Guide
Recurring affiliate commissions for SaaS
On a subscription, a sale is not paid for once: it replays at every billing cycle. That is what makes SaaS affiliate marketing different from the classic kind — and what makes setting the rate less obvious than it looks.
Updated
One sale, many commissions
A one-off commission is paid once, on the first sale. A recurring commission is recreated every time the customer is billed again — month after month, or year after year, for as long as they stay.
On a physical product that distinction does not exist: the sale happens once and that is the end of it. On a subscription it changes the entire economics of the channel, for both sides.
Why it changes the affiliate's behaviour
Pay once, and an affiliate is rewarded for a signup. Pay on every renewal, and they are rewarded for a customer who stays. Those are two different jobs, and they produce two different kinds of traffic.
This is the practical argument, not a moral one: an affiliate paid on renewals has a direct interest in describing your product accurately, because a customer who churns in month two costs them the eleven commissions they were counting on.
Setting the rate, with the maths written down
A recurring rate cannot be compared to a one-off rate on the same scale. 20% paid once on a €50/month plan is €10. The same 20% paid recurrently on a customer who stays 18 months is €180 — eighteen times more, out of revenue you would not have had otherwise.
Two numbers decide whether that works, and they are yours, not ours:
- How long your customers stay. Not the average you hope for — the one your billing already shows.
- What the rest of your acquisition costs.If a paid customer costs you €120 today, a recurring commission that totals less than that over the customer's life is cheaper, even when the percentage looks high.
The cases that lower the total
A guide that only describes the growing curve is not describing a real program. Four things interrupt it, and each has to be handled explicitly rather than discovered later.
- Cancellation. No more invoices, so no more commissions. Nothing is clawed back — what was earned stays earned.
- Refund.The matching commission is voided before payout. If it had already been paid, a negative line is deducted from the affiliate's next payout.
- Chargeback. Same treatment as a refund. If you later win the dispute, the reversal is undone and the affiliate is credited back.
- Downgrade. The commission follows the amount actually invoiced, so it falls with the plan rather than staying on the original price.
Why nothing is ever rewritten
Every click, conversion and commission is an append-only record. A refund does not edit the original line — it adds a new one. A won dispute does not erase the reversal — it adds a third line that credits it back.
That matters the day someone asks why an amount is what it is. With rewritten lines, the answer is a guess. With an append-only ledger, the answer is the history itself, and both sides read the same one.
Frequently asked questions
How long is a recurring commission paid for?
For as long as the customer stays subscribed and pays their invoices. There is no maximum duration by default: a customer who stays four years generates four years of commissions. That is a program decision, not a technical constraint — some merchants prefer to cap it at twelve months, and that is possible too.
What happens if the customer changes plan?
The commission follows the amount actually invoiced. If the customer upgrades, the next commission is calculated on the new amount; if they downgrade, it falls accordingly. It is never frozen on the first month's price.
What if the customer cancels and resubscribes later?
The new subscription is a new sale. If they come back on their own, without going through an affiliate link, it is not attributed — attribution is tied to the subscription, not to the customer. That is deliberate: the same customer can have two subscriptions brought by two different affiliates.
Does a free trial trigger a commission?
No. The commission is created when Stripe actually collects, not when a trial starts. A trial that never converts therefore costs nothing — neither to you, nor as a commission paid out by mistake and clawed back later.
What happens to a commission already paid if the customer is refunded?
It is not rewritten. A negative line is created and deducted from the affiliate's next payout. If they have nothing else pending, the negative balance carries over to their next commission — that is the standard behaviour in this market, and it is visible on both sides before the payment.
Do I have to choose between recurring and one-off?
It is a per-program setting. A flat amount paid once suits a product sold once; a recurring percentage aligns the affiliate with the customer's lifetime, which pushes them to bring customers who stay rather than signups that leave after a month.
Recurring is the default behaviour
You pick your rate and whether the commission replays. The rest — creation on every invoice, voiding on a refund, deduction when a payout already went out — happens without you.