How Decolinker's Platform Fee Works
This is the single most common question merchants ask before joining, so here is the exact mechanics.
The short version
A merchant sets a commission rate between 15% and 90% on a product. Decolinker takes 7% of the sale out of that rate. The affiliate keeps the rest. The rate the merchant set is the total cost of the sale, nothing is added to it.
A worked example
A merchant sells a $100 product at a 35% commission rate.
- Merchant pays a total of $35 on the sale, exactly what they set the rate at.
- The affiliate who sent the sale earns $28 (28% of the sale).
- Decolinker keeps $7 (7% of the sale).
The merchant never pays more than the rate they chose. The 7% is not a separate line item billed on top, it is carved out of the rate before the affiliate is paid.
Why it works this way
Some networks add their fee on top of the commission, so a merchant offering a 30% rate might actually pay37% once the network's cut is included. Decolinker's fee is baked into the rate the merchant already set, so the number a merchant enters is the number they pay, with no surprise addition at billing time.
The same sale on an additive network
A $100 sale at a 35% commission, on a network charging a 30% override on top.
- The affiliate is paid $35, the full 35%.
- The network bills a further $10.5 as its override.
- The merchant pays $45.5 in total on a 35% offer.
Both models are legitimate and the difference is who absorbs the fee. Additive networks pay the affiliate more on the same headline rate and charge the merchant more than the rate suggests. Decolinker's model charges the merchant exactly the rate they chose, and the affiliate's share is that rate minus the 7%.
This is why comparing headline rates across networks is misleading in both directions. A merchant should compare what leaves their account per sale. An affiliate should compare what actually lands in theirs.
What the fee covers
- Click tracking and attribution, including the records needed to settle a dispute over who earned a sale.
- Sale reporting from connected stores, and the deduplication that stops a retried delivery being counted twice.
- Commission calculation, the refund window, and validation before anything is paid.
- Affiliate payouts, including the payment infrastructure and its compliance requirements.
- The marketplace itself, where affiliates find products without a merchant recruiting each one individually.
When you get billed
Decolinker never touches your customer's payment directly, you collect that through your own store as normal. Decolinker bills you separately, on a recurring cycle, for the combined platform fee and affiliate commissions your sales generated in that period.
Nothing is billed on a sale that has not cleared its refund window, so a sale refunded shortly after it happens does not generate a fee or a commission. The order of operations matters here: the merchant is invoiced before the affiliate is paid, so commission is never advanced against money that has not arrived.
What happens on a refund
A refunded sale is not a sale, and the commission on it is reversed rather than paid. This is the reason for the refund window rather than paying out the moment an order lands: recovering money from an affiliate who has already been paid and already spent it is a bad experience for everyone and often simply does not work.
The trade for affiliates is waiting somewhat longer to be paid, in exchange for payouts that are final once they arrive.
A rate change never rewrites history
The fee rate in force when a sale happens is recorded onto that sale. If the platform fee ever changes, commissions already recorded keep the arithmetic that applied at the time, so a past sale never restates what a merchant owed or an affiliate earned. The same is true when a merchant changes their own commission rate.