What is affiliate marketing?
The word "affiliate" means connected or associated. In affiliate marketing a shop – an advertiser – connects a number of partners to itself, who market it on their own channels: a blog, a comparison site, a YouTube channel, a newsletter or an Instagram profile. The partners get neither a fixed salary nor advertising money up front. They earn commission on the sales they can prove they created.
That is the property that makes the model interesting for both sides. The shop pays for the result, not for the hope of a result. The affiliate can earn money from an audience without having products, stock or customer service of their own. Affiliate marketing is therefore a form of performance marketing: payment follows performance.
An example in numbers
A reader finds a test of running shoes on a Danish running site, clicks the link to an online shop and buys a pair of shoes for DKK 800 excluding VAT. The programme gives the affiliate 10 %. Once the sale is approved, the affiliate has earned DKK 80. At Affilyflow that corresponds to a total price for the shop of 12.5 % – DKK 100, of which DKK 80 goes to the affiliate and DKK 20 is the network fee. The shop has paid for a sale, not for an ad impression that might never have led anywhere.
The short definition is in the glossary under affiliate. The rest of this guide is about how it works in practice.
How it works: from click to payout
An affiliate sale is a chain of seven links. If one of them breaks, the affiliate does not get their commission, and the shop does not know what the marketing delivered. This is what the chain looks like – with Affilyflow’s own mechanics as the example:
The customer clicks
The click goes through the network’s server, which records it, gives it a click ID and sends the customer on to the shop. At Affilyflow the commission rate and the cookie window are locked on the click in the same second. If the shop changes its terms afterwards, the change only applies to new clicks.
The shop remembers the click
The shop’s tracking – a script, a plugin or an app – stores the click ID in a first-party cookie on the shop’s own domain or on the shop’s server.
The customer buys
If the customer buys within the cookie window, the tracking reports the order with order number and amount. At Affilyflow, commission is by default calculated on the value of the goods after discount, excluding VAT and shipping, and the same order cannot count twice in the same programme.
The sale is pending
The sale is created as pending. The shop has an approval period to reject it with a reason, for example if the item is returned. At Affilyflow the shop chooses 30, 45, 60 or 90 days – set to match its return period – and the period is locked on the sale.
The sale is approved
If the shop does not reject it before the deadline, the sale is approved automatically and the commission counts towards the affiliate’s balance. If an order is refunded via the WooCommerce plugin or Stripe, the sale is rejected or the commission reduced automatically.
The affiliate gets paid
Only approved commission can be paid out. At Affilyflow that happens automatically on the first banking day of the month when the balance is at least DKK 100, and every payout gets a settlement statement.
The technical version with click ID, rate lock, deduplication and bot filter is in the guide to affiliate tracking and in the docs under How tracking works. How a sale becomes money in the account is covered in the article From click to payout.
The three parties: shop, affiliate and network
Affiliate marketing always has a shop and an affiliate. As a rule there is also a third party in the middle that both trust.
The shop
advertiser, merchant
Sells the product and pays for the result. Sets commission, cookie window, approval period and rules – for example which channels, and whether discount-code sites may take part – and approves or rejects sales.
The affiliate
publisher, partner
Owns the audience: a content site, a YouTube channel, a newsletter, an Instagram profile. Chooses programmes, creates links, labels advertising and earns commission on the sales the link creates.
The network
affiliate network, platform
Handles tracking, reporting, disputes and payouts, so neither party has to trust the other’s numbers. Brings many shops and affiliates together in one system and charges a fee for it.
Who pays what?
The shop pays both the affiliate’s commission and the network’s fee. At Affilyflow the shop sets a total price per sale, and the network fee is 20 % of it: at a total price of 20 % the affiliate gets 16 % and the network 4 %. The affiliate only sees their own rate and gets exactly that – the fee is not deducted afterwards.
There is neither a subscription nor a setup fee. The shop deposits money into a balance, and commission and fee are deducted from it – for Danish shops VAT too. Rejected sales cost nothing. The affiliate pays nothing to take part.
