Getting Started with
Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the channel where other people sell for you. Publishers, creators, comparison engines, cashback communities and newsletters send shoppers your way, and you pay them a commission when a sale completes. As standard, costs settle 30 to 90 days after the order and come out of the revenue that order brought in.

Costs that follow revenue rather than running ahead of it make this an unusually forgiving channel for a small brand. UK advertisers put around £1.8bn through it in 2025, and about £1 in every £10 of UK online retail now touches an affiliate partnership on its way to checkout. Studies on both sides of the Atlantic measure average returns in double figures for every pound spent.

Forgiving is not the same as effortless, though, and plenty of first programmes stall for avoidable reasons. Below is the full launch picture: how the channel works, what it costs, how to set commission, where to run your programme, and what the first ninety days tend to look like in practice.

How an Affiliate Programme Works

Strip away the jargon and every programme runs on the same loop:

• You set a commission. You decide what a sale is worth to you and join a network or platform.
• Partners promote you. Content sites, cashback platforms, voucher pages, comparison engines and creators feature your brand to their audiences.
• The visit is tracked. A tracking link records which partner sent each shopper.
• A sale converts. A small tag on your order-confirmation page reports the sale automatically.
• You validate and pay. You confirm the sale is genuine (not returned, not fraudulent) and the partner receives their commission.

Three kinds of company run the infrastructure. Affiliate networks are two-sided marketplaces that handle tracking, contracts, validation and payment, with an existing base of publishers who can find and join your programme; Awin, CJ Affiliate, impact.com, Rakuten Advertising, Tradedoubler, Partnerize and Webgains are the established names. Standalone platforms such as Refersion, Tapfiliate and UpPromote give you the same tooling without a marketplace, so recruitment falls entirely to you. Sub-affiliate networks like Skimlinks and Sovrn Commerce work the other way round: they join your programme as a single partner and bring thousands of long-tail publishers with them. Choosing between all of these is a real decision, and there's a dedicated comparison later in this series.

Are You Ready for It?

Most launch guides skip this question, since most are written by companies that would rather you signed up today. Two things are non-negotiable. You need to sell online with a clear conversion event, whether that's an order, a booking or a subscription. And you need margin headroom to fund commission and fees while staying profitable. Without both, stop and fix that first.

Beyond those two, programmes work hardest when a few more things line up: an average order value where a percentage commission means something to a partner (£40 to £200 is the sweet spot, though volume can make up for less), some existing demand to amplify, a site that can carry a tracking tag and ideally a product feed, a willingness to treat partners as partners, and a goal of winning new customers rather than re-badging sales you would have made anyway.

What It Costs to Start

Commission is the headline cost, but not the whole bill. The table below is the entry-level picture as of 2026. Tiers change, so check the providers' own pages before committing.

For every layer in pounds, with worked examples at three revenue levels, see What Affiliate Management Costs: The UK Guide.

Setting Your Commission

Start from your gross margin rather than from what competitors pay. Commission comes out of the profit on each sale and has to leave you ahead. That sets the ceiling, and everything beneath it is negotiation.

Within the ceiling, the benchmarks: most direct-to-consumer brands launch at 10 to 15% of order value, or a flat £10 to £15 per new-customer order. Category norms run 8 to 15% in apparel, 10 to 18% in beauty, and 5 to 10% in electronics, where margins are thinner.

One flat rate for everyone is the classic first-year mistake. Editorial sites and creators sit at the top of the funnel and typically earn a higher rate for the demand they create. Voucher sites convert demand that already exists, so they start at your minimum, which leaves room to offer increases in return for better exposure later. Cashback works differently again: the member receives most of the commission as their reward, so those rates sit near your programme average. Two more settings matter from day one. Your cookie window (30 days is the common default), and separate rates for new versus returning customers, which has become the cleanest cost control in the channel.

Networks, Platforms or Apps: Where to Run It

Three routes, each with a fair case. A self-serve network tier is the cheapest way to reach a real publisher base; you get the marketplace, tracking and payments, with limits on features and support. A standalone platform costs less per sale and gives you more control, but there's no marketplace behind it, so budget recruitment time accordingly. A full managed network programme makes sense at larger scale, once setup and override costs are small against the volume.

One warning about older advice. ShareASale, for years the default small-business recommendation, was folded into Awin in 2025. A guide that still recommends it hasn't been updated in a while, and the rest of its advice probably hasn't been either. The current landscape, criteria first, is covered in Choosing Your First Affiliate Network.

Your First 90 Days

A realistic launch schedule, drawn from how programmes onboard in practice:

Month one goes on setup. Months two and three go on recruitment and your first tracked sales. Meaningful traction usually shows between months three and six, and most programmes feel established somewhere between six and twelve months. Expect the 80/20 rule from the start: a small share of partners will drive most of the revenue. That's normal, and it simply means recruitment never stops.

Six Mistakes That Sink First-Year Programmes

• Set-and-forget. A programme is a channel, not a switch. Left alone, partners drift, offers expire and applications pile up.
• Approving every applicant. Traffic quality varies enormously. Vet who joins, and watch the click-to-sale ratio of anyone sending volume that never converts.
• One commission rate for everyone. You'll overpay the bottom of the funnel and underpay the top. Set rates by partner type from day one.
• Neglecting the validation queue. Late payment is the fastest way to lose good partners. Paying on time is partner relations, not admin.
• No offer calendar. Publishers plan content weeks ahead. Miss the seasonal windows and you simply don't appear.
• Calling everything incremental. Last-click revenue is not all revenue you would otherwise have missed. Learn the difference early and the channel will survive its first finance review.

Start lean, give it the months it needs, and let the programme grow into itself. For the week-by-week reality of running one yourself, carry on to the self-managed guide.