What 364 affiliate programs actually pay
Commission rate is the number every directory sorts on and it explains almost nothing. Here is the arithmetic across all 364 programs we publish, with the correlation calculated.
LinkApprove Partnerships Team · Program research and advertiser relations
· Updated · 4 min read
Every affiliate directory on the internet, including the parts of ours that let you sort, puts commission rate in the biggest type. It is the number brands lead with, the number creators compare, and the number that decides which programs get promoted.
It is also, on our own published data, almost unrelated to what a program pays you.
This is not an opinion. Every figure below is computed from the 364 program pages on this site, each of which publishes its commission rate and cookie window, and most of which publish an average order value. You can check any of them by opening the page.
The shape of the directory
Before the argument, the ground it stands on.
- Programs published
- 364Programs published
- Pay a percentage
- 257Pay a percentage
- Pay a flat bounty
- 107Pay a flat bounty
- Publish an order value
- 285Publish an order value
The median commission rate is 6%. The median average order value is $130. The median cookie window is 30 days.
Those three medians describe a program that does not exist. Half the directory sits well away from them in at least one dimension, and the distance is where all the money is.
Rate and payout are different questions
Here are the eight highest-rate programs in the directory, with what a single average-sized sale on each actually pays.
| Program | Rate | Avg order | Per sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tripadvisor | 50% | $240 | $120.00 |
| NordVPN | About 29% | €23 | €6.67 |
| Il Makiage | 12% | $68 | $8.16 |
| Brooklinen | 10% | $195 | $19.50 |
| SkinCeuticals | 10% | $170 | $17.00 |
| Daniel Wellington | 10% | $140 | $14.00 |
| Missoma | 10% | $130 | $13.00 |
| Elemis | 10% | $125 | $12.50 |
Now the same directory sorted by what a sale is worth.
| Program | Rate | Avg order | Per sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tripadvisor | 50% | $240 | $120.00 |
| Blue Nile | 5% | $2,400 | $120.00 |
| James Allen | 5% | $2,400 | $120.00 |
| Tempur-Pedic | 5% | $2,100 | $105.00 |
| Hydrow | 5% | $1,900 | $95.00 |
| Helix Sleep | 7% | $1,250 | $87.50 |
| Burrow | 6% | $1,450 | $87.00 |
| Brilliant Earth | 4% | $2,100 | $84.00 |
Ignore Tripadvisor, which appears in both lists for the reason given above, and the two tables share nothing. Of the nineteen programs paying 10% or more, not one apart from Tripadvisor appears in the payout list, even with the ten-percent list drawn as favourably as possible.
Blue Nile pays 5% and returns $120 a sale. Glossier pays twice the rate and returns $6.50. That is an eighteen-fold difference in the opposite direction to the ranking.
By category, the same story
median 5% on a $320 order
median 5% on a $390 order
median 4% on a $350 order
median 7.5% on a $170 order
median 6% on a $180 order
median 6.5% on a $135 order
median 5% on a $128 order
median 7% on a $130 order
median 6% on a $130 order
median 6% on a $100 order
median 8% on an $85 order
median 4% on an $85 order
Median commission per average order across the 227 percentage-rate programs that publish an order value. Bounty programs are excluded. Pets and food have three qualifying programs each and should be read as indicative rather than settled. Software and entertainment are left out because too few of their programs pay a percentage on a published order value. The 27 programs priced in euros are converted at about $1.15; any rate from $1.05 to $1.25 moves no category by more than 40 cents and leaves the correlation at 0.22.
Beauty and skincare pays the highest median rate of any category at 8%, and the second-lowest amount per sale at $5.95. Travel pays the joint-lowest median rate at 4% and returns more than two and a half times as much per sale.
If you selected programs on rate alone, you would systematically choose the categories that pay least.
Where the bounties went
The August edition had 29 flat-bounty programs. There are now 107, and a third of them are software and creator tools, where a program pays a fixed amount on each new signup rather than a share of a basket. Food and meal kits account for another 17.
A bounty removes order value from the equation, which makes the rate comparison above irrelevant for those programs. It does not remove the cookie window, and on a free-trial product the window decides whether the signup counts at all.
The number nobody publishes
There is a third term, and it is the one that decides whether either of the first two matters.
The 30-day window is the industry default and three quarters of the directory sits in that band. The tail is where the risk is.
Sixty-three programs, about one in six, run a window of fourteen days or fewer. On those, a reader who clicks during research and buys a fortnight later pays you nothing. The six programs at 24 hours or less are effectively same-session only.
A short window is not automatically bad. It is bad when it is paired with a purchase people deliberate over, which is precisely where the high-value programs live. Best Buy pays 1% on a one-day window against a $210 average order, and electronics buyers routinely research for weeks.
What to do with this
Three practical consequences, in the order they change your earnings.
Sort by rate multiplied by order value, not by rate. Both numbers are on every program page here that publishes them. The arithmetic is one multiplication and it reorders the directory completely.
Read the cookie window before you write anything long-form. Evergreen content on a seven-day window is a gift to whoever publishes the review that ranks above yours.
Stop treating a low rate as an insult. A 1% rate in consumer electronics is not a bad deal, it is what retailer margins in that category support. The relevant question is what 1% of the basket is, and in that category the basket is large.
None of this requires data we hold privately. It is all on the program pages, published before you sign up rather than after, which is the only reason this analysis was possible to write at all.
Programs mentioned
LinkApprove Partnerships Team · Program research and advertiser relations
· Updated
The team that reconciles commission terms against live advertiser feeds, reviews partner applications and writes the program notes in the directory. Collective byline for reference material rather than opinion.
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