Can you do without the network? Yes – with an in-house programme the shop saves the fee, but then has to build tracking, settle disagreements and pay every affiliate itself. The pros and cons are in the guide to affiliate networks.
Commission models: CPS, CPA, fixed amounts and subscriptions
What the shop pays for decides which affiliates the programme attracts. The five models you will meet most often:
| Model | The shop pays for | Typically suits | At Affilyflow |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPS – percentage of the sale | A completed sale, as a percentage of the order value | Most online shops | Yes |
| Fixed amount per sale | A completed sale, as a fixed amount | Products with similar prices, or where the margin does not follow the price | Yes |
| CPL/CPA – per lead | An action without a purchase, such as a sign-up or a trial | Subscriptions, finance, B2B | Yes, a fixed amount per lead (requires a thank-you page) |
| Recurring commission | Every renewal of a subscription for an agreed period | SaaS and subscription boxes | Yes, for 6, 12 or 24 months or lifetime – via Stripe |
| CPC/CPM | Clicks or impressions, whether or not anyone buys | Banner advertising and reach | No – sales and leads only |
A percentage of the sale is the most common model, because the commission follows the size of the order. A fixed amount fits better when products cost roughly the same, or when the margin is the same in money terms. Leads make sense when the sale itself happens later or somewhere else – for example when a customer signs up for a trial.
If you sell subscriptions, recurring commission is the strongest argument with affiliates: they earn on every payment during the agreed period, not just the first. At Affilyflow the number of promised renewals is locked on the click, so an ongoing agreement cannot be cut back afterwards.
How high should the commission be?
There is no right number for every industry. Start with your margin: how much can a new sale cost in marketing before it is no longer good business? Then set the rate so it can compete with the programmes your affiliates would otherwise choose. You can always raise a rate. At Affilyflow the affiliate’s rate can only be lowered once every 30 days, and a reduction only applies to new clicks – which gives affiliates the confidence to invest in content about you.
Who are affiliates?
Affiliates range from an individual with a hobby blog to media companies with many sites. The main types:
- Content sites and niche sites: tests, guides and comparisons that get traffic from Google. They meet the customer while the purchase is still being considered, and often create sales the shop would not otherwise have had.
- Influencers and creators: recommendations on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, often with a discount code. Strong at creating demand – less steady than search traffic. How an online shop pays creators per sale is explained in the guide to influencer marketing.
- Newsletters and email: an audience that signed up of its own accord. Requires the sender to have consent from their recipients.
- Price comparison sites: catch customers who have chosen the product and are looking for the best shop.
- Discount-code sites and cashback sites: catch customers late in the purchase. They can save a sale, but also take commission on sales that would often have happened anyway – the question of incrementality.
- PPC affiliates: buy ads on Google and send the traffic on. Require clear rules about the shop’s brand name (brand bidding).
As a shop you decide in your programme rules which types you want on board – for example whether discount-code sites and paid search are allowed. How to assess each partner is covered in the article How to choose affiliates for your programme.
Tracking, cookies and consent – honestly explained
Affiliate tracking rests on two things: a click ID in the address when the customer lands, and somewhere to store it until the customer buys. At Affilyflow that is a first-party cookie on the shop’s own domain – never a third-party cookie – or a cookie the shop’s server sets itself.
The cookie window
The cookie window is the period after a click during which a purchase still earns commission. At Affilyflow the shop chooses 14, 30, 45, 60 or 90 days, and we recommend 30. The window runs from the click and is not extended by new visits. There is one model for who gets the sale: last click wins. If the customer later clicks another affiliate’s link, that affiliate gets the sale.
Safari and iPhone
Safari’s tracking protection (ITP) deletes cookies and storage set by JavaScript after about 7 days without a visit to the site. That applies to every network that tracks with a script – not just us. So in practice a 30-day window holds for the whole period on computers and Android, but typically about 7 days in Safari and on iPhone. A cookie set by the shop’s own server lasts longer: the WooCommerce plugin does that, and on a custom-built online shop the shop’s developer can do the same with tracking from your server.
