Most creators pay the same affiliate commission on every single payment — forever. If someone brought in a member on a recurring $200+/week product with a 30% commission, that affiliate is getting paid 30% on week 47 for a sale they made once, months ago.

Here's the fix that actually protects your margin without screwing over the people who bring you business:

Step the commission down after the first payment.

• Payment 1 (acquisition): full commission, e.g. 25-30%. The affiliate did the work of finding and converting the member — pay them well for it.

• Payments 2-3: step down to half, e.g. 10-15%. There's a short tail where the affiliate relationship still matters (they might follow up, answer questions, etc).

• Payment 4+: drop to 0% default, or move the affiliate to a smaller flat override if they're actively still engaged with that member.

On Whop this takes two settings: your product's global affiliate commission handles the default first-payment rate, and override affiliates let you set custom persistent rates for specific partners who negotiate different terms (e.g. a partner who does ongoing retention work for their referred members might deserve a small ongoing override instead of $0 after payment 3).

The mistake isn't paying affiliates — it's paying them the same structure for acquisition work and retention work when those are two completely different jobs. Separate the split from day one and you protect months of margin without ever having a single awkward conversation about "renegotiating" commissions later.

If you're running any recurring membership with affiliates, pull your last 90 days of affiliate payouts this week and check: are you still paying full commission on renewal payments from 6+ months ago? If yes, that's money you can recover today just by adjusting the structure going forward.