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Affiliate Deal Calculator

Math over mood, every deal sized inside your max allowable CAC
Affiliate pitch view: internal margins, caps, and ratios are hidden. This is what the partner sees.
📐 How this works

Your margin pool is the ~35¢ you keep on every $1 after delivery costs and overhead. It's the only money an affiliate gets paid from. We count all affiliate pay (commission + base + override) as CAC. Performance affiliates must clear 3:1+ LTGP:CAC; 2:1 is the hard floor, and only for a capped, time-boxed brand-whale sponsorship, never a normal deal. The cap, max affiliate % = pool ÷ (target + 1), is 7% at 4:1, 8.75% at 3:1, 11.7% at the 2:1 floor. Resets are upside, not survival.

35¢ = your margin pool per $1 (the LTGP affiliates are paid from) Kept after delivery + overhead. ALL affiliate pay (commission + base) comes out of this, it's your CAC. Stricter than the book's pre-overhead LTGP, so your cap is conservative. ▾
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Trader payouts are the dominant, most volatile cost. If referrals skew to instant-funded accounts, the pool can fall toward ~29¢, and your max allowable CAC falls with it. Stress this before signing.
📜 The 6 deal commandments Read before signing. If a term breaks one, the answer is "no or changed", not "but they're huge." ▾
  1. Math over mood. No deal on vibes, reach, or FOMO. Under 3:1 LTGP:CAC is a no, no matter the audience."If the LTGP:CAC is under 3:1, it's a no. I don't care how big their audience is."
  2. Pay from max allowable CAC, not margin we don't have. Start with the cap, design the deal inside it."Here's our max CAC. Slice your deal however you like inside it, we're not going over."
  3. Performance first, base maybe. Best structure is pure rev share. Any base is a short, time-boxed draw, training wheels, not salary."We get paid when you get paid. Any base is temporary."
  4. Big reach doesn't beat bad math. We don't match suicidal competitor offers to feel included."If another firm wants to burn cash to rent your audience, let them. We plan to be here in 3 years."
  5. Whales play on upside, not subsidy. A real producer wants rev share, ratchets, backend, not a guaranteed salary."Believe in your performance? Our upside pays more than a flat base. If not, we're not your partner."
  6. Tier the upside, guard the downside. Top performers earn the richest rates; blended payout stays low and LTGP:CAC improves."Hit the higher tiers, you take the lion's share. Until then, we protect the house."

📋 Deal terms

Commission, prices, conversions. Everything updates live.
Volume, the knob to play with
01000 conv/mo
first-time 53% · recurring 47%
Commission rates
%
%
Average order value
$
$
Non-commissionable lifetime ?
$
×
%
$
×
%
Measured per account sold (90d): 0.238 resets at $98 ≈ $23, and 8.4% activate at $228 ≈ $19, so about $42 of non-commissionable revenue per account. The old 5.67-resets input implied ~$561; reality is far smaller, which is why lifetime is a thin lever, not a rescue.
Base / retainer
$
mo
2nd-tier override ?
%
Guardrail
: 1
🎚️ Lifetime assumption ?
● GOOD
+$0/mo net to us
LTGP : CAC ?
·
dollars kept ÷ affiliate pay
All-in affiliate % ?
·
vs. your cap
Conversions to green ?
·
to hit your target
Referred revenue
·
/mo (conversions)
Break-even ?
·
net = $0
Max base you can afford ?
·
at target ratio
All-in affiliate %: where it comes from
First-time commission·
Recurring commission·
Resets + activations·
2nd-tier override·
Base / draw (as % of revenue)·
All-in CAC·
💡 Commission headroom from non-commissionable lifetime
Lifetime revenue / account·
… non-commissionable (resets + activations)·
Max affiliate pay at your cap (on total lifetime)·
Max first-time commission you can offer·

🎤 The closing pitch vs. their other deals

Same volume, what they earn elsewhere vs. with you. Lead with the total check, not the headline %.
Total CAC / mo
·
commission + base + override
Top One net / mo
·
after pool + pay
LTGP : CAC
·
vs target
All-in CAC
·
vs cap
Their current deal, the one to beat
%
$
Their deal (incl. base)
·
per month
Top One, pure performance
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per month, no base
⚡ Where you pull ahead of their deal
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·
·
The gap widens as they produce more
The line
"If you want the highest headline %, we're not your shop. If you want the biggest total check over the next 12 months from a firm that will still be here and won't slash your deal later, that's us. We pay from profit, not from investor charity."
LTV / customer
·
incl. their repeats
Their comm / customer
·
· of LTV
Your net / customer
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after payouts + comm
New customers / mo
·
first-time of conversions
Where this deal sits, by conversion volume
break-even
here
0 conv500/mo

📈 What if they did this many conversions? live simulator

Your P&L, what they earn, and LTGP:CAC across a range of monthly conversions. Green line crossing $0 is break-even. Drag the conversions knob above to move the marker.
Net to us / mo What they earn / mo Referred revenue

⚖️ Compare structures save & stack

Hit "Save" up top to freeze the current terms, then change them and save again. Net is shown at each conversion tier.

The math, in plain English

So anyone on the call can defend every number.

The one rule

Every $1 you pay an affiliate should leave $3 to $4 with you after paying them. So max allowable affiliate % = pool ÷ (target + 1), which is 8.75% at 3:1 and 7% at 4:1. If their all-in take (commission + amortized base) is above that, the deal's too rich.

3:1 for performance, 2:1 is the hard floor

Performance affiliates must clear 3:1+; under that you're busy but broke, same work, no wealth. 2:1 is the absolute floor, and only for a brand whale run as a capped sponsorship (hard budget, private terms, a strategic KPI). At 1:1 you keep nothing before overhead. Use whales to build authority, not a habit of bad math.

Why a draw beats a base

A recoverable draw self-extinguishes: any month their commission tops it, it costs $0. Draw = temporary CAC; base = permanent CAC, paid every month no matter what.

Resets are upside, not survival

Resets improve your LTGP, but we never count them to justify a bad CAC. The deal must clear 3:1 without resets. Turn them on only to see the lifetime upside, never to rescue a deal.

Built on Top One's measured economics · Net = (revenue × pool%) − commission − base/draw − override · all affiliate pay counted as CAC
Margin pool is after delivery + overhead (conservative vs the book's pre-overhead LTGP). Steady-state; month 1 skews all-first-time. Internal, Top One.