Affiliate terms & commission monitoring

Your earnings are defined by a document you don't control and rarely re-read: the program's terms and commission page. This guide covers exactly what to monitor on that page, why a scheduled diff is far more reliable than re-reading it, and how to turn "the deal changed" into an alert instead of a surprise.

What to monitor on a terms / commission page

• RevShare percentage. The headline number. A downward move (e.g. 40% → 25%) is the single most painful change and is often buried in an otherwise-unchanged paragraph.
• CPA and hybrid deal terms. The flat amount, the qualifying criteria, and the mix in a hybrid deal.
• Qualifying / NGR definitions. Changing what counts as a "qualified player" or how Net Gaming Revenue is calculated can cut your effective rate without touching the headline percentage.
• Cookie / attribution window. A shorter window means fewer of your referrals get credited.
• Negative carryover. Whether a negative balance resets monthly or is carried forward — and whether a "no negative carryover" promise is still present.
• Payment terms. Minimum payout, methods, schedule, and any new fees.
• GEO / restricted markets. The list of jurisdictions you can and can't send traffic from.
• Program status. Any closure, suspension, or "going direct" language — and whether the page still loads at all.

Why a scheduled diff beats re-reading

Terms pages are long, dense, and edited surgically. The change that costs you money is usually one number or one clause inside thousands of words. Re-reading the whole page on a human schedule fails for obvious reasons — you won't, and if you do, you'll miss the one edited line.

A scheduled diff inverts the problem. It stores a clean snapshot of the page, and on each run compares the new version to the old one:

• It normalises cosmetic noise first. Cookie banners, CSRF tokens, ad slots and whitespace are stripped before comparison, so you aren't alerted on chrome that changes every load.
• It shows the exact added/removed lines. You see "40%" become "25%", not "the page changed".
• It classifies the change. Commission cut, payment change, GEO restriction, closure — each with a severity, so the urgent ones stand out.

How to set it up

1. Collect the public terms / commission URL for each program you run.
2. Take a baseline snapshot of each.
3. Re-snapshot on a schedule (daily for revenue-heavy programs), diffing against the baseline.
4. Route adverse changes to wherever you'll actually see them — email, Slack, or Telegram via RSS.

The open-source affiliate-watch engine does all of this — snapshot, normalise, diff, classify, and emit a report / JSON / RSS feed — with transparent rules you can inspect and a test suite that proves the classification.