Affiliate marketing — a performance-based, cost-effective marketing method. For Shopify owners who want to build their own in-house affiliate program, the Shopify app "UpPromote" is recommended.
"What kind of app is UpPromote? What can it do?"
"I want to know how to use UpPromote"
Reading this article will resolve the questions and needs above.
UpPromote is a Shopify app that lets you easily start your own in-house affiliate program, and its features include being highly functional and supporting Japanese language.
This article explains UpPromote's features, benefits, setup method, and more. If you're considering introducing an in-house affiliate program, please use it as a reference.
The blog article below introduces the benefits and drawbacks of running affiliate marketing on Shopify, along with recommended apps. Please use it for reference.
What Is the Shopify In-House Affiliate App "UpPromote"?
Image source: UpPromote | Shopify App Store
UpPromote is an app that lets you easily start your own in-house affiliate program on your Shopify store. We'll first explain affiliate marketing in general, and then explain UpPromote.
What Is Affiliate Marketing? The Difference Between Going Through an Affiliate Network and Running Your Own In-House Program
Affiliate marketing is an advertising method in which a third party promotes your products or services on their website, social media, or elsewhere. When that promotion leads to a sale or sign-up, you pay the promoter a reward equivalent to an advertising fee. The people who promote products are called affiliates, and they are typically bloggers or social media influencers.
In this way, affiliate marketing is characterized by its efficiency: no reward is paid until a sale or sign-up (a result) actually occurs.
There are two ways to start affiliate marketing: using an affiliate network (an "ASP," or Affiliate Service Provider), or running the program yourself in-house.
An affiliate network is a matchmaking service that connects companies with affiliates. While it lets you reach many affiliates, costs such as setup fees, monthly usage fees, and commissions are incurred. Representative affiliate networks include A8.net and AccessTrade.
With an in-house affiliate program, you partner directly with affiliates. While you can keep intermediary costs down, building and running the program and recruiting affiliates takes effort.
Which approach is best suited depends on factors such as your shop's resources and the name recognition of your products or services.
Features of the Shopify App UpPromote
UpPromote is a Shopify app that lets you easily build your own in-house affiliate program. Its interface is simple and it also supports Japanese. After setup, you can launch an affiliate program in as few as 4 steps.
UpPromote broadly categorizes affiliate programs into three types based on purpose, and provides the features necessary for each.
Affiliate Marketing
This is general affiliate marketing. Affiliates use a dedicated link to introduce products or services on their blog, etc. Rewards are paid based on purchases or sign-ups made through the link.
Influencer Marketing
Influencers with reach on platforms such as YouTube or TikTok introduce products to their fans and followers. This can be expected to drive sales promotion by leveraging their reach.
Referral Marketing
Existing customers introduce products to family and friends. When a purchase occurs through a referral, a perk or reward is paid to the referrer.
In this way, UpPromote lets you flexibly build a program that fits your marketing strategy and customer base.
Points to Note About UpPromote
There are also some points to be aware of with UpPromote.
Difficult for Beginners to EC Operations and Affiliate Marketing
UpPromote is an app provided by a Vietnamese company. While it supports Japanese, there are some unnatural expressions that look as if they were produced by machine translation, so it's hard to call it fully Japanese-localized. In addition, affiliate-marketing-specific jargon is used throughout.
Because you need to infer the meaning of unnatural Japanese from context and understand the jargon while building your program, this can be a somewhat difficult tool to master for those without knowledge of EC operations or affiliate marketing.
You Need to Recruit Affiliates Yourself
With an affiliate network, you can efficiently approach Japanese affiliates. Since UpPromote is a service for building an in-house affiliate program, it doesn't have a network like an affiliate network does. It does offer something called the UpPromote Marketplace, a place that connects stores and affiliates, but it has almost no name recognition in Japan.
Because of this, you need to recruit affiliates yourself, and it's entirely possible that "even if you recruit affiliates, no one signs up." Note that recruiting affiliates requires you to actively promote through your own website, social media, email newsletters, and so on.
UpPromote's Main Features and What It Can Do
Here are UpPromote's main features and capabilities.
Diverse Affiliate Program Design Features
UpPromote lets you run regular affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, and referral marketing, and provides features suited to each method. Representative features include the following.
