Guide to Using Affiliate Marketing on Superhive

You have likely run across affiliate marketers and affiliate marketing links in your everyday life without even realizing it. Whenever an influential Instagrammer, YouTuber, or blog author recommends a product to you, they are likely earning a small portion of any resulting sales of that product in their role as an affiliate marketer. On Superhive (formerly Blender Market), using affiliates to publicize your products can help you reach new audiences and increase your sales. Plus, you have complete control over who your affiliates are and how much they can earn off of each of your products.

What is affiliate marketing?

Most simply, affiliate marketing is an exchange of money for exposure. The affiliate exposes your product to potential customers via various online platforms. In exchange, whenever a sale is made as a result of the affiliate's product promotion, you give them a percentage of those sales. Affiliates can only earn commissions from your products when their referrals lead to a completed sale of a product you've allowed them to promote.

What are the benefits of affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a great way to get your product in front of customers who might otherwise never see it. Think about all of the social media posts, tutorials, and explainer art posts that call out Blender-related products by name. If the recommendation comes from a trusted source, customers are more likely to purchase. This sort of product exposure is gold.

How much does it cost to use affiliates?

How much money you end up sending to affiliates depends on what commission percentage you have agreed upon and how successful they are. The important thing to remember is that they only make money when you make money.

How do I find someone to market my products as an affiliate?

Great question. The quickest place to start is the Affiliate Directory in your Creator Dashboard (Affiliate Details → Affiliate Directory). It lists active Superhive affiliates with their audience size, content format, and channels. By default it shows affiliates who have completed their profiles, and you can choose View All to see everyone. You can filter by Audience and Format, view each affiliate's profile, and click Add as Affiliate to add them without needing their email address. See Using the Affiliate Directory.

You can also look at the Top 10 Referrers in your Product Events Report. Those websites are the top sites that send customers to your products. To keep that exposure going, and to share the love, consider reaching out to them to negotiate an affiliate agreement.

Another approach is to reach out to people whose Blender/art/3D opinions you trust. If you are paying attention to and appreciate their posts, articles, or videos, chances are that other people do, too.

In some cases, affiliates will contact you about promoting one or more of your products.

Regardless of how you select someone to promote your products, they must have a Superhive (formerly Blender Market) user account in order for you to add them as an affiliate. Anyone in the Affiliate Directory already has one. If someone you'd like to work with isn't on Superhive yet, they can apply to the affiliate program, or create an account so you can add them by email.

For tips on finding and approaching affiliates, see How to Reach Out to Potential Affiliates.

Can multiple affiliates earn a referral credit from a single product purchased by a referred customer?

No. We only allow one affiliate visit to be stored at a time. In other words, if a customer clicks two separate affiliate links to your product, then only the most recent one will count. Superhive uses last-click attribution, so the referral goes to the last affiliate link the customer clicked before buying.

Each time a customer clicks an affiliate link, we save a cookie to their browser that will expire in 14 days. If they purchase within those 14 days, then a referral will be generated (assuming you have set the affiliate to Active and have allowed them a referral for the product purchased).

For more on how to grant affiliates access to products, see How to Add New Affiliates to Your Products and How to Manage Existing Affiliates.

How soon does the customer have to purchase the product in order for the referral to count?

Customers must purchase a product within 14 days after first clicking on the affiliate link in order for the referral to count. When the customer clicks on the link, we save a cookie to their browser with some unique codes that we can then check for after the purchase. So long as the customer’s cookie is valid and the affiliate is valid (that is, they are an active affiliate for you and the product that was purchased), then the referral will be generated.

This allows you to encourage affiliates to share your products in a way that energizes customers to purchase those products, thus growing your sales and revenue.