The creator's guide to affiliate commissions

Affiliate commission is the quietest, most misunderstood line in a creator's income statement. It is also, for most working creators in 2026, the largest. Brand deals get the headlines; affiliate pays the rent. This is a plain-English guide to how it actually works — the rates, the tracking, the windows, and the maths you need to plan around.

What a commission actually is

A commission is a percentage of the sale price that a brand pays you when a shopper buys something through your link. It is paid after the return window closes — usually 14 to 30 days — and almost never on the tax or shipping. The headline rate you see on a creator network is the gross rate; the rate you'll bank is roughly 80% of that, once returns and ineligible categories are netted out.

Typical rates by category

Fashion and accessories sit between 5% and 12%. Beauty is usually 8% to 15%, with prestige labels at the higher end. Home goods land at 4% to 10%. Electronics are stingy — often 1% to 4% — because margins are tight. Subscription products, by contrast, can pay 30% to 50% of the first month, which is why software and meal-kit links over-index in creator income.

Tracking windows and why they matter

A tracking window is how long a brand will credit you for a sale after the initial click. The industry default is 30 days, but Amazon famously runs a 24-hour window. A short window means a shopper has to buy almost immediately; a long window means a shopper who saves the link for next payday still counts as yours. When you compare networks, the window matters more than the rate.

First-click, last-click, and the attribution problem

If a shopper taps your link, leaves, then buys through someone else's link a week later — who gets paid? Most networks default to last-click, which means the last creator in the chain wins. A growing number, including the Pluggz network, support first-click attribution for storefronts: the creator who introduced the brand keeps the commission even if the shopper came back via a different link. First-click is fairer to the creators doing the discovery work; last-click rewards the creators closest to the purchase.

The maths of sustainable income

A simple model: 10,000 monthly storefront visits, a 6% product-tap rate, a 4% checkout conversion on tapped products, an average order value of £80, an effective commission rate of 9%. That works out to roughly 24 paid orders per month and around £170 in commission. The lever with the highest return isn't traffic — it's the product-tap rate, which is almost entirely a function of how well-edited your storefront is.

What to watch out for

Three things eat commissions silently. First, coupon-site overrides — a shopper who taps your link and then opens a coupon extension is often re-attributed to that extension at checkout. Second, app-to-web breakage — a shopper who taps a link in Instagram, then opens the brand's app, sometimes drops out of tracking entirely. Third, return cycles — if you push a high-return category like fast fashion, your gross commission can look great in week one and shrink by 30% by week six.

A working creator's checklist

Always disclose. Pick two or three networks rather than ten — the tax forms alone aren't worth the long tail. Read the terms of service for ineligible categories before you push a product. And every quarter, do a single afternoon's accounting: pull commission, returns, and effective rate per brand. The pattern will tell you which partnerships to deepen and which to quietly let go.