How much commission should a brand pay creators per sale?

A brand should pay creators as much commission per sale as the product's margin can carry while still leaving a profit you are happy with, and enough in rupees that a creator thinks one sale is worth a video. Work it out product by product, the way you would set what you can afford to pay to win a customer, not from a benchmark. On products whose margins can carry it, rates of 10% to 30% are where creators start paying attention.

Then show the rate upfront on the listing, pay it on every unit with no cap, and raise it when you want a push. This guide walks through the maths with hypothetical rupee examples you can redo with your own numbers. Viewzar, which publishes this blog, runs Viewzar Shop, where brands set a per-unit commission on every product, so read it with that in mind.

Start with your margin, not someone else's rate

Commission rates you see quoted elsewhere were set for someone else's costs. Marketplace affiliate programmes, such as the ones Amazon and Flipkart run, pay percentages set across enormous catalogues, and those rates change, so check the current terms if you compare. Your rate has to come from your own product.

The margin formula

For each product, per unit:

1. Sale price, what the buyer pays
2. minus product cost, making or buying it
3. minus packaging and shipping
4. minus other per-order costs, such as selling and payment costs on that channel and an allowance for returns
5. equals contribution before marketing

Now decide the smallest profit per unit you are happy to keep. The most you can pay in commission is your contribution minus that profit. Any rate below that line is one you can hold for as long as you like.

Here is a hypothetical example. A ₹999 cotton co-ord set costs ₹380 to make, ₹90 to pack and ship and ₹70 in other per-order costs. Contribution is ₹459. You want to keep at least ₹200 a unit, so you can pay up to ₹259 in commission, about 26% of the price. Setting 20% pays ₹199.80, call it ₹200 a sale, and leaves you a buffer for a festive push.

Do this for every product separately. A store with one rate for everything overpays on thin-margin items and underpays on the products creators would happily sell.

Price commission like a customer-acquisition cost

Commission is what you pay to win one sale, so compare it with what you already pay to win one sale elsewhere. Pull your own numbers from your ad account. If your boosted reels and search ads cost around ₹350 in spend for every order of that ₹999 co-ord set (a hypothetical figure), a ₹200 commission is cheaper. It is also paid only after the sale has happened, while ad spend goes out whether or not anyone buys.

Repeat purchases change the maths too. If buyers of your shampoo reorder every couple of months, the first order is worth more than its own margin, and you can afford a higher commission to win it. Count only the repeat behaviour you can actually see in your own sales data, not what you hope for.

For the full measurement side, from cost per sale to incrementality, see how to measure influencer marketing ROI.

Commission is a customer-acquisition cost you pay only after the customer has paid you.

Rupees per sale vs percent, and what creators actually look at

Brands set commission as a percentage. Creators decide on rupees. These three hypothetical products show why that matters.

The shoes pay the lowest percentage and the most money. The phone case's 30% sounds generous and pays about ₹90. Low-priced products need a higher percentage to reach a rupee figure worth a video, and some cannot get there at any rate their margin allows. Those often sell better as a bundle. A pack of three phone cases at ₹799 and 20% pays ₹159.80, about ₹160 a sale.

Creators also weigh how many they can sell. A ₹90 commission on an easy impulse buy that sells 200 units from one strong reel comes to about ₹18,000. A ₹300 commission on shoes that sell 20 units comes to about ₹6,000. So the rupee figure decides whether a creator looks twice, and how easy the product is to buy on a tap decides what they earn after that.

Why 10% to 30% attracts creators on certain products

A rate in the 10% to 30% band gets attention when it turns into a meaningful rupee figure, and it is affordable when the product's margin is healthy. Both conditions have to hold.

Products that often carry rates at the top of that band:

• Beauty and personal care made in-house, where product cost is a small part of the price.
• Fashion basics and accessories such as belts, bags and jewellery, sold direct.
• Home décor, candles and gifting, where design rather than material sets the price.
• Your own packaged food and snacks, sold direct in packs or gift boxes.

Products that usually sit at the bottom of the band, or below it:

• Electronics and appliances, where margins are thin but prices are high, so 10% can still be a decent rupee figure.
• Resold branded goods, where you do not control the margin.
• Staples bought on price, where the buyer compares with a quick-commerce app before ordering.

Check every one of these against your own margin formula. The categories are patterns, not rules.

A commission table for five hypothetical products

Here is the margin formula applied to five made-up products. "Costs per unit" covers product cost, packaging, shipping and other per-order costs. "Brand keeps" is what is left per unit after the commission, before fixed costs like salaries and rent.

What the table tells you:

• The earbuds have the thinnest margin, yet 10% still pays about ₹200 a sale because the price is high.
• The belt has room for 30%, which pays about ₹450 a sale and makes it the product creators will reach for first.
• The gift box pays only about ₹90. Bundle two boxes, or accept that it sells on volume in the festive season.
• The kurta at 15% leaves plenty of room to raise the rate for a push and still keep a healthy margin.

