Why Bonus Payments Matter
Not every affiliate contribution fits neatly into a commission structure. Maybe an affiliate brought in a wave of new users through a viral social post. Perhaps they created outstanding content that drove brand awareness far beyond what their tracked sales reflect. Or maybe you simply want to reward consistency and loyalty.
Until now, these moments required workarounds: manual bank transfers, PayPal payments, or just a "we'll sort it out later" that never gets sorted. That changes today.
Introducing Bonus Payments
Insert Affiliate now lets you pay ad-hoc bonuses directly to your affiliates. No need to tie payments to specific transactions. Just pick an affiliate, enter an amount, add a reason, and pay.
There are two ways to send a bonus:
Pay via Stripe
If your affiliate has connected their Stripe account, you can send a bonus payment directly through Stripe. The payment lands in their connected account, and the transaction is automatically tracked in your dashboard. The affiliate receives an email notification when the payment completes.
This is the recommended approach because everything is handled in one place: the payment, the record, and the notification.
Record an External Bonus
If your affiliate hasn't set up Stripe Connect, or if you've already paid them through another method (bank transfer, PayPal, cash), you can still record the bonus in Insert Affiliate for tracking purposes. Choose whether to mark it as already paid or as pending, and the system keeps a clean audit trail either way.
How It Works
- Navigate to your affiliate in the Search Affiliate section
- Click the Bonuses tab to see their bonus history
- Click "Pay a Bonus" (Stripe) or use the dropdown to select "Pay Externally"
- Enter the amount and reason for the bonus
- Complete the payment or record it for tracking
The affiliate will see their bonuses in a dedicated Bonuses tab in their own dashboard, with summary cards showing total bonuses, paid amounts, and pending payments.
Full Visibility for Everyone
For companies, the admin Bonuses tab shows every bonus with its payment method (Stripe or External), status, and a toggle to manually mark bonuses as paid or unpaid. Summary cards give you a quick overview of total, paid, and pending bonus amounts.
For affiliates, the Bonuses tab provides a clean read-only view of all bonuses received, along with the reason for each one. They can filter by payment status to see what's been paid and what's still pending.
When to Use Bonus Payments
- Top performer rewards: Recognise affiliates who consistently exceed targets
- Campaign incentives: Offer a bonus for hitting a specific milestone during a promotion
- Content creation: Reward affiliates who create high-quality videos, reviews, or social posts
- Referral bonuses: Pay affiliates who bring other affiliates into your programme
- Seasonal rewards: End-of-quarter or holiday bonuses to keep affiliates motivated
Built on Stripe Connect
Bonus payments use the same secure Stripe Connect infrastructure as regular affiliate payouts. Payments go directly to the affiliate's connected Stripe account, with full transaction records maintained for both parties.
The minimum payment via Stripe is $0.50. For external tracking, there's no minimum, so you can record bonuses of any size.
Get Started
Bonus payments are available now for all Insert Affiliate users. Head to the Search Affiliate page, find your top performer, and send them the bonus they deserve.
For more details on setting up affiliate payments, check out the paying affiliates guide in our docs.