An affiliate is someone who promotes other people’s products and can earn commissions for sales made through their Promotional links.
At Hotmart, you can sign up for free as an affiliate and choose products from different niches to promote, such as business, cooking, literature, marketing, software, study guides for public exams, technical courses, animal training, Japanese culture, and more.
In this article, you’ll learn how affiliation works at Hotmart, how affiliate program rules are defined, how commissions are assigned, and what you need to consider before you start promoting a product.
How affiliation works at Hotmart
When you become affiliated with a product, you gain access to its Promotional links, also known as HotLinks. These links are unique and identify that a sale originated from your promotion.
Depending on the rules defined by the creator, affiliation can work in two ways:
- Automatic affiliation: any user can become affiliated with the product and start promoting it.
- Affiliation with approval: the creator needs to review and approve your request before you can promote the product.
A product may also not accept affiliates. In this case, it won’t be available for affiliation. To learn more about how to become affiliated with a product, check out our article: How do I become affiliated to a product at Hotmart?
How Hotmart links a sale to an affiliate
Hotmart has its own technology that identifies when someone accesses the sales page through an affiliate’s Tracking Link.
When the buyer clicks your HotLink, the platform records that source. Then, at the time of purchase, Hotmart checks whether that sale came from a referral made by an affiliate.
Even if the buyer returns to the sales page days later, the commission may still be assigned to the affiliate, as long as the purchase happens within the tracking period defined by the creator, which can be 60, 90, 180 days, or unlimited.
This means that if the buyer accesses the product through your HotLink and completes the purchase within the configured period, the commission may be assigned to you.
Affiliation tracking is done through cookies installed in the buyer’s browser. For tracking to work correctly, the purchase must be completed in the same browser and device where the buyer clicked your Tracking Link.
How commission rules work
The commission is defined by the creator. That means the amount you can earn depends on the offer price and the commission percentage configured in the Affiliate Program.
In addition to the percentage, the creator also defines the commission attribution rule. The main rules are:
- Last click: the commission is assigned to the last affiliate who received the buyer’s click before the purchase.
- First click: the commission is assigned to the first affiliate who brought the buyer to the product page.
- Multiple clicks: the commission may be shared between the first and last affiliates who received clicks from the buyer. This option depends on the configuration set by the creator and may not be available in all programs.
These rules help define who will receive the commission when the buyer interacts with links from more than one affiliate before completing the purchase.
How to cancel an affiliation
If you want to cancel your affiliation, follow these steps:
- Access your Hotmart account through this link: https://app.hotmart.com/.
- In the left-side menu, click Products.
- Then, click My products.
- Go to the I’m an affiliate area.
- Select the product you’re affiliated with and click Cancel affiliation.
The creator can also cancel an affiliation manually or configure automatic cancellation rules for affiliates with low performance.
When automatic cancellation is active, affiliates who don’t make sales within the period defined by the creator may be removed from the program. The minimum period is 90 days.
Before automatic removal, Hotmart may send notifications encouraging the affiliate to start promoting the product again.
If the affiliate is approved again for the program, the performance review may consider the affiliate’s entire sales history for that product, not only the most recent affiliation. If the criteria are still not met, the affiliate may have 7 days to make sales before being automatically removed again.