Guide · for shops and affiliates
How to choose an affiliate network.
An affiliate network is the third party that keeps count. The shop wants to pay for sales. The affiliate wants to be paid for the traffic that created them. The two sets of numbers meet in the network – and how the network is built decides who has the advantage when they do not match.
Below is what a network does, what it does not do, and the six questions that decide the choice. We answer each of them for ourselves, so you can put them to every other network. The examples come from Denmark, where Affilyflow is based.
The network’s role
What a network does.
Four tasks. Everything else a network offers – catalogues, banners, dashboards – is an accessory to them.
Tracking
The network owns the redirect itself. The click lands on our server first and gets its own click ID – and in the same second the commission rate, cookie days and number of promised renewals are copied onto the click row. Known crawlers are sent on, but are not counted as clicks.
Reporting
The order comes in via the Shopify app, the WooCommerce plugin, a Stripe webhook or a script on the site. The network decides three things: does the order belong to a click, is the click within the window, and what is the amount. Commission is calculated excluding VAT – via the Shopify app, however, on the value of the goods without shipping, where it has not yet been confirmed whether VAT has been deducted. The same order ID can never count twice in the same programme.
Disputes
The shop can reject a sale within the programme’s approval period – 30, 45, 60 or 90 days – and must give a reason the affiliate can read. If nothing happens, the sale is approved automatically. If the parties still disagree, we can reopen a decided conversion – and every privileged action is recorded in an audit log.
Payouts
The balance is not a column anyone can write to: it is calculated from data as earned minus in progress minus paid out. A conversion never credits a balance automatically – everything is created as pending. And the server, not the browser, decides the amount of a payout – automatically on the first banking day of the month or when the affiliate presses “Pay out now”.
The limits
What a network does not do.
The short list matters more than the long one. A network that will not write it has its reasons.
- It does not bring traffic
- The catalogue makes a programme visible to the affiliates who are already in the network. The audience is something the affiliate has to bring.
- It does not catch every single sale
- Attribution rests on a click ID in the URL and a cookie with the buyer. If both are cleared, the connection does not exist. We do neither fingerprinting, cross-device tracking nor identity graphs – a choice rather than a shortcoming, and the reason we do not promise a percentage we cannot keep. The mechanics are explained in detail under affiliate tracking and attribution.
- It does not move the money by itself
- The payout is created automatically on the first banking day of the month, and the amount is calculated by the server. The transfer itself is made by bank transfer – there is no payment engine in the system, so we do not promise the money in the account the same day.
- It does not enforce every rule technically
- Channel restrictions are enforced when the link is created: if the shop does not allow TikTok, the link cannot be made. Brand bidding, on the other hand, is a policy in the programme, not a technical block. On every click we measure ad clicks from Google Ads and Microsoft Ads and clicks from known discount-code and cashback sites – but we cannot see the search keyword.
How to choose
Six questions that decide the choice.
We do not name competitors here – we have not verified data about them, and an unsupported claim about others is worse than no claim. Instead you can put the six questions below to anyone and demand a concrete answer rather than an adjective. Here are ours.
Criterion 01
The fee structure
Ask
“What does the shop pay in total per sale, and how much of it reaches the affiliate?”It is the difference between whether the rate in the catalogue is the one the affiliate gets. If the fee is deducted afterwards, 10 % becomes 8 % in the affiliate’s pocket, and the shop negotiates a rate neither party can rely on.
How Affilyflow answers
- The shop sets its total price per sale, and the fee is part of it: the network fee is 20 % of the total price, and the affiliate gets the 80 %. A total price of 20 % gives the affiliate 16 % and the network 4 %. The affiliate only sees their own rate and gets exactly that, and the fee is booked on every single conversion.
- Commission is calculated on the order amount excluding VAT, so the shop does not pay commission on tax. Via the Shopify app it is calculated on the value of the goods without shipping, where it has not yet been confirmed whether VAT has been deducted.
- There is no monthly subscription: the shop tops up a balance, and commission plus fee are deducted from it – for Danish shops VAT too. Rejected sales cost nothing.
Criterion 02
The attribution rules
Ask
“When is the cookie window locked, and who decides whether a sale falls within it?”A window that can be shortened retroactively is not a window. And a window decided in the browser can be disputed by both parties afterwards.
How Affilyflow answers
- The window is snapshotted on the click row the second the click happens, and our server decides the age. The client cannot lie about how old the click is.
- There is one model: the click ID the conversion carries. No multi-touch, no splitting between several affiliates. One click owns the sale.
- The shop sets the window to 14, 30, 45, 60 or 90 days, and it is shown on the programme page before you join.
Criterion 03
Approval and disputes
Ask
“How long can a sale be rejected, what does a rejection require, and who settles a disagreement?”A network is also a court. The question is whether there is a deadline, a duty to give reasons and a third party to turn to – or whether the shop is both party and judge, so a disagreement ends with one side simply holding the money back.
