The four numbers that determine your earnings
Strip a revshare affiliate business down to its inputs and four numbers explain almost all of your income. Clicks and conversion rate tell you how many new signups you produce each month. Membership price sets the size of each commission. Retention — how many months the average member stays — decides how much recurring revenue stacks up behind those new signups. Change any one of these four and your monthly payout changes with it.
New affiliates focus on clicks and conversion rate because they are the most visible numbers in a dashboard. The two that quietly decide your income over a year are membership price (which sets the ceiling on each commission) and retention (which multiplies every signup into a stream of rebills). The optimising conversions guide covers lifting conversion rate; this guide covers the full math.
- Clicks — how many visitors you send in a month.
- Conversion rate — what share of those clicks become paying signups.
- Membership price — the monthly fee the member pays.
- Retention — how many months the average member stays subscribed.
First-signup commission math
Run the first-month numbers with concrete values. Suppose you send 1,000 clicks in a month, your traffic converts at 2%, the membership price is $29.95, and the program pays 50% on first signups. That is 1,000 × 0.02 = 20 signups. Each signup pays you 50% of $29.95, or roughly $15. Twenty signups × $15 = $300 in first-sale commission for the month.
This is the number most affiliates carry in their head, and it is the smallest part of the real income. It tells you what month one looks like; it tells you nothing about month two, three, or twelve. For that you need the rebill layer.
The rebill layer
Each retained member pays you 40% on every renewal, for the lifetime of the membership. Suppose your average member stays for three months — the first signup plus two rebills. Each of those 20 members from month one rebills twice at 40% of $29.95, or roughly $12 per rebill. Twenty members × two rebills × $12 = $480 in rebill income spread across months two and three, on top of each month's fresh first-sale commission.
Now watch what happens when traffic is consistent. In month two you add another 20 new signups ($300 first-sale) plus the 20 survivors of month one rebilling once ($240). In month three you add 20 new signups, plus the month-two cohort rebilling once, plus the month-one survivors rebilling a second time. By month six, your active rebill base is multiple cohorts deep, and your monthly payout is materially larger than month one — even though your traffic volume never changed. This compounding is why steady, retaining traffic beats bursty, churning traffic. The rebills guide walks through the curve in detail, and the calculator models it for your real numbers.
EPC: earnings per click
Earnings per click (EPC) is the single metric that lets you compare traffic sources fairly, because it rolls conversion rate, membership price, and retention into one number: total earnings divided by clicks sent. A source with a lower conversion rate but higher retention can have a higher EPC than a source that converts better but churns — which is exactly why comparing sources on conversion rate alone misleads.
Using the example above: 1,000 clicks producing $300 in first-sale commission is an EPC of $0.30. Add the rebill layer over three months and the true EPC rises toward $0.78 once recurring income is counted. Track EPC by placement, not just by source, and the best places to spend your effort become obvious in dollars rather than guesses.
Model your own traffic
The point of the math is not to do it by hand — it is to internalise which numbers you can move and which you cannot. You control clicks (more traffic), conversion rate (better creative and placement), and to some extent retention (honest pre-sell, well-matched traffic). You do not control membership price or the commission rate, which are set by the program.
Plug your real or expected numbers into the calculator and it runs the full twelve-month model for you: first-sale commission, rebill stacking, active member base, and projected monthly income. It is the single most useful exercise a new — or experienced — revshare affiliate can do, because it turns a vague 'how much can I make' into a concrete curve you can plan against.