Twelve numbers, four that matter
The four KPIs that decide whether an affiliate program is working are conversion rate, earnings per click, the share of affiliates who are active, and cost per acquired customer. Clicks and total affiliates look impressive and tell you almost nothing. Every formula on this page is written out so you can compute it from a CSV export.
Quick answer
Twelve are worth knowing. Four decide whether the program is working.
Conversion rate
referrals ÷ unique clicks
Is the traffic real?
Earnings per click
commissions ÷ clicks
The number partners judge you on.
Active affiliate rate
active ÷ total affiliates
The single best health signal.
Cost per customer
(commissions + fees) ÷ new customers
Does the channel stay funded?
The full list
Compute each one from a CSV export. Nothing here needs our dashboard to be useful.
Whether the clicks are real, and whether you are crediting them to the right partner.
Clicks and unique clicks
unique_click_rate = unique clicks ÷ total clicksGood looks like: Watch the ratio per partner, not the totals. A sudden divergence on one affiliate is the signal.
In Referly: Analytics → Performance, with the clicks toggle set to all clicks or unique clicks only.
Conversion rate
conversion_rate = referrals ÷ unique clicksGood looks like: At least in line with your site-wide conversion rate. Materially below it usually means low-intent clicks rather than a pricing problem.
In Referly: The Conversion Funnel card shows the rate between each step; the Affiliates table has a Click → Referral column you can switch on.
Earnings per click (EPC)
epc = commissions earned ÷ clicksGood looks like: Compare it against what a partner could earn elsewhere, not against a target of your own. If EPC is weak, raising the rate is the expensive fix and improving conversion is the cheap one.
In Referly: An optional EPC column in the Affiliates table.
Attribution window utilisation
late_conversion_share = conversions after day N ÷ all attributed conversionsGood looks like: If the tail past your current window is thin, the window is long enough. If it is not, lengthen the window rather than arguing about it.
In Referly: Export referrals to CSV and compare click date to conversion date; the window itself is in program settings.
Whether the people you recruited are working, and how much of the channel rests on one of them.
Active affiliate rate
active_rate = affiliates with ≥1 click this month ÷ total affiliatesGood looks like: Watch the trend, not the level. Rising after a recruitment drive means the drive worked; flat means it did not.
In Referly: Analytics → Affiliate Acquisition, and the Most Active / Recently Dormant cards in partner activity reports.
Partner activity reports start on the Business plan.
Time to first sale
time_to_first_sale = median(days from affiliate signup to first attributed sale)Good looks like: Shorter is better and the trend is what matters. A rising median after you changed onboarding is a straight verdict on the change.
In Referly: The onboarding funnel, Signed up → Shared link → First click → First referral, shows where partners stall.
Partner activity reports start on the Business plan.
Revenue concentration
concentration = revenue from the top 10% of partners ÷ total affiliate revenueGood looks like: Some concentration is normal and healthy. A figure that climbs quarter after quarter is a recruitment problem wearing a revenue disguise.
In Referly: Analytics → Performance, the Affiliates breakdown card, ranked by revenue.
Affiliate churn
affiliate_churn = partners with a sale last quarter and none this quarter ÷ partners with a sale last quarterGood looks like: Compare it against the same quarter last year rather than against last quarter. Affiliate activity is seasonal.
In Referly: The Recently Dormant Affiliates card, plus the Affiliates table filtered by referrals in a period.
Partner activity reports start on the Business plan.
What the channel actually costs once commissions, reversals and fees are in the number.
Commission cost and effective commission rate
effective_rate = commissions paid ÷ affiliate revenueGood looks like: Compare it to your headline rate. A widening gap means your exceptions have become your policy.
In Referly: Analytics → Performance with the metric set to Commission, against the same period's Revenue.
Cost per acquired customer
affiliate_cac = (commissions + software + payout fees) ÷ new customers acquiredGood looks like: Below your blended CAC, and staying there as volume grows. Rising CAC at rising volume is the warning.
In Referly: Commissions from Analytics; payout fees from the Payouts batch list; the software cost is your Referly plan.
Refund and clawback rate
reversal_rate = reversed commissions ÷ commissions earnedGood looks like: In line with your overall refund rate. A partner materially above it is the thing to investigate, not the average.
