A commission that pays once is a transaction. A commission that renews for as long as the customer stays is a small business, and the two are almost never worth the same amount even when the headline percentage on the landing page is identical. If you are weighing an affiliate deal or a business-introduction agreement in Thailand, the number you actually need is not the rate the programme advertises. It is the total the arrangement will have paid you by the time that customer walks away.
This article hands you a method to calculate that total yourself, on paper or in a spreadsheet, before you sign anything. It quotes no rates, because every programme publishes its own and changes them without asking you. What it does instead is show you which inputs move the result, where each one is found, and which contract clauses can erase a line you had already counted. Because the first real payout rarely lands in the first month, it also covers how operators bridge that gap; some keep a small daily income running alongside the build-up, such as I am Beezy, an application where each piece of content you view generates a payment to your local payment method.
No capital is assumed anywhere in what follows. You need a spreadsheet, the programme's own terms page open in another tab, and about an hour of undisturbed attention.
What a recurring commission actually pays you
The three shapes a payout can take
Almost every programme you will meet in Thailand pays in one of three shapes. The first is a share of a single sale, which is how marketplace affiliate schemes work, Shopee and Lazada among them. The second is a fixed bounty for a qualified action, which is how banks, insurers and telecom operators buy customers: the reward is the same whether the person spends a little or a lot. The third is a recurring share, paid for every billing cycle the customer completes, which is how software subscriptions, hosting, accounting tools and many service contracts reward the person who brought the account in.
The renewal is the product, not the signature
In the first two shapes, your work ends at conversion. In the third, conversion is only the opening of a stream, and the stream is what you are being paid for. This changes what a good introduction looks like. A customer persuaded into a subscription they did not need will cancel in the second cycle and leave you with one payment instead of twenty. In a recurring model, the quality of the fit between customer and product matters more to your income than the volume of introductions you make. That single sentence is why experienced apporteurs turn away business that a commission-per-sale affiliate would happily take.
What attrition does to your line
Every recurring programme leaks. Customers close accounts, switch tools, go out of business, or simply stop paying. The rate at which that happens is the most powerful number in your whole model, and it compounds against you month after month. A modest monthly loss rate looks harmless in the first quarter and removes most of your base by the end of the second year. If you build only one thing into your simulator, build this.
Which variables decide the number?
The five inputs you cannot skip
Your simulator needs exactly five columns to be useful. How many new customers you introduce per month. What the average customer pays per cycle. What share of that payment reaches you. What proportion of customers survive each cycle. And for how many cycles the programme keeps paying you before the commission stops. Anything else is decoration. Any model missing one of those five is not a model, it is a wish.
Where each input actually comes from
Four of the five are printed somewhere. The commission share, the payment duration and any cap are in the programme terms, usually under a heading about commission structure. The average customer payment is on the product's own pricing page, and if the product has several plans you take a weighted guess rather than the cheapest. Your introduction volume is the only figure you supply from your own experience, and you should base it on what you achieved last month, not what you hope to achieve next quarter.
The input everybody guesses wrong
The survival rate is the one nobody publishes and everybody underestimates. Ask the programme manager directly what proportion of referred customers are still paying after a year. If they answer with a figure, ask whether it covers all partners or only their best ones. If they will not answer at all, that refusal is itself information: build your model on the assumption that survival is poor, and be pleasantly surprised rather than caught out.
Building the simulator, one column at a time
Month one, told honestly
Open a sheet. Row one is month one: the customers you introduce, multiplied by the average payment, multiplied by your share. That is your first line, and it will look disappointingly small. Resist the urge to inflate the introduction count to make it feel better. The purpose of this exercise is to find out whether the arrangement is worth your time, and a model tuned to flatter you cannot answer that question.
Month twelve and what compounds
Row two is the survivors of month one plus the new customers of month two. Row three is the survivors of both plus month three. Carry that logic down twelve rows and you will see the shape that makes recurring commission attractive: your income in month twelve is not twelve times month one, it is the accumulated base of everyone who stayed. That accumulation is the entire argument for choosing a recurring programme over a one-off one, and it only exists if the survival rate is decent.
