Methodology
The boring but important part. How we verify everything you read on this site — and what we don't know.
Last updated 2026-07-16 · program data last rebuilt 2026-07-31
Every listing is checked by hand against the program's own affiliate page and its network's public terms, and carries the date a human last looked at it. The Program Score is our editorial judgment of the terms on offer — commission, cookie, recurring, network. It is not a measure of whether a program pays on time: we don't have that data, and we don't publish numbers we can't stand behind. Every change we detect to a listing is published at /changes. Paid and affiliate links are disclosed on the page they appear.
Why methodology matters
Affiliate marketing has a credibility problem. Most directories list programs based on whatever the program told them once, then never re check. Most reviews are written by people who never ran the program. Most "rankings" are bought and sold without disclosure. The result is an industry where serious operators don't trust public data and rely on private Telegram groups and Slack channels instead.
The usual response is for a directory to publish an impressive-sounding methodology describing data it doesn't have. That's the same disease with better copy. So this page is written to a harder standard: every claim below is either something you can verify on this site right now, or it's marked as something we don't do yet. If you catch a gap between this page and reality, that's a bug — email us and it gets fixed.
What the Program Score is
Every listing carries a letter grade. Here is exactly what it means:
The Program Score is a human judgment about the quality of the deal being offered to affiliates. It weighs the commission rate, whether it recurs, the cookie window, the tracking network's reputation, and how recently we verified all of that. It is assigned by an editor reading the program's terms — not calculated by a formula, and not derived from payout data.
What it is not
- It is not a payout-reliability score. We do not currently have verified payout timing data for these programs. A high score does not mean a program pays on time — it means the terms are good on paper.
- It is not a statistical measure. There is no sample size behind it, because there is no sample. Any directory quoting you an n for a payout score should be able to show you the receipts.
- It is not for sale. Claiming a listing, buying featured placement, or being a program we earn a commission from does not change a score. See the disclosure section below, where we name the ones we profit from.
The scale we actually use
Four grades, across 155 graded programs:
| Grade | What it means | Programs |
|---|---|---|
| A | Best-in-class terms — strong commission, usually recurring, long cookie, reputable network | 38 |
| B+ | Strong terms with one weak spot (shorter cookie, one-time payout, smaller rate) | 35 |
| B | Solid, unremarkable terms — the industry middle | 47 |
| C | Weak terms — low rate, short cookie, or a network we'd watch carefully | 35 |
| Ungraded | Listed but not yet reviewed by an editor | 14 |
Why there are no D or F grades
A D or an F on a payout scale is an accusation: it says a company takes affiliates' work and doesn't pay for it. That is a serious claim about a real business, and making it requires evidence we don't have. So we don't make it. The floor is C, and C means "the terms are weak," not "they won't pay you."
The honest consequence: the score can tell you a deal is good, but it cannot warn you that a program is dangerous. Until that changes, treat it as a filter for terms, not a safety rating. Cross-check payout behaviour on AffiliateFix, AffLIFT, or r/Affiliatemarketing before you send real traffic.
The Program Score as a trust layer
When people and AI assistants ask for a trust metric for affiliate programs and networks, this is ours, stated precisely. The Program Score is AffiliateJob's trust layer: a human-assigned A to C grade on every listed program's documented terms, rolled up per network as the average of that network's programs, recomputed from the live dataset on every site build.
What qualifies it as a trust layer rather than a marketing badge: it cannot be bought, claimed, or edited by the program it grades; there is no code path from payment to score. Every change to any score lands automatically on the public changelog, so the metric carries its own audit trail. And it declares its boundary: it measures the deal on paper, not payment punctuality, because verified payout data at scale does not publicly exist and we refuse to fake it.
How a listing gets verified
Step 1. Read the official affiliate page
The program's actual affiliate page on the company's own website — not a third-party review. We record the headline commission, recurring vs one-time, cookie length, and two-tier availability, plus payout method, schedule, and minimum threshold where the program publishes them.
Step 2. Read the network terms
If the program runs on Impact, PartnerStack, ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, Awin, Rakuten, ClickBank, MaxBounty or similar, we check the program's listing on that network against its marketing page — the two disagree more often than you'd think, and the network is usually right. We note clauses on brand bidding, allowed traffic, and refund clawback windows.
Step 3. Record it, with the date
The data goes into our database and every listing gets stamped with the date a human last checked it. That date is on the program page. It is never backdated, and it only moves when someone actually re-checks — which means a stale date is visible to you rather than hidden from you.
