Choosing an Incentive Structure

An incentive structure decides how much a collaborator earns when a conversion happens. It answers a single question: is the commission tied to the sale’s revenue, to the fact that a sale happened at all, or to the specific products that were sold? You’ll face this choice when you’re configuring a program and Siren asks how the reward should be calculated.

Percentage of Transaction is the default for almost every affiliate program, and if you’re not sure what to pick, start there. The fixed-fee structures exist for specific situations where a percentage doesn’t fit.

Percentage of Transaction and Fixed Per Transaction are available in all tiers. Fixed Per Product requires Siren Essentials.

Quick comparison

Structure	What it does	Best for
Percentage of Transaction	Pays a percentage of the sale total	Standard affiliate commissions
Fixed Per Transaction	Pays a flat fee per completed sale	Lead generation and low-margin sales
Fixed Per Product	Pays a flat fee per unit of a specific product	Uniform-priced catalogs and marketplaces

How to choose

Use Percentage of Transaction if…

You’re running a normal affiliate program and you want commissions to scale with revenue. This is the right pick for most e-commerce stores, SaaS products, course platforms, and anything else where sale sizes vary and you want affiliates motivated to promote higher-value purchases. It’s also the structure nearly every “basic affiliate program” recipe uses, so if your setup looks anything like a standard affiliate program, start here.

Use Fixed Per Transaction if…

The act of converting matters more to you than the transaction’s revenue. This fits lead-generation programs where you pay a flat fee per qualified lead, referral programs where every new customer is worth roughly the same, and low-margin stores where a percentage would either eat your margin or be too small to motivate anyone. It’s also useful when you run frequent discounts and don’t want commissions shrinking along with the sale price.

Use Fixed Per Product if…

You’re selling a catalog of uniformly-priced items, and you want to pay a set amount per unit sold rather than per transaction or per dollar. This is built for marketplaces, subscription services with a single price point, and catalogs where individual products have stable, predictable margins. A fitness store paying $10 per set of dumbbells sold is the canonical example. Skip this one if your prices vary widely, because the same flat fee across a $5 item and a $500 item rarely lines up with what you actually want to reward.

See the full details

Percentage of Transaction for revenue-based commissions.
Fixed Per Transaction for flat fees per conversion.
Fixed Per Product for flat fees per unit sold.