What an Affiliate Program Actually Is
An affiliate program pays you a share of the sales you help create.
You recommend something, someone buys it through your link, and you earn a percentage of what they spent. No negotiating a rate, no invoicing, no waiting for a brand to approve a concept. You post, and if people buy, you earn.
That's the whole model. Everything else is detail.
Paid for Results, Not for Posting
This is the part that takes adjusting to if you've done sponsored work before.
A sponsorship pays you for the post itself. You agree a fee, you deliver the content, you get paid whether it performs or not.
Affiliate pays you for the outcome. A post that nobody acts on earns nothing. A post that keeps converting for six months keeps paying for six months.
Neither is better. They reward different things, and plenty of creators do both — sponsorships for guaranteed income, affiliate for the upside.
Nobody Pays More Because of Your Link
Worth knowing, because creators worry about this and sometimes soften their recommendations because of it.
Your commission comes out of the brand's margin, not out of your audience's pocket. The price is the same whether someone uses your link or types the website in themselves. You're being paid for sending a customer the brand wouldn't otherwise have had.
You Don't Need a Huge Following
Affiliate earnings track how much your audience trusts you, not how many of them there are.
A creator with 4,000 people who take their recommendations seriously will routinely out-earn a creator with 80,000 casual followers. Conversion is what pays, and conversion comes from trust.
How Your Link Knows It's Yours
This is the mechanical bit, and it's worth understanding because it explains a lot of rules that otherwise seem arbitrary.
Your Tracking ID
Every link you generate from your storefront contains a unique identifier that belongs to you. You'll hear it called a tracking ID, an affiliate ID, or a partner ID depending on who's talking.
That ID is the only reason a sale can be traced back to you. It's what turns an ordinary product link into something that earns.
What Happens When Someone Taps
Roughly:
Someone taps your link. Your tracking ID travels with them.
Their browser stores it, usually as a cookie.
They browse, they think about it, maybe they leave and come back.
At checkout, the system reads that stored ID.
The sale gets credited to you.
Steps 2 and 3 are where things get fragile. The ID lives in that one browser on that one device, so a person who taps on their phone and buys on a laptop may not carry it across.
Why the Link Has to Be Exactly Yours
Because the ID is embedded in the link itself, anything that changes or removes it breaks the connection.
Which is why:
A screenshot of a link earns nothing. There's no ID to read, and nothing to tap.
Retyping a URL from memory drops the ID.
Sharing another creator's link credits them, not you.
Telling people to search for the product themselves skips the ID entirely.
Tip: Always pull links fresh from your storefront. This article covers which link type to use in which placement.
The Words You'll Hear
Affiliate marketing has a lot of jargon and most of it is simpler than it sounds. Here's what people mean.
About Links and Tracking
Affiliate link — any link carrying your tracking ID. Also called a tracking link or referral link.
Tracking ID — the unique identifier that marks a link as yours.
Cookie — the small file in someone's browser that remembers your ID after they tap.
Deep link — a link that goes to one specific product or page rather than a homepage.
Storefront — your own page collecting the products you recommend, each one already carrying your ID.
Promo code — a discount code tied to you, which can credit sales even when someone didn't use your link.
About Sales and Credit
Click — someone tapped your link. Not yet worth anything.
Conversion — someone bought. This is the thing you're actually paid for.
Conversion rate — the share of clicks that turn into purchases. Higher is better; a few percent is normal.
Attribution — the process of deciding which creator gets credit for a sale.
Attribution window — how long after a click a purchase still counts as yours. Also called a cookie window or lookback window. Length varies by brand.
Last-click attribution — the common rule where credit goes to whoever was tapped most recently before checkout.
Affiliate network — the platform that does the tracking and payments behind the scenes. Impact, Rakuten, CJ, and ShareASale are ones you may see named.
About Money
Commission — your share of a sale.
Commission rate — the percentage you earn. Set by the brand, and it can differ by product category.
Flat rate — a fixed amount per sale instead of a percentage.
Average order value (AOV) — the typical size of a purchase. Higher AOV means more commission at the same rate.
Earnings per click (EPC) — average earnings for every click you send. A good way to compare two products fairly.
Awaiting Approval — a recorded sale that hasn't yet been confirmed by the brand.
Approved — a confirmed sale, cleared for payout.
Reversed — a commission removed because the customer returned or cancelled. Normal, and it happens to everyone.
Payout — the actual transfer of approved commission to you.
Tip: For how approval and payouts work on your specific program — timing, schedules, and what each number on your Earnings tab means — see the Earnings collection. This article is the vocabulary; that one is the specifics.
What Actually Drives Your Earnings
Only three things do, which makes it easier to know what to work on.
The Three Levers
Commission rate. Mostly out of your hands, but worth knowing which categories pay better than others.
Order value. A 5% commission on a £200 purchase beats 20% on a £15 one. Recommending higher-value items, or things people buy several of, moves this.
Conversions. The lever you actually control. It comes down to recommending things your audience genuinely wants, and making the link easy to find and obvious to tap.
Where to Put Your Effort
Almost always conversions.
Chasing a higher commission rate is a conversation with a brand you may not be able to have. Doubling the number of people who act on your recommendation is entirely down to how you post — which product you pick, how you talk about it, and whether anyone can find the link.
Common Misconceptions
"I get paid for clicks." You don't. Clicks are only worth something when they turn into purchases.
"My audience pays extra because of my link." They don't. Your commission comes from the brand.
"I need a big following to earn." Conversion pays, not follower count.
"A screenshot of my link works." It can't be tapped and carries no tracking ID.
"Affiliate and sponsored are the same thing." One pays for the post, the other pays for the result.
"A pending sale is money I have." It isn't confirmed until the brand approves it, and returns can reverse it.
"Any link to the product will do." Only a link carrying your tracking ID earns you anything.