- Issuing affiliate links (dedicated links that let you track results for each affiliate)
- Automatic coupon generation (a coupon is issued when an affiliate signs up)
- Automatic discounts (a discount is automatically applied to orders referred by an affiliate)
- Gifting (providing product gifts to affiliates)
- Lifetime commission (paying commission not just once, but on a customer's sales over their lifetime)
- New customer commission (paying a different commission when a new customer is acquired)
- Multi-level marketing (affiliates recruit other customers to become affiliates)
- In-app chat function with affiliates
In addition to the above, it provides a variety of other features as well.
You can also run multiple affiliate programs within the same store. You can vary the commission rate by program or by product, or change the commission rate in stages depending on sales.
By using these features, you can build the optimal affiliate program tailored to your products and customer base.
Customization Features to Match Your Brand
UpPromote lets you customize the way things are presented to match your brand image.
Affiliate links, the affiliate-facing dashboard, the sign-up page, and the referral program widget can all be adjusted to match your store's design and tone.
This lets you provide a consistent brand experience to affiliates — who may also become customers themselves — and helps build trust.
Automated Reward Payouts (PayPal Only)
UpPromote has a feature that lets you automate reward payments through PayPal integration. Once an affiliate meets the reward conditions you've specified, the reward is automatically paid, reducing the effort of doing payments manually.
However, the only supported payout method is PayPal.
Benefits of Adopting UpPromote on Shopify
Here are the benefits of introducing an affiliate program on your Shopify store with UpPromote.
Feature-Rich, Letting You Design Your Own Unique Program
UpPromote is characterized by being feature-rich. Used well, it makes it easy to boost affiliate motivation and build trust relationships.
For example, "lifetime commission," which keeps paying rewards from a single customer's ongoing sales, dramatically boosts affiliate motivation.
Introducing the "automatic discount" feature makes it easier for affiliates to promote products and helps build trust. For example, it becomes possible to run something like "500 yen off for anyone who purchases through this link" on a blog, differentiating it from other blogs. This is a major benefit for affiliates.
Furthermore, introducing multi-level marketing lets affiliates recruit other affiliates, efficiently increasing the number of affiliates.
In this way, you can freely design a program to match your own strategy and objectives.
Easy to Set Up and Highly Usable
After installation, UpPromote lets you launch an affiliate program in as few as 4 steps. Its interface is also highly usable, making it an easy app to adopt even for a store trying affiliate marketing for the first time.
Configuration can be done directly within the Shopify admin, allowing you to set up and manage the program seamlessly. The app also supports Japanese, which is another point in its favor for stress-free use.
High Cost-Effectiveness
While affiliate marketing is cost-effective, using an affiliate network incurs setup and monthly fees. This makes it a high barrier for small stores. With UpPromote, you can start your own in-house affiliate program for free, so you can begin at low cost.
It's a good idea to start with the free plan, then switch to a paid plan once you've acquired affiliates, your product's name recognition has grown, or you need more advanced features.
Because the plan design accommodates a variety of business sizes, you can start affiliate marketing while keeping costs down.
UpPromote Pricing Plans
Here's a summary table of UpPromote's pricing plans.
| Plan Name | Free | Growth | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free | $29.99 | $89.99 | $199.99 |
| Monthly fee (billed annually) | Free | $24.99 | $74.99 | $166.66 |
| Number of programs | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Referral reviews | 200/month | 300/month | 600/month | Unlimited |
| Coupon assigned per affiliate |
1 | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bulk emails per day | 100 | 300 | 400 | 500 |
| Features | Affiliate sign-up form Analytics 10+ other features |
All Free plan features Premium sign-up page Store credit White-label email 4+ other features |
All Growth plan features Custom affiliate links Automatic coupon generation Automatic payout via PayPal Multi-level marketing Bonuses 10+ other features |
All Professional plan features Multiple stores Delegated coupon codes Custom development Additional advanced options |
| Staff accounts | - | - | 4 | Unlimited |
As of April 2025
UpPromote is a highly functional app with more features than can be listed in the table. If you'd like to check the details, please see the official UpPromote page.
How to Set Up and Get Started With the Shopify App UpPromote
Here's how to set up and get started with UpPromote.
First, install the app from the Shopify App Store.
Image source: UpPromote | Shopify App Store
Your Shopify store will show an installation confirmation again, so click "Install."
Image source: Shopify admin
Once installation is complete, the app's onboarding (setup guide) will be shown.