How Affilyflow answers
- The shop has the programme’s approval period – 30, 45, 60 or 90 days, locked on the sale. After that the sale is approved automatically by a scheduled job – not by the shop’s goodwill. Approval is final.
- A rejection requires a reason, and the affiliate can read it on the sale together with order lines, source and click time.
- If the parties still disagree, we as the network can reopen a decided conversion. We are not bound by the approval period, and the action is recorded in the audit log.
- The shop’s approval rate is shown in the affiliate’s catalogue as soon as the shop has decided at least 10 sales.
Criterion 04
The quality of the catalogue
Ask
“Who gets into the catalogue, and what is the requirement to be shown?”A catalogue with thousands of programmes sounds big until half of them turn out to be empty. Bot-created shops are not a theoretical problem: in our own clean-up they made up 55 % of the catalogue, and 88 % of sign-ups came from automation.
How Affilyflow answers
- Only shops with a confirmed email, a website and tracking that is running are shown publicly and can be joined. The requirement is enforced in the database, not as a filter in the interface.
- Both sign-up pages run Cloudflare Turnstile, verified on the server.
- Public metrics have minimum thresholds: earnings per click and conversion rate require at least 25 clicks, the average curve at least 3 sales. Below the threshold we show nothing rather than a number that lies.
Criterion 05
The data
Ask
“What can I see, and what can I take with me?”A network that only shows you a monthly total is a network you cannot verify. The question is whether you can get down to the individual event.
How Affilyflow answers
- Every single tracking event is logged – including those that did not become a sale, with the outcome: duplicate, unknown affiliate, wrong shop, blocked. That is why a missing sale can be answered rather than guessed.
- The affiliate can export clicks, sales and earnings as CSV. The shop sees every sale with order ID and order lines.
- Access is protected at row level in the database. The shop sees the affiliate’s chosen display name, sites and partner profile and can write via Messages. Private contact and bank details are not shared.
Criterion 06
The money when something goes wrong
Ask
“What happens to the commission if the order is refunded after payout?”Returns are not an edge case – they are everyday business. How a network books them decides whether the balance is a number you can plan around.
How Affilyflow answers
- If a sale that has already been paid out is refunded within 90 days of approval, we show the balance as negative instead of resetting it. The amount is offset against the next payout. It is unpleasant to look at, and correct. If more than 90 days have passed, the affiliate keeps the commission – we carry that.
- An ongoing agreement on recurring commission cannot be cut back afterwards. The number of promised renewals is locked at the click.
- The minimum for a payout is DKK 100 in approved balance. The payout happens automatically on the first banking day of the month, and the amount is calculated by the server – not by the person receiving the money.
The terms are public – three programmes from the catalogue
Rate, cookie window and any recurring commission are shown on each programme page before you join – not afterwards.
Rate lock
What happens when the shop changes the rate.
What burns most affiliates is not how high the rate is. It is what happens to it after the traffic has been sent.
Monday
The click happens
The rate of 12 % is copied onto the click row together with the cookie window.
Step 1Wednesday
The shop lowers the rate
The new rate applies to clicks from Wednesday onwards. Monday’s click is not affected.
Step 2Friday
The buyer comes back
The sale is settled at 12 % – the rate that was on the click.
Step 3
The cookie window and the number of promised renewals behave like the rate: they are snapshotted on the click, not looked up at conversion. If a programme changes its terms, the affiliates who have joined are notified – and the change applies to clicks from that day on. How the snapshot is taken and decided is explained in the guide to tracking and attribution.
It is the one mechanism we would like to be judged on: everything else in a network can be rebuilt later.
Three models
Network, in-house programme or direct deals.
The three routes solve the same task, each with its own bill. The difference is not first and foremost the price – it is who ends up settling a disagreement.
Network
Best when
You want many small and medium-sized affiliates without hiring anyone to manage them.
- One integration gives access to every affiliate in the network at once.
- Reporting is done by a third party, so nobody has to take the other side’s numbers on trust.
- The affiliate has one balance and one payout flow across all shops.
- The network charges a fee for the reporting on top of the affiliate’s commission.
- The rules are the network’s: the attribution model is ours, not yours.
In-house programme
Best when
The channel is so big that the fee costs more than running both the system and the referee role.
- No network fee.
- Full control over rules, data and how a sale is counted.
- You build and run tracking, deduplication, bot filtering and reversals yourself.
- You are both party and judge in every dispute. That is the hidden price: an affiliate who has to trust your own reporting demands a higher rate.
- You recruit every affiliate yourself and pay each one yourself.
Direct deals
Best when
You have fewer than a handful of partners and pay for exposure rather than per sale.
