Pay per click or lead (CPC & CPL)
When to use cost-per-click and cost-per-lead, how to set each up, the affiliate experience, and how Rekomi keeps them fraud-resistant.
Most Rekomi programs pay on a sale (the Per sale model, one-time or recurring). Two models pay earlier in the funnel: CPC pays per click, and CPL pays per qualified lead. This guide covers when to reach for each and how to set them up.
CPC and CPL are rolling out. You can configure per-click and per-lead campaigns, but click and lead commissions are not minted yet. The neutral measurement, fraud-filtering, and aggregation described below ship when these models go live. Per-sale (CPS) campaigns are fully live today.
Which one to use
| You want to reward... | Use | Pays on |
|---|---|---|
| A sale or recurring revenue | Per sale | a paid invoice |
| A qualified lead (trial, demo, waitlist) | CPL | a form submission |
| Raw traffic to your site | CPC | a tracked click |
CPC is rare for SaaS (clicks don't guarantee value) and best for paid content or syndication deals. CPL fits products with a free trial or demo, where a signup is worth a known amount to you. Both require a Starter plan or above.
CPC and CPL are invite-only. There is no public sign-up page for these campaigns and they are not listed in the creator network. You invite each partner and set their rate (per partner, or via a partner group), so paying per click or lead stays bounded by who you approve plus an optional campaign budget cap, not an open bounty anyone can claim. Auto-approve and public discoverability are turned off automatically for CPC/CPL.
Set up a CPC campaign
- Create or edit a campaign and set the commission model to
CPC. The type locks to Fixed (a click has no amount to take a percentage of). Set the value, for example$0.50per click. - Affiliates share their neutral tracking link,
rekomi.link/{their-slug}. A visitor who clicks it is counted on Rekomi's edge, then forwarded to your campaign's destination URL. - Clicks are de-duplicated per device and bot-filtered, then aggregated into commissions hourly. Affiliates see their click count and earnings on their campaign page.
Because the click is measured on Rekomi's side (not your server), neither you nor the affiliate can quietly change the number, which is what makes per-click payouts trustworthy.
Set up a CPL campaign
- Set the commission model to
CPL. The type locks to Fixed. Set the value, for example$10per lead. - Affiliates share a Rekomi-hosted lead form,
/lead/{their-slug}. A prospect who fills it in becomes a lead attributed to that affiliate. - Every submission must pass a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge, email-format and disposable-domain checks, and a self-lead guard before it earns. Duplicate submissions from the same person (including plus-aliases) are counted once.
A lead earns the moment a valid form is submitted, you do not wait for a sale. If a trial later converts, you can run a separate sale-based campaign alongside.
Rates, groups, budgets, and links
- Invite partners and set their rate. From the campaign, invite a partner and set their
$ per click/$ per lead. The campaign's default rate is just a fallback; a partner's own rate always wins. - Partner groups (rate tiers). On the Commissions tab, create groups (for example "Standard $0.30/click", "Premium $0.50/click") and assign partners to one from the partner's detail page. Rate precedence is per-partner override → group → campaign default. One group can be the default that new partners inherit.
- Budget cap. Set an optional campaign budget (CPC/CPL only). Once the campaign's commission reaches it, new clicks and leads stop earning. Live spent / remaining shows on the Commissions tab.
- Multiple destination links (CPC). A partner can create several
rekomi.link/{slug}links pointing to different pages on your own site (deep links), each tracked separately. Destinations are validated to your campaign's domain, so the neutral link can never be pointed at an arbitrary site.
Keeping CPC and CPL honest
Because these models pay without a purchase behind them, Rekomi filters quality up front rather than clawing it back later. See Commission models, Fraud and quality for the full list (neutral measurement, de-duplication, bot and anonymizer filtering, self-dealing guards). CPC and CPL commissions are not refundable the way sales are.
To stop a bad actor, reject or ban the partner from the Affiliates tab, or use the Fraud tab on the campaign. The Fraud queue lists the signals Rekomi flagged and already dropped (bot traffic, anonymized IPs, self-leads); from there you can dismiss a false positive, mark it resolved, or ban the partner. Banning stops their future clicks and leads from earning immediately.