Protect what must survive: links, historical commitments and payouts

Affiliates do not care which platform you use. They care about three things, and they check them in this order: does my link still work, do I keep the deal I was promised, and where is my money. A migration that protects those three is invisible to them. One that misses any of them is a support queue.

Links

Every affiliate keeps their existing link. Both the old link and the new one track after the move, so content that was published a year ago keeps earning and nobody has to edit anything. A very small number of link formats need a redirect instead of direct tracking; we check yours before the move, not after.

The effort here is proportional to active affiliates, not total affiliates. A program with a long list of signed-up affiliates usually has a much shorter list that sent a click in the last month. Those are the ones to look after personally. The rest get the same email as everyone else.

Historical commitments

If you have affiliates on terms you no longer offer, a lifetime rate from the early days or a multi-year deal with a partner, those survive as a private tier. Call it your legacy tier, give it exactly the terms they have today, and move those affiliates into it before anything else happens. For fixed-term commissions we rebuild the end date per referral from the date of the first payment, so a commission that had eight months left still has eight months left.

Payouts

This is where migrations break, and we say so every time. Platforms generate payouts differently, and money that is owed but not yet paid is the first thing an affiliate asks about. The standard practice is simple: clear the open payouts in the old tool before the cutover, so the new platform starts from zero. If that is not possible, outstanding payouts can be migrated, but they have to be checked line by line. Either way, know the number of open payouts on cutover day, and know that it is zero or accounted for.

Referrals

Existing referrals are uploaded with the affiliates, so future payments on those customers keep generating commissions. This is what makes the recurring tail survive the move: an affiliate who sent you a customer eight months ago keeps earning on that customer after the switch.

Before anything moves: tracking

Nothing is migrated before the tracking is verified on your side. The one check that catches most trouble is whether the signup snippet fires on every way a customer can sign up. Email and password is the obvious one. If you also offer sign-in with Google or another provider, test that path separately. A snippet that fires on one path and not the other looks like a working install and quietly loses a share of your referrals.