An affiliate is a WordPress user with an affiliate record attached. There are three ways to create one, and you will probably use all three eventually.
They apply#
Publish the registration form — the [squad_affiliate_apply] shortcode (the older [squad_affiliate_register] name still works, aliased to the same thing), or the Divi 5 Registration module — and applications arrive in Squad Affiliate → Affiliates as pending. Approve or reject each one. You can set the programme to approve automatically if you would rather not gate it, which suits a programme where anyone with an audience is welcome and does not suit one where being an affiliate implies endorsement.
An application is idempotent per WordPress user: if the person applying already has an affiliate record — pending, active, whatever its state — registering again returns that same record rather than creating a duplicate. Somebody double-submitting a form, or clicking an old bookmarked application link a second time, doesn’t produce two rows to reconcile.
You add them#
From Affiliates → Add New, pick an existing user or create one. This is for the people you recruited yourself, who should not have to fill in a form to join something you invited them to.
They buy first#
Customer advocacy (Pro) turns a buyer into an affiliate at checkout. It is the cheapest recruitment there is — they have already paid you once, which is more qualification than any application form provides.
The four statuses#
An affiliate record can be in exactly one of four states: pending (applied, awaiting your decision), active (approved, tracking and earning), rejected, or suspended. Suspended sits apart from rejected — it’s the state for pausing someone who was active and earning without discarding their history the way a rejection implies, useful for a dispute you’re looking into or a partner taking a break, where you expect them back rather than gone for good.
What they get#
Every approved affiliate gets a referral link, a portal showing their clicks, referrals, earnings and payout history, and — if you enabled it — a coupon code of their own. The link works immediately; there is no propagation delay, because attribution is resolved on your own site at request time, not synced from anywhere.
Recruited through another affiliate#
If your programme runs a multi-level network (off by default, and its own filter to turn on — see Recurring, lifetime and tiered commissions), a new affiliate who signs up while carrying someone else’s referral cookie is automatically recorded as that affiliate’s recruit. This only happens with the network switched on: on an ordinary programme, arriving through another affiliate’s link and then applying yourself doesn’t create any relationship between the two of you, because there’s nowhere for that relationship to matter until override commissions are actually in play.
Rejecting well#
A rejection sends no email unless you enable one. If your programme gets applications from people who genuinely misunderstood it, a short rejection notice saves you the follow-up question — the template is under Settings → Emails.