Farnborough
Nice
Why Headline Commission Rate Is the Wrong Way to Rank Affiliate Programmes
One £1,800 commission from a single charter pays the same as roughly 17 hotel bookings at a 6% rate on a £1,800 stay. Yet most roundups of the highest paying affiliate programme options sort by the percentage on the banner, so a 40% claim on a £90 product outranks a 10% share of an £18,000 trip. The order says nothing about what lands in your account.
Rate is only one of four inputs. A 40% rate on a £90 basket pays £36, while 10% of £18,000 pays £1,800. The gap is basket size, and a rate-only ranking hides it completely.
The other two inputs are quieter. Conversion decides how many of your leads ever reach a payable event, and payment terms decide how long the money is tied up and how much of it is reversed. Hotel networks commonly hold commission for 60 to 90 days after the stay and reverse it on cancellation, and card issuers claw back bounties on accounts closed within a set window.
Fixed bounties need their own warning. A £150 card bounty is flat, so it never grows with the quality of your audience, and referred traffic is approved for premium cards far less often than the issuer's headline marketing implies.
A fair ranking needs one comparable unit. This article uses expected earnings per qualified lead, and every figure below is a modelling assumption, not a quoted rate. Check each programme's current terms before building a plan on any of them. Ask for the written schedule covering the rate, attribution window, reversal rules and payment date before you promote anything.
The Earnings-per-Qualified-Lead Method: Rate, Basket Size, Conversion and Time to Pay
A qualified lead here is a named person who has asked for a quote, an application pack or an availability check, not a click. Counting clicks inflates every programme equally and tells you nothing about which one pays.
The formula is short: commission per booking, multiplied by the conversion rate from qualified lead to payable event, multiplied by one minus the reversal rate. Commission per booking is the rate times the basket, or the flat bounty where one applies.
The assumptions used throughout are these:
- Hotel booking network: 6% of a £1,800 stay, 4% conversion, 15% reversal on cancellations.
- Airline and card programme: £150 flat bounty, 5% approval and activation, 10% clawback.
- Villas and yachts: 8% of a £14,000 week, 3% conversion, 5% reversal.
- Wealth management: £1,000 first-year introducer fee (a 20% share of a 1% annual fee on £500,000), 1.5% conversion, no reversal in year one.
- Private jet charter: 10% of an £18,000 first booked trip, 2.5% conversion, 3% reversal.
Time to pay stays as a separate column, because cash timing matters differently to a newsletter publisher with fixed costs and a consultant with a salary. Charter commission is typically payable within 30 days of the flight, hotel networks 60 to 90 days after the stay, and card bounties once the issuer confirms activation. Wealth-management fees follow account funding and a compliance check.
The charter reversal rate is lowest because commission is calculated on trips that have been flown, not on deposits. An £18,000 basket is a blended figure: a Phenom 300E, which seats up to eight and has a range of roughly 2,000 nm, covers Farnborough (EGLF) to Nice (LFMN) in about 1 hour 50 minutes for £9,000 to £13,000 one way. Clients choosing that sector may also consider the Citation CJ4 or the Learjet 75 Liberty, which price in a similar band. A Gulfstream G450 from London to Dubai, around 6 hours 30 minutes in the air, runs closer to £60,000 to £80,000 one way.
2026 Ranking: Hotel Networks, Airline and Card Programmes, Villas and Yachts, Wealth Management and Private Jet Charter
Ranked by modelled earnings per qualified lead, private jet charter comes first at about £43.65, and hotel networks come last at about £3.67. The middle places are closer than the extremes suggest.
1. Private jet charter, about £43.65 per lead. A 10% introducer commission on the first booked trip is £1,800 on the blended basket, and a reversal rate of 3% leaves £1,746. At 2.5% conversion that is £43.65 for every qualified lead. Repeat trips from the same client can add further commission, depending on the programme terms, which the other categories rarely match.
2. Villas and yachts, about £31.92 per lead. An 8% share of a £14,000 week is £1,120, and the 5% reversal leaves £1,064. Conversion is lower at 3%, because villa and yacht buyers compare more listings and plan further ahead. Seasonality is sharp: most bookings cluster between January and April for summer weeks.
