Sub-Affiliate
A sub-affiliate is a partner recruited by another affiliate, who earns an override commission on the traffic their recruits send.
What it means
Sub-affiliation lets an existing affiliate recruit other affiliates under their account. The recruiter (the master affiliate) earns an override — typically 2-10% of the revenue share or CPA generated by their recruits — while the sub-affiliate is paid their own standard deal. The operator gets reach into channels it would never have found alone; the master affiliate turns their network into passive income.
Why it matters for operators
Sub-affiliate programmes scale acquisition without scaling the affiliate management team, but they blur accountability. Compliance obligations (advertising standards, licensed-market targeting) still land on the operator even when the offending banner was placed by a sub-affiliate three layers removed. A workable programme pays overrides AND enforces the same vetting, tracking and content rules at every tier — and caps the tiers, because each layer adds margin cost and compliance distance.
Example
A master affiliate running an SEO portfolio recruits 15 streamers as sub-affiliates on a 5% override. The streamers deliver 400 FTDs a month; the master earns the override on all of them without producing a single new page — and the operator's affiliate manager handles one relationship instead of sixteen.