of sale
Offline step
Tracked
Platform commission
None — there's no platform
Why not an off-the-shelf platform
Three reasons, in order of how much they cost you
Its pricing runs against your growth
The standard affiliate platform model is a subscription plus a cut of every sale. Before you've signed a single partner, the subscription is due; once it's actually working, the cut eats real margin — money that ends up either in your price or out of your partners' commission. And partners are charged again when they withdraw.
A tool meant to drive growth gets more expensive the more it works.
The half you need most isn't there
A dealer isn't “an affiliate on a better rate”. They have a location, they can service and repair, and they can let a customer handle the thing before deciding. None of that exists in a product designed for purely online distribution — it can follow a link, but not a person who walked into a shop and ordered two weeks later.
In a lot of categories that's the highest-converting path there is.
The relationship data accumulates somewhere else
Which creators have worked out, what each dealer sells, what happened during in-store visits, what customers said on the spot — that's an asset built over years. Keeping it inside a platform means two things: switching platforms starts you over, and the platform can see all of it.
And more practically: it doesn't know your storefront, so none of that data flows back into your own business.
One system, two kinds of partner
Dealers get everything creators get, plus what only happens offline
Each with their own tracking and settlement
- Personal tracking links and personal promo codes
- Sample requests and approvals
- Assignable campaigns, with different discounts for different people
- Independent commission rates — every partner can be different
- Their own performance and commission view
- Official assets available directly, with produced content flowing back
All of the above, plus three things that happen offline
- Location and service-point data — customers find their nearest one from the storefront
- Registered service and repair capability — so a repair request reaches someone who can actually handle it
- In-store experience — covered separately below; it's the most distinctive part of the system
- A separate purchasing and commission structure, kept apart from the creator side
The offline step
A visit that used to leave no trace now leaves one
What changes is small and structural: the customer leaves with something that belongs to that visit and to them specifically, and the storefront recognises it directly. We don't publish how that's issued or validated — that's implementation. What matters commercially is the three things it makes true.
The dealer gets credited for work they actually did
Which is the precondition for them doing it again. An unrewarded effort stops happening, regardless of what the agreement says.
The customer isn't asked to remember anything
No code to keep, nothing to mention at checkout. Anything relying on a customer's memory leaks most of what it's meant to capture.
What happened in the shop becomes data
Which locations convert, what customers ask before buying, which objections recur — none of which survives in a shop assistant's memory.
The same month
Inside the system, and on spreadsheets and chat logs
Inside the system
- ✓A sale closes and who it belongs to is settled immediately — no month-end exports to reconcile
- ✓What a customer takes away from an in-store visit works on the storefront directly, with nobody creating it by hand
- ✓A partner's rate is changed in one place and is immediately live for them — no announcement, and nothing out of sync
- ✓Refunds and returns reverse commission automatically, instead of chasing money already paid out
- ✓What customers say in a shop lands in the system, so which locations are performing is visible
- ✓Partners can see their own numbers instead of asking you at month end
On spreadsheets and chat logs
- ✕Settlement day starts with two days of reconciling, then two days of “why doesn't this one count as mine”
- ✕A customer brought in offline becomes untraceable organic traffic the moment they reach the site
- ✕Changing one partner's rate means remembering to change a sheet, an announcement and next month's settlement
- ✕You discover the return after the commission was already paid last month
- ✕Customer feedback lives in a shop assistant's memory, and leaves when they do
- ✕Assets get passed around in chat apps, and afterwards nobody can find them
Attribution
Settled in advance, not argued on settlement day
Priority is ordered before anything happens
Where two partners could claim the same sale, the order of precedence is already set and applied consistently — nothing is judged in the moment. The one part of it we publish is the principle: the party that actually spent something on that sale takes precedence. The full rule set is configured to your business during delivery.
Rules can change — just not on settlement day
Changing terms is normal and the system supports it. What isn't acceptable is renegotiating them once the amounts are visible. Every calculation keeps its inputs, so any disputed figure resolves by looking it up rather than by whoever argues hardest.
Three views
Each side sees only what's theirs
Merchant side
Approve applications, set each partner's commission rate, assign campaigns, handle sample requests, and see performance and settlement across the whole network. Rules are set here and take effect everywhere at once.
Dealer side
Their own performance and commission, tracking links and personal codes, in-store experience records, location details, asset downloads and sample requests. It opens in a browser — nothing to install.
Creator side
The same, minus the location and offline parts. They can see where each amount came from and how far it's got through settlement, which by itself removes a large amount of back-and-forth.
