Creator economy
Can anyone actually tell you affiliate commission rates by category?
Every affiliate guide publishes a rate table. We tried to source one from four public routes in a single afternoon and could not, so this is the log of where each attempt stopped and what can honestly be measured instead.
Some links here are affiliate links — if you buy, the retailer may pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. We have earned $0 from them so far. Here’s how it works.
Part of: The business of being a creatorFor creators
Nobody can hand you a verified table of affiliate commission rates by category, and the pages that appear to are almost always reprinting an undated memory. On 2 September 2026 we tried four public routes to a rate and recorded where each one stopped: the product API we query exposes ten queries and thirty-six product fields with no commission field among them; one large retailer’s rate card redirected to a sign-in page; two affiliate programme pages described commissions without printing a number. The rate lives in the programme terms you see after acceptance.
Four routes to a rate, and where each stopped
This is not a survey of the affiliate industry. It is a log of four requests made during one run, with the outcome of each written down as it happened. We publish it because the useful finding is negative, and negative findings are exactly what nobody in this category publishes.
| Route | What we asked for | Outcome, 2 September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| CJ product API | any commission or payout field on the product type or query root | No such field. Ten queries on the root, all product or feed queries; thirty-six fields on the product type, none commission-related. |
| Amazon Associates fee schedule | the published standard rate table | HTTP 302 to a sign-in page. Not readable without an account. |
| Etsy affiliate page | a rate or a rate range | None published. The page describes a percentage of revenue and states that commissions are typically validated 30 days after the sale date. |
| Walmart affiliate page | category rate tables | The page refers to commission-rate tables in general terms and prints no figures. |
Method: one request per route, made during this run on 2 September 2026, recorded whether or not it succeeded. A fifth route, eBay Partner Network, did not respond within a 60-second timeout on two attempts and is excluded rather than reported as a refusal.
Four routes, zero published category rates. That is a small sample and we do not claim it is the whole market — some programmes certainly do print a number on a public page. The claim is narrower and firmer: a creator cannot assemble a rate table from public sources in an afternoon, so anyone who published one either had accounts we do not have, or did not check.
What the network API actually exposes
Worth being specific, because this is the part people assume works. We hold a CJ developer credential and query the product API every day for the price data on this site. Introspecting its schema on 2 September 2026 returns:
- Ten queries on the root, every one a product or feed query: products, shoppingProducts, travelExperienceProducts, their three application-scoped variants, shoppingProductFeeds, financeProducts, financeCreditCardProducts and productFeeds.
- Thirty-six fields on the product type — title, brand, price, sale price, availability, image, last-updated, advertiser name and so on. Searching them for commission, rate or payout returns nothing.
- No advertiser or programme query at all. Nothing in the schema represents the commercial terms of a programme.
So the catalogue is open and the terms are closed. That is a deliberate design: rates are negotiated per publisher, and a public rate becomes a floor the advertiser then has to defend. It also means the rate you are offered may not be the rate the creator next to you is offered, which is the most under-reported fact in this subject.
Keep reading
Why the tables you have read are unreliable
Three failure modes, in the order they do damage.
They are undated
A commission rate is a live commercial term. A table without a read-date cannot be aged, so a rate cut two years ago still reads as current. If a page gives you a rate and no date, you have been given a rumour with a decimal point in it.
They average across categories that behave differently
A band like “home: 3-8%” is not one number, it is a range wide enough to contain two different businesses. The same is true of every band in every table of this kind, and the width is never explained.
They describe the rate and ignore the base
Commission is paid on what the buyer pays. Our own measurement of live listings finds discounting heavily concentrated in some categories and almost absent in others, and a discount moves the base under the rate without touching the rate itself.
What can be measured instead, and was
The half of the equation that is public is the order value. We pulled live US listings during this run and computed the median asking price by subcategory. These are not commissions; they are the number a commission would be a percentage of.
| Subcategory | Live listings matched | Median price | Distinct retailers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planners and journals | 126 | $17.17 | 15 |
| Candles | 182 | $22.99 | 18 |
| Headphones | 109 | $29.99 | 15 |
| Bakeware | 133 | $49.99 | 15 |
| Cookware | 172 | $79.95 | 16 |
| Dumbbells | 124 | $90.99 | 18 |
| Monitors and laptop stands | 149 | $110.50 | 21 |
Method: CJ product API, US advertisers, keyword pulls filtered to titles containing the product type and de-duplicated by link and title, pulled 2 September 2026 during this run. A demo advertiser account present in the catalogue was excluded from retailer counts.
Last verified 2 September 2026 against live CJ product-feed pulls taken during this run, schema introspection of the same API on the same date, and four affiliate programme pages requested individually and recorded as they responded
Some links here are affiliate links. LinkToLooks has earned $0 from them to date — no network has approved us yet — so nothing on this page is picked to hit a payout.
The arithmetic that makes a rate meaningless alone
Take two offers a creator might actually be weighing. Programme A pays 10% in a category whose median live listing is $17.17. Programme B pays 4% in one whose median is $110.50. Per sale, at the median:
- Programme A: 10% of $17.17 = $1.72
- Programme B: 4% of $110.50 = $4.42
The lower rate pays 2.6 times more per sale. Now apply a discount, which is where the second-order effect lives: if the B listing is on promotion at 25% off, the base falls to $82.88 and the commission to $3.32 — still ahead, but a fifth of the earnings has gone without the rate moving by a single point.
What to do this week
- Stop looking for the table. It does not exist in a form you can verify, and an hour spent looking is an hour not spent applying.
- Apply to two programmes in the category you post about, and read the rate in the terms once you are in.
- Write the rate down with the date you read it and the page it was on. That is the whole discipline; it takes a minute and it is what lets you notice a cut.
- Re-read those terms quarterly. Rate changes are not announced to publishers in any reliable way.
- Track your own realised rate — commission divided by order value on statements you have actually been paid. That number is true for you, which no published table can be.
Frequently asked
Where can I find affiliate commission rates by category?
In each programme's own terms, after you are accepted. On 2 September 2026 we checked four public sources and none published a category rate table: the network API we query has no commission field at all, one retailer's rate card sat behind a login, and two affiliate pages described rates without printing any.
Why do so many articles publish rate tables then?
Because a table is easy to write and almost impossible for a reader to check. The tables in circulation rarely cite the programme page they came from or the date they were read, which is the difference between a figure and a memory.
Is a higher commission rate always better?
No. Commission is a percentage of what the buyer actually pays. A 10% rate on a category whose median live listing is $17 pays less per sale than 4% on one whose median is $110, and discounting cuts the base further.
What should I record when I do get a rate?
The programme, the rate, the category it applies to, the date you read it and where it was written. Rates change without announcement and a dated note is the only way you will ever notice.
Can LinkToLooks tell me its own rates?
No. We hold no network approvals and have earned $0 in commission to date, so we have no rate card of our own to quote and no earnings to report.
Sources and scope
- Schema introspection and all price statistics: CJ product API, US advertisers, pulled 2 September 2026 during this run.
- Programme page outcomes: single requests to the Amazon Associates fee schedule, the Etsy affiliate page and the Walmart affiliate page, made and recorded on 2 September 2026.
- No commission rate is asserted anywhere on this page, because we could not source one.
Keep reading
How this guide was made. We research and draft these guides with AI, then a person checks every price, link and factual claim against the source before it publishes. We work this way because it lets us re-verify prices across hundreds of guides in a day, which is what keeps the numbers here current; it does not decide what we recommend. Anything we could not verify is labelled as unverified rather than filled in.