How your cashback website works

A cashback website is a commission-based model for affiliate marketing. The site owner receives a partner's commission and returns part of that commission to the buyer.

You need some basic knowledge of how affiliate marketing works to run a successful cashback site. We use the following terms in this guide:

1. Advertiser or Merchant – an online retailer that promotes its products through an affiliate network.

2. Publisher or Affiliate – you, the owner of the cashback website.

3. Affiliate Network – an intermediary between the Advertiser and the Publisher.

4. User or Customer – a buyer who clicks an affiliate link on your site and makes a purchase.

How it works

1. Register as a publisher with one of the supported affiliate networks. Most networks also require approval for each merchant you plan to promote.

2. Each network has its own module in the Cashback Tracker plugin. Activate the relevant modules, add your API keys, and set the default percentage of your commission to return to buyers. You can also set a different value for each merchant.

3. Add affiliate links to your site using one of the available methods: via shop pages, via the plugin's shortcodes, via Content Egg, Affiliate Egg, or custom solutions or theme functions.

4. The customer must be registered and logged in to your site. Once logged in, they receive a special Sub ID that is appended to affiliate links so the network can track their orders. A few important requirements: the purchase must be made after clicking an affiliate link on your site, the user must have their ad blocker disabled, and cookies must be enabled in their browser. There are WordPress plugins that notify users when an ad blocker is detected; search Google to find them.

5. It takes some time for the affiliate network to track a purchase and reflect it in statistics. Cashback Tracker will check the network's API and load updated statistics.

Each new purchase is assigned Pending status, meaning the order has been assigned to the user. The merchant can then approve or decline the order (Approved or Declined status). Note that merchants may take several weeks to approve an order, which means you will not receive your commission — and cannot pay cashback — until the order reaches Approved status. We generally recommend informing users that they should expect cashback within 3–4 weeks of purchase.

6. When a status changes, the plugin fires special events. If you have PHP skills, you can use them to write custom functions. We also provide a built-in integration with the myCRED points plugin for users without coding experience.

The plugin creates three custom point types in myCRED — Pending, Approved, and Declined — for each currency. You can then use myCRED add-ons to display statistics to users and manage points. myCRED integrates well with BuddyPress and many other themes and plugins. Most myCRED add-ons are free, as is the core myCRED plugin itself.

7. Approved points can be converted to real value. For example, you can sell real products for points, restrict access to parts of your site based on a user's point balance, or exchange points for gift cards or PayPal/bank transfers. Note that Cashback Tracker does not include a built-in withdrawal form. You will need to add a request form for users or use one of the myCRED Cash Out add-ons.