Affiliate rates, cookie windows and payout terms compared

Affiliate programs are the business model of almost every site that ranks infrastructure - and the reason most comparison content in this market is unusable. This page takes the opposite approach: the population here is the same providers as everywhere else on the site, the program-terms column is honestly empty until terms are verified with dates, and this article documents how the money flows - so you can read any site in this market, including this one, with the incentives visible.

The two payout models, and what each one buys

Two models, with different shapes of conflict [1][2]:

• Revenue share - the referring site earns a percentage of what referred users generate, for months or years. It aligns the site with operators that monetize customers hard, and against operators with fair terms and low margins. If a site earns more from operator A's rev share, every "independent comparison" on that site is priced accordingly - unless its methodology says otherwise and proves it.
• CPA (cost per acquisition) - a fixed fee per funded signup. One-time interest in your click; no ongoing stake in whether the contract is good. Hybrid models blend both.

Neither model is corrupt by itself. The corruption is structural: when a site's income depends on operators, its rankings quietly drift toward the operators that pay [6]. The defense is methodology that survives the drift - published criteria, dated sources, and a scam archive that includes operators with generous programs. That is the standard this site's methodology holds itself to, and the standard to demand from anywhere you read a recommendation.

The program terms that actually matter

If you evaluate programs yourself - as a publisher, or to understand the site recommending to you - these are the five terms that shape behavior [1]:

• Rev share percentage and duration - lifetime versus capped terms change everything downstream.
• Cookie window - 30 days versus lifetime attribution changes which clicks get paid, and thus which reviews exist.
• Negative carryover - whether a bad month for referred users follows the affiliate. Sites that accept it are buying a preference structure.
• Payout minimum and frequency - the same mechanics as mining payout thresholds, on the publisher side.
• Unilateral term changes - the clause that lets an operator reprice a program after publishers have invested in the placement [2].
• Geo and KYC asymmetries - programs that pay differently by region shape which markets get courted; the no-kyc hub documents the same asymmetry from the user side.

Live from our database - caveats and sources in each linked review.

Disclosure is the law, not a courtesy

Regulators treat affiliate links as material connections that must be disclosed clearly - the FTC endorsement guidance spells out what a compliant disclosure looks like [7], and its creator guidance applies the same principle to social placements [8]. The practical standard:

• Disclosure before the link, not after - a footer mention does not cover a mid-article recommendation.
• Plain language beats legal text - "we earn from this link" beats a paragraph of boilerplate nobody parses.
• The disclosure travels with the content - social placements, newsletters and syndicated copies all need it.

A site whose disclosure requires effort to find has answered the question anyway.

The mechanics operators use to steer publishers

Program design shapes which sites recommend which operators - the terms are steering mechanisms whether or not anyone intends it [1]:

• Stepped rev share - higher percentages kick in after volume milestones, which pushes publishers to concentrate traffic on one operator instead of splitting it honestly.
• Lifetime cookie attribution - one click owns the customer forever, so landing-page reviews multiply and real comparisons thin out.
• Sub-affiliate tiers - publishers earn from other publishers' referrals, which grows networks of near-identical review sites. When five sites share one voice, the fifth "independent review" is the same document [3]. Pool-operator research [9] shows how transparent pool-level fee disclosure looks by contrast - the same information, published instead of steered.

None of these terms appear in consumer-facing marketing; they live in partner portals. The asymmetry is the point: you see the recommendation, the publisher sees the rate card.

How to read any recommendation site in one minute

The checklist that works on this site and on every competitor [3]:

1. Find the disclosure. If there is none, that is the finding - every serious market participant has one.
2. Find the methodology. Published criteria, weighted dimensions, and dated sources - or a page of adjectives.
3. Check the negatives. Does the site call out scams by name, with dates? A site that never criticizes a payer is a brochure.
4. Follow the links. Every "top pick" deep-linking to a signup page with affiliate parameters is a business model, whatever the header says [5].

Why this page's data column is empty

The honest answer, documented in the change log: verifying program terms means reading each operator's partner pages and dating the check - and until that wave runs per operator, the column stays empty instead of carrying unverified claims [3]. 136 live providers appear on this page's table via the site-wide ranking; 76% of all rows carry facts verified against sources with dates. The same bar applies to the affiliate column: terms with dates, or nothing. 51% of the 136 live providers on this table still operate without mandatory identity checks, and the free-trial hub shows how to test any of them before the affiliate question even matters. The providers table carries the underlying facts either way - and the cheapest hub shows why the effective price, not the referral bonus, is the number that matters.