Building Your Affiliate Network

Affiliates — influencers, travel agents, bloggers, and booking sites — sell your rooms to their audiences and earn a commission. This guide goes beyond Finding an Influencer and covers the full lifecycle of building and managing your affiliate partnerships.

How affiliates work on Wink

1. An affiliate finds your property on Wink Studio.
2. They create a shareable link, card, or embed for your property.
3. A traveler clicks the link and books.
4. The affiliate earns a commission on the booking.
5. You receive the booking minus the commission and platform fee.

Step 1 — Make your property discoverable

Before affiliates can sell your property, they need to find it.

1. Activate the Wink Network on your property so it appears in affiliate search results.
2. Complete your property profile — properties with photos, descriptions, and competitive rates attract more affiliates.
3. Set a competitive default commission rate for network affiliates.

Step 2 — Find and invite partners

You can also proactively seek out partners:

1. Go to the Network section in your Extranet. See Network.
2. Browse affiliates by category, location, or audience type.
3. Send an invitation to affiliates you want to work with.
4. Offer them a direct channel with a custom commission if they’re a good fit.

Step 3 — Create direct channels for top partners

For affiliates who drive significant volume or have a strategic audience, create a direct sales channel:

1. Navigate to sales channels for your property.
2. Create a new channel named after the partner (e.g., “Partner - Kim Travel”).
3. Set a custom commission rate — this can be higher than your network default to incentivize the partnership.
4. Optionally restrict which room types or rate plans are available on this channel.

Step 4 — Track and optimize

Use analytics to monitor which affiliates perform best:

• Which partners drive the most bookings?
• What’s the average booking value per partner?
• Which channels have the highest conversion rate?

Based on this data, you can adjust commission rates, create exclusive offers for top performers, or phase out underperforming channels.

Tips for success

• Competitive commission — A higher commission attracts more and better affiliates. Consider your total cost of acquisition vs. other distribution channels.
• Respond to requests — When an affiliate sends you a request, respond quickly. First impressions matter.
• Provide great content — Properties with quality photos, detailed descriptions, and complete amenity listings give affiliates better material to work with.
• Exclusive offers — Consider giving your top affiliates access to exclusive rate plans or early access to promotions.

Further reading

• Network — Manage your affiliate relationships.
• Setting Up Sales Channels — Create and configure channels.
• Insight for Dummies — Track affiliate performance with analytics.