3. Wealth management, about £15.00 per lead. The £1,000 first-year fee is the largest per-conversion figure after charter, but 1.5% conversion and heavy regulation hold it down. In the UK, introducers must disclose the arrangement clearly, and many firms restrict who may refer. The recurring fee in years two and three lifts the lifetime figure, but this is not cash you can spend this quarter.
4. Airline and card programmes, about £6.75 per lead. A £150 bounty at 5% approval gives £7.50, and a 10% clawback trims it to £6.75. The strength is predictability: approvals arrive quickly and the audience size needed is modest.
5. Hotel booking networks, about £3.67 per lead. The 6% rate on a £1,800 stay is £108, and 15% reversal on cancellations leaves £91.80. The 4% conversion is the highest in the table, which is why hotels remain useful as a volume floor.
Worked Comparison: One Hundred Qualified Leads Across Five Programme Types
Take 100 qualified leads from an audience that travels at the upper end of the market. The table shows what each programme pays on average, using the assumptions above.
| Programme type | Expected payable events | Expected earnings | Typical time to pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private jet charter | 2.5 | £4,365 | About 30 days after flight |
| Villas and yachts | 3.0 | £3,192 | After the stay or charter week |
| Wealth management | 1.5 | £1,500 | After funding and compliance checks |
| Airline and card | 5.0 | £675 | After activation |
| Hotel network | 4.0 | £367 | 60 to 90 days after stay |
Charter earns almost 12 times what the hotel network does from the same 100 leads, on fewer than two thirds as many payable events (2.5 against 4.0). That is the basket effect: a charter booking is worth about 19 hotel bookings once rate and reversal are applied.
The average hides lumpy outcomes. At 2.5% conversion, the chance of 100 qualified leads producing no charter booking at all is about 8% (0.975 raised to the power of 100). For hotels at 4% it is about 1.7%, and for cards at 5% about 0.6%. Charter income arrives in large, irregular payments, which suits a publisher or adviser with other revenue, and suits a publisher living month to month much less.
Two charter bookings of £18,000 each produce £3,600 before reversal, whereas the same two-booking month from a hotel network produces £216. If you can wait for the first payout, the charter route is the best-paid programme in this comparison. If you cannot, the table tells you to pair it with something that pays faster.
Where Private Jet Charter Does Not Win, and How to Choose the Right Mix for Your Audience
The charter advantage rests on conversion staying at or above roughly 1.8%. Below that figure, the villa and yacht category overtakes it: £1,746 multiplied by 1.8% equals the £31.92 villas deliver at 3%. At 0.2% conversion, which is realistic for a broad consumer audience that has never booked a charter, charter pays £3.49 per lead, less than a hotel network's £3.67.
Audience fit is the practical test. Charter converts for readers who already take six or more leisure or business trips a year at a cost of £5,000 or more each, such as family office staff, executive assistants, yacht crews and concierge teams. A general travel-deals audience will click, and will almost never request a quote. A rule of thumb: if fewer than 1 in 40 of your qualified leads would plausibly spend £9,000 on a one-way light-jet sector, the 2.5% conversion assumption is optimistic and the villa or card figures deserve more weight in your plan.
Cash flow is the second test. A card bounty or hotel commission pays out dozens of times a month and smooths revenue. Charter may pay out twice in a quarter. For an affiliate with a payroll or advertising spend to cover, a mix weighted 60% towards faster programmes is safer than chasing the single highest figure.
Regulation is the third. Wealth management requires care about disclosure and, depending on how you describe the service, authorisation. A mix that includes it only makes sense if you can meet those obligations without a compliance bill that cancels the fee.
A workable method is to run the earnings-per-lead calculation with your own conversion data after 50 qualified leads per programme. Put charter or villas in the lead position only if your measured conversion clears 1.8%, keep a hotel or card programme beside it for steady monthly payouts, and re-run the numbers every quarter as your audience changes.