- Fixed price, no percentages, no platform.
- No third party in the relationship.
- Does not scale – every deal is a new negotiation and a new invoice.
- No shared reporting: you argue about the result based on your separate analytics.
The rule of thumb: a few large partners at a fixed price belong in a direct deal. Many small and medium-sized affiliates belong in a network. If you want to run the numbers for your shop, the cost structure is on the page about starting an affiliate programme.
Switching
How to switch without losing your history.
A network switch rarely goes wrong on the technology. It goes wrong when the old one is closed too early, and traffic still in the air lands nowhere.
Do not shut down the old one first
Let the old links live while you run in parallel. A link you remove today may still have an open cookie window that turns into a sale next week.
Export your history before you cancel
Export sales, commission and payouts while you still have access. History cannot be imported – not with us either. Whatever you have not exported before closing time does not exist afterwards.
Install the new one alongside
Connect the shop with the Shopify app (once it is in the App Store), the WooCommerce plugin, a Stripe webhook or a script on your own site. We never ask for your Stripe API key – only a webhook signing secret that can only verify.
Run a real purchase through yourself
Test with a real click and a real purchase, not with dummy data. After that we check every 6 hours whether your tracking script still responds, and tell you when it goes from live to down.
Cancel once the last window has closed
Wait to close the old programme until the longest cookie window has expired. With us it is at most 90 days.
The glossary
Terms in this guide.
Eleven of the words that keep coming up when you compare networks. Each entry has its own explanation and an example.
The full affiliate glossary contains 120 terms.
Questions
What people ask most.
What does an affiliate network cost for a shop?
The shop sets its total price per sale. The network fee is 20 % of the total price, and the affiliate gets the 80 % – a total price of 20 % gives the affiliate 16 % and 4 % in fees. There is no monthly subscription: the shop tops up a balance, and commission and fee are deducted from it – prices are excluding VAT, and for Danish shops VAT is also deducted from the balance. Rejected sales cost nothing, and commission is calculated excluding VAT – via the Shopify app, however, on the value of the goods without shipping, where it has not yet been confirmed whether VAT has been deducted.
Does it cost anything to be an affiliate?
No. The rate you see is the rate you get – the network fee is part of the shop’s total price and is not deducted from your rate. There is neither a sign-up fee nor a subscription. The minimum for a payout is DKK 100 in approved balance, and the payout happens automatically on the first banking day of the month.
Can the shop lower my commission after I have sent the traffic?
Not for traffic that has already been sent. Rate, type, cookie days and the number of promised renewals are copied onto the click row the second the click happens, and the sale is settled on those terms. If the shop changes the terms tomorrow, they only apply to clicks from tomorrow.
What happens if the shop does not respond to my sale?
Then it is approved automatically. The shop has the programme’s approval period – 30, 45, 60 or 90 days, shown on the programme before you join – to reject it, and a rejection requires a reason you can read. If nothing happens within the period, the sale is approved by the system. If you still disagree, we as the network can reopen a decided conversion.
What is the difference between an affiliate network and an in-house programme?
A network provides tracking, reporting, dispute resolution and payouts for both parties and charges a fee for it. An in-house programme saves the fee, but the shop builds and runs tracking, deduplication and payouts itself – and is both party and judge if an affiliate disagrees with a rejection. It is the referee role that is hard to replace, not the code.
How do I know whether a programme in the catalogue is genuine?
Only shops with a confirmed email are shown publicly, and the requirement is enforced in the database. Metrics are only shown above a minimum threshold: 25 clicks for earnings per click and conversion rate, 3 sales for the average curve. And the shop’s approval rate is shown as soon as it has decided at least 10 sales.
How does Affilyflow differ from Partner-ads and Adtraction?
Partner-ads and Affilyflow both have no fixed fees, and with both the shop pays the network’s share – Partner-ads charges 25 % of the rate offered, Affilyflow 20 % of the shop’s total price per sale, and the affiliate gets the rate shown. Adtraction runs a subscription from DKK 690 a month plus a tracking fee. At Affilyflow, rate and cookie window are also locked at the time of the click. The figures were read on the networks’ own pages in August 2026.
Where to next
Documentation and further reading
- Partner-ads alternativePrice, terms, payouts and tracking side by side – and when Partner-ads is best.
- Adtraction alternativeSubscription versus payment per sale – and when Adtraction is the better choice.
- Partner-ads, Adtraction, Awin or AffilyflowPrices and terms at seven networks with sources, read in October 2026.
- What is affiliate marketing?From click to payout: commission models, cookies and the rules in Denmark.
- Numbers you can verifyCommission locked at the click, public metrics – and what we deliberately do not promise.
Choose a network you can verify.
The shop only pays for sales it has approved. The affiliate gets exactly the rate the programme shows. Both can be verified on each individual sale.