How much commission should you pay an affiliate?
Not what everyone else pays — what your margin can carry. A worked method for picking a number you won't resent in three months.
The question arrives fast and gets answered badly. Someone sees a competitor paying 40%, panics, and matches it — on a product with a very different cost structure. Three months later they quietly close the program and tell people affiliate marketing doesn't work.
A commission is not a market rate you have to meet. It is a number you can afford, offered to people who bring you customers you would not otherwise have had. Working it out takes about ten minutes.
The number you actually start from
Take one product. Subtract what payment processing costs you on that sale. Subtract anything else that scales with each unit — a printed workbook, a support hour, the licence you pay per seat. What's left is what a sale is genuinely worth to you.
Now ask the real question: what fraction of that would you trade for a customer you'd never have reached? Most creators, once they phrase it that way, land somewhere between a fifth and a third. Not because 20–30% is a rule, but because that's where the trade stops feeling like a loss.
| Product | Price | Marginal cost | A comfortable rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preset pack | $29 | ≈ $1.20 processing | 30–40% |
| Self-paced course | $99 | ≈ $3.20 processing | 25–30% |
| 1:1 coaching hour | $150 | processing + your hour | 10–15% |
| Cohort program | $400 | processing + delivery | 10% or excluded |
Why one flat rate is usually wrong
The moment your catalogue contains both a $12 download and a $150 call, a single percentage stops making sense. Ten per cent of the call is fifteen dollars for an hour of your life; forty per cent of the download is under five dollars and costs you nothing.
On store.fan you set a default and then override it on any individual product. The product's rate wins over every other rate, including a special rate you've given a particular affiliate — the product's economics decide, not a personal deal. That ordering is deliberate, and it's what lets you be generous by default without being reckless.
Compare it to the right alternative
Creators instinctively compare a 30% commission to keeping 100%, which makes it look expensive. The honest comparison is to the other ways you'd get that same customer.
If a sale costs you $18 in ads and converts at the rate cold traffic usually converts, a $17.70 commission on a sale that already happened is the cheaper channel — and it's paid after the fact rather than in advance of a maybe. That's the comparison that should drive the number.
Changing it later
You can change a rate whenever you like, and the change applies only to sales made after it. Every commission is calculated and frozen at the moment the buyer pays, so you can't retroactively reduce what someone already earned — and they can't retroactively increase it either. That protects both sides, and it means a cautious starting number is a safe one.
- 1Start slightly lower than you think you can afford.
- 2Give it two months and look at what the program actually cost you.
- 3Raise it for the individuals who brought real volume.
- 4Only raise the default if recruiting has genuinely stalled because of it.
On store.fan you can set anything from 1% to 90%. Anything near the top end usually means you're using an affiliate program to do a job a launch discount would do better.
No, and you can't — commission is calculated on the item price after any discount code, excluding delivery and tax. Postage isn't profit and tax was never yours to share.
Treat a membership like any other sale and set the rate on the first payment you can afford. Paying a big percentage on something you have to keep delivering every month is how programs quietly become unprofitable.
Try the numbers on your own price before you commit to a rate.
Open the calculatorTurn your knowledge into income
Launch your Store.Fan in minutes — sell digital products, courses, and calls straight from your bio. Free to start.
