Home / Categories / Affiliation
What commission should I offer?
systeme.io publishes no recommended rate for a programme you run. It gives you four fields, pre-filled at 40% commission, a $30 minimum payout, a 0% second tier and a 30-day payout delay, and the percentage is then set per order form.
What is actually adjustable
The Affiliate program section of Settings holds four fields, and systeme.io calls all four essential to complete. Two of them are percentages.
| Field | Arrives at | Where it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Default commission | 40% | Changeable per order form page |
| Minimum payout amount | $30.00 | All order forms, immediately |
| Second-tier affiliate commissions | 0% | All order forms, immediately |
| Default payout delay | 30 days | Changeable per order form page |
What each one does
Default commission is the share of a sale an affiliate keeps. systeme.io's own worked example: a product at $22.50 before VAT, with a 40% commission, pays the affiliate $9.00 per sale.
Minimum payout amount holds a commission back until it is worth invoicing. Set at $50.00, an affiliate needs $50.00 or more pending before an invoice is generated for them.
Second-tier commission pays an affiliate a further percentage when the affiliates they referred make sales. In systeme.io's example, an $80.83 offer at 40% pays the selling affiliate $32.33, and the affiliate who recruited that seller takes a 5% second-tier cut.
Default payout delay is how long a sale waits before it can be paid out.
The number is not a product setting
systeme.io ships the field holding 40%. It publishes no guidance on what a programme of yours ought to pay, because that is a pricing decision about your own margins rather than a switch in the software.
Three documented facts bear on it.
- It is a percentage of the sale. Both commission fields are expressed in percent, so the payout scales with the price.
- It is per order form. A new order form starts at 0%, and the rate is set on the order form settings, so two products can pay two different rates.
- It repeats. Affiliation is lifetime. A referred contact who buys again months later earns that affiliate a commission again.
What the payout delay is for
systeme.io states the reason plainly: the delay avoids paying commission on an offer that has a money-back guarantee. It recommends checking the setting against your own terms and conditions.
A 30-day guarantee sitting behind a 7-day payout delay means paying commission on sales that can still be refunded.
Which settings you cannot vary per product
The minimum payout amount and the second-tier percentage apply immediately across all your order forms. Only the commission percentage and the payment timeframe can be changed on an individual order form page.
Those four fields are the whole of what systeme.io documents about setting commission levels.
Did this answer your question?
Keep reading
- Is systeme.io free? Yes, and the free plan never expires. Here is exactly what fits inside it.
- Which systeme.io plan do I need? Count your contacts. That is nearly the whole decision.
- Should I build my website with a funnel or a blog? There is a third option, and it is the one their own help centre buries.