Performance-based influencer marketing means paying a creator for a result the brand can count, such as a sale, a click, a view or a verified store visit, instead of or on top of a flat fee for the post. It is now the majority approach in some form: Modash's survey of marketers found that 61% used some kind of performance-based compensation in 2025, most often with a flat fee paid up front. There are six ways to structure it. Each one counts a different thing, needs a different tracking method, and goes wrong in its own way.
In short
- Flat fee per post: the creator is paid for the content. Simple, and the most common model; it pays the same whether anyone buys.
- Commission per sale: the creator earns a percentage of tracked orders. Fair when tracking is good; unfair to the creator when it is not.
- Pay per click: the creator is paid for traffic. Easy to track and easy to game.
- Pay per view: the creator is paid per thousand views on the live post. Rewards reach, not results.
- Pay per walk-in: the creator is paid for each customer counted at the store. The model for a café, salon, gym or shop, and the hardest to count.
- Hybrid: a fixed content fee plus one of the above. What most performance deals look like in practice.
1. What does a flat fee per post pay for?
The work: the visit, the filming, the edit and the posting rights. CreatorIQ's survey of 132 marketers found pay-per-content used by 60%, ahead of commissions at 45% and pay per click at 33%, and it was also the model marketers called most effective. The fees are smaller than the headlines suggest: Collabstr's 2026 report on 21,000 marketplace collaborations found 80% cost under $300, with average paid engagements of $193 on Instagram, $186 on TikTok and $255 on YouTube. A flat fee is the right way to pay for content and the wrong way to pay for customers, because it pays the same whether anyone comes in.
2. How does a commission per sale work?
The creator shares a link or a code, the store tracks the orders that carry it, and the creator earns a percentage. On YouTube it is now the dominant deal type: the Influencer Marketing Factory's Brand Deals Report 2026 found 52.9% of YouTube brand deals were affiliate against 41.4% paid, while flat fees still dominate Instagram and TikTok. Rates follow margins. Amazon.ca's affiliate rate card pays 2% on most categories and 10% on luxury beauty; Influencer Marketing Hub's affiliate benchmark found 48.9% of programs paying flat rates and 42.4% a percentage of sales, with software programs paying 20% to 70%. The weak point is the tracking: a code that leaks or a link that loses the customer who buys later on another device pays the creator for less than they did, which is why Modash found creators less open to pure affiliate deals in 2025 than the year before. On Onlure the brand sets the commission, between 1% and 50%, and the store's own order record decides which sales count. The guide to commission-based influencer marketing covers how a per-sale campaign is set up and paid.
3. When does pay per click make sense?
When the goal is traffic to a page that converts on its own, and the brand can tell real clicks from idle ones. It is the easiest result to measure and the easiest to inflate, and the click-to-purchase ratio is sobering: Later's creator-commerce network reports roughly one purchase for every 17 clicks on its shoppable links. Pay per click suits an online store testing a new creator; it tells a physical business nothing about who came in.
4. What does pay per view reward?
Reach. The creator is paid per thousand views on the live post, which rewards the content that travels and nothing about what it sells. No named industry report publishes a creator CPM benchmark, so the rate is whatever the platform or the deal sets. Onlure pays C$2 per 1,000 views on a live post, capped per post, as one part of a campaign rather than the whole of it. Views are a fair bonus for a creator and a poor sole basis for a budget.
5. How does pay per walk-in work?
The creator is paid for each customer counted at the store, which is the result a local business is buying. It is also the result no ad platform counts: a customer watches a Reel on Monday and comes in on Thursday without clicking anything, Instagram records a view, the till records a sale, and nothing joins the two. Onlure has solved that for local campaigns. Each walk-in is verified in store and credited to the creator who sent the customer, and the brand pays C$6 per verified walk-in from a creator and C$3 from a flyer or static ad, with no charge for a walk-in that is not verified. World Soccer Party counted 173 walk-ins from seven creators on a C$1,000 budget and Simi African Foods 37 from creators and flyers on C$500. How the verification works is proprietary. It is live today for beta brands and Shopify stores; any other brand sets it up on a founder demo.
6. Why is a hybrid the usual answer?
Because creators carry risk in a pure performance deal and brands carry it in a pure flat fee. Modash reports that in 2025 only 23% of marketers found influencers open to performance pay, and then only when a flat fee was paid up front. A hybrid pays for the content and then for the results: on Onlure a brand pays a fixed content fee per creator by tier, 70% at accept and 30% at video approval, and then pays only for what the content does, a verified walk-in, an online sale at the commission it set, or views, from a reserve it sets before the campaign starts. The Toronto micro-creator pay guide has current content-fee rates by tier, and the creator-side guide to performance pay explains how a