Before creating a program, let's first set the app screen's language to Japanese. Click the language selector at the bottom of the screen and select "Japanese."
The screen display has now changed to Japanese. Note that this is not accurate Japanese, as it appears to be machine-translated.
Creating a Program
Following the onboarding, here's how to create an affiliate program.
*The labels below reflect UpPromote's Japanese-language settings. Where the translation deviates from its original meaning, a clarifying note in parentheses "( )" has been added.
※In UpPromote's Japanese translation, affiliates are simply labeled with the Japanese term for "affiliate" (アフィリエイト). You need to judge from context whether it's referring to the affiliate program or to the affiliates themselves.
1. Set Up the Program
Configure the affiliate program settings.
For "Tracking method," there are links and coupons. A link is a mechanism that takes the user to your ecommerce site when clicked, and selecting it is required. A coupon issues a coupon code tied to an affiliate. Sales made using this coupon code are counted as that affiliate's results. Using a coupon is optional.
You can choose from 3 options for "Commission type." (Commission refers to the reward.)
- Percentage of sale (the reward is calculated as a fixed percentage of the order amount)
- Flat rate per item (regardless of the product's price or the order's total amount, the affiliate is paid a fixed amount for each item sold)
- Flat rate per order (regardless of the order's total amount, the affiliate is paid a fixed amount per order)
In "Commission amount," you set what percentage the affiliate's reward will be.
2. Recruit Affiliates
This is the affiliate recruitment setup.
Here, you'll create a test affiliate account and confirm that it works. Click "Create Account" under "Create an affiliate account."
Set a password and click "Create."
Next, activate the test account. Turn on the switch in the "Action (Enable)" column.
3. Get a Referral Order
Confirm that tracking of the affiliate link is working correctly.
An affiliate link for the test account will be issued, so click the link.
Once the online store screen appears, return to the app's dashboard. If you see the message "Tracking function is working correctly," that's OK.
4. Pay Affiliates
Configure how rewards will be paid to affiliates. Check one or more options under "Manual payment."
- PayPal: a peer-to-peer money transfer app
- Bank Transfer
- Debit card: transfer to a debit card account
- Check
- Venmo: a peer-to-peer money transfer app
- PayTM: a peer-to-peer money transfer app
- UPI: a peer-to-peer money transfer app
- Other
If you're running the affiliate program for users in Japan, bank transfer is basically the only realistic payment method.
Few financial institutions in Japan currently support transfers to debit card accounts, and the peer-to-peer money transfer apps are mostly overseas products with few users in Japan. Requiring affiliates to sign up for a service they don't normally use risks making it hard to attract affiliates.
This completes the creation of your affiliate program. Finally, a plan selection screen will appear. If starting with the free plan, click "Continue without registering" in the top right.
Japanese-Language Settings for Affiliates
The default language for the affiliate login screen and my-page is English. Let's change it to Japanese.
From the dashboard, select "Display," and under the "Login" tab, in the "Login settings" section, check "Enable Google Translate." This will display a language selector on the login screen.
Next, in the "Language settings" section of the "Account transition" tab, change "Default language" to Japanese. Also change the language in the "Text translation" section to Japanese.
Recruiting Affiliates
Once you're ready, let's recruit participants for the affiliate program. Here are the main ways to recruit participants for your own in-house affiliate program.
- Recruit on your official website
- Recruit via email newsletter, official LINE, or social media
- Notify purchasers
- Reach out directly to influencers
Once you've decided how to recruit, post or send the affiliate program's sign-up link. The affiliate program sign-up link can be obtained from "Home" in the dashboard.
When you want to directly reach out to influential influencers, it's effective to set a slightly higher commission rate than your standard affiliate reward. In this case, you'll need to create a separate program, which requires switching to a paid plan.
Start Your Own In-House Affiliate Program With UpPromote
This article introduced UpPromote, Shopify's in-house affiliate app.
By leveraging UpPromote, you can build your own unique affiliate program. You can start for free, and run affiliate marketing more cost-effectively than using an affiliate network. It can also be used for influencer marketing and referral marketing.
On the other hand, with a lot of jargon and incomplete Japanese-language support, it may be a bit challenging for beginners. It's also worth noting that you'll need to acquire affiliates yourself.
Using this article as a reference, we encourage you to consider introducing your own in-house affiliate program.
