How to start a supplement affiliate program: a network or your own, payouts from break-even and the FTC's rules

To start a supplement affiliate program, first decide who sells to the buyer. A network such as ClickBank, Digistore24 or BuyGoods takes the payment, pays affiliates and reviews your offer; your own program keeps your checkout and leaves tracking, payouts and policing to you. Set payouts below your break-even CPA, claw them back on refunds, and give affiliates approved claims: the FTC holds you responsible for what they say.

How to start a supplement affiliate program: a network or your own

The two models differ in who the buyer pays. On a network, it's the network. ClickBank says it is "the retailer of products on this site": the order form is ClickBank's, and affiliates are paid "directly from ClickBank for each sale, out of the funds collected from the transaction" (How ClickBank Works). Digistore24's pricing page calls it a "Full MoR", a merchant of record, and "the legal entity responsible for every transaction" (Digistore24). BuyGoods' terms say each order "must be accepted by BuyGoods", with the payment received before it accepts (BuyGoods).

That decides where your VSL ends. On a network, its buy button leads to the network's order form; Digistore24 makes this a written rule, and direct links to payment providers it isn't integrated with aren't permitted. In your own program, buyers pay on your checkout and affiliates are traffic sources with tracked links. Each model leaves you different work:

A network or your own program

Who does what in each model

The network sells to the buyerA network or marketplace

• Takes the payment on its own order form and stands as the seller
• Pays affiliates out of each sale, on its own schedule
• Runs refunds and chargebacks through its own system
• Reviews your offer before it can run
• Brings a marketplace of affiliates looking for offers

The catch: a fee on every sale, its refund rules for your buyers and its order form at the end of your VSL.

You sell; affiliates send trafficYour own program

• Your checkout, on a payment processor that accepts supplements
• Tracking software that credits each sale to the right affiliate
• Your own terms: payouts, holds, clawbacks and approved claims
• Recruiting and vetting every affiliate yourself
• Paying affiliates from your own account

The catch: no network fee, but the processor, the tracking, the payouts and the policing are all yours.

A network is the quicker start, especially before you have a payment processor that accepts supplements. Either way, the economics and the compliance below are yours to get right.

ClickBank vs Digistore24 vs BuyGoods, in their own words

ClickBank, Digistore24 and BuyGoods, the networks our nutra marketing guide names, each publish their own rules. They differ where your margin is decided: the fee, the refund window, when money moves and what a supplement has to prove before it runs. Here is what their own pages said in October 2026. Fees change, so check the live page before you sign:

Three supplement networks, in their own words

From each network's own pages; fees as of October 2026

ClickBankDigistore24BuyGoods

ClickBank: “the retailer”

ClickBank splits what remains after its fee, tax and shipping between you and the affiliate, as a revenue share or a CPA.

• Fees: a one-time $49.95 activation fee when your first product is approved, then 7.5% + $1 of each sale, and $5 on each payout
• Refunds: 60 days by default, adjustable from 30 to 90 days per product; a refund debits the payouts from that sale from your account and the affiliate's
• Payouts: weekly or every two weeks once you pass a threshold, $100 by default, with a 10% return allowance held for about 12 weeks
• Chargebacks: a fee on each one: $22 while your rate is under 1%, $29 plus ClickBank's margin from 1% to 1.49%, and $49 plus its margin above 1.5%; at 2% or more, ClickBank wants action within 48 hours

Digistore24: the merchant of record

US sales run through Digistore24 Inc., which also covers Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Digistore24 says it takes care of payment processing, refunds, chargebacks and taxes.

• Fees: “starting at 2.9% + $1 per sale”, with a final rate that varies by product type, traffic source and volume; no monthly, setup or activation fee
• Refunds: your sales page must show the return period: 60, 90 or 180 days for sales through Digistore24 Inc.
• Payouts: weekly for vendors, more often for affiliates
• Shipping: Digistore24 doesn't ship physical products; your own fulfillment provider does

BuyGoods: a curated marketplace

BuyGoods calls itself “the performance marketplace for health & wellness vendors and affiliates”, open to experienced affiliates and vendors only.

