Affiliate and referral programs advertise a percentage. What decides how much money reaches your bank account is everything printed underneath it: when a commission is approved, how long it is held, what happens if the customer refunds, who gets credited when two affiliates touch the same buyer, and how small a balance a program will actually pay out.
This guide explains those mechanics in plain terms, because almost every "my commission disappeared" complaint is one of them working exactly as documented. At the end we answer the same seven questions about our own program, so you can see what a complete answer looks like.
Disclosure: 24hTrack is a package tracking platform and it runs the partner program described in the last two sections. Nothing here is an income estimate. Terms change — check any program's own page before you rely on it.
Commission normally moves through three states: earned when the customer pays, approved when the refund and dispute risk on that payment has passed, and paid when your approved balance clears the payout minimum. The hold between earned and approved exists because money can still be taken back — card disputes can arrive up to 120 days after a charge and PayPal buyers can open a dispute up to 180 days after payment, so holds of 30 to 180 days are normal rather than a red flag. A clawback is different: it reverses commission that was already approved or paid, usually after a refund or chargeback. Before promoting any program, check the hold length, the clawback rule, the attribution window, whether commission recurs, any per-customer cap, the payout minimum and the payout method.
On most affiliate dashboards a commission passes through three states, and they mean genuinely different things. Earned means the customer paid and the commission was calculated. Approved means the program has decided the money is safe to keep. Paid means it left the program and went to you.
A commission can sit in the first state for months without anything being wrong, and it can leave the second state if the underlying payment is reversed. Reading a dashboard as "they owe me this" mixes the three together, which is where most disappointment comes from.
A program that paid you the moment a customer subscribed would be paying out of money it might not keep. Refunds, card chargebacks and payment-provider disputes all arrive after the charge, sometimes long after, and the affiliate share is usually already gone by then.
The windows are public and they are long. Card issuers generally allow disputes for up to 120 days after a transaction. PayPal is longer still: a buyer can open an Item Not Received dispute up to 180 days after the date the payment was sent. A program that pays through PayPal and approves commission in 14 days is carrying that entire exposure itself, which usually means it recovers the money from affiliates later instead.
So the hold length tells you which risk the program has chosen to absorb. A 30-day hold typically matches a refund policy. A 60-day hold covers most refunds plus early disputes. A 180-day hold matches the full PayPal dispute window and means commission is very unlikely to be reversed after it is approved.
A hold delays payment. A clawback reverses a commission that was already approved, and sometimes already paid. The trigger is almost always the same: the customer got their money back, through a refund, a chargeback or a dispute they won.
What matters is the order of recovery, and it is rarely explained. A well-written program takes the money from the part of that same payment it is still holding, then from your next payouts, and only asks you to repay if there is nothing left to deduct from. A badly written one simply invoices you. Both are legal; only one is predictable.
Two mechanisms decide whether a signup counts as yours. A cookie window credits you if the person buys within a set number of days of clicking your link — 30, 60 and 90 days are all common, and last click usually wins, so a later affiliate can take a customer you introduced. A referral code the customer types at signup is not time-limited in the same way, because the attribution happens at the moment the account is created rather than at purchase.
For anyone sending traffic from content that people read weeks before they buy, the cookie window is the single most important number in the terms, and the one most often left unpublished.
One-time programs pay a fixed bounty when a referral becomes a paying customer, and nothing after that. Recurring programs pay a share of later payments for a defined period, very often twelve months. A smaller group pays with no end date, for as long as the customer keeps paying.
A per-customer cap changes the picture more than the headline rate does. A program can advertise a high percentage and still stop, or drop to a token rate, once one customer has generated a certain amount of commission. If a cap exists it should be in the terms with a number next to it; if you cannot find one stated either way, treat the program as capped until it tells you otherwise.
The last two terms are mundane and they decide whether small earnings are real. A payout minimum means balances below a threshold carry over instead of being sent — normal, and worth knowing before you count a $9 balance as income. The payout method decides whether you can receive it at all: some programs pay only through an affiliate network, some only to a specific wallet, some to a bank account in a limited list of countries.
If a program page answers fewer than five of these, the answers exist somewhere — usually in terms you only see after joining. Read them before you send traffic, not after your first clawback.
