<b>Q: Are coupon and deal-site affiliates worth paying full commission?</b>

<b>Q: Are coupon and deal-site affiliates worth paying full commission?</b>

Usually not full rate, but don't ban them outright. The problem is attribution: coupon sites often catch a customer at the last click after your own marketing did the work, so you pay commission on a sale you'd have made anyway.

How to handle them:

— Put coupon/loyalty/cashback partners in a separate commission group at a reduced rate
— Use last-click-excluding rules or a 'no-voucher' commission tier so they don't override an affiliate who actually introduced the customer
— Only issue exclusive codes you can track, never let them surface codes you didn't authorize (that trains customers to abandon checkout and hunt for one)

They do have real value for cart-abandonment recovery and price-sensitive closers. Just price that value correctly.

Caveat: audit your checkout for a 'have a code?' field that leaks margin. If it sends buyers off-site to find a code, you're funding coupon affiliates to solve a problem you created.

Got a question? Send it in.