aMember is a really flexible system for managing a member’s only site or member’s only content. But sometimes the interface is not as intuitive as people hoped. One of the things that may not be as clear is its ability to set different affiliate commissions for different products. What you may not realize is there are two places to set commissions. One in the setup/configuration area and the other in each product record.

Default Commission Percentage

This is found under the setup/configuration >> Affiliates screen.

This sets the default configuration. While you can leave it empty, I would suggest you do enter a base commission percentage. Here’s why:

1. If you forget to set commissions, then aMember will fall back to this amount if nothing is entered it will be $0
2. Easier management. Let’s say your base commission is 20% but there are some products you want to pay higher. If you set your default to 20% then you won’t have to enter the commission amount on every single product. For those with higher percentage, you override the default in the product record. This way, when you raise your base commissions from 20% to 30% (example only), you only have to change it here. You won’t have to spend tons of time to individually change commissions in each product because at time of writing, there is no way to mass edit your products.

So set up your base commission amount or percentage here, then set up individual percentages in the product record.

Custom Commissions Per Product

Once you have your base set, under each product you can fine tune the commissions and override the default for that product only. You’d first pull up all your product records by clicking on Manage Products.

Then click on the product you want to edit

You will be presented with the product setup screen. Scroll down almost all the way down, you will see these boxes. Enter a commission amount or percentages here.  Click Save and you’re done. Be sure to test your setup.