In Referly: The Rewards table, filtered by status; refund detection and reversal run on every plan.
Payout latency
payout_latency = median(days from commission earned to money received)Good looks like: Shorter, and predictable. Predictable matters more, a partner can plan around 30 days, not around 'sometimes'.
In Referly: The Payouts batch list: created date against the batch status.
Automated payouts start on the Business plan; on Startup you mark batches paid manually with proof attached.
The “good looks like” lines carry direction, not benchmarks. No sourced distribution of conversion rate, EPC or active rate exists that we would stand behind.
The pipeline
Every KPI is a ratio between two points on this pipeline. Read the drops, not the totals.
Click to sale, one program, one month
IllustrativeEvery click on a partner link
Deduplicated by visitor
The configurable middle step
People attributed to a partner
Attributed and approved
Clicks → unique
One partner sending the same visitors repeatedly. Check their unique-click ratio.
Unique → middle step
A landing page or offer problem. The traffic came; it did not care.
Middle → referral
Attribution setup. Make sure codes are tracked as well as links.
Referral → sale
Checkout, pricing, or a coupon that did not apply.
In Referly: the funnel's middle step is configurable, a referral for SaaS or an add-to-cart for a store, so both read the same report meaningfully.
Stop reporting these
Each goes up when nothing has improved. Decide the denominator before you report anything.
Total affiliates
A thousand partners at an eight percent active rate is eighty partners and a support burden. The number goes up every time someone signs up and never goes down, which makes it the easiest metric in the program to grow and the least informative one to report.
Total clicks
Undifferentiated clicks reward whoever is best at generating traffic rather than sales, and they are the metric most exposed to fraud, clicks are cheap to manufacture and referrals are not. If you report one traffic number, report unique clicks alongside the conversion rate.
Gross affiliate revenue
Before commissions, refunds and payout fees it is not revenue, it is a number. It is also the figure most likely to appear in one slide while net contribution appears in another, which is how two people end up disagreeing about whether the channel works.
Any single-month conversion rate
With attribution windows running up to sixty days, one month's conversion rate divides this month's conversions by this month's clicks, two different cohorts. Use a rolling window at least as long as your attribution window, or compare quarters.
Reporting the channel
Whoever you report to wants one answer: is the channel worth the money. Four lines answer it.
Affiliate sales this month
Net contribution after commissions and fees
Partners actually driving clicks
The one number you are moving this quarter
Pull them from the Overview, Performance, Affiliates and Affiliate Acquisition tabs, or export affiliates, referrals and rewards to CSV.
Your month
Conversion rate
4.34%
referrals ÷ unique clicks
Earnings per click
$0.31
commissions ÷ clicks
Unique click rate
76.7%
unique ÷ total clicks
Referral → sale
23.4%
sales ÷ referrals
Click → sale
0.78%
sales ÷ clicks
Cost per acquired customer
$41.10
(commissions + fees) ÷ sales
The four-line report
Send these four. The fourth is the one nobody includes and the one that predicts whether your partners are still promoting you next quarter.
Customer stories
The founders and affiliate managers behind three fast-growing programs, in their own words.
“Affiliates drive a serious share of our revenue across three countries. Since we moved to Referly everything runs from one place, tracking has been spot on, and our partners get paid without me chasing spreadsheets.”
Alexander Koppers
Affiliate Manager, Moov
$6.9M
in total affiliate-driven revenue
“We have been running affiliate programs for over a decade, and ours is one of the biggest parts of how OptimizePress grows. Referly is the first platform where an operation with thousands of partners actually feels manageable, from recruiting new affiliates to tracking every sale they send.”
James Dyson
Founder & CEO, OptimizePress
“This platform is quite simple and easy to use, and you can start attracting people to your affiliate program very quickly. A big plus is that the founder, Ayo, is super responsive.”
Ilfat Khayrullin
CMO & Co-founder, Letterly
FAQ
The ones that come up when somebody has a dashboard and does not yet trust it.
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The only comparison that means anything is against your own site. Affiliate traffic should convert at least as well as your average visitor, because it arrives with a recommendation attached; if it converts materially worse, you are usually looking at incentivised or low-intent clicks rather than at a pricing problem. We do not publish a benchmark, because no source we would stand behind has one.
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