• Payment: BuyGoods accepts each order, takes the payment and appears on the buyer's bank statement
• Fees: none published for vendors
• Refunds: its buyer terms accept returns within 60 days of purchase
• Payouts: affiliates are paid weekly, on Wednesdays, and more often at higher revenue tiers

Affiliate applications are reviewed by hand, and some offers must be applied for before an affiliate can run them.

ClickBank's list for physical supplements is specific: final label artwork for every SKU, copies of any warning letters, complaints or consent decrees, proof of liability insurance with Click Sales Inc. named as an additional insured, and possible testing by a lab of ClickBank's choice, at your expense, for sexual enhancement and nootropic supplements and some weight-loss and testosterone products. ClickBank estimates the insurance at a minimum of $2,000 to $4,000 a year, and says FDA-regulated products must ship from the US and only to US addresses (Selling Physical Products).

Digistore24 sends supplement brands to its compliance team, because supplements need special approval (US approval criteria). For US sales it asks for a certificate of analysis and the label, and its lawyers examine every dietary supplement again (Digistore24 help center). None of this approval is a regulator's, either: ClickBank says its role as a retailer "does not constitute an endorsement, approval or review" of the products it sells.

Set the payout below your break-even CPA

An affiliate's payout is your ad cost for the order, so it has the same ceiling as any ad: what one order leaves before marketing, your break-even CPA (which costs belong in it). Pay more and every sale an affiliate brings loses money on the first order.

Say your average order through ClickBank is $150. The product costs you $18 and shipping and fulfillment $9, ClickBank keeps 7.5% + $1 (its fee as of October 2026), and refunds and chargebacks take 10% of revenue. Enter the network's percentage where a processor's fee would go and its $1 under other costs:

Calculator

Break-even ROAS and CPA calculator

Your numbers per order. Below the break-even ROAS, every order loses money before fixed costs.

Average order value$Product cost per order$Shipping and fulfillment per order$Payment fees (% of the order)%Refunds and chargebacks (% of revenue)%Other costs per order$

Break-even ROAS

1.57x

Profit per order before ads

$95.75

Contribution margin

63.8%

Break-even cost per order (CPA)

$95.75

ROAS = revenue ÷ ad spend. Refunds are counted as revenue you give back; the product cost and shipping of a refunded order are already spent.

Reset to the example

That leaves $95.75 an order: the most a CPA payout can be before the first sale stops paying for itself. Pay $70 and you keep $25.75 an order. Pay $95.75 and you keep nothing, so the program lives on whatever buyers order next.

ClickBank's smaller charges, $5 on each payout and $0.50 or $1 on most refunds, barely move that number, and the one-time $49.95 activation fee doesn't belong in it. Fixed costs come out of what you keep instead: ClickBank's estimate for the insurance it asks for starts at $2,000 a year, which at $25.75 an order takes 78 orders to cover. If you also buy ads to the same funnel yourself, the 1.57x break-even ROAS the calculator shows is the line for those.

Three things move the ceiling:

• Clawbacks. If payouts on refunded orders come back, you pay on kept orders only. With 10% of orders refunded, a $106.39 payout then costs the same $95.75 an order on average. On ClickBank, a refund debits the payouts from that sale from both accounts, though ClickBank says who covers refunds depends on whether the deal is a revenue share or a CPA.
• What buyers order next. Reorders, upsells and subscriptions can justify paying above the first-order break-even. Work out your allowable CPA over 60 days and over a customer's life with the target CPA post, and pay above the first order only from cash you'll have when the payouts fall due.
• A revenue share instead of a CPA. On ClickBank, a revenue share is a percentage of what's left after its fee, tax and shipping. Turn your ceiling into that percentage and check it on your smallest and largest bundle, because a percentage pays more on a six-bottle order than on one bottle.