Stress-testing before you believe it
Now break your own model on purpose. Halve the introduction count. Double the attrition. Cut the commission share, because programmes do revise them. Set the payment duration to whatever minimum the terms permit rather than the maximum. If the twelve-month total still justifies the hours you would spend, the programme is sound. If it collapses under any single one of those changes, you have found the assumption your whole plan rests on, and you should verify it before signing rather than after.
| Input | Where to find it | What goes wrong if you guess |
|---|---|---|
| Commission share | Programme terms, commission section | Every row of the model is wrong by the same factor |
| Average customer payment | Product pricing page, weighted across plans | You model the top plan and sell the entry plan |
| Survival per cycle | Ask the programme manager directly | Year two disappears and you never see it coming |
| Payment duration or cap | Terms, often a separate clause | The stream stops while you are still counting on it |
| Introductions per month | Your own record of last month | The whole plan is built on an ambition, not a result |
What can cancel a commission you have already earned?
Refund and clawback windows
Most programmes reverse a commission if the customer refunds, charges back, or cancels inside a defined window. That window is normal and reasonable. What is not always obvious is how long it runs and whether it applies to every billing cycle or only the first. Find the clause, note the window, and remember that money sitting inside it is not yours yet no matter what the dashboard says.
Attribution, cookies and the last click
You are paid for an introduction the system can see. If the customer clicks your link, thinks it over for a fortnight, then arrives through a search result or another partner's link, most systems credit whoever was last. The tracking window and the attribution rule together decide whether your patient, high-quality introductions get paid at all. A long consideration cycle combined with a short tracking window is the most common reason careful partners earn less than careless ones.
Programme changes and termination
Read what happens if the programme closes, if the company is acquired, or if you are removed for a terms breach. Some agreements keep paying your existing base for a defined period. Others stop everything at termination. This clause costs nothing to read now and decides the value of years of accumulated work later.
Funding the ramp-up months with I am Beezy
The gap between the work and the first payout
Every recurring programme has a lag. You introduce customers in one month, the commission confirms after the refund window, the payout runs on a fixed schedule, and a threshold may hold your balance until it is reached. Three months of work before the first meaningful transfer is ordinary rather than exceptional. That gap is where most new partners quit, not because the model failed but because nothing arrived while the data connection, the travel and the ordinary bills continued.
Keeping the model honest while you wait
A supplementary daily income during that stretch does two things. It covers the running costs the build-up consumes, and it removes the pressure that pushes people into making unsuitable introductions just to see a number move. I am Beezy pays into your usual payment method for content you view, which makes it a bridge rather than a business, and a bridge is exactly what the first quarter needs. Keep it in a separate column of your sheet so it never flatters your commission model.
The Thailand-specific checks before you sign
Getting the money into a Thai account
Confirm, before you invest weeks, how the programme actually pays partners in Thailand. Many international schemes route through intermediaries, and the method they support decides whether your commission arrives in baht at a reasonable cost or sits stranded. Domestic programmes generally transfer to a Thai bank account or through PromptPay, which is simpler. Check the minimum payout threshold too, because a low commission rate with a high threshold can mean waiting months for a first transfer.
Invoices, records and the tax question
Commission income is income. Keep a monthly record of what each programme paid you, in baht, with the date and the reference, from your very first payout rather than from the moment it becomes significant. If you operate as a registered business rather than an individual, ask the programme whether it can issue documents in your company name, because some cannot. A qualified Thai accountant will tell you what your specific situation requires; nobody writing an article can.
A checklist to run before you sign
Print this, fill it in, and refuse to sign until every line has an answer taken from the programme's own documents rather than from a sales conversation.
| Check | Why it matters | Where to confirm it |
|---|---|---|
| Payout method for Thailand | Decides whether you can collect at all | Payout or partner FAQ page |
| Minimum threshold | Sets how long you wait for the first transfer | Payout terms |
| Tracking window | Decides if slow decisions still credit you | Programme terms |
| Clawback period | Tells you when money becomes truly yours | Commission clause |
| Duration of the recurring payment | The difference between an annuity and a bonus | Commission clause |
| What happens on termination | Protects the base you spent a year building | Termination clause |
Build the sheet before the enthusiasm, not after. A recurring commission programme that survives your own stress test is worth years of steady attention, and one that does not survive it was going to fail with your time instead of your spreadsheet's. The discipline is identical whether you introduce one customer a month or fifty, and it is the only reliable way to compare two offers whose headline rates say nothing useful.
Start the model this week with a single programme and real numbers rather than five programmes and optimism, keep your records in baht from the first payout, and if you want a small daily inflow covering the connection and travel costs while the commission base accumulates, I am Beezy pays into your usual payment method for the content you view.
