Design a commission an affiliate will actually work for

Ask what commission rate to set and you will get a percentage back from almost anyone. The percentage on its own is meaningless. The only question that matters is what one referred customer earns the affiliate, and whether that is worth the work of sending you traffic.

The ten-client test

Take your monthly revenue per account. Multiply it by the commission percentage. Multiply that by the number of months you pay for. That is what one referred customer earns an affiliate. Now multiply by ten clients, and ask the only honest question: would you recommend your own product to your audience for that amount?

A $150 plan at 30% for 24 months earns an affiliate $1,080 per referred customer, and $10,800 for ten. A $20 plan at 30% earns $6 per payment, which is why generous percentages on cheap plans attract nobody. The floor professional affiliates use, whether they say it or not, is about $10 per customer payment. Below that, an article or a newsletter slot is not worth spending on you.

The band, and where you sit in it

If a number has to be said out loud: between 20 and 50%. That is the range in which a B2B SaaS priced somewhere between $30 and a few hundred dollars a month gives an affiliate real earning potential.

Where you sit inside it depends on your stage, and the answer is the opposite of what most founders assume. Early stage pays more and for longer: you have no brand, little proof, and an affiliate has to work harder to convince their audience, so you pay for that work. Established programs pay 20 to 30% for 12 to 24 months, because affiliates come to them anyway. The commonest mistake is an early-stage company paying less than an established one, which removes every reason to take a risk on an unknown product.

You will lower the rate later, once the program and the company have grown. When you do, the original affiliates keep their deal in a private tier. Track 5 covers that.

Lifetime or a fixed term

Lifetime commission reads well on a program page. It is also what early-stage and struggling programs offer, because they have to. The affiliate's own judgement is the useful one here: a capped term on a product with low churn beats lifetime on a product whose customers leave inside a year. Decide from your churn, not your generosity.

What you cannot do, and what you can

Commission is only ever paid on revenue you have received. There is no cost per lead, cost per signup or per-demo bounty, because a reward that arrives before money does is an invitation to fraud, and a reward that arrives only on the first payment gives the affiliate no reason to care whether the customer stays. Commission schedules are also static: one percentage for a set number of months, the same for every plan. Reward growth with tiers, not with a special first-month rate.

What you can add on top of the recurring rate is a one-off bonus for a specific action, an article, a newsletter mention, a review. Track 3 shows how to use those. And you can never pay out more than you make: model the rate against your own margin before you publish it, and check the affiliate's side of it with the commission calculator.