Is a program worth it for a small business?

It depends on your margin and whether you can recruit. You pay after the sale, so the downside is capped. The catch is the fixed software fee, which makes affiliate CAC worse than paid at low volume. If the net contribution line above is negative, the answer today is no.

How much revenue before the software pays for itself?

Divide the plan price by your margin less your commission rate. At an 80% margin and 20% rate you keep 60 cents on the dollar, so a $75 plan is covered at $125 a month in affiliate revenue.

Am I paying for sales I would have got anyway?

Partly, yes, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Coupon traffic especially. Exclude coupon sites, use a shorter cookie window, and discount your input by 10 to 30% before you model it.

We will not publish a benchmark we have not measured. Compare net contribution per pound against your best paid channel, and remember affiliate spend is variable where paid spend is committed.

Before or after refunds?

After. Refunds reverse the commission automatically, and a holding period keeps commissions unpayable until the refund window closes.

What does it cost to send the money?

PayPal costs you nothing, the affiliate's account carries the fee. Wise charges its own transfer fee, previewed per batch. Referly Payouts is 5% bank or 8% card and is opt-in.

How long to break even?

On the software fee, usually the first month or two of real revenue. On the effort, a quarter or more if you are recruiting from scratch. Set the hours and hourly rate above to model that honestly.

Affiliate Program ROI Calculator

Does the program pay for itself?

Enter the monthly revenue you expect affiliates to bring, and see what’s left after commissions, software and payout fees. At $10,000 a month in affiliate revenue with a 20% rate, an 80% margin and a $75 plan, the program contributes about $5,925 a month. The formula is published below.

Monthly affiliate revenue$10,000

Commission rate20%

Gross margin80%

Customers acquired per month50

Hours a month managing it4 h

Your hourly ratenot counted

How you pay affiliates

0% to you. The receiving affiliate's account carries PayPal's fee.

Net contribution: $5,925
Cost per acquired customer: $41.50
Return on program spend: 2.86×
Total program cost: $2,075

Where $10,000 of affiliate revenue ends up. Note the size of the software bar against the commission bar, the subscription is almost never the number that decides whether this channel works.

View as a table

Every line between gross profit and net contribution.
Step	Amount	Running total
Gross profit at 80% margin	$8,000	$8,000
Commissions paid	−$2,000	$6,000
Software, Startup	−$75	$5,925
Net contribution	$5,925	$5,925

What does a customer cost you on paid today?

Optional, it adds the comparison line below.

Affiliate CAC

Affiliate cost per customer as the program scales. Enter your paid CAC above to see where the two cross.

A model built from the numbers you entered, not a benchmark and not a measured result.

View as a table

Modelled affiliate cost per acquired customer as the program scales.
Step	Affiliate CAC
1	$59
4	$45
7	$43
10	$42
13	$43
16	$42
19	$42
22	$42
24	$42

Example

$10,000/month affiliate revenue · 20% commission · 80% margin · Startup plan · PayPal · 50 customers

Affiliate revenue	$10,000
Gross profit at 80% margin	$8,000
Commissions paid	−$2,000
Software, Startup	−$75
Payout fees (PayPal, paid by the affiliate's account)	−$0
Net contribution	$5,925
Cost per acquired customer, at 50 sales	$41.50
Return on program spend	2.86×

Plan prices are read from Referly’s own plan registry at render time, never hard-coded, so a price change updates this page in the same commit, and the model steps you to a higher plan when your revenue crosses a cap.

Every line of the maths

The formula, with the numbers in it

Including the payout row, where every other calculator quietly rounds to zero.

What's left

Gross profit: $8,000
Commissions: $2,000
Software: $75
Net: $5,925

What it cost you

Program cost: $2,075
Customers: 50
Cost per customer: $41.50

Return on program spend is net divided by cost: 2.86x.

What it costs you to send the money

PayPal0%Wise0%Referly Payouts, bank/ACH5%Referly Payouts, card8%Manual bank transfer0%

Referly Payouts is opt-in. Referly’s transaction fee is 0% on every plan.

The real decision

Against another pound of Google Ads

The choice is almost never “affiliate program: yes or no”. It's affiliate against the next unit of paid spend.

You pay after the sale

Paid spend is committed before one. A bad month costs you nothing.

Affiliate CAC starts worse

The software fee is fixed, so a small program spreads it over very few customers. It only improves with volume.

Recurring keeps costing

Cheap in month one, expensive at month twelve. A payment cap is what flattens that curve.

Where this number is wrong

Five assumptions you should argue with

A model is only useful if you know what it cannot see.

Incrementality

Some affiliate sales would have happened anyway, coupon traffic especially. Discount your input by 10 to 30% if you want a conservative number.

Refunds

Refunded sales reverse their commission, so this slightly understates net contribution on refund-heavy businesses.

Ramp

This is a steady state, not a month-one forecast. The first quarter is mostly recruitment.

The revenue cap

Crossing $10,000 or $30,000 a month moves you to a higher plan, and the model steps the software line when you do.

Your time

Four hours a month suits a running program. Building a partner base from nothing is far more.

One line, many shapes

If the software fee is what's bothering you

Every rival calculates it a completely different way.

Try the true cost calculator See Referly’s pricing

Free tools

The other free tools

Modelled the return? These fill in the inputs.

FAQ

Before you commit a budget

The questions a sceptical founder asks first.

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It depends on your margin and whether you can recruit. You pay after the sale, so the downside is capped. The catch is the fixed software fee, which makes affiliate CAC worse than paid at low volume. If the net contribution line above is negative, the answer today is no.

Every figure on this page is modelled from the numbers you enter. It is not a benchmark, not a forecast, and not a customer result, real customer stories live here.