How affiliate programme terms actually work

An affiliate programme pays you for sending a company paying customers. You get a tracking link; someone clicks it, buys within a set window, and you get a cut. No sale, no cost — which is why almost every software company runs one.

The headline percentage is the least useful number in the deal. These are the terms that decide what you actually earn, in roughly the order they matter.

1. Recurring or one-time — the biggest lever

A percentage tells you nothing until you know how many times you get paid it. On a $100/month product:

• A $150 one-time bounty pays you $150. Ever.
• 60% for 12 months pays roughly $720 in year one, then stops.
• 30% for the customer's lifetime pays $360 a year, indefinitely.

Same customer, three completely different outcomes — and a lower percentage often wins. Of the 250 programmes here, 141 pay recurring commission (59 of those for the customer's lifetime), 51 pay once, and 58 don't say.

2. Cookie window — how long a click stays yours

When someone clicks your link, the company drops a cookie. If they buy after it expires, you get nothing. This matters most for anything people research before buying: a reader who finds your post, thinks about it, and purchases three weeks later is worth money only if the window is still open.

The range here is real: Jasper at 14 days against TubeBuddy at 365 days, and 2 state that attribution never expires at all. A further 130 programmes don't publish a window at all.

3. Minimum payout — whether you get paid at all

Most programmes hold your earnings until they cross a threshold. At low volume this is the term that decides whether money ever reaches you: earn $80 in a year against a $250 minimum and you have earned nothing you can spend.

Thresholds here run from $5 to $450, and 7 state no minimum at all. 162 don't say.

4. Payout method — the one non-US affiliates should read first

Some programmes pay PayPal only. Others use Wise, Payoneer, direct bank transfer, or EFT. Guides written for a US audience treat this as a footnote; if you are anywhere PayPal is awkward or expensive, it is the difference between money arriving and money technically existing.

5. Which network runs it

Most companies don't build their own affiliate system — they rent one. The network decides your dashboard, your reporting, and how reliably you're paid. It also means joining one network can cover many programmes with a single login.

6. Entry requirements, which you usually find out after applying

Not every programme is open. Some require existing traffic or domain authority, some only admit existing paying customers, and some quietly stop accepting new affiliates while leaving the page up. Where a programme states a bar, it's in that programme's notes.

What the vendors don't tell you

628 of 1500 material fields — 42% — are not published by the vendors themselves. 17 programmes here don't state a commission rate anywhere on their public page: Amplitude, Bouncer, Brevo, Coda, Deskpro, Grammarly, Graphy, Instantly, Jetpack, LearnDash, Lusha, Pabbly, Squarespace, TextExpander, Time Doctor, Wix, Xero.

That is the honest reason this directory exists. The terms are scattered across 250 vendor pages, disclosed inconsistently, and changed without notice. Search results are mostly affiliate roundups, which have a structural problem — the author earns from the programmes they rank, so the ordering follows commission rates rather than accuracy.

Everything here is read off the vendor's own page and carries the date it was read. Where a vendor says nothing, this site says not stated rather than filling the gap with a guess — because knowing a company won't publish its cookie window is itself worth knowing before you build content around it.