9th October 2026
One of the most common questions ecommerce brands ask when launching or reviewing an affiliate programme is:
“What commission rate should we offer affiliates?”
It sounds like a straightforward question.
Should you pay 5%, 10% or 15%? Should every publisher receive the same rate? Should influencers earn more than cashback partners? And should affiliates receive higher commission for acquiring new customers?
The answer depends on much more than what your competitors are offering.
Your affiliate commission structure directly influences the profitability of the channel, the publishers you attract and the behaviours you incentivise.
Set commission too low and you may struggle to recruit valuable partners.
Set it too high without understanding incrementality and margin, and you could pay substantial commission on transactions that would have happened anyway.
At Conversion Digital, we believe affiliate commission should be treated as a strategic investment tool, not simply a percentage entered into an affiliate network.
Here’s how ecommerce brands can build a commission structure that supports profitable growth.
An affiliate commission rate is the amount a brand pays a publisher when an agreed action, usually a sale, is generated through an affiliate partnership.
For ecommerce brands, commission is commonly calculated as a percentage of eligible order value.
For example:
This is known as a cost-per-sale model and is commonly described within affiliate marketing as cost per acquisition (CPA). CPA can also refer to a fixed payment per validated acquisition.
Affiliate programmes can also use fixed commissions, tiered rates, bonuses or hybrid commercial arrangements.
The key is that commission should reflect the economics of the business and the value generated by the publisher.
For a wider introduction to how the channel operates, see our Affiliate Marketing for Ecommerce Brands: The 2026 Growth Guide.
There is no universal affiliate commission rate that works for every ecommerce brand.
A business selling high-margin digital products has very different economics from a retailer selling low-margin consumer electronics.
Even within ecommerce, two businesses selling similar products can have different acceptable commission rates because of differences in:
For that reason, competitor commission rates should be treated as a benchmark, not the starting point for your entire strategy.
The best affiliate commission rate is one that is commercially sustainable, competitive enough to attract the right publishers and aligned with the value those publishers create.
Before deciding what to pay affiliates, understand what you can afford.
Imagine an ecommerce retailer with the following order economics.
| Metric | Example |
|---|---|
| Average order value (excluding VAT) | £100 |
| Product cost | £40 |
| Fulfilment and payment costs | £10 |
| Contribution before marketing | £50 |
| Target contribution after marketing | £30 |
| Available marketing acquisition budget | £20 |
In this simplified example, the business has £20 available for customer acquisition and associated marketing costs.
But that doesn’t mean it should automatically offer affiliates 20% commission.
The £20 may also need to cover:
If the brand offers 20% commission on a £100 order, it could consume the entire acquisition budget before those additional costs.
This is why commission and total affiliate cost of sale are not the same thing.
The commercial model needs to account for the full cost of operating the channel.
A useful starting point is to establish the maximum amount the business can spend acquiring a customer or generating an order while maintaining its profitability objectives.
A simplified framework is:
Maximum allowable acquisition cost = Contribution before marketing − Required contribution after marketing
For example:
£50 contribution before marketing − £30 required contribution = £20 allowable acquisition cost.
The next step is to determine how much of that £20 can be allocated to publisher commission.
If network fees, management and other costs account for £5 per order, the remaining £15 becomes the illustrative maximum publisher commission.
On an eligible order value of £100, that would equal 15%.
However, this is only an example.
Brands also need to account for different product margins, returns, customer types and the treatment of fixed management costs.
For repeat-purchase businesses, it may be commercially sensible to spend more acquiring a genuinely new customer.
But that decision should be supported by customer lifetime value and contribution data, rather than assumed future revenue.
One of the biggest limitations of many affiliate programmes is the use of a single default commission rate.
For example:
Every publisher receives 10% CPA.
This is simple to administer.
But it assumes every affiliate transaction creates equivalent value.
That is rarely true.
Consider two hypothetical publishers.
Publisher B generates twice the attributed revenue.
But should both publishers receive the same commission?
Not necessarily.
Publisher A may justify a higher CPA because of its acquisition and discovery contribution.
Publisher B may still be commercially valuable, but its rate should reflect the actual behaviour being incentivised.
These metrics are signals rather than definitive proof of incrementality. A proper assessment should consider customer journeys, margins and testing where possible.
As we explain in our Affiliate Marketing Incrementality Guide, attributed revenue alone doesn’t tell you how much additional business a publisher has created.
Commission should reflect publisher contribution, not simply publisher volume.
One of the most effective ways to align affiliate spend with ecommerce objectives is to differentiate commission for new and returning customers.
For example:
| Customer type | Illustrative CPA |
|---|---|
| New customer | 12% |
| Returning customer | 5% |
These figures are examples, not recommended industry benchmarks.
The logic is straightforward.
A brand may be willing to invest more in acquiring a new customer because that customer could generate additional future purchases.
