Marketplace Vendor Commission

What This Recipe Does

This recipe is the revenue-share core of a multi-vendor marketplace. It isn’t a commission program bolted onto a store, it’s the engine that splits every transaction between the vendor who supplied the product and the platform that runs the storefront. Each vendor earns 70% of the revenue from their own product sales, and the marketplace platform keeps the remaining 30%. When a customer places an order containing products from multiple vendors, every vendor whose products appear in that order earns their commission independently.

The key difference from a standard affiliate program is the resolver: this recipe uses “every binding wins” instead of “newest binding wins.” In a typical affiliate setup, only one collaborator earns per transaction. In a marketplace, that would mean only one vendor gets paid per order, which breaks the entire model. With “every binding wins,” all vendors with products in the order earn simultaneously.

Starting a Marketplace with One Recipe

Applying this recipe is the smallest viable shape of a working multi-vendor marketplace. It’s the minimum a marketplace needs to run: vendors as collaborators, products linked to them, and a revenue split that fires on every sale. Day one looks like this. You apply the recipe, add your vendors as collaborators, link each vendor to the products they’re selling, and start taking orders. The commission math runs itself from there. None of the heavier pieces have to exist for the marketplace to start running, and an operator can validate the idea against real revenue splits before deciding whether to build vendor self-service screens, a custom storefront, or escrow logic.

A marketplace has a storefront, a payments rail, and a commission engine sitting between them. Siren is the commission engine. The storefront is what WC Vendors, Dokan, or custom WordPress code handle, including vendor dashboards, product editing, and the shop-by-vendor pages. Payments are a separate problem. The operator’s payment processor takes the customer’s card. Siren’s job is the layer in between, tracking which vendor earned what, on which sale, under which program. The full picture is laid out in the marketplaces guide.

The mechanic doesn’t change when the vertical does. Vendors get a percentage, the platform keeps the rest, and “every binding wins” makes multi-vendor orders settle cleanly. A course marketplace runs on it (Online Course Platform Starter shows that flavor with instructors and students). A vacation rental marketplace runs on it too (Travel Destination Marketplace shows the host-and-listing flavor). Handmade goods, B2B parts catalogs, services marketplaces, they all fit the same shape. This recipe is what every one of those verticals has in common underneath.

Who It’s For

• Founders building a marketplace MVP who need vendor revenue-sharing working before they invest in vendor onboarding UX or a custom storefront, shipping a working marketplace fast instead of building commission plumbing from scratch
• Multi-vendor marketplace operators running storefronts where each vendor lists and sells their own products through a shared platform
• WooCommerce store owners using a multi-vendor or marketplace plugin who want a clean, trackable commission system for paying vendors their share

How It Works

When you apply this recipe, Siren creates a program that watches for a specific engagement event: collaborator product sold. Each vendor in your marketplace is added as a collaborator and linked to their products. When a customer purchases a product, Siren checks which vendor owns it and records the engagement.

The “every binding wins” resolver is what makes this work for marketplaces. Unlike resolvers that pick a single winner per transaction, this one pays every collaborator who has a qualifying engagement. If a customer’s cart contains items from three different vendors, all three earn their 70% cut on their respective sales. No vendor is excluded because another vendor’s product was also in the cart.

The 70/30 split is a common marketplace default. The vendor keeps the majority because they supply the product, handle fulfillment, and bear inventory risk. The platform keeps 30% for providing the storefront, customer acquisition, and infrastructure. You can adjust this split when applying the recipe or change it later in the program settings.

Commissions are calculated on line item totals only. Shipping, taxes, and fees are excluded, giving you a clean cost structure that vendors can understand and predict.

The recipe tracks what each vendor earns. It doesn’t move money on their behalf. Every sale adds to the accrued balance for the vendor who owned the product, and that balance is visible in the collaborator dashboard and exposed through the REST API. Siren doesn’t initiate vendor payouts. Operators run those payouts on their own schedule, through whatever rail fits the business. Once a payout is sent, mark it paid in Siren and the accrual resets cleanly. The mechanics are walked through in the guide on paying collaborators.

{
  "version": 1,
  "name": "Marketplace Vendor Commission",
  "description": "A multi-vendor marketplace commission program. Every vendor earns 70% of their product sales independently.",
  "programs": {
    "vendor": {
      "name": "Vendor Commission Program",
      "description": "Earn 70% of every sale of your products on the marketplace.",
      "incentiveType": "saleTransactionPercentage",
      "incentiveResolverType": "EveryBindingWins",
      "units": "USD",
      "status": "active",
      "incentiveArgs": { "transactionPercent": 70 },
      "engagementTypes": [
        { "type": "collaboratorProductSold", "value": 100.0 }
      ],
      "transactionCompilers": ["includeLineItems"]
    }
  }
}