Consent
Under the Danish cookie rules, cookies that are not strictly necessary to deliver the page the user asked for require consent – and an affiliate cookie is used for marketing. It is the shop that owns its site and its cookie banner, and therefore also the shop that chooses how tracking relates to consent. Affilyflow’s script can wait for marketing consent and reads Cookiebot, Cookie Information, IAB TCF, Google Consent Mode v2 and the built-in banners of Shoporama, DanDomain Classic and Smartweb by itself. Without consent no click is stored in the browser. The details are in the docs under Consent and cookies.
Personal discount codes: commission without a cookie
A personal discount code that the shop gives to one specific affiliate earns that affiliate commission – even without a click, for example when the customer declined cookies or bought on a different device from the one that saw the recommendation. A discount code for all affiliates does not earn commission on its own, and a valid click always wins over a code. See Personal discount codes in the docs.
What tracking cannot do
No tracking catches every sale. If the customer declined cookies, cleared their browser or bought on another device without a personal code, the connection does not exist. We do neither fingerprinting nor cross-device tracking – and we do not promise a percentage we cannot keep. In return, the shop can see the tracking’s coverage under Setup: how many clicks from affiliates reached a page with the script, were stored and became a sale.
Clicks are counted with care too: crawlers from search engines and SEO tools, clicks from cloud servers and unusually many clicks from the same visitor do not count, and the same visitor with the same affiliate and programme counts once, as long as less than 30 minutes pass between the clicks.
Rules and law in Denmark
Affiliate marketing is legal and widespread in Denmark, but it is advertising and must be treated as such. This section is an overview of the Danish rules – not legal advice, and it does not cover other countries.
Advertising labels
Under section 6(4) of the Danish Marketing Practices Act (markedsføringsloven) the commercial intent must be clear. The Danish Consumer Ombudsman (Forbrugerombudsmanden) regards affiliate links as advertising when the affiliate receives payment or another benefit for them. The Consumer Ombudsman recommends writing "Reklamelink" or "Annoncelink" (advertising link) directly above the link or immediately after it. A label at the end of the text is not enough, and neither are the words "affiliate link" and "affiliate agreement". On social media, "Reklame for …" (advertisement for …) is recommended as the first thing in the post.
The same applies to discount codes: if an affiliate mentions a code that earns commission, the mention is advertising and must be labelled. Read more under ad identification and the Consumer Ombudsman’s influencer rules.
Source
The Consumer Ombudsman’s page on hidden advertising on social media (updated 19 December 2024) and the case where affiliate links had to be labelled as advertising (both in Danish). Both read in October 2026.
For shops this means: write the labelling requirement into the programme’s guidelines, and act if an affiliate does not follow it. Affilyflow does not approve content in advance – responsibility for the label lies with whoever publishes, and the shop should know how it is being marketed.
Newsletters and invitations
Section 10 of the Marketing Practices Act prohibits advertising by email unless the recipient has asked for it in advance – with a narrow exception for existing customers. That applies to affiliates who send links in a newsletter, and to shops that want to invite affiliates. At Affilyflow, invitation emails are therefore only sent to recipients the shop confirms have asked for the programme themselves.
Paid search and trademarks
If an affiliate advertises on the shop’s brand name, the shop pays commission for customers who were already on their way. So the programme must state clearly whether paid search is allowed, allowed without the brand name, or not allowed. At Affilyflow we measure ad clicks from Google Ads and Microsoft Ads on every click – but we cannot see the search keyword.
Tax and VAT
In Denmark, commission is taxable from the first krone, as hobby income or business income depending on how the activity is run (hobby or business). It is B income, so the affiliate has to declare it themselves, and VAT registration becomes relevant above DKK 50,000 of VAT-liable turnover in a calendar year. At Affilyflow every payout gets a settlement statement (self-billing), and payouts to Danish private individuals are reported to the Danish Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen). The full walkthrough is in Tax and VAT as an affiliate in Denmark.
