> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.the-meridian.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Introduction

Affiliates turn your best users into a sales channel. Give influencers, agencies and partners a tracked link; when a merchant installs your app through it, the affiliate earns a commission on the revenue you make, calculated automatically, every night.

Affiliates are available for **public apps**.

## How the money moves

| Step | What happens |
| - | - |
| **Referrals** | A merchant installs through an affiliate's tracked link, and the install is attributed |
| **Commissions** | A nightly sweep mints what each referral has earned, under the rules that apply |
| **Payouts** | Outstanding commissions aggregate into payouts, one per affiliate per currency |
| **Outstanding** | What's earned but not yet paid, awaiting your disbursement |

## The pieces

| Page | What it covers |
| - | - |
| **[Program](/affiliate-program)** | The one program per app: its identity, its tracked link, and its default commission rules |
| **[Members](/affiliate-members)** | Who's enrolled, their links, and which rules apply to each |
| **[Groups](/affiliate-groups)** | Named tiers that override the program rules field by field |
| **[Commissions](/affiliate-commissions)** | The ledger, and how each amount was arrived at |
| **[Payouts](/affiliate-payouts)** | Aggregation, the minimum, and marking one paid |
| **[Affiliate profiles](/affiliate-profiles)** | The org-level roster: shared identity, payout details, holds |
| **[Activity](/affiliate-activity)** | The lifecycle log of joins, referrals and payouts |

## Where to start

Create the [program](/affiliate-program), set its tracked link and its default rule, then [enroll](/affiliate-members) your first affiliate. Everything else (groups, per-member overrides, payouts) only matters once commissions start arriving.

<Note>
  Disbursement is manual in v1. Meridian calculates and tracks what's owed to the cent; you pay it through your own rail and mark the payout as paid.
</Note>


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.