Write the terms before the first affiliate applies

Terms are where the program's economics and its compliance meet. Put these in writing, and have every affiliate accept them before their first click:

• Payout, hold and clawback. The CPA or revenue share, when it's paid, and what's reversed if an order is refunded or charged back. Hold payouts long enough to see most refunds, or pay sooner and claw back, but write down which.
• Approved claims and pages. The claims affiliates may use, word for word, the pages they may send traffic to, and the ads or presells you've reviewed.
• Disclosure. The words affiliates must use to say they're paid, and where those words go.
• What's banned. Disease claims, invented testimonials, fake news pages and cookie stuffing, plus incentivized clicks and search ads on your brand name unless you allow them on conditions you set.
• Consequences. What follows a first breach and a second: a warning, withheld payouts, removal.

On a network, its own rules sit on top of yours, and its approval comes first. Have a lawyer read your terms before launch: this post summarizes the rules, and it isn't legal advice. Here is how the terms play out for one affiliate, from application to payout:

One affiliate, from application to payout

What a reasonable program does at each stage

1. 1Apply
2. 2Brief
3. 3Track
4. 4Monitor
5. 5Pay
6. 6Act

1Vet the affiliate

What happens: Ask where and how they will promote you: traffic sources, sample ads and the pages they plan to use.

Why it matters: You answer for what affiliates say, so the risk starts with who you let in.

What goes wrong:

• Accepting everyone to grow the headcount
• No written record of what they said they would do

2Hand over approved claims and pages

What happens: The claims they may use, the pages they may send traffic to, the disclosure wording and the banned list.

Why it matters: The FTC expects advertisers to explain what network members can and can't say, and how to disclose.

What goes wrong:

• A swipe file with claims your evidence doesn't support
• No disclosure wording, so each affiliate improvises

Read more: FTC Endorsement Guides: Testimonials and Disclosures

3Credit each sale

What happens: The network's tracking, or your own software, ties each order to the affiliate who sent it.

Why it matters: Payouts, clawbacks and fraud checks all run on that record.

What goes wrong:

• Credit for clicks the buyer never made
• Sales credited by hand, with no record of why

4Check what they publish

What happens: Search for your brand and product names on a schedule, in ads and on pages; Meta's Ad Library lists the active ads running on Meta's apps.

Why it matters: The FTC tells advertisers to periodically search for what network members are saying.

What goes wrong:

• Checking only at sign-up
• Keeping an affiliate who breaks the rules because it sells

5Pay after the hold

What happens: Pay on the schedule in your terms, net of refunds and chargebacks inside the clawback window.

Why it matters: A payout made before the refunds arrive is money you may not get back.

What goes wrong:

• Weekly payouts on a 60-day guarantee with no clawback
• Clawbacks that aren't in the signed terms

6Act on problems

What happens: Warn, withhold or remove, in the order your terms set out, and keep a record of each step.

Why it matters: The FTC's FAQ tells advertisers to take appropriate action when they find questionable practices.

What goes wrong:

• No written consequences, so every case becomes a negotiation
• Warnings with no follow-up

Approved pages are easiest to hold when the page is yours. If affiliates send traffic to your hosted VSL, you control every word on it; the weak point is a copy you never approved. In RevvyScales, embed security limits which domains may embed a VSL's player, so the video can't play inside an affiliate's own page with claims of its own around it (embed security). It won't stop a screen recording, and it doesn't touch what an affiliate says in its ads.

Your affiliates' claims are your claims

Under the FTC's Endorsement Guides, advertisers are "subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements", and for failing to disclose unexpected material connections (16 CFR 255.1). An affiliate's commission is such a connection: the Guides' own example says reviews with affiliate links "should clearly and conspicuously disclose the compensation".