Personal data
A network has no need to know who the customer is. For a sale, Affilyflow stores order number, amount, currency and any order lines – never the customer’s name, email or address – and IP addresses are not stored on the click.
Getting started as a shop
An affiliate programme is quick to start and slow to build. What takes time is finding the right partners – not the technology. Here is how to start:
Do the maths before you set a rate
What is a new customer worth to you – including repeat purchases (LTV)? How much can a sale cost in marketing before it stops paying off? The answer is the ceiling for your total price per sale.
Create an account and a programme
Choose commission, cookie window, approval period and rules. At Affilyflow there is no subscription or setup fee: you deposit money into a balance, and commission and network fee are deducted from it – for Danish shops VAT too.
Install the tracking
Choose the route that suits your shop: WooCommerce plugin, Stripe webhook or a script on your own site (also Smartweb, DanDomain, Shoporama, custom-built online shops and – via Google Analytics 4 – Magento 2, PrestaShop and Shopware 6). The Shopify app is in review with Shopify and is not in the App Store yet.
Make a test purchase
The test link under Setup gives you a click from our test affiliate. A purchase through it becomes a test sale that costs nothing, but proves the whole route from click to sale works.
Become visible to affiliates
Your programme appears in the catalogue and on affilyflow.com once your website is set and tracking is running. Before that nobody can join – so no affiliate sends traffic to a programme that cannot measure it.
Recruit and follow up
Share your invitation link, your QR code and your programme page, write to your affiliates under Messages, and follow every click and sale under Results. How to build the programme over time is covered in the strategy guide for online shops.
Starter credit
DKK 250 in starter credit when you create a store account – try Affilyflow without paying. Does not apply to accounts created by the Shopify app.
Terms, price calculator and integrations are collected on start an affiliate programme, and the step-by-step setup is in the docs under Getting started as a shop.
Getting started as an affiliate
It costs nothing to become an affiliate, and there is no requirement for a certain number of visitors. What decides the result is whether your audience trusts your recommendations:
Choose a niche and a channel
Choose a topic you can write or talk about for a year, and a channel you can keep up. The full build plan for a site is in the guide to building an affiliate site.
Find programmes that fit
Look beyond the rate: EPC, approval rate, cookie window and the programme’s rules. All open programmes are in the catalogue of affiliate programmes – you can join straight away.
Create deep links with sub-IDs
Link to the product you write about, not the home page, and give every placement its own sub-ID. Then you can see which page earns the money.
Label the advertising
In Denmark, write "Reklamelink" or "Annoncelink" (advertising link) right next to the link, and "Reklame" (advertisement) first in a social media post. See the section on rules and law above.
Measure and adjust
Follow clicks, sales and EPC per page and per link. Move your energy to where the money comes from, and swap out programmes that do not convert.
Get your money
Approved commission is paid out automatically on the first banking day of the month from DKK 100. Fill in your personal details and bank details in good time – payouts to Danish private individuals are reported to the Danish Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen).
If you use ChatGPT or Claude, you can connect them to your Affilyflow account and let them find programmes, check rules and create trackable links – see affiliate marketing with AI. If you want to know what a Danish site can realistically earn, read What does a Danish affiliate site earn?
Ready to begin? See how to become an affiliate or Getting started as an affiliate in the docs.
