Overview
ClickBank Vendors can offer two types of commission on ClickBank: revenue share (also known as revshare) or CPA (cost per action). Revenue share is a percentage based commission and CPA is a flat fee amount commission. For both commission models, affiliates are only paid commission on sales that are completed. They are not paid per click or per lead.
Revenue Share
If you opt to offer revenue share commission, you will offer a commission percentage to affiliates. The commission percentage is the percentage of a sale that affiliates earn after the finalization of a purchase they have facilitated.
Revshare commission is generally set when a vendor adds a product to be submitted for review. If no specific commission is set at a product level, any products added to the vendor's account will default to the account-level commission rate.
This rate can be changed by the vendor, however changing your account-level rate will not effect product-level commission rates. The default account level rate is 25%.
Additionally, the account-level rate is the rate that will populate to a vendor's affiliate marketing place listing. This is the listing that potential affiliates will view within the ClickBank Marketplace. The account-level commission rate will apply to Any products a vendor adds to their account, unless otherwise specified by the vendor at the product level.
However, you can set different commissions for different products. Or, you can set commissions for specific affiliates that override the site-wide commission rate. To find out more about commission hierarchies, click HERE. Or, you can find out more about submitting a product for review by CLICKING HERE.
CPA
A CPA commission, or cost per action commission, is a fixed commission amount paid to an affiliate when a specific action is taken. In the case of ClickBank, that action is the initial sale in a vendor’s sales funnel.
When an affiliate earns commission on a CPA basis, the affiliate does not receive additional commission for any upsells or rebills of subscription sales, and their commission is not returned in the event the sale is refunded or charged back.
CPA commission is set by the vendor for individual affiliates. This allows vendors to easily set or adjust the affiliate’s commission based on the affiliate's performance. As an affiliate increases the number of sales or generates greater revenue for a vendor, the affiliate has the potential to earn higher CPA commissions.
Affiliates also benefit from CPA commissions because they know exactly how much they will earn for each conversion and do not have to worry about potential refunds or chargebacks. This is especially true for larger affiliates who are managing big campaigns with greater ad spend.
Depending on the sales productivity and revenue generated by an affiliate, some vendors may choose to take a loss on the initial product sale because the revenue generated from upsells and rebills of subscription sales outweighs the loss on the initial product sale.
To offer CPA commission you must meet the following requirements:
- Your ClickBank account must be active for 60 days or greater.
- You must have at least 100 initial sales of an approved product in the last 60-90 days.
- You must maintain a positive account balance.
To find out more about how to offer CPA on ClickBank, check out this article.
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