Should I pay every creator the same commission or set individual terms per creator?

Tiers and bonuses are open rules: anyone taking part knows when they earn more. An individual rate is a deal with one person. With 40 creators you can quickly end up with 40 different agreements to settle and review.

A simple setup: a flat rate as the base, a tier or bonus on top that is open to everyone, and individual rates only for the few creators whose numbers support it. That keeps the admin manageable.

Individual terms reward creators who already sell. Someone who doesn’t feature your products yet rarely starts for a few extra percent, and an affiliate programme in which creators can pick your products brings no posts on its own. Sought-after creators tend to post when there is a reason, such as a funded campaign or a launch. Before individual rates pay off, you need to get creators posting, ideally many at once, and then see who sells.

Some creators with large audiences ask for a higher rate or a fee before there are any figures. Treat that like the example below: as extra cost that extra orders have to cover.

All figures are assumptions, so plug in your own. Only your own data shows how sales in your programme are spread across creators.

1. Starting point: 40 creators, a rate of 10% on net revenue after returns. An order brings in €50 net after returns on average, so €5 commission, and €20 contribution margin before commission, meaning what is left after cost of goods, shipping, payment fees and returns.
2. Each month brings 100 orders, 60 of them through five creators and 40 through the other 35. You pay €500 in commission, €5 per sale, and keep 100 × €15 = €1,500 after commission.
3. You give the five 15%, so €7.50 per order. If they sell no more than before, you pay 60 × €2.50 = €150 more. Cost per sale rises to €6.50, and what you keep after commission falls to €1,350.
4. Break-even: €150 ÷ (€20 − €7.50) = 12 extra orders. So the five need to go from 60 to 72 orders, an increase of 20%, before the higher rate earns you anything.
5. If they reach 80 orders, you pay 80 × €7.50 + 40 × €5 = €800 for 120 orders. Cost per sale is €6.67, higher than before, but you keep 80 × €12.50 + 40 × €15 = €1,600, which is €100 more.
6. Extra means these sales would not have happened otherwise. If the same shoppers simply buy through a different link, say another creator’s link or your newsletter, the five creators’ numbers go up, but your total sales don’t.

Say the tiers are 10% up to €3,000 monthly revenue and 15% from €3,000. If the higher tier applies to all revenue, the last €100 of revenue before the threshold costs you €160 more in commission. If it only applies to the part above, commission rises without a jump, and at €6,000 you pay 12.5% on average instead of 15%.

A tier on all revenue is easier to explain but makes the threshold expensive. Anyone just below it has a reason to pull orders into the month. So state in your terms which version applies.

Returns after the month ends can push a creator back below the threshold. In Germany, consumers ordering from an online shop usually have a right of withdrawal (§ 312g(1) BGB, German Civil Code). The period is 14 days (§ 355(2) BGB) and for goods only starts once they have arrived (§ 356(2) no. 1 BGB). After the withdrawal, the customer has up to 14 more days to send the goods back (§ 357(1) BGB). So check the tier only once the periods for that month’s orders have run out and the returns are booked. If you offer a longer returns window, it takes correspondingly longer.

1. Pick a period of several months, a quarter for example. A single post with an unusual number of sales says little about what a creator sells over time.
2. Pull the same figures for each creator: orders, net revenue after returns and cancellations, return rate, clicks and orders per click. If you can identify first-time buyers, add their share.
3. Convert to contribution margin. A creator with lots of revenue and lots of returns can bring you less than one with less revenue whose community keeps what it buys.
4. Set the threshold for better terms and test the higher rate against the highest commission your margin can carry and against the number of extra orders it has to bring, as in the worked example above. How to work out that ceiling from your margin and returns is covered in the guide on setting influencer commission.
5. Put in writing what applies: criterion, rate or bonus, basis net after returns, duration, review date and what happens afterwards, such as a return to the base rate.
6. Compare after the review date: did the creators on better terms sell more than before, and more than creators with similar numbers who stayed on the base rate? If not, the terms expire.

With wyrld Boost you take a campaign budget to creators who feature your products. You set the products, the time frame and the KPIs the payout is based on, such as sales or clicks, and decide in which shops people buy. Many creators can take part at the same time. Taking part is up to each creator, and creators label campaign videos as ads. After the campaign you see which creator delivered which results, which gives you a basis for individual terms.

If your affiliate programme runs through one of the major affiliate networks wyrld is connected to, wyrld is usually already in it as a single partner, with hundreds of creators behind it, mostly in fashion, beauty and interiors. The brand and shop subscription shows you which creators feature your products, who drives clicks and, where your shop reports sales, who sells. For the creators who sell, you set your own commission rates or bonuses, and wyrld sets them up. Without an affiliate programme, a direct connection is also possible. Prices for the subscription and Boost are available on request.