Reversal Rate

What is Reversal Rate?

Reversal rate is the percentage of credited affiliate commissions that are subsequently reversed — through customer refunds, chargebacks, or policy violations — expressed as reversed commissions divided by total credited commissions over a given period.

Reversal Rate In Practice

Reversal rate is the discount applied to every commission you see in your dashboard. A program advertising a $100 flat bounty with a 20% reversal rate has an effective payout of $80 per qualifying referral — a 20% reduction that never appears in any headline metric. This matters most when comparing programs with similar advertised rates: a program paying $80 with a 3% reversal rate ($77.60 effective) consistently outperforms one paying $100 with a 22% reversal rate ($78.00 effective), and the gap widens at scale. Reversal rate also diagnoses traffic quality: a sudden spike on a stable program signals either a content change attracting less-committed buyers, a merchant policy change, or a product quality issue causing more refunds. Track reversal rate per program separately from gross commissions — the difference between gross and net is your true earnings baseline.

Example of Reversal Rate