One Login for Every Affiliate Link: What It Costs

Applying to affiliate programs one at a time is tedious. Each wants its own application, approval, dashboard, payout threshold and tax form. Four stores in, most people give up.

So: is there one place that just gives you a link for any store? There are several. They are worth using - and worth understanding before you route everything through one.

#Three different things get called this

They are not variations of one product. They solve different problems and they suit different creators.

Sub-affiliate networks. You join the network, search a store, paste a product URL, get a tracked link. The network holds the merchant relationships and pays you a share. Cuelinks, EarnKaro and INRDeals in India. This is the one most people mean.

Automatic link converters. You add one line of JavaScript to a site you own, and ordinary outbound product links become affiliate links without you touching them. Skimlinks and Sovrn Commerce. Built for publishers with a website, not for someone working from a phone.

Creator commerce apps. A storefront inside someone else's shopping app, with brand relationships and often gifting attached. LTK and ShopMy. Different bargain entirely: you get an audience and a curation surface, but the storefront is theirs.

EarnKaro's ₹10 threshold is the one to notice - most programs strand your first few hundred rupees behind a floor you cannot reach for months. Cuelinks is free, carries over 1,000 programs and approves in a day or two. Sovrn reaches 50,000+ merchants but expects a site to put its script on.

#What it costs, concretely

The cut is not hidden, just easy to miss: the rate on a network's merchant page is usually gross - what the store pays the network, before the network's share comes out.

Skimlinks states its split plainly: it keeps 25%, you get 75%. On a $100 sale at a 25% merchant rate, the $25 commission is split $18.75 to you.

The clearer way to see the cost is to compare the same store both ways:

Roughly a third of the commission, on one of India's largest beauty retailers. The full breakdown is here, but the shape holds generally: for a store big enough to run its own program, direct pays more.

#When one login is the right answer

Four cases where it clearly is:

• You have no website. Most direct programs, including Amazon Associates, want a site, app or channel to review. EarnKaro and INRDeals do not.
• You link a lot of small stores. Ten stores paying you ₹200 a month each will never clear ten separate payout thresholds. One dashboard aggregates them into one payment.
• You are still finding out what your audience buys. Applying to a program is a commitment; generating a link is not. Use one platform, watch what actually converts, then go direct on the winners.
• You want to start this week. One approval instead of eight.

And two cases where it is the wrong answer:

• Your top store. If most of your commission comes from one retailer, the cut you are paying on it is your largest avoidable cost.
• When the store has a better creator program than an affiliate one. Myntra has no public affiliate sign-up at all - earning runs through a program inside its app, at rates no network can match.

#The part that is rarely mentioned

Every link you generate through an aggregator points at that aggregator's domain first, and resolves through their tracking.

Which means:

• If you stop using the platform, those links stop earning. Not just the new ones - every link already in an old caption, an old video description, a saved post.
• You do not hold the merchant relationship. No rate negotiation, no account manager, no early access. You are the network's publisher, not the store's affiliate.
• Attribution passes through one more hop. Every extra redirect is another place a click can be dropped.

None of that is a reason to avoid them. It is a reason not to build your whole catalogue on one, and to keep your own record of what you linked and where.

#A sensible setup

The arrangement that survives contact with reality, in order:

1. Go direct on your top two or three stores. The ones you actually recommend, where the rate difference is real money.
2. Add one aggregator for everything else. EarnKaro if you work from a phone, Cuelinks if you want the widest Indian catalogue, Skimlinks if you publish on a site of your own - all linked in the table above. Two is not better than one: it splits your data and your thresholds for nothing.
3. Keep the links somewhere you own. A network dashboard is not a destination you can send people to. Whatever you use, the page your audience lands on should be yours, so that changing networks means editing links rather than rebuilding an audience.

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In short: one login for everything is real, and the right way to start. Then watch which stores actually earn and take those direct. The aggregator keeps its value on the long tail - which is where the tedium was.

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