What is an affiliate marketing program? How it works for a brand

By the RecruitAffiliates.ai team · 26 October 2026 · 10 min read

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An affiliate marketing program is a deal where you pay people a commission when they send you a buyer. Each person gets a tracked link. When someone clicks it and buys, the tool credits that person, and you pay them a set share of the sale. If nobody buys, you pay no commission.

Here are the five terms you need, in plain words:

An affiliate is a person or a site that promotes your products. A blogger, a reviewer, a podcaster or a creator can all be one.
A commission is the cut of each sale you pay them.
A tracking link is a web address with a code in it, so the sale can be traced back to the person who shared it.
A cookie window is how long after a click a sale still counts for that person.
A program is the set of rules you publish: what you pay, how long a click counts, and how people join.

How does the money flow?

An affiliate program works in six steps, and you pay only at the last one.

You set the offer. For example, 10% of each sale, with a 30-day cookie window.
A person joins. They apply, and you approve them.
They get a tracking link. Some programs also give a discount code.
They share it. In a review, a newsletter, a video or a podcast.
A buyer clicks and buys. The tracking tool records the sale against that person.
You pay after the sale is safe. Some brands wait out the return period first, then pay on a set date.

The impact.com guide to affiliate programs says brands "reward on a performance basis" (impact.com, checked 26 October 2026). That is the whole idea. You pay for a result, after the result.

Three jobs sit behind those steps, and each has an owner.

Job	Who does it	What it means
Who pays	You, the brand	You set the rate and send the money
Who earns	The affiliate	They promote you and collect commission
Who tracks	A tracking tool	It records each click and sale and shows who is owed what

Who is in an affiliate program?

Three parties take part, plus the buyer.

The brand. That is you. You make the offer and take the sale.
The affiliates. The people who promote you. A program is only as good as the people in it.
The tracking tool. Software that gives out the links, records the sales and works out what is owed. On Shopify it is usually an app. Our Shopify affiliate program guide compares the common ones. Some tools only tell you the amounts, and others also send the money.

Many brands also use an affiliate network, which is a marketplace that handles tracking and payouts and gives you access to its members. Our post on network versus direct recruiting explains the trade.

Who covers shops like yours? We can show you for one kind of brand. On 22 October 2026 we ran a first search for 30 public Shopify brands, hand-picked from our own list, six in each of five categories. It showed 2,924 people. For 1,877 of them (64%), the best evidence was a review, roundup or comparison page. TikTok gave 49 people and Instagram 17. An email was found for 916 (31%). See the method and limits and the category results.

That is a first search, not a count of promoters. An AI model read the titles and addresses of 30 random rows and opened none of the pages. 9 looked like non-promoters (30%, likely range 17% to 48%). So the people a first search finds are often writers who already cover products like yours. Creators are one group among several.

A worked example with plain numbers

This is an example, not a forecast. Use your own numbers.

Let's say you sell a candle for $60. It costs you $24 to make and ship. So you keep $36 on each sale before any commission. You pay affiliates 10%, which is $6 a sale.

One affiliate writes a roundup of gift ideas. In a month, 30 orders come through the link.

Line	Amount
30 orders at $60	$1,800
Returned orders (3 of the 30)	$180
Orders that stay (27)	$1,620
Cost to make and ship those 27	$648
Commission on 27 orders at $6	$162
Left for you	$810

Four things to notice:

You pay commission on the 27 orders that stayed, not the 30. That is why brands delay payouts.
Of every $60 sale, $6 goes to the affiliate and you keep $30. You still make money on each one.
The example treats returned items as back in stock, and ignores the postage lost on those 3. In real life, add both.
If the roundup brings no orders, you pay $0 in commission. You may still pay for the tracking tool and your own time.

Your margin sets how high the rate can go. Our guide on what commission a Shopify program should pay shows how to work out your ceiling.

What does an affiliate program cost?

Four costs make up the bill. Commission is the one that follows your sales, though a few apps also take a small cut.

Commission. A share of each sale that stays. It is the main cost, and it rises and falls with your sales.
A tracking tool. Some Shopify apps have free plans. Others charge a monthly fee, and some also take a small share of sales. Prices vary by app and change often.
Free product. Some brands send a sample so a person can review it.
Time. Finding people, answering them and paying them. Our guides to affiliate recruitment and affiliate management cover these two jobs.

