<b>MYTH: you'll get paid the same as the vendor's direct sales</b>

<b>MYTH: you'll get paid the same as the vendor's direct sales</b>

Everyone benchmarks their SaaS commissions against the program's headline conversion data. But that data is sales-assisted, and you are not.

Product-led tools convert through onboarding emails, in-app nudges, and a human rep for anything above $99/mo. Your affiliate buyer sees none of that until <i>after</i> the click is attributed — and frequently the rep, not your cookie, closes the deal.

The deeper trap: for higher-tier plans, vendors route prospects to "book a demo," which strips affiliate attribution entirely. You sent a qualified enterprise lead and got credited for the $29 self-serve plan they started on, if anything.

So you're paid on the cheap end of the catalog while the sales team harvests the expensive end you teed up.

Verdict: you fish, they keep the big ones.