Does WooCommerce Provide Affiliate Links?

The answer to this question depends on what you are trying to do:

• If you want to promote products from another company, WooCommerce can handle that fairly easily.
• If you want other people to promote your WooCommerce products on external sites using trackable affiliate links, you will need an affiliate plugin.

Those two scenarios are often confused, so let’s separate them clearly.

If You Want to Link to Other Stores: Yes, Sort Of

WooCommerce can display products that are sold somewhere else. It can also include normal affiliate links in your site content.

For example, you might:

1. Join another company’s affiliate program.
2. Receive a special tracking URL from that company.
3. Add that URL to a blog post, product roundup, review, comparison page, or WooCommerce product listing.
4. Send visitors to the external site to complete the purchase.

In that sense, yes, you can use affiliate links on a WooCommerce site.

However, WooCommerce is not really creating or managing those links. You are simply adding a URL to your content. The affiliate tracking happens through the other company’s affiliate system, not through WooCommerce.

WooCommerce also includes an External/Affiliate Product type. This lets you create a product listing in your store that points shoppers to another website for checkout. Instead of adding the product to the cart on your site, the customer clicks a button and is sent to the external seller.

This is useful if your goal is to promote products sold elsewhere. But it does not turn your WooCommerce store into an affiliate program.

If You Want Affiliates to Promote Your Products: No, Not by Default

The more common question is whether WooCommerce can generate affiliate links for your own products.

In other words, can you give other people unique referral links so they can promote your products on other sites and earn commissions?

By itself, WooCommerce does not include this functionality.

WooCommerce can process orders, manage products, handle checkout, apply coupons, and track customers. But it does not automatically:

• create affiliate accounts
• generate referral links
• track which affiliate referred a customer
• connect referrals to WooCommerce orders
• calculate commissions
• manage affiliate dashboards
• handle payout reports

If you want to run an affiliate program for your own WooCommerce products, you’ll need to install an affiliate plugin.

How an Affiliate Plugin Fills the Gap

A WooCommerce affiliate plugin adds the missing referral system on top of your store.

Instead of manually creating links or trying to track commissions yourself, the plugin gives each affiliate a unique link. When a visitor clicks that link and later places an order, the plugin records the referral and calculates the commission.

A typical WooCommerce affiliate setup works like this:

1. Someone signs up to become an affiliate.
2. The affiliate receives a unique referral link.
3. They share that link on their website, social media, email list, or other channels.
4. A visitor clicks the link and lands on your WooCommerce store.
5. If that visitor buys something, the affiliate plugin attributes the order to the correct affiliate.
6. The plugin calculates the commission based on your rules.

This allows you to run an affiliate program without manually checking traffic sources, matching customers to affiliates, or calculating payouts by hand.

What Store Owners Should Look For in an Affiliate Plugin

Not all affiliate tools are equal, especially for WooCommerce stores.

A useful WooCommerce affiliate system should do more than count clicks. It should understand what happens inside the actual order. This matters because WooCommerce orders can involve:

• product variations
• coupons
• discounts
• taxes
• shipping
• refunds
• cancellations
• different commission rules
• different product types

A generic tracking tool may not handle these details well, especially changes made to an order after it has been placed. A WooCommerce-specific affiliate plugin is more reliable because it is connected directly to your store’s order data.

Using Solid Affiliate to Create WooCommerce Affiliate Links

Our recommended plugin for this is Solid Affiliate:

Solid Affiliate is built specifically for WooCommerce, so it adds affiliate program functionality directly inside your WordPress dashboard. Once it is installed, affiliates can register through your site, receive referral links, track their performance, and promote your products.

A standard affiliate link might look something like this:

https://yourstore.com/?ref=affiliateID

Each affiliate gets a unique version of the link so referrals can be tracked correctly.

If you prefer cleaner links, Solid Affiliate also supports custom affiliate slugs.

This lets affiliates use a more personalized or readable referral link instead of a default ID-based format.

Affiliates can place those links in places like:

• product reviews
• tutorials
• comparison articles
• social media posts
• newsletters
• YouTube descriptions
• paid campaigns

When someone clicks an affiliate link and purchases from your WooCommerce store, Solid Affiliate connects that sale to the referring affiliate.

Solid Affiliate can track real WooCommerce purchases, calculate commissions from actual orders, and adjust commissions when orders are refunded or changed. It also keeps your affiliate program inside WordPress, so you do not need to manage a separate external platform.

Final Thoughts

WooCommerce does not provide a full affiliate link system for your own products out of the box.

You can use WooCommerce to promote other companies’ products with normal affiliate links, and the External/Affiliate Product type can help you send shoppers to another site. But that is different from running an affiliate program for your own store.

If you want affiliates to promote your WooCommerce products on other sites using unique, trackable referral links, you need an affiliate plugin.

For that, Solid Affiliate is a strong choice because it adds affiliate registration, referral links, order-based tracking, commission calculations, reporting, and payout management directly to your WooCommerce store.

For more options, see The 5 Best Affiliate Plugins for WooCommerce.