The numbers that decide whether it works
The rate is the first thing everyone sees – but rarely what decides what a programme is worth. Five numbers tell you more:
| Metric | What it measures | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| EPC | Earnings per click | Combines rate, conversion and order value in one number. The best measure of whether a programme is worth sending traffic to. |
| Conversion rate | The share of clicks that become a sale | Shows whether the shop and the product live up to what the affiliate promised. |
| Approval rate | The share of decided sales that were approved | A high rate is worthless if many sales are rejected. Affiliates look for exactly this. |
| AOV | Average order value | Decides what a percentage rate is worth in money – and whether a fixed amount is better. |
| Incrementality | Sales that would not have happened without the affiliate | The shop’s most important question. Cannot be read directly, but the channel and source on every sale give a good indication. |
At Affilyflow, earnings per click and conversion rate are only shown publicly once a programme has at least 25 clicks, and averages only from at least 3 sales – a number based on so few events would lie. The shop’s approval rate is shown to affiliates as soon as the shop has decided at least 10 sales. How to use the numbers when running a programme is covered in Affiliate marketing strategy for online shops.
Choose a network – or don’t
There are several affiliate networks in Denmark, and the difference rarely lies in the size of the catalogue. It lies in who has the advantage when shop and affiliate disagree. Ask all of them the same five questions:
- The fee: What does the shop pay in total per sale, and does the affiliate get exactly the rate the programme shows?
- The lock: Are rate and cookie window locked on the click, or can they be changed for traffic that has already been sent?
- Approval: How long is the deadline for rejecting a sale, does a rejection require a reason, and who settles a disagreement?
- The data: Can you see the individual click and sale – source, page, order number – or only a monthly total?
- Refunds: What happens to the commission when an order is refunded after payout?
Our answer to each question is in the guide to affiliate networks, and a comparison with sources is in Partner-ads, Adtraction or Affilyflow. If you are considering a switch, we compare side by side in Partner-ads alternative and Adtraction alternative.
Questions and answers about affiliate marketing
What does affiliate marketing mean?
Affiliate marketing means marketing through affiliated partners. A shop lets affiliates – such as bloggers, comparison sites and influencers – recommend its products with a trackable link, and pays them a commission for every sale or lead the link creates. It is also called partner marketing or performance-based partner marketing.
Is affiliate marketing legal in Denmark?
Yes. Affiliate marketing is a common and legal form of marketing, but affiliate links are advertising. Under the Danish Marketing Practices Act the commercial intent must be clear, and the Danish Consumer Ombudsman recommends writing Reklamelink or Annoncelink (advertising link) right next to the link. The commission is taxable, and advertising by email requires the recipient’s prior consent.
What does affiliate marketing cost for an online shop?
The shop only pays for results: commission to the affiliate and a fee to the network. At Affilyflow the shop sets a total price per sale, and the network fee is 20 % of it – a total price of 20 % gives the affiliate 16 % and the network 4 %. There is no subscription; commission and fee are deducted from a balance the shop tops up itself, and rejected sales cost nothing.
How much can you earn from affiliate marketing?
It depends on traffic, niche, the programmes’ rates and how well the content converts, and most people start with small amounts. The most useful number is EPC – earnings per click – because it combines rate, conversion and order value. Do the maths on your own clicks instead of trusting promises of fixed monthly amounts.
How long does an affiliate click last?
As long as the programme’s cookie window says – at Affilyflow between 14 and 90 days, and we recommend 30. The window runs from the click and is not extended by new visits. In Safari and on iPhone the browser deletes cookies set by JavaScript after about 7 days without a visit; a cookie set by the shop’s own server lasts longer.
Can you do affiliate marketing without a website?
Yes. Many affiliates use social media, YouTube or a newsletter. Check the programme’s allowed channels before you share links, and remember the advertising label – it applies on every channel, including in a video or a story.
Do I have to pay tax on affiliate income?
In Denmark, yes: commission is taxable from the first krone, either as hobby income or as business income. It is B income (income without tax deducted at source), so you have to declare it yourself. VAT registration becomes relevant when VAT-liable turnover exceeds DKK 50,000 within a calendar year.
What is the difference between affiliate marketing and influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is about who recommends – a person with an audience. Affiliate marketing is about how payment works – per sale via a trackable link or a personal discount code. The two often overlap: an influencer can perfectly well be an affiliate and earn commission instead of a flat fee.