Run a pay-per-lead affiliate program.
A pay-per-lead affiliate program pays partners a fixed bounty for each qualified lead, a demo, a trial, a waitlist signup, instead of waiting on a sale. Rekomi runs the whole thing: invite-only partners, a per-lead rate you set, a budget cap, and real-time fraud scoring so you never pay for a bot-filled form.
- Invite-only
- Budget-capped
- Every lead fraud-scored
Reward the lead when the sale closes later.
Cost-per-sale is the safe default, but sometimes the action worth paying for happens before the purchase. Pay-per-lead is the right call when:
You close on a call, so a booked, qualified demo is the action worth rewarding.
The trial is the commitment; the paid conversion comes later in the funnel.
You are building a launch list, and a confirmed signup is real progress.
Long sales cycles where a lead today becomes revenue weeks from now.
Partners who are great at driving signups but do not control the checkout.
Marketing-qualified leads your sales team works, not instant sign-up-and-buy sales.
Live in an afternoon, honest by design.
A confirmed-email trial account, a completed demo form, a verified signup. The tighter the definition, the less junk you pay for.
A fixed amount you can pay profitably given your lead-to-customer rate. Add an optional campaign budget cap so spend never runs away.
Pay-per-lead campaigns are invite-only (a sale campaign that adds a per-lead reward can stay public), so paying per lead stays bounded by who you approve, not an open bounty anyone can farm.
Capture it from a Rekomi-hosted form or post it server-side from your backend, so attribution does not depend on a pixel.
Every lead is fraud-scored before it earns, and Rekomi sends the payout (W-9/W-8 already collected at onboarding) to the right partner.
Price the bounty against what a lead is worth.
Scaled to how much a qualified lead is worth to you. A low-ticket signup sits near the bottom; a high-value B2B demo can be worth far more. Set it per partner or per partner group.
You sell a $50/mo product (about $600 lifetime value) and 1 in 8 qualified trials converts. A $15 bounty means 8 leads cost $120 and produce one $600 customer: partner cost near 20% of lifetime value. If a bad actor floods 200 fake trials, real-time scoring holds them out of payment and they cost you nothing.
The moment you pay per lead, fraud is the whole game.
A fake lead is a direct payout, so every lead is scored against live IP reputation (proxy, VPN, Tor, datacenter, and bot signals plus a blended fraud score) before it can be paid. High-risk leads are quarantined for your review, and the system fails closed, so an unscored lead never earns.
See how fraud protection works →Pay per lead, per sale, and per click on the same campaign.
You do not have to choose one model per campaign. Under “What do you pay affiliates for?” tick Sales, Leads and Clicks in any combination and set a rate for each: $10 for each qualified lead, 20% of every sale that lead becomes, and a few cents per validated click if the partner drives raw traffic too. Partners see every leg on their invite and campaign page, the budget caps click and lead spend only, and partner-specific rates keep applying to the main leg.
How combining works →What is a pay-per-lead affiliate program?
A pay-per-lead affiliate program pays partners a fixed bounty for each qualified lead they send, such as a demo request, trial signup, or waitlist join, instead of a share of a sale. It fits when the valuable action happens before the purchase and the lead itself is worth rewarding.
How much should I pay per lead?
Work backward from what a lead is worth. If 1 in 8 qualified trials becomes a customer worth $600, a $15 bounty keeps your partner cost near 20% of that customer's value. Typical per-lead bounties run from a few dollars to $50 or more, scaled to your lead-to-customer rate.
How do you stop fake or low-quality leads?
Every lead passes a bot challenge, email-format and disposable-domain checks, a self-lead guard, per-campaign de-duplication, and real-time IP fraud scoring (proxy, VPN, Tor, datacenter, and bot detection) before it can earn. High-risk leads are held out of payment for your review.
Is it different from cost-per-sale?
Yes. Cost-per-sale pays only when a sale closes and is the safest default. Pay-per-lead pays earlier, for the qualified lead, which recruits partners who fill your pipeline before the sale. You can run both at once, a different model per campaign.
Can I pay per lead and per sale on the same campaign?
Yes. A Rekomi campaign can pay for any combination of leads, sales and clicks. Tick more than one option when you set the commission and give each its own rate: $10 per qualified lead plus 20% of every sale is the classic pairing for a free trial. Partners see every leg on their invite, the budget caps lead and click spend only, and sale commissions follow the commission length you choose. A campaign that pays per sale can stay open to public sign-up even with a per-lead reward.
Also paying for traffic, or for the sales those leads become? See pay-per-click affiliate programs, or the pay per click and per lead overview (CPC and CPL). New to the model? Read how to run a pay-per-lead or pay-per-click program.
Launch a pay-per-lead program this afternoon.
Set your per-lead bounty, invite your partners, and let Rekomi validate every lead and handle the payouts.
- 14-day free trial
- Cancel anytime, $0 charged