Here is how the Affiliate Module works:

When someone clicks an "affiliate" contest link, it behaves like a regular contest link, but we also fire a cookie so it appears that they came to your site through the affiliate link and registers them as having been from that affiliate. With the cookie dropped, if that person then buys your product, the affiliate will get credit and the commission.

You can promote your product in addition to your contest on your contest page if you wish, or you can rely on the fact that once they sign up for the contest, you will have added them to your mailing list and can send them back to your site later to buy. Whatever option works best for your product and market. You can, if you wanted, have a separate contest just for affiliates and craft the contest link to go straight to your sales page, awarding the affiliate contest points, and just sending the visitor straight to the sales page. Again, its really up to you with what you want to accomplish and how you want to set up your sales funnel. We like to get the visitors engaged in the contest, and count on the emails getting them back to the site to actually buy. That way you build your list as well as get those visitors to help promote your site more.

Setting up your contest for Affiliates:

Under the Other tab in your contest admin area, check the box to Enable Affiliate Link.

You then need to edit your contest links shortcode to tell it to display the box where the Affiliate can enter their Affiliate URL.
Change your shortcode to include affiliate_url="yes" so that it looks like this:
[contest_links contest="your_contest_slug" affiliate_url="yes"]

Now, when someone signs up through that shortcode, they will see in addition to their links, a box where they can fill in their Affiliate URL for your product. The affiliate MUST put in their affiliate URL, otherwise they will not receive affiliate credit, only contest points.

*We recommend that you set up a separate page for your affiliates to sign up for your contest through. This way you can have a "public" facing page which just has a normal contest links page (using [contest_links contest="your_contest_slug"] for the shortcode) and setup and a separate page where your affiliates can sign up. This avoids confusion from visitors who aren't affiliates and who just want to participate in the contest.

1. You need to have Contest Burner Ultimate Edition in order to activate the Affiliate module. If you have purchased the Ultimate Edition, or upgraded to it and don't automatically see the options available try removing your license key, saving, putting your license key back in and saving. This will call our license servers and should unlock the features. If this does not work, please send in a ticket and we will get it resolved.

2. Almost every major affiliate program will work with Contest Burner.There is something called 3rd party cookies, which basically means that the affiliate tracking cookie isn't being dropped directly from your site, but through a 3rd party (in this case, Contest Burner). This is how we are able to award both contest points and affiliate credit from a single link. As long as the affiliate program will allow 3rd party cookies (which almost every single one does), then it will work with Contest Burner.

3. The upline works this way:
Contestant A is an affiliate, and Contestant B signs up through Contestant A's link. Contestant B is not an affiliate.
Contestant C then signs up through Contestant B's link. If you enable upline searching, then Contestant A will get affiliate credit for Contestant C as well as Contestant B if either of them then buy.
This can continue as many levels deep as you would like, however, as soon as an affiliate is found up the line, that affiliate will get credit. If Contestant C is also an affiliate, then anyone signing up from him, or the people he signs up, will give Contestant C the affiliate credit, not Contestant A.