Should you add a discount on creator codes?

A discount on creator codes gives the viewer a reason to remember the code and type it, and gives the creator a simple line for the video. It also comes out of your margin, just like the commission.

Treat the discount and the commission as one acquisition budget per product. If you add a discount, rerun the margin formula with the discounted price as the sale price before you choose a rate. On a thin-margin product you may have to pick one or the other. On a fat-margin product like the belt above, a modest code discount plus a strong commission is often the combination that gets both the creator and the buyer moving.

Disclose the commission upfront on every listing

Creators choose products in seconds, often while scrolling a list of hundreds. A rate they have to ask for reads as a low rate. A rate shown in rupees on the card removes the maths and the doubt, and they can decide right there.

Showing the rate upfront also does three things for you:

• No negotiation. One rate per product, the same for every creator who adds it, so you never haggle over a percentage in DMs.
• Fairness creators can see. Nobody wonders whether a bigger account got a better deal on the same product.
• Self-selection. Creators who find your rupee figure worth a video add the product. Those who do not move on, and neither of you wastes time.

This is a different thing from the disclosure creators owe their audience. ASCI's guidelines for influencer advertising in India require paid and affiliate content to be labelled, for example with #ad, #affiliate or "I earn a commission". Put that line in your creator brief. For the rest of the brief and the listing, see how to get creators to sell your products.

Why there should be no cap on what creators earn

Some brands cap commission at a monthly figure per creator, to protect the budget. On commission, a cap works against you.

• Your cost per sale does not change. Commission is a share of each sale, so unit 5,000 costs you the same percentage as unit 5. A big commission bill only exists because of big sales.
• A cap tells your best seller to stop. The creator who hits it has proved their audience buys your product. A cap sends them to another brand at the moment they are most valuable to you.
• Your top creator is your best channel. You would never turn off an ad that sells at a profit because it sold too much.
• The real limit is stock. Plan inventory for a creator's video taking off, not a ceiling on what they can earn.

Budgets belong where you pay for reach before you know whether it sells, such as ads or a pay-per-view campaign. Commission is paid after the sale, so it funds itself.

Raising rates for a push, and changing them fairly

Raise a product's commission when you want more creators on it fast. Good moments include Diwali, Raksha Bandhan and wedding season, a new launch, clearing older stock, or reviving a product that has gone quiet. A higher rate should apply at once, so creators sorting by highest commission find it the same day.

Lowering a rate is different. Creators who added your product made videos based on the rate you showed them, and some of those videos keep selling for months. A fair system applies a lower rate only to new orders, and only after advance notice to the creators who added the product.

That shapes your strategy:

1. Start at a rate you can hold for a year. It is easier to raise than to cut.
2. Plan pushes with an end in mind. Bringing a raised rate back down counts as lowering it, with notice, so choose the push length with that in view.
3. Do not tinker weekly. Creators plan videos days in advance. A rate that moves every week looks unreliable.

How Viewzar Shop handles commission for brands

On Viewzar Shop you open a store, list your products and set a per-unit commission on each product as a percentage of the sale price. You choose the rate per product, and commissions of 10% to 30% are available on certain products. Creators see the commission on every product card in rupees and percent, for example "Earn ₹50 · 10%", and can sort the Products tab by highest commission, so a strong rate gets found. Buyers never see commission figures.

You can raise a product's commission at any time and the higher rate applies at once. A lower rate applies only to new orders, and only after advance notice to the creators who added the product.

Any creator can add your product to their shop in one tap, with no follower minimum or application. Each gets their own short link and their own code, so many creators can make videos about the same product at once, and each is paid only on the units they sell. There is no cap on what a creator earns, whether they sell 5 units or 5,000. You can also give buyers a discount on creator codes.

You pay nothing up front and no listing fee. You pay only when a sale happens, out of that sale. Viewzar runs the checkout and payments, and you are the seller and ship the order. A returned order earns no commission, and commission unlocks for the creator only after your return window closes. Your dashboard shows orders, creators ranked by sales, units sold per product, returns, reviews, payouts and sales analytics, so you can see which rates are working.

If you also run pay-per-view campaigns, those are priced per 1,000 verified views instead, as explained in choosing a rate and budget. Commission suits brands with products that can be shown on video and margins that can share. To set your first rates, open your store on Viewzar.

The bottom line

Set commission per product from your margin, think of it as the price of winning a customer, and check the rupee figure from the creator's side before you publish it. Show it upfront, pay it on every unit with no cap, and raise it for pushes rather than cutting it later. For the wider model of paying creators only when a sale happens, read commission-based influencer marketing. On Viewzar Shop, every one of those choices is a setting on your listing.