You can pay in three ways. Pay per sale means a commission only when someone buys. Pay per lead means a fixed amount for a signup. Pay per click means a fixed amount for each visit. Affise, an affiliate software company, wrote in a post dated 22 September 2026 that "the most popular payment method by far is pay-per-sale," and that pay per click is "starting to become more and more outdated" (Affise, 22 September 2026). Both are vendors, so read that as their view. impact.com notes that brands use pay per click rarely because of the risk of low-quality or fake clicks (impact.com, checked 26 October 2026). Wikipedia, a neutral source, also says "eighty percent of affiliate programs today use revenue sharing or pay per sale" (Wikipedia, checked 26 October 2026). It gives no date for that figure. For a shop, pay per sale is the default.

What do typical terms look like?

On 23 October 2026 we read the public affiliate pages of 168 Shopify brands. These are stores with a public affiliate page, not a random sample of all shops. For 137 of them, the page named a base rate. The median was 10%. The middle half sat between 8% and 15%. Beauty and skincare was the one category with a higher median, at 15%.

Of the 73 pages that state a cookie length, 57 (78%) say 30 days. See the full commission rates research. It covers only pages that state a percentage, and it says nothing about what works. So 10% with a 30-day window is a common place to start, not a rule.

For what else to offer, such as bonuses or a higher rate for top sellers, see what to offer affiliates.

How is an affiliate program different from gifting and ads?

The difference is when you pay and what you pay for.

Method	You pay	You pay when	What you get
Affiliate program	A commission	After a sale	Tracked sales
Influencer gifting	Product and postage	Before anything happens	A chance of a post
Paid ads	Ad spend	Before anyone clicks	Clicks and, with luck, sales
Paid influencer post	A fee	Before the post	One post

With ads and gifts you pay first and hope. With an affiliate program you pay after. The catch is that nobody is forced to promote you. A program with no active people earns nothing, which is why finding them is the hard part.

You can combine the methods. Send a gift with an affiliate link, and you get two rows at once. Our gifting note examples show how to word the note.

What are the rules on telling people about commission?

If someone earns from a link, readers should be told. The FTC's guide for creators says: "Disclose the relationship if you got anything of value to mention a product" (FTC, Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers, November 2019). Put a disclosure line in your terms, and ask affiliates to use it. This is not legal advice, and rules differ outside the US. Our affiliate disclosure examples give ten lines to copy.

What should you do first?

Do these five things, in this order.

Check your margin. Work out what you keep per order, then pick a rate you can pay.
Pick a tracking tool. Start with a free plan if your orders are few. The guide above compares the common ones.
Write one page of terms. The rate, the window, when you pay and the disclosure line.
Ask 10 people. Pick people who already cover products like yours. The first 10 affiliates in 14 days plan shows how.
Keep out the wrong people. Coupon sites can take credit for sales you would have made anyway, so say in your terms who may join.

Looking to join a program instead?

This page is for brands that run one. If you want to earn as an affiliate, look at the affiliate page on the brand's own site, or the network it uses, and read its terms before you apply.

Where RecruitAffiliates.ai fits

RecruitAffiliates.ai covers the people part. It does not track sales or pay commission, so you still need a tracking tool.

You enter your website. It finds websites, blogs, review sites, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels and Instagram and TikTok creators already covering shops like yours. Each one comes with the page that shows it, so you can judge the fit. It looks for each person's email and checks what it finds, so you get a verified email. AI drafts a personal first email. You approve it, and it sends from your own inbox. Replies land in that inbox. A campaign is four emails in one thread.

A new mailbox sends 5 first emails a day in the first week, and builds to 30 at most. Launch is $79 a month for one brand, with a 7-day free trial and no card.

Frequently asked questions

What is an affiliate marketing program?

It is an offer to pay people a commission for each sale they send you. Each person gets a tracked link, and you pay only when a sale comes through it.

How does an affiliate program work for a brand?

You set a rate and a cookie window, people join and get tracked links, and they share them. When a buyer clicks and buys, the tool credits the sale. You pay after the return period ends.

How much does an affiliate program cost?

You pay a commission on each sale that stays. You may also pay a monthly fee for a tracking tool and for any free product you send. With no sales, there is no commission to pay.

Is an affiliate program worth it for a small brand?

It can be, because you pay after a sale, not before. The risk is that nobody promotes you. Start with 10 well-chosen people and look at the numbers after 30 days.

What is the difference between an affiliate program and influencer marketing?

An affiliate program pays a commission after a sale. Influencer marketing often pays a fee or sends a gift first. You can mix the two by giving a gift with an affiliate link.

What commission do Shopify brands that state a rate pay?

Among the 137 of 168 public programs we read on 23 October 2026 that state a base rate, the median was 10%. The middle half paid between 8% and 15%.