Shopify Referral Campaigns: links, codes & payouts

Pay creators for the sales they drive to your Shopify store: set up a campaign, hand out trackable links and per-creator discount codes, see which sales were credited to whom, and pay from your Cruva balance.

For brands and agencies paying creators for the sales they drive to a Shopify store.

The short version

Creators join your campaign and get their own trackable link — one per product, plus a store-wide link if you offer one — and, if you turn it on, their own discount code. When someone buys after using that link or code, Cruva reads it back off Shopify's own record of the visit, credits the sale to that creator, and works out what they earned when the period closes. You confirm every payment; nothing pays itself. Cruva takes 1.5% of attributed sales, billed on your Shopify invoice.

Find it under Creator Community → Shopify (/dashboard/community/shopify-campaigns).

Before you start

A connected Shopify store. Referral tracking needs no new Shopify permissions — the connection you already have is enough. Only discount codes ask for one more.
The 1.5% fee, agreed on the campaign form. A campaign can't be published without it. Creators are always paid their full commission; the fee is charged to you.
Cruva's fee subscription approved in Shopify. Shopify requires app charges to go through Shopify Billing, so someone at the store approves the charge once. Payouts are held until it's approved, so do this before your first one.
A funded Cruva balance — the same one community campaign payouts come from. See Creator payouts & adding funds.

Create a campaign

Go to Creator Community → Shopify → Create campaign.
Name it, write what creators should know, and pick the products they'll promote.
Set what creators earn. The rules add up: percent of sales, a flat amount per order, and a one-off joining fee paid the first time that creator earns anything on the campaign.
Choose how often a period closes — daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly — and the attribution window (7 days by default).
Optionally give each creator their own discount code, and optionally offer a store-wide link.
Optionally require approval to join. Requests then land on the Requests tab for you to approve.
Add an image, branding, requirements and example posts, then publish.

Then hand the campaign out with Copy creator link. That link opens the campaign page creators see.

A campaign whose only commission rule is set to zero is live and pays nobody. The panel at the top of the Shopify page lists anything holding money up, including that.

What creators see

They open your campaign page, read your terms, and join. Joining gives them their discount code straight away. Links are minted the first time they copy one — so a creator who joined last month can take a link for a product you add tomorrow, which is the point.

Everything is on that one page: their code, the store-wide link if you offered one, a searchable list of your products with a copy button on each, their own sales chart, and what they've earned.

How a sale gets credited

Cruva looks for the strongest signal first:

Their link — the ?ref= on the URL, read back off the buyer's visit.
utm_content — the same code again, which survives platforms that strip parameters they don't recognise.
The landing page the buyer arrived on.
Their discount code — the only signal a sale has when someone simply typed a code they heard in a video.

Last touch wins. If a buyer used two creators' links, the sale goes to the most recent one inside the window. The window is measured from the visit to the order, so a visit older than the window no longer counts — and a code-only sale is exempt, because a typed code carries no timestamp.

Give it a few minutes. Shopify doesn't finish recording where a visit came from until a little after checkout, so a sale shows up on Cruva's next pass rather than instantly. Refunds arrive the same way and reduce what's owed on their own.

Credited, not sold. A link is credited with the whole order. Someone who arrives through a snowboard link and adds three other things to the basket puts all of it against that link — which is why the Products tab says Credited GMV rather than units sold.

Discount codes

Two modes, and the difference matters:

One per creator — each code is built from that creator's handle and names exactly one person, so a sale counts for them even when there was no link at all.
One code for everyone — a single code you choose. A code everyone reads out can't say who drove a sale, so those sales are credited through links only. Keep the link in their posts.

Creating codes needs one extra Shopify permission (write_discounts). Cruva asks for it in context the first time you switch codes on, and granting takes seconds in your Shopify admin. Declining leaves you with working links and no codes, which is a perfectly usable campaign.

Codes get shared — one read out in a video reaches coupon sites eventually. Uses per code and one use per customer are what limit that.

Reading the numbers

Open a campaign and you get three tabs:

Creators — a row per creator with a sales sparkline, orders, clicks, and what they've been paid and are owed. Expand a row to see the individual links they hold and what each one earned.
Products — how each product performed, the store-wide link, and a separate row for sales credited by discount code, which belong to no single product.
Payments — every payout computed for this campaign, and what Cruva has charged you.

Prices and images come from what Shopify returned when you picked the products. Refresh product data on the campaign's edit page pulls them again.

Getting paid out

When a period closes, Cruva writes one pending payout per earning creator. Money never moves on its own: you click Pay on a row and it goes from your Cruva balance to that creator. Cruva's 1.5% is posted to your Shopify invoice straight after.

If one of those charges is refused — usually because the billing cap your store approved is used up — payouts are held until it goes through, so the gap can't quietly widen. The banner on the Payments tab has a Retry button; raising the cap needs a fresh approval from the store, and nothing retries on its own.

Pausing vs ending a campaign

Pause closes it to new creators. Links already out in the world keep working and keep earning — a creator's video can't be edited, so their posts keep paying.
End stops it earning. Sales made while it was live are still credited and still paid out; ending is not a clawback.

Common questions

Do I need a new Shopify permission for this? Not for links, tracking or payouts. Only per-creator discount codes need one, and it's asked for in context.

A creator says their link isn't tracking. Check the campaign is published (not a draft), that the sale is inside the attribution window, and allow a few minutes for Shopify to settle the visit. If they only ever read their code out, the sale is credited by code instead — you'll see it on the Products tab's discount-code row.

Can a creator get a link for a product I add later? Yes. Links are minted when they copy one, so a product added today is available to everyone already in the campaign.

Two creators, one buyer — who gets it? The most recent link the buyer used inside the window.

Can I pay someone before the period closes? No. Payouts are computed per campaign, creator and period, so the period has to close first. Shorten the cadence if you want to pay more often.

Why don't these numbers match my Shopify reports? They're counting different things on purpose — see why Cruva's numbers differ.

Does this replace my Shopify affiliate app? It's the same job done from inside Cruva, with the creators already in your community. Sales are read from Shopify's own customer journey, so nothing has to be installed on your storefront.

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