Affiliates are given credit for introducing new Customers to your firm: Customers are registered to an affiliate during Customer Registration (i.e., when the Customer account is created). This is a separate process from Checkout. A Customer who creates an account that is NOT registered to an affiliate cannot be registered to an affiliate at a later point. At this point, they are no longer a new customer and therefore the affiliate has not introduced them to your firm. A Customer who is registered to an affiliate will remain registered forever. An affiliate will receive affiliate credit for ALL orders from that customer for their lifetime.