Mistake: paying CPA on raw sales, not validated ones

Mistake: paying CPA on raw sales, not validated ones

Failure mode: you pay a creator on every "sale" the same day. Refunds, chargebacks, and fraud land 30 days later. You've already paid out on revenue that evaporated. The creator with the most cancellations looks like your best.

Fix: a validation window between tracked and payable.

Phase 1 — Track: sale fires, logged as pending.
Phase 2 — Hold: a fixed window (match your refund period, e.g. 30 days) before status flips to approved.
Phase 3 — Pay: payout runs only on approved, net of reversals.

Decision rule: if a creator's reversal rate exceeds 15%, audit their traffic source before the next payout. High reversals signal incentivized or bot clicks.

Checklist:
— Validation window stated in the contract, in days
— "Net of refunds" written into the payout clause
— Reversal rate is a column in your dashboard

Definition of done: you have never paid commission on a sale that later reversed.

Gross sales pay the creator. Net sales pay the business. Only one is real.