Grow your marketplace through affiliates and referrals with Toppal

One of the most reliable ways to grow your marketplace: word-of mouth.

Users already on the platform have good reasons to invite newcomers: suppliers want more customers, and happy customers want to recommend a great service to friends. Influencers and content creators with overlapping audiences make natural partners for collaborations.

Referral and affiliate programs turn this word-of-mouth potential into something reliable: people earn when they refer others, so they have extra reason to do it.

Until now, having an affiliate program for your Sharetribe marketplace required custom development or a lot of manual operation. Now, you can set one up using Sharetribe's new referral source feature and Toppal, an end-to-end affiliate marketing tool built specifically for Sharetribe. 

How Toppal works

Toppal connects to your Sharetribe marketplace and handles the full lifecycle of an affiliate program. Here’s what you can achieve with Toppal, no coding required:

• Define your program rules: Choose what triggers a reward (a new user sign-up or a completed transaction) and how much affiliates earn (a fixed amount or a percentage).
• Give affiliates unique tracking links: Toppal automatically attributes new sign-ups and completed transactions to the right person through personal affiliate links.
• Manage payouts in one place: Review and approve rewards in Toppal's dashboard. Pay out rewards manually or through email using Toppal’s integration with the payout tool Tremendous.

None of this requires changes to your marketplace code. Toppal syncs with your Sharetribe data automatically in the background.

How to set up Toppal with Sharetribe

Toppal connects to your marketplace using Sharetribe's referral source feature and Integration API. To get started, you need to set up a referral source in Console and then paste your Integration API credentials into Toppal.

Read the setup guide in the Help Center to connect Toppal to your marketplace and launch your first affiliate program. Toppal offers a 7-day free trial to test how it works and also has a comprehensive Help Center to help you get started.

Please note that Toppal is available on the Pro and Extend plans.

Get started with Toppal today

Toppal was created by Tyler Maddren who runs his own marketplace on Sharetribe. Tyler has a background in affiliate and referral marketing and built Toppal to make this growth strategy easier to access for other founders as well.

Tyler will join our Customer Advocate Yifan for a webinar on creating an affiliate program with Toppal in the Sharetribe Community. The event takes place on Tuesday, June 30th.

Word-of-mouth is a powerful growth tool. If you have users who believe in what you're building, an affiliate program gives them an easy way to spread the word and earn money on the side. Create a Toppal account to set up your first affiliate program today.