This article will cover the following:
What Are Affiliates in CAKE?
Affiliates are the publishers and partners who promote your advertisers' offers and drive traffic to them. Each affiliate gets their own account where they can browse available offers, grab tracking links, and check their performance stats.
Affiliates only see the offers and payout rates you explicitly share with them. They cannot view other affiliates' data, advertiser details, or your internal margin.
Affiliate Signup and Approval
Option 1 — Affiliates Apply Through Your Signup Page
Option 2 — Add an Affiliate Manually
If your network has auto-approval turned on, affiliates who complete the signup form will be activated immediately without a manual review step. Check your network settings if you want to require manual approval for all new applicants.
Affiliate Statuses
| Status | What it means | Can log in? | Can run offers? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pending | Application submitted, awaiting your review | No | No |
| Active | Approved and in good standing | Yes | Yes |
| Inactive | Account exists but dormant; affiliate cannot log in | No | No |
| Rejected | Application was declined during review | No | No |
| Suspended | Account temporarily blocked, usually for a policy issue | No | No |
You can change an affiliate's status at any time from their account record. Changing from Active to Suspended immediately cuts off their access without deleting any historical data.
Setting Payouts and Offer Access
Affiliates don't automatically have access to every offer on your network — you grant access on an offer-by-offer basis and set the payout they'll receive for each one.
You can set a default payout on the offer itself, then override it for individual affiliates who have negotiated different rates. The affiliate-level payout always takes priority over the offer-level default.
Lowering an affiliate's payout without notice can damage the relationship. Communicate payout changes in advance and confirm the change is intentional before saving.
Affiliate Tiers
Affiliate tiers let you group affiliates into categories — Gold, Silver, Bronze — and apply shared settings to everyone in the same tier. This saves time when you want to give a whole group of affiliates access to the same offers without configuring each account one by one.
- You create tiers in your network settings and give each one a name.
- Each affiliate is assigned to one tier at a time.
- Offers can be made available to an entire tier, so any affiliate in that tier automatically gets access.
- Tiers can carry default payout rates, so newly added affiliates inherit those rates without manual setup.
If you have any questions, please reach out to your dedicated CAKE Client Success Manager/Account Manager or contact the CAKE Support Team at support@getCAKE.com.