It grows on the storefront
Not a back office standing next to your site
A sale closes and attribution is decided there and then
Not two spreadsheets compared at month end, and nobody has to remember who brought this one in.
What's issued offline is recognised on the storefront
No one has to go and create a matching discount in a back office, and there's no “I was given a code that doesn't work”.
Locations appear on the storefront's map
Customers can find them, which is what makes it worth a dealer's effort to do the offline work at all — that's the loop.
Commission is calculated against real orders
Refunds, returns and partial returns reverse automatically. The part manual reconciliation always gets wrong needs no person here.
Repair requests reach someone who can handle them
Matched on capability and location, rather than dropped into a group chat containing everyone.
What it means for you
Three questions that decide whether this is yours to build
Do you need to track the offline half?
If every conversion happens online, an off-the-shelf affiliate platform genuinely is better value and we'll say so. Locations, hands-on experience and deals closed in person are what building your own actually buys you.
Are your partner terms different per partner?
One rate and one set of rules for everybody means a simple tool is enough. Tiers, territories, per-campaign and per-category rates — the more variation, the less an off-the-shelf tool can hold.
Is this relationship data an asset to you?
If three years of it matters to your business, it shouldn't live somewhere that can change its rules or its pricing whenever it likes.
When this doesn't apply
Three cases where we'd tell you not to
Purely online, with uniform terms
No locations, no offline step, one commission rate for everyone — an off-the-shelf affiliate platform is better value there, and we'll tell you to use one rather than take the project.
You can count your partners on one hand
Three or five relationships can be handled with a spreadsheet and attention. The value of this rises with partner count and settlement frequency; too early, and the system costs more to run than it saves.
The rules aren't settled
Who takes priority, how rates are split, what doesn't earn commission — somebody has to be able to decide those. Building before they're settled just moves the argument somewhere else.
Where this sits
Related, and often confused
This manages people selling for you
If what you need to manage is your own multi-tier organisation — the people running your business rather than reselling it — that's a different shape: reporting, attribution between colleagues, commission across tiers.
It only works because the storefront is ours
Attribution at the moment of sale, offline credentials the site recognises, dealers on the store map — all of it depends on the storefront being built rather than configured.
You can start with one piece
Tracking and commission calculation, or the service-point map, work as a single module with the interfaces left open for the rest.
Questions
What people ask about this one
01Wouldn't an off-the-shelf affiliate platform be cheaper?+
Often yes, and where it is we'll say so. Two conditions decide it: whether conversions happen offline as well as online, and whether your terms differ per partner. If neither holds — everything online, one rate for everyone — we'd recommend an off-the-shelf platform and not take the project. Where both hold, the platform can't hold the important half, and the subscription-plus-commission model gets more expensive exactly as you grow.
02How is an offline visit attributed to a partner?+
The customer leaves with something that belongs to that visit and to them specifically, and it's recognised by the storefront directly — no one has to create a matching record afterwards, and it can't be handed around. What we publish about the priority rules is one line: where two claims collide, the party that actually spent something on that sale takes precedence. The full rule set is configured to your business during delivery, not published here.
03What if the commission is calculated wrong?+
Two things are structural rather than promises. Every calculation keeps its inputs, so any figure can be traced back to the order and the rule that produced it — disagreements become a lookup rather than an argument. And refunds, returns and partial returns reverse automatically, which is where manual reconciliation goes wrong most often. Settlement periods, disputes and payment remain your management process; we don't run them and don't guarantee outcomes.
04Can attribution rules be changed after launch?+
Yes — they're configuration, not code. The rule that matters more is procedural: priority is decided in advance and applied consistently, rather than judged case by case on settlement day. Changing the rules is fine; changing them during settlement is what destroys partner trust.
05Do partners have to install anything?+
No. Both partner interfaces open in a browser. That's deliberate: adoption fails when a partner has to install and remember something new, and a distribution system nobody logs into produces no data at all.
06We sell through both creators and dealers. Is that two systems?+
One system. Dealers get everything creators get, plus three things that only exist offline: location and service points, registered repair capability, and in-store experience. Treating dealers as “affiliates on a better rate” is the mistake that makes off-the-shelf tools fail here.
07Does adding a partner type or a new rule later cost extra?+
Yes, and it's written into the contract at signing rather than raised mid-project. Rates, campaigns, thresholds, notification targets and adding partners are configuration your own people handle, or an annual maintenance subscription covers. A new partner type, a new business line or a new system integration is new development, scoped and priced as a new project.
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