Pick the broker first, the commission second
Your income depends on clients staying with the broker. A programme paying 60% of nothing is worth nothing, and a broker with withdrawal complaints will cost you your audience's trust. Check the broker's licences, its complaint record and its own retention before you look at the rate card. Partner programmes never affect a broker's trust score on BrokerBazaar, so use the broker review and the programme profile together.
The fourteen questions
- Which legal entity will I contract with, and which regulator licenses it?
- Which countries are accepted, excluded or paid at a lower tier?
- What exactly qualifies a client for CPA: deposit size, lots, days?
- What is the clawback window and what triggers it?
- How is 'net revenue' defined for revenue share?
- Which account types pay a lower rebate (raw, zero, Islamic)?
- How long does the tracking cookie last, and is first or last click paid?
- What are the payout frequency, minimum and methods, and who pays the fees?
- Can the broker change rates, and with how much notice?
- Do I keep earning on existing clients if the programme closes or I leave?
- Is there a dashboard with client-level data, or only totals?
- Are sub-affiliate or master IB overrides paid for life or for a fixed term?
- Which marketing methods are banned: brand bidding, incentivised traffic, email?
- Who approves my content, and how fast?
Clauses that quietly cut income
- Inactivity rules that stop commission on a client who has not traded for 90 or 180 days
- Minimum active client counts before any payout is released
- Lifetime caps per client on revenue share
- 'Net of bonuses' definitions when the broker pays large bonuses
- Rate tiers by country where most of your audience sits in the bottom tier
- Payout in trading credit rather than cash, or only to a trading account with the broker
Red flags: when to walk away
- The programme belongs to an entity with no verifiable licence, or only a 'registration' in a country with no supervision
- Pay-outs promised in days with no qualifying conditions at all
- No written agreement, terms only on a chat message or a landing page
- Encouragement to promote bonuses, guaranteed signals or copy-trading returns
- Commission on client deposits rather than on trading or acquisition (a sign the model needs new money coming in)
- Public complaints from partners about unpaid or reversed commission
- Requests that you collect client documents or passwords
- The broker appears on a regulator warning list in any of your target countries
Before you promote
Open a small live account yourself and test deposit, trade and withdrawal. Ask the partner manager for the agreement in writing and read the definitions section first. Set up tracking so you can reconcile the broker's reports against your own clicks. Then publish with the disclosures your audience's regulator expects, and review the broker's licence status every quarter.