Creatives
Upload banners, images and copy blocks under Squad Affiliate → Creatives, and they appear in every affiliate’s portal with their referral link already embedded. An affiliate should never have to build a tracking URL by hand — that is where mistyped slugs come from.
Give each creative a size and a name that says where it goes. “Sidebar 300×250” gets used; “banner-final-2” does not.
Short links
Pro adds branded short links on your own domain — yoursite.com/go/jane. They survive being read aloud, and they keep working when a third-party shortener is blocked or shuts down.
The leaderboard
The leaderboard ranks affiliates by referrals or earnings over a window you choose, and it is the one feature here that reliably changes behaviour: people who can see they are fourth try to be third.
Two things to decide before enabling it. Whether to show real names or handles — some affiliates do not want competitors knowing their volume. And whether to show figures at all, or only positions, which gets you the motivation without publishing anyone’s income.
Notifications for a new referral, an approved payout and a pending application are on by default and each is templated under Settings → Emails. The one worth customising first is the new-affiliate welcome: it is the only message you can be sure gets read.