1.8x peak revenue growth, same budget
A London luxury gifting brand with an established affiliate program and a strong seasonal trade. The program was stable but unoptimised: every partner, whatever their value, sat on the same flat 4% commission.
Vertical
Luxury Gifting
Focus
Commission restructure
The problem
Commission restructure
A flat rate pays the voucher site that appears at checkout — on a customer who has already decided to buy — the same as the content partner introducing the brand to someone new. You overpay for checkout-stage activity and underpay the partners building long-term value, so the ones who matter most have the least reason to prioritise you. A flat rate is a hidden subsidy from your best partners to your worst.
What I did
What a commission restructure involves
A flat commission treats every partner the same, whatever they bring. A restructure sorts partners by what they actually do for the brand and pays each type accordingly, so the budget follows the value. Four moves did it here.
Audit every active partner by behaviour, not category. Who introduces new audiences, who converts mid-funnel, who intercepts at checkout, who only fires on a discount.
Move to tiered commissions. Checkout-intercept partners on a defensive rate; content, loyalty and affinity partners higher, each tier with a clear reason behind it.
Remove voucher sites that were not adding incremental sales.
Activate the partner mix ahead of every key trading period. Priority partners rebriefed, creative refreshed, exclusive offers lined up, so incremental partners got visibility before generic discount sites did.
Peak-month revenue, YoY
Peak-month orders, YoY
December sales, YoY
The results
What changed
December revenue went from £72,927 to £115,632, and every comparable trading period since has grown year on year.
Orders grew faster than revenue, which points to more first-time buyers entering through the program.
The effective commission rate did not move. The same percentage of revenue, redirected away from checkout interception and toward the partners bringing new customers in.
Common questions
01
What is a tiered affiliate commission structure?
02
Why is a flat affiliate commission a problem?
03
Does restructuring commission reduce affiliate revenue?
04
How do you decide which tier a publisher belongs in?
05