This is our own program, so treat it as a worked example of a complete answer rather than a recommendation. Current values are published at www.24htrack.com/partners and the full terms at www.24htrack.com/terms#partner-program; they can change.
Hold: after the calendar month ends, 70% of the commission on each payment is approved once that payment is 60 days old, and the remaining 30% is held until the payment is 180 days old — the PayPal dispute window described above. A payment of $100 or more waits the full 180 days. If none of your customers has disputed or been refunded in the last 180 days, and you have been a partner that long, you receive 100% at 60 days.
Clawback: refunded payments, chargebacks and disputes the buyer wins earn nothing. Commission on money taken back is deducted from the held-back part of that payment first, then from later payouts, and only has to be repaid if there is nothing left to deduct it from. While a customer of yours has an open dispute, payouts to you pause until it is resolved.
Attribution: anyone who creates an account through your link, or types your code on the sign-up form, is your customer — so attribution happens at signup rather than inside a cookie window. A customer who already belongs to another partner is not moved to you. People who sign up through your link currently get 5% off one purchase.
Recurrence and cap: you earn a share of every payment that customer makes — monthly plans, credit packs and every renewal — with no end date, for as long as they keep paying and you remain a partner. Your level rate is capped per customer; the cap and the reduced rate that applies afterwards are stated in the partner terms.
Rate: ten levels, from 5% to 50%. Each month's level is set on the 1st (UTC) from the previous 90 days and needs both a revenue figure and a minimum number of customers who paid in that period; the rate then applies for the whole month, and a level can drop by at most one step per month. Example at current rates: commission on a $119 credit pack is $5.95 at level 1 and $59.50 at level 10.
Payout and termination: money is sent once your approved balance reaches $20, and smaller balances carry over, to the payout account you registered with 24hTrack. Joining needs no application — every main account has a link under Invite & Earn. Money from your own account, wallet or team does not count, and neither do accounts opened purely to earn commission. Posting your code on coupon sites can have that commission withdrawn. Spam, misleading claims, posing as 24hTrack, bidding on the 24hTrack brand in ads or fraud end the partnership, and unpaid commission is not paid.
A high percentage on a cheap product is a small number. Commission on a $2.99 monthly plan is measured in cents whatever the rate; the same rate on a credit pack is a different conversation. Before comparing two programs on their headline rate, look at what their customers actually buy and how often.
And no program can tell you what you will earn, because that depends entirely on who you refer and whether they keep paying. Any program that does quote an expected income is telling you something about itself.
Because the program has not finished carrying the risk on that payment. Commission is normally approved only after the refund and dispute window on the underlying charge has passed. Card disputes can arrive up to 120 days after a charge and PayPal disputes up to 180 days after payment, so holds between 30 and 180 days are standard. Check your program's stated hold period — pending is usually a schedule, not a problem.
A clawback reverses commission that was already approved or paid, normally because the customer was refunded or won a chargeback or dispute. It is different from a hold, which only delays approval. Good terms say how far back a clawback can reach and whether it is deducted from held commission, from future payouts, or invoiced to you.
Commonly 30 days, to match a refund policy, and 60 days where early disputes are a concern. Programs that pay through PayPal sometimes hold part of the commission for 180 days, the full window in which a buyer can still open a dispute. Longer holds usually mean lower clawback risk after approval.
Recurring commission pays a share of a customer's later payments for a defined period, very often twelve months. Lifetime commission has no end date and continues for as long as the customer keeps paying. Both can still be limited by a per-customer cap, so read the cap before comparing the two.
No. Every main 24hTrack account has a referral link and code under Invite & Earn, and there is no application. You become a partner when someone creates an account through your link or enters your code. Details are at www.24htrack.com/partners.
Ten levels from 5% to 50% of what your customers pay, on every payment they make — plans, credit packs and renewals — with no end date, and capped per customer as set out in the partner terms. Your level is recalculated monthly from the previous 90 days. What you earn depends entirely on who you refer, so no income figure can be promised.
After the calendar month ends, 70% of each payment's commission is approved once the payment is 60 days old and the rest at 180 days; payments of $100 or more wait the full 180 days, and partners with no refunds or disputes in the last 180 days receive 100% at 60 days. Money is sent once the approved balance reaches $20.
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