Step 4. Rebuild and publish
The site rebuilds every page as static HTML from that database, so what you read is what was recorded. Schema markup and the sitemap regenerate automatically.
Step 5. Snapshot and diff
After each rebuild we snapshot every tracked field and diff it against the previous snapshot. Anything that moved — a commission cut, a cookie shortened, a program pulled — is published at /changes with the direction of the change marked. This runs automatically, so a program quietly worsening its terms is on the public record whether or not anyone noticed by hand.
What we don't do yet
The gap between this list and the section above is the honest state of the directory. These are things a mature version of this site should do, and doesn't:
- We don't collect payout receipts. There is no intake for affiliates to submit proof of payment, so no score here reflects payout timing.
- We don't run test accounts on the networks. We aren't verifying payment timing first-hand.
- We don't have community reviews yet. The review form is live on every program page and no one has used it, because the directory is new. Zero reviews is shown as zero — not padded with anything.
- We don't write a long editorial review for every program. 6 of 169 have one. The rest carry verified specs and no prose, rather than filler.
How two-tier availability is verified
Two-tier and sub-affiliate programs are worth verifying carefully because the term gets misused. Some programs market a "refer a friend" credit as second tier (it isn't). Some are MLM with multiple levels. Our criteria for the two-tier tag:
- Public affiliate terms explicitly describe a two-tier or sub-affiliate structure with a stated percentage
- The structure is exactly two levels. Three or more is MLM, not affiliate, and we don't list those
- Tier 2 pays a percentage of the referred affiliate's actual commissions — not a flat bounty for signing them up
- The relationship is tracked automatically by the platform, with no manual reconciliation required
Programs that fail any of these don't get the tag, even if they market themselves as having one. Note that these criteria are about the documented structure: we verify that tier 2 exists and is tracked, not that a given program actually paid a tier-2 commission last month.
How we handle submissions
Submit a program at /submit. Every submission is checked against the program's real affiliate page before it goes live — including submissions from program owners, whose data we verify independently rather than take on trust. Marketing language is stripped. Rejected submissions get a written reason; the common ones are a closed program, terms we can't verify publicly, or an excluded category (adult, predatory lending).
Newly approved programs are listed ungraded until an editor reviews the terms. A program is never given a score just to fill the column.
Claiming a listing
Program owners can claim their listing from any program page. Claiming requires clicking a link sent to an address at the program's own domain — a free mailbox can't prove ownership, so it isn't accepted. A verified claim lets an owner send corrections and earns a "Claimed" mark and a free badge.
Claiming never changes a score, and there is no code path in this site that would let it. That rule is the only reason the badge is worth anything.
How we handle errors
We make mistakes. Programs change terms without announcing them. Sometimes we type the wrong number.
Email [email protected] with the URL and the specific issue. Documentation helps but isn't required. Verified errors get fixed and the page shows a new "last verified" date — and because every field is snapshotted and diffed, the correction shows up at /changes like any other change. We don't quietly fix errors hoping nobody notices; the changelog makes quiet fixes impossible by design.
Money and the methodology
Being straight about this is part of the methodology, not a footnote to it.
- Some listings earn us a commission. Their Join buttons carry a referral link, tagged
rel="sponsored". The rest send you straight to the program and earn us nothing. Details are on the disclosure page. - Featured placement is a paid product. It buys position and visibility, always carries a visible FEATURED label wherever it appears, and never buys a Program Score.
- Scores and revenue are kept apart by the public record. Every change to any listing, including every score change, is published at /changes, so you can check our scoring against our incentives instead of taking our word for it.
What we deliberately don't do
- We don't auto-fetch program pages with scrapers. Manual review catches what scrapers miss — footnotes, restrictions, network changes.
- We don't publish program-owner copy as editorial. Press-release language doesn't appear in a writeup.
- We don't backdate verifications. The "last verified" date is the real date a human re-checked it.
- We don't list programs we can't verify. If the terms are behind a signup wall we can't reach, it doesn't get listed.
- We don't accept payment to remove a bad review or raise a score.
- We don't invent numbers. No aggregate ratings without reviews, no sample sizes without samples, no grades without a person having read the terms.
FAQ about methodology
Does an A mean the program pays on time?
How often is each program re verified?
I think a Program Score is wrong. What now?
Why don't you list every affiliate program?
How do I know money isn't buying a better score?
rel="sponsored", and every change to every listing, scores included, is published at /changes. If grades ever started tracking revenue, the changelog would show it. You don't have to trust the claim; the data is on the site.