Affiliate and Royalty Stack

What This Recipe Does

This recipe creates two independent programs designed to pay different people from the same transaction:

1. Affiliate Program - 25% commission to the person who referred the buyer, tracked via referral link visits
2. Creator Royalty Program - 50% royalty to the person who created the product, tracked via product ownership bindings

These programs are deliberately not grouped. When a customer buys a product, both programs evaluate the transaction independently. The affiliate who drove the traffic earns 25%, and the creator who built the product earns 50%. Two different people, two different roles, both compensated from one sale.

This is the foundational model for course platforms, digital marketplaces, and any creator economy where you need to reward both the builder and the promoter.

Who It’s For

• Course platform operators building a marketplace where instructors create courses and affiliates drive enrollments
• Digital product marketplace owners who need to compensate both product creators and the affiliates who sell their work
• Creator economy platforms where content producers and promoters are different people with different compensation models

How It Works

The Affiliate Program uses the referredSiteVisit engagement type. When someone clicks a collaborator’s referral link and later makes a purchase, the affiliate earns 25% of the transaction. Attribution uses newestBindingWins, so the most recent referral link click determines who gets credit. This is standard affiliate behavior.

The Creator Royalty Program uses the collaboratorProductSold engagement type. This is fundamentally different from referral tracking. Instead of tracking who sent the buyer, it tracks who created the product. When a creator is bound to a product in Siren and that product sells, the creator earns 50% of the line item total. No referral link is needed because the engagement is tied to product ownership, not traffic.

The two programs coexist because they answer different questions. The affiliate program asks “who sent the buyer?” while the royalty program asks “who made the product?” Since these are always different people (or at least different roles), stacking them is the correct behavior. A platform owner running a course marketplace wants both the instructor and the affiliate to earn from every sale.

If you want to cap total payouts per transaction, you can adjust the percentages. A 25% affiliate rate plus a 50% royalty rate means 75% of each sale goes to collaborators, leaving 25% as platform revenue. Adjust these rates to match your margin targets.

{
  "version": 1,
  "name": "Affiliate and Royalty Stack",
  "description": "Two stacked programs paying both the affiliate who referred the buyer and the creator who built the product, each earning independently from the same transaction.",
  "programs": {
    "affiliate": {
      "name": "Affiliate Program",
      "description": "Earn a 25% commission on every sale you refer through your unique affiliate link.",
      "incentiveType": "saleTransactionPercentage",
      "incentiveResolverType": "newestBindingWins",
      "units": "USD",
      "status": "active",
      "incentiveAmount": 25,
      "engagementTypes": [
        { "type": "referredSiteVisit", "value": 100.0 }
      ],
      "transactionCompilers": ["includeLineItems"]
    },
    "royalty": {
      "name": "Creator Royalty Program",
      "description": "Earn a 50% royalty every time a product you created is sold. Compensation is automatic and tied to your product ownership.",
      "incentiveType": "saleTransactionPercentage",
      "incentiveResolverType": "newestBindingWins",
      "units": "USD",
      "status": "active",
      "incentiveAmount": 50,
      "engagementTypes": [
        { "type": "collaboratorProductSold", "value": 100.0 }
      ],
      "transactionCompilers": ["includeLineItems"]
    }
  }
}