Multi Level Commissions

This article provides an overview of how multi level commission are calculated and distributed.

As described in the Plugin Settings article there are only a few standard settings that affect how the multi level commissions are calculated and distributed.

By default MLA calculates commissions based on the order total however multi level rates can also be set on a per product basis when using ‘WooCommerce’ and ‘Easy Digital Downloads’.

Based on the above settings, MLA will distribute commissions on 4 levels with the following commission amounts;

Level 1: 10%
Level 2: 9%
Level 3: 8%
Level 4: 7%

But what does this mean practically ? Let’s consider the following network;

In the diagram above ‘Owen Wilson’ is a registered affiliate who’s parent is ‘Ben Affleck’, however Owen could also just be a regular customer. The important factor here is that he is linked to ‘Ben Affleck’ either as his child or was simply referred by him (non-affiliate).

In our example, ‘Owen Wilson’ will place an order for $100. Assuming no product based rates are configured, commissions would be generated as follows;

Ben Affleck: $10 (level 1).
Liam Neeson: $9 (level 2).
George Clooney: $8 (level 3).
Hugh Jackman: $7 (level 4).

Navigating to the Referrals admin page (Affiliates > Referrals), we can see the multi level commissions have been generated as expected.

Advanced Commission Settings

The above covers how to set the default options that the plugin uses when calculating multi level commissions however there are various ways to configure more advanced rate structures such as setting rates on a per product basis.

When combining MLA with our ‘Affiliate Groups’ add-on, plugin settings (including per product rates) can be set on a group by group basis.