Once you have your direct affiliates all set up and thriving, you might want to consider driving your revenue even further by incentivizing them to recruit their own sub-affiliates through our multi-level marketing (MLM) feature.

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This feature allows your affiliates to recruit their own affiliates (sub-affiliates) via their own invite link directly on Trackdesk. The sub-affiliates drive more revenue to you, and the direct affiliate gets a set commission from each of the sub-affiliate's conversions as a reward.

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First, enable MLM by navigating to Settings → Affiliates → Multi-level marketing.

Here, you can enable MLM globally, enable MLM for specific affiliates, create multiple MLM tiers, and set a commission for each of them. Enabling MLM gives affiliates access to a Sub-affiliates page in their main menu, where they can find their own registration link. The registration link sits in the Recruit sub-affiliates panel on that page, and you can hide that panel from every affiliate in your account with a setting described below. You will be able to see all affiliates and sub-affiliates in your Affiliate list.

You can select if MLM commissions should be calculated from conversion payout or revenue.

Finally, you can set the commission amount for each MLM tier.

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When selecting the Individuals only option, you have to select specific affiliates that will have the feature allowed, i.e., those who will get their own invite link, and for whom the system will calculate MLM commissions. In Individuals only mode, the Global commissions block sets the default levels; individuals you add without custom levels follow this global pyramid.

The Individuals only mode for the MLM allows only specified affiliates to invite other sub-affiliates (for example, a scenario where you would allow team captains, and only they would be able to invite other sub-affiliates under them).

When Individuals only mode is active, only affiliates explicitly added to the list will earn MLM commissions on conversions from their sub-affiliates. Affiliates not on the list are ignored by the MLM chain; even if a sub-affiliate is registered underneath them, no commission is created for them.

To allow access to individual affiliates, simply click Add custom MLM commission in the Custom individual commissions block at the bottom of the page and select the affiliate in the side panel:

By clicking Edit on the affiliate's row in the Custom individual commissions block, you open the Edit custom commission panel and set custom tiers and payout rates for the specific affiliate only. You can also access this setting from the detail of the affiliate in the Affiliate list:

Custom commissions per affiliate replace the global tier rates entirely for that affiliate; there's no partial override. If you set a custom commission for an affiliate, they will use that table of rates for every level above them. If you want them to inherit a particular tier from the global setup, copy the value over.

As you're setting up the MLM tiers, an example payout will be calculated on the page. Commissions for all tiers are paid on top of the conversion revenue or payout. If an affiliate who's at the bottom of the MLM pyramid makes a conversion, a commission gets created for each affiliate in an individual tier above them.

Let's say you're using payout as the baseline and have a conversion with a payout value of $100, and have set up 3 MLM levels with commissions of 10%, 5%, and 2% per level. An affiliate who's at the bottom of the pyramid makes a conversion. There are three levels above them, so a commission is created for each level, totaling 17%, with the final complete payout being $117.

In a different scenario, an affiliate who's in the second tier of the pyramid makes a conversion with the same amount. There is only one affiliate above them, so only they get credited with the commission of 10%, the final payout for the conversion in this case being $110.

There are three main places in the system to keep track of MLM metrics: the affiliate list, reports, and billing.

In the Affiliate list section, you can see if an affiliate has a parent affiliate directly on the affiliate table. In the affiliate detail modal, you can also see your affiliate's invite link and can directly filter their sub-affiliates.

You can also manually assign a new parent affiliate yourself.

In the Reports section, you can see a commission column (which you can optionally hide) in each of the reports. You can also make use of a specific MLM commissions report which keeps track of all commissions and their associated affiliates and conversion states.

Lastly, in the Billing section, you can keep track of how much money in the affiliate's payout comes from direct conversions and how much they get on commissions. To find this information, navigate to Settled balance, click on the settlement detail, and click the eye icon next to the payout to find the division.

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By default, you'll find the information about the original source of the conversion in the MLM report (affiliate name and email). If you want, you can enable the display of these parameters to affiliates as well by using the Show sub-affiliate information in MLM commission report? setting:

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The parent affiliate is assigned automatically when an affiliate signs up using another affiliate's invite link. However, you can assign (or change) the parent affiliate manually via the affiliate detail in the Affiliate list. In the MLM commissions section of the affiliate, simply select and assign the parent affiliate you'd like. You can always quickly review the assigned parent affiliate in the affiliate list itself.

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Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

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If you do not want your affiliates recruiting their own sub-affiliates, you can hide the panel that gives them the recruitment link.

You will find the setting on the MLM settings page, below Calculate MLM commissions from and the conversion-source switch, labeled Hide the "Recruit sub-affiliates" panel from affiliates? It is off by default.

Turning it on hides the Recruit sub-affiliates panel, including the recruitment link, the copy button and the share buttons, for every affiliate in your account. The Sub-affiliates page itself stays available.

The setting is presentational only. It does not affect:

Yes, affiliates can see a list of their direct sub-affiliates on the platform with basic details. They also have a Sub-affiliates grouping available in the Report builder, allowing them to see how much they generated from their sub-affiliates.

Yes. It does not matter whether the conversion is the first or the x-th. What matters is how deep the given affiliate is in the MLM structure and whether that creates the MLM commission.

The commission is counted from the conversion payout or revenue, depending on your preference. The MLM commissions are paid on top of it, so if a sub-affiliate makes a conversion that has a revenue or payout of $10 and MLM commissions are set to 10%, you pay $11 in total: $10 to the sub-affiliate for the conversion and $1 to the parent affiliate for the commission.