The FTC's FAQ for businesses spells out what that means for a brand with a network of promoters: advertisers "need to have reasonable programs in place to train and monitor members of their network", scaled to the risk that their deceptive practices could harm consumers, and "Your company is ultimately responsible for what others do on your behalf" (FTC). Supplement claims are about health, which argues for a tight program, with claims and pages approved in advance. For the disclosure itself, the FTC suggests "I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post"; a bare "affiliate link" may not be understood.

The FAQ adds some reassurance: with a reasonable program in place, one rogue affiliate is unlikely to bring enforcement against you. That reassurance depends on the program existing. The full disclosure rules, placement included, are in our Endorsement Guides post.

Control and responsibility arrive together, as an affiliate network found in court. In FTC v. LeadClick Media, affiliates sold acai berry and "colon cleanse" free trials through fake news sites. In September 2016 a federal appeals court held the network "directly liable for its own deceptive conduct", with no Section 230 immunity, because it had helped create the deceptive content (opinion). According to the FTC, the court upheld an $11.9 million payment and found that LeadClick "knew that the news sites were phony and actively participated in creating their content" (FTC).

Writing about the first ruling in 2015, the FTC's business blog pointed out that LeadClick could approve or reject its affiliates' sites and gave them feedback on what they said: "'Who, me?' isn't likely to be a persuasive defense to allegations of deception" (FTC blog). The ruling rested on what LeadClick knew and did, and that's the lesson for a brand: the review that protects you from bad affiliates also makes you answerable for what you approve.

Watch for cookie stuffing and the chargebacks bad traffic brings

Cookie stuffing drops an affiliate's tracking cookie on visitors who never clicked the affiliate's link, so the affiliate is credited for sales it didn't cause. It has been prosecuted as wire fraud: in 2014 a California man was sentenced to 15 months in prison after free web applications he made gave users' browsers a cookie carrying his company's eBay affiliate ID, "even though the user did not click on an eBay ad or link" (US Attorney's Office). Ask how each affiliate gets its traffic, and question credited sales that don't match the clicks it says it sends.

The other abuses are mostly a matter of terms: incentivized clicks, where people are paid or rewarded to click, and search ads on your brand name, which catch buyers who were already looking for you. Allow them, limit them or ban them, but in writing.

Then watch refunds and chargebacks per affiliate, not just in total. A program-wide rate can hide the one affiliate whose buyers keep asking for their money back:

Refund rate by affiliate, one month

Illustrative program: share of each affiliate's orders refunded

Affiliate A20 of 500 orders4%

Affiliate B15 of 300 orders5%

Affiliate C30 of 200 orders15%

All affiliates65 of 1,000 orders6.5%

A run of refunds from one affiliate points at what it promises or how it buys traffic, so ask for its ads and pages before you ask for more volume. Chargebacks follow the same pattern and cost more. In your own program, those disputes land on your merchant account, where the card networks count them against you (how the networks count chargebacks); on ClickBank, each one carries a fee that rises with your account's chargeback rate, from $22 under 1% to $49 plus ClickBank's margin above 1.5%. LeadClick shows the wrong reflex here too: the FTC's blog noted that it treated merchant accounts closed over chargebacks, a warning sign of unhappy consumers, as a problem to work around.

Before you launch the program

Go through this list with your numbers, your terms and the network's rules open:

Before you launch the program

• Decide who sells to the buyer: a network's order form or your own checkout
• Read the network's supplement rules and gather what it asks for: labels, certificates, insurance, any warning letters
• Work out your break-even CPA with the network's fee in it, and set the payout below it
• Match the payout hold or clawback to your refund window
• Write the approved claims, pages and disclosure wording affiliates will get
• Put the banned list in writing: disease claims, fake news pages, cookie stuffing, and your rules on brand bidding and incentivized clicks
• Name who searches for affiliates' ads and pages, and how often
• Track refunds and chargebacks per affiliate, not just in total
• Write down what happens when an affiliate breaks the terms

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