Meanwhile, the business may not need to pay the same rate for a returning customer who already has an established relationship with the brand.
This can create a stronger incentive for publishers to introduce new audiences.
However, the tracking must reliably distinguish between new and returning customers.
Brands should also avoid assuming that every new customer is incremental or every returning customer is non-incremental.
The purpose is to make commission more closely reflect commercial objectives.
Publisher categories can provide a useful starting point for commission strategy.
But they should not be used as a substitute for measuring actual performance.
A possible structure might look like this:
| Publisher type | Commission approach |
|---|---|
| Content & editorial | Competitive CPA, with selective placement investment |
| Influencers & creators | CPA, gifting or hybrid fixed-fee arrangements |
| Cashback | CPA based on acquisition, customer behaviour and profitability |
| Voucher | Controlled CPA with code and incrementality monitoring |
| Closed user groups | CPA aligned with member acquisition and offer economics |
| Loyalty | CPA linked to audience value and repeat-purchase economics |
| Comparison publishers | Competitive CPA based on consideration and conversion value |
| Subnetworks | CPA with underlying publisher transparency and compliance controls |
This doesn’t mean every content publisher should automatically earn more than every cashback publisher.
A cashback partner introducing valuable new customers could justify a stronger rate than a poorly performing content partner.
The key is to use publisher type to inform strategy, then use data to refine the commercial structure.
For a detailed breakdown of the different partner categories and their roles, read our guide to Affiliate Publisher Types: Which Drive Ecommerce Growth?.
Not every product contributes the same margin.
Imagine a retailer selling:
Offering the same 15% commission across every product could create very different profitability outcomes.
Product-level commission allows brands to reflect those differences.
It can also support strategic priorities.
For example, a retailer might temporarily increase commission on:
This creates a more sophisticated commercial model than one universal programme-wide rate.
The practical limitation is that the affiliate network and ecommerce tracking setup must support reliable product-level data.
Tiered commission can incentivise publishers to increase their contribution.
For example:
| Monthly validated revenue | Illustrative commission |
|---|---|
| Up to £5,000 | 7% |
| £5,001–£15,000 | 9% |
| Above £15,000 | 11% |
The structure could apply progressively to revenue within each band or as a rate determined by the achieved tier. The programme terms should specify which method applies.
But there’s an important risk.
If you reward publishers purely for increasing attributed revenue, you may encourage activity that improves network reporting without necessarily increasing incremental business value.
A better approach can be to tie incentives to:
The incentive should reward the outcome the brand actually wants.
Not automatically.
Influencer and creator partnerships operate differently from many traditional affiliate relationships.
A creator may need to invest time in:
Some creators will work on performance-only commission.
Others will require product gifting, fixed fees or hybrid arrangements.
For example:
Gifting + 12% CPA
or:
£300 fixed fee + 8% CPA
These are illustrative commercial structures, not standard market rates.
The important thing is to evaluate the full economics of the partnership.
A creator who generates relatively modest immediate sales may also produce valuable content and introduce the brand to new audiences.
However, if the objective is direct customer acquisition, the total cost of the partnership should still be evaluated against measurable outcomes.
Affiliate commission is one part of the creator proposition, not necessarily the entire proposition.
This is also why effective affiliate recruitment requires a tailored commercial proposition for each publisher, rather than simply offering every prospective partner the same percentage.
This is especially important for ecommerce brands with higher return rates.
Imagine a publisher generates £50,000 of tracked revenue at 10% commission.
Initially, that creates £5,000 of commission.
But suppose £15,000 of the revenue is subsequently returned.
If the programme validates transactions correctly and reverses commission on eligible returned orders, the commission payable on the remaining £35,000 would be £3,500.
Without appropriate validation, the brand could pay commission on revenue it never retained.
Your affiliate commission strategy should therefore include clear rules for:
For ecommerce brands, kept revenue and validated commission can be more useful than gross tracked sales when evaluating profitability.
Affiliate is often described as a performance-based marketing channel.
That’s broadly true for CPA activity, but it doesn’t mean the channel has no additional costs.
The total cost may include:
Publisher commission — payments made to affiliates for validated sales.
Network fees — transaction, subscription or other platform charges.
Agency management — fees for recruitment, optimisation, reporting and programme management.
Tenancy and placements — fixed commercial investment for additional exposure.
Creator fees and gifting — costs associated with content partnerships.
Technology — tracking, reporting, compliance or optimisation tools.
A simplified calculation is:
Affiliate cost of sale = Total attributable affiliate channel costs ÷ Eligible kept revenue × 100
For example:
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Publisher commission | £8,000 |
| Network fees | £1,500 |
| Agency management | £2,500 |
| Tenancy | £2,000 |
| Total cost | £14,000 |
| Kept affiliate revenue | £100,000 |
| Total affiliate cost of sale | 14% |
The result is a 14% total cost of sale.
This is materially different from saying the programme operates on an 8% commission rate.
Brands should track both publisher-level efficiency and fully loaded channel economics.
Care is also needed when comparing affiliate cost of sale with other marketing channels, particularly where different attribution methods are used.
Competitor research is useful, particularly when recruiting publishers.
If comparable brands offer significantly stronger commercial terms, publishers may be less motivated to promote your products.
However, matching a competitor’s headline CPA without understanding their economics is risky.
You may not know:
Publicly advertised commission rates can also differ from the rates paid to strategic publishers.
Use competitor data to understand market expectations.
Then build your own commission structure around profitability and strategic objectives.
Increasing commission can be effective when there is a clear commercial reason.
A premium editorial partner may require a more attractive commercial proposition.
A temporary CPA increase can encourage publishers to prioritise new products.
Higher rates can incentivise publishers to introduce new audiences.
Commission increases can sometimes support newsletters, placements or other promotional opportunities.
If a publisher consistently delivers profitable, incremental value, stronger terms may help develop the relationship.
But increasing CPA without a defined objective can simply increase cost.
Every commission change should have a commercial hypothesis behind it.
Reducing commission can be appropriate when:
However, reducing CPA across the board can damage valuable relationships.
A better approach is to analyse partners individually, communicate changes appropriately and understand the likely impact.
The objective is not to minimise commission. It is to maximise the value generated for every pound spent.
If your affiliate programme has been running for several years, there’s a good chance your commission structure has evolved without a complete strategic review.
Start by asking:
These questions can reveal opportunities to improve profitability without necessarily reducing programme revenue.
They can also identify where increasing commission could unlock additional growth.
If you’re reviewing the wider performance of your affiliate programme, our guide to How to Grow an Affiliate Programme: 10 Ecommerce Strategies explores recruitment, publisher activation, incrementality and ongoing optimisation.
At Conversion Digital, we believe affiliate commission should be considered through four lenses.
What can the business afford to pay?
This requires an understanding of margin, returns, customer value and total channel costs.
What additional value is the publisher creating?
Look beyond last-click attribution and assess customer acquisition, journey position and other relevant signals.
Does the publisher provide access to new audiences, content, editorial coverage or important commercial opportunities?
Some partnerships create value beyond immediate attributed revenue.
Would stronger commission unlock additional profitable volume, placements or customer acquisition?
A publisher already operating at maximum exposure may respond differently from one with significant untapped opportunity.
Together, these factors provide a stronger foundation than simply selecting a percentage based on competitor programmes.
At Conversion Digital, we don’t believe commission optimisation should be limited to increasing or decreasing a headline CPA.
We start by understanding how the programme operates.
That means reviewing:
From there, we can identify where commercial terms may need to change.
Sometimes that means increasing commission to unlock strategic partnerships.
Sometimes it means reducing commission where the value being generated doesn’t justify the cost.
And sometimes the biggest opportunity isn’t changing the rate at all — it’s improving the publisher mix or activating partners who are currently underdeveloped.
Through our affiliate and partnership management services, we help ecommerce brands develop commercially sustainable programmes that reward valuable publisher activity and support long-term growth.
The objective is to create a commission structure that supports profitable, incremental affiliate growth.
Affiliate commission rates vary significantly by industry, product margin, customer value and publisher type. Ecommerce brands should establish sustainable rates based on their own economics and use competitor rates as a secondary benchmark.
A 10% commission rate may be commercially attractive for some ecommerce brands and unsustainable for others. Its suitability depends on margin, network costs, returns, customer acquisition objectives and the incremental value generated by the publisher.
Many ecommerce brands can justify paying higher commission for new customers where acquisition economics support it. However, new customer status should not be treated as definitive proof of incrementality.
Not automatically. Commission should reflect the publisher’s actual commercial contribution, including new customer acquisition, incremental influence and profitability, rather than simply its category.
Yes. Many affiliate platforms support differentiated commission structures based on publisher, customer type, product category or other conditions, although capabilities vary by network and tracking setup.
This depends on programme terms and transaction validation. Many ecommerce programmes reverse or adjust commission when orders are returned or cancelled, subject to the network’s rules and validation deadlines.
An increase can help when it creates a meaningful incentive for additional promotion. However, higher commission does not guarantee more sales. Brands should agree clear objectives and evaluate the incremental return.
If your affiliate programme still uses the same commission structure it launched with, there may be opportunities to improve both profitability and performance.
Conversion Digital helps ecommerce brands review publisher economics, optimise commission structures, measure incrementality and recruit partners capable of generating more valuable revenue.
Whether that means rewarding new customers, restructuring publisher rates or investing in higher-value partnerships, the objective is the same:
Build an affiliate programme where commission is aligned with genuine commercial value.
Speak to Conversion Digital about optimising your affiliate programme.
