Managing Collaborators (Affiliates)

What is a collaborator?

A collaborator is anyone who participates in one of your incentive programs. Siren uses “collaborator” instead of “affiliate” because affiliates are just one type. A collaborator might be an affiliate sharing referral links, a course creator earning royalties, a blogger paid when their content contributes to a sale, or a salesperson closing deals through your site. The label changes, but the mechanics are the same: they perform tracked actions, and they earn rewards when those actions lead to a conversion.

Creating a collaborator manually

Go to Siren > Collaborators in the WordPress sidebar and click Add New. Fill in the collaborator’s name, nickname, and email.

Each collaborator gets a tracking ID, which is the unique code used in their affiliate link. Siren generates one automatically, but you can change it to anything memorable. Old tracking IDs keep working even if you change them later, so existing links won’t break.

Set the status to Active so they can start creating engagements immediately. Pending or Inactive collaborators can’t generate engagements or earn anything.

Finally, pick which programs to enroll them in. They only earn from programs they’re in, so double-check before clicking Create.

Manual creation vs. self-registration

Manual creation is for inviting specific people you already know. Self-registration uses a registration form on your site where anyone can sign up, which is how you run an open program. Both paths create the same collaborator record. The difference is who starts the process and whether approval is automatic or manual.

Sending login credentials

Siren creates collaborator records separately from WordPress user accounts. A collaborator can exist and earn commissions without ever logging in. If you want them to access the collaborator dashboard for stats and referral links, they need a WordPress user account.

Before you can create user accounts, WordPress has to allow registrations. Go to Settings > General and check “Anyone can register.” Without this, Siren can’t create accounts for your collaborators.

Then go to Siren > Collaborators, check the collaborator, choose “Send login email” from the bulk actions dropdown, and click Apply. They’ll get an email with a link to finish setup and create a username and password.

Managing status and program enrollment

Click any collaborator on the Siren > Collaborators screen to edit their profile. You can change status between Active, Pending, and Inactive, and adjust program enrollments.

Setting a collaborator to Inactive stops new engagements immediately but leaves existing obligations and pending payouts alone. Commissions they’ve already earned stay put regardless of current status.

You can also view engagement history and obligations from the profile for a complete picture of their activity. The profile’s activity feed is the fastest place to read that picture chronologically — every conversion, obligation, and payout tied to the collaborator is listed there in order, which is especially useful when someone emails asking about a specific transaction.