You sell an e-book for 79 PLN, the customer pays, and the balance is less than 79 PLN. This doesn't necessarily mean the offer is weak. Typically, a sales commission works, meaning a fee is charged only when you actually earn money. For digital product creators, this is often a more sensible model than a subscription, especially if you're building sales from scratch or have seasonal campaigns.
The problem begins when you look solely at the commission percentage instead of the entire transaction. The difference between 5% and 10% sounds significant, but an even bigger difference is whether that price includes payment, automated invoicing, file access, analytics, checkout, and affiliate billing. If you have to purchase these elements separately or manage them manually, a low percentage quickly becomes unaffordable.
How does sales commission work in practice?
The mechanism is simple: the platform charges a fixed percentage or flat fee per completed transaction. You don't pay for the mere fact of having a store. The cost occurs when a customer purchases your course, Canva template, prompt pack, or e-book.
Let's say you sell a product for PLN 100 and the platform's commission is 8%. After purchase, the sale processing cost is PLN 8, and your bill is PLN 92 before any other transaction fees. The exact cost structure depends on the terms and conditions of your chosen platform, so always check whether the percentage includes payment processing and the applicable refund policy.
In digital sales, the commission model has one major advantage: your costs increase with your revenue. When there are no sales, you're not paying monthly for tools you're not yet using. This gives the author more breathing room to test their first product, price point, or niche.
This doesn't mean, however, that commission always trumps subscription fees. With very large, stable scale, a flat fee may be more profitable per transaction. However, in such cases, you need to honestly consider the full costs: processing time, additional integrations, payment errors, manually assigning access, and monitoring affiliate commissions. These are costs that don't show up in the pricing table, but are clearly visible in your calendar.
Platform, Merchant and Affiliate Commissions are three different things
The word "commission" can easily lead to confusion, as it can mean three completely different calculations. A platform commission is a fee for the sales infrastructure. A seller's commission is the remuneration of the person who closes the sale, for example, during a consultation. An affiliate commission is a portion of the revenue you pay to your partner for a successful referral.
You can have all three elements in one purchase. A customer purchases a course for PLN 199 from an influencer's link, the system identifies the source, charges the affiliate a 30% commission, collects a transaction processing fee, and you keep the rest. There's no guesswork about who pays whom and how much. There's one condition: the system must correctly attribute the click and automatically handle billing.
How to calculate the commission so that it does not eat into the margin?
Don't just set your affiliate commission at random, because 40% sounds attractive to an affiliate. First, calculate how much you're left with from a single sale after all costs. With digital products, you mostly incur the cost of creating the content upfront, but each transaction still has its own costs: platform commission, advertising budget, affiliate commission, returns, and customer service.
The simple formula looks like this: product price minus platform cost minus affiliate commission minus customer acquisition cost equals the amount that finances your profit and growth.
Example: You sell an e-book for PLN 99. The affiliate receives 25%, or PLN 24.75. Sales support costs you 8%, or PLN 7.92. If the customer came through an affiliate, you don't incur advertising costs for that purchase. This leaves you with PLN 66.33 before other operating costs. This can be a great arrangement because you only pay for marketing when a sale actually happens.
The situation is different when you acquire the same customer with a PLN 35 ad. Then, with a PLN 99 price and the associated affiliate commission, you're giving away too much. Don't try to salvage this by simply lowering your affiliate rates. A better move might be to increase your average cart value.
Add a checkbox at checkout with an additional fee of 19 PLN for a set of e-book exercises, or an order bump for 29 PLN with ready-made templates. If every fourth customer uses the add-on, you increase your revenue from the same traffic without adding any additional advertising dollars. The commission is then calculated based on a larger basket, but your bottom line usually grows faster than the cost of service.
Price cannot be separated from the customer acquisition model
A product priced at 29 PLN may be great for entering your audience, but it doesn't handle paid advertising and high affiliate commissions well. A product priced at 149 PLN provides more room for affiliate compensation, campaign testing, and bonuses. There's no single best price. There's a price tailored to whether you're gaining traffic organically, through advertising, or referrals.
Before launching your campaign, write down three scenarios: sales without an affiliate, sales with an affiliate, and sales after advertising. See how much remains in each case. This way, you won't promise a 50% commission to the influencer, only to discover a week later that each sale generates revenue but no money for development.
Affiliate: Commission that buys reach by result
A well- established affiliation is more predictable for the creator than paying upfront for an uncertain publication. The affiliate shares the product with their community, and you only pay them for confirmed sales. It's a win-win arrangement, provided the terms are clear from day one.
Set one rate for standard affiliates, for example, 20%, and a separate rate for those who regularly deliver sales. Don't quietly change rates mid-campaign. Affiliates need to see the number of clicks, orders, and the amount charged. Without transparent data, messages like "I had a sale, but the system didn't count it" appear, and you waste time manually investigating where the customer came from.
Cookies are also important, as they are the mechanism that attributes a purchase to an affiliate link after a click. If a recipient clicks on a referral, returns to make a purchase two days later, and the system loses attribution, the affiliate doesn't receive any money. With one sale, it's an annoyance. With fifty, it's a reason for the affiliate to stop promoting you.
Instead of sending out a mass collaboration offer, write a direct message to five creators whose audience actually has a problem your product solves. Include a ready-made description, three specific benefits, an affiliate link, and a clearly stated rate. This gives the partner something to act on, not another generic pitch to put aside.
What should a platform commission include?
Simply being able to accept payments isn't enough. In knowledge sales, customers expect immediate access. After a successful transaction, they should receive the product without your manual intervention, and you should see the sale result and the source of the purchase in one place.
A good commission infrastructure handles payments, automatic issuance of sales documents, secure access to purchased files, reporting, and affiliate compensation. This prevents you from copying and pasting data between spreadsheets, email inboxes, and multiple panels. Manually transferring files poses a risk of delay, error, and a message from a paid but still waiting customer.
For a Polish creator selling outside of Poland, multi-currency support is also crucial. An e-book priced at €19 or a course priced at $49 shouldn't require a separate sales process. You can test foreign audiences, communicate the price in their currency, and still maintain an automated flow from payment to product access. Sales documents are generated by the system, and you still consult with your accountant for accounting matters.
When is a commission a bad decision?
Commission isn't a magic bullet for every model. Be careful when selling a very low-priced product while simultaneously financing expensive advertising. With a 15 PLN offer, even a small percentage and payment fee can leave you with too little room to acquire a customer.
Caution also comes in handy when it comes to high affiliate rates. A generous commission may attract affiliates, but it's no substitute for a product that actually converts. First, check sales on your own list or in a small campaign. Only then should you invite affiliates, as they don't want to promote an offer that doesn't deliver results.
Don't choose a system based solely on the lowest percentage. If a cheap option requires manual partner counting, a separate invoicing tool, and manual access submission, you're paying with your own time. And your time should be spent on product development, checkout testing, and partner discussions, not copying order data.
It's your turn to move
Calculate one real transaction today: product price, service cost, customer acquisition cost, and affiliate rate. Then see if increasing your cart size by 19 or 29 PLN gives you more room for profit than another attempt to cut your commission by a fraction of a percent.
If you want to sell courses, e-books, and templates without assembling a process of random tools, launch your sales with NetBiznes. You get a single environment that automatically guides customers from click through payment and affiliate settlement to immediate access to the product. Take advantage of the promotional period with reduced commissions to get started, test your own offer, and make decisions based on data, not guesswork.