Launch your affiliate program
in an afternoon

An affiliate program pays partners and creators a commission on the customers they bring you. Here's how it works.

Create your affiliate program in under 15 minutes with the help of our quickstart guide. Then invite your dev team to complete installation.
how to create an affiliate program
Follow your program checklist to test, launch, and promote your affiliate program. GrowSurf guides you through each step.
how to launch an affiliate program
The admin dashboard shows real-time analytics, like who your top affiliates are and the engagement funnel for your affiliate program, while weekly and monthly email reports keep you in the loop.
how to improve an affiliate program
Next, tell GrowSurf when a new customer signs up through an affiliate link. Choose one of the options below based on how your signup flow works.
Then tell GrowSurf when a referred customer pays. Choose one of the options below based on how you track purchases. GrowSurf keeps commissions up to date even on refunds or chargebacks.
Finally, pay affiliates. GrowSurf emails affiliates when they earn a payout, and once they qualify, you can send payouts in bulk from the dashboard.
Once an affiliate applies to your program and you approve them, they'll be granted access to their affiliate portal where they can get their link, share it, and see their signups, commissions, and payouts. Here are four simple options.
Start without a GrowSurf account or credit card. Copy the prompt below and paste it into an AI assistant that can browse the web and send requests. Your assistant creates the account, asks you what you want, and prepares a draft affiliate program for you to review.
ChatGPT Claude Gemini Perplexity and other assistants that can browse the web and call APIs
Help me create a GrowSurf referral or affiliate program. Start by reading https://growsurf.com/agent-start.md and follow it as the source of truth. Use your action-capable tools and the GrowSurf REST API to create and configure the program; do not require a dashboard visit or an existing GrowSurf account or API key. If you can speak MCP, connect to https://mcp.growsurf.com/onboard, which needs no credentials, and use growsurf_program_design_advisor for the design. Consult https://growsurf.com/openapi.json, https://growsurf.com/arazzo.yaml, https://growsurf.com/auth.md, https://growsurf.com/llms.txt, and the linked GrowSurf docs when useful.

Ask me for my website first. Read it, then come back with a complete recommended program: what counts as a referral, the reward structure, who gets rewarded, and where people share. Ask me what I want to change instead of interviewing me setting by setting. Do not pick a reward amount or commission rate yourself. Ask what a converted customer is worth to me, and leave rewards switched off until I confirm the amount and how it gets paid. Show me and ask for explicit approval of the current GrowSurf Terms of Service and Privacy Policy before accepting them or creating an account. Pause for me to verify my email before protected API requests. Treat the returned API key as a secret and keep it out of chat, logs, screenshots, source files, and shell history.

Create and configure the program as DRAFT. Read back the saved resources and summarize what is ready for review. Do not launch or resume the program, add payment details, accept charges, enable or fulfill rewards or commissions, initiate payouts, rotate keys, delete data, or edit or deploy my website or app without separate explicit approval.

If you cannot fetch the linked resources or send HTTPS requests, or you have no secret store that survives between turns, do not create the account, do not offer to generate cURL or scripts, and do not plan the program. Reply with only this: "I can't make web requests from here. Sign up at https://app.growsurf.com/signup (free, no card), then connect an AI assistant in Settings → AI Connections at https://app.growsurf.com/settings#ai-connections and paste this prompt again." Never claim that you executed the workflow.
Your assistant asks for your website, reads it, and recommends a complete affiliate program. Tell it what to change and how much the commission should be. It creates your account once you approve GrowSurf's terms, then waits while you verify your email.
AI agent workspace

Help me create a GrowSurf referral or affiliate program. Start by reading https://growsurf.com/agent-start.md and follow it as the source of truth.

Your draft affiliate program is ready for review.

  • Built an affiliate program from a program template
  • Set a 20% commission for each referred subscription
  • Saved the program as a draft for approval

Here's what your affiliates will see:

Earn 20% commission

Share your link. When a referred customer subscribes, you earn commission.

Your program is saved as a draft — nothing reaches your affiliates until you approve it. Your assistant can help with installation too: open the Installation step in your dashboard, hit Copy for AI, and paste it into your assistant or send it to your dev team.
app.growsurf.com

Last step: connect GrowSurf to your product.

Three things. Install the code, connect the payment processor that bills your customers, and pick how affiliates get paid.

Copy for AI Copies these steps as a markdown prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or Antigravity and it walks through the install. Copied — paste it into your assistant
  • 1Install the GrowSurf Universal CodeOne script on your site
  • 2Connect your payment processorPayments, refunds, and chargebacks
  • 3Pay your affiliatesPick how payouts get sent
  • 4Give affiliates somewhere to grab their linkThe Partner Portal
AI agent workspace
# GrowSurf Affiliate program installation guide for AI. Use this markdown as the source of truth when helping me install this GrowSurf program. If you have access to my codebase, make the code changes for me instead of telling me to do them myself…
  • Added the GrowSurf script to your site
  • Connected your payment processor so commissions calculate
  • Embedded the Partner Portal in your account page

Prefer to write the code yourself? See the four installation steps under Do it yourself →

After Launch

From affiliate conversion
to payout

You recruit your own affiliates and set the commission terms before you invite them: what counts as a sale, the rate, the waiting period, and the payout minimum. Once your program is live, here is what happens from the moment an affiliate brings in a sale to the moment they are paid.

  1. Step 1

    An affiliate brings in a sale

    When someone clicks an affiliate's link and becomes a paying customer, GrowSurf credits that sale to the affiliate as it lands, not on a schedule you run.

  2. Step 2

    The affiliate earns a commission

    Your terms decide the amount: a flat fee or a percentage, plus renewals and repeat payments if you set it up that way. The commission lands in the affiliate's balance straight away. Nothing is paid out yet.

  3. Step 3

    Refunds settle during the waiting period

    A new commission is not ready to pay. It sits through the waiting period you set, the window where refunds and chargebacks can still land. A refund inside that window takes it back off the balance. When the waiting period ends, the commissions that remain are approved.

  4. Step 4

    You pay everyone who is due

    An affiliate becomes due once their approved balance clears the minimum you set. Your dashboard lists everyone who qualifies, and one action pays them all through PayPal or Wise, with a record of every payout. Pay US customers and affiliates with Venmo through PayPal.

  5. Step 5

    Affiliates watch their earnings

    Affiliates see every commission, whether its waiting period has ended, and every payout you have sent. They enter their own payment details, so you never chase anyone for a PayPal address before you can pay them.

Notes and related links
  • Customer referrals and affiliate programs are different program types. A referral program rewards existing customers with one-off rewards when a referral qualifies. An affiliate program pays recruited partners recurring commissions on the sales they bring in. Each is set up as its own program with its own pricing: referral programs are priced by the people who receive a referral link or sign up through one, and affiliate programs charge a percentage of referral revenue.
  • Decide who gets credit. If more than one channel can claim a sale, decide which program gets credit and set up your integration to match.
Ubindi

"GrowSurf manages everything to do with our referral program from A to Z — our tech team had to merely paste a small piece of code into our app, everything else was easily set up by marketing. The savings from that alone makes the decision to go with a 3rd party (instead of building things ourselves) well worth it."

Alex Klein
Alex Klein
Co-Founder at Ubindi
SurveyMonkey

"We wanted a cost-savvy solution that could be managed and changed easily without the help of IT/devs. GrowSurf provided us exactly what our business needed! They saved me and our development team valuable time by providing an easy-to-use solution of building an internal system, with minimal coding. With GrowSurf's support, I was able to set up the entire program within a day."

Gabriella Di Fazio
Gabriella Di Fazio
Marketing Manager at SurveyMonkey

Trusted by marketing and product teams that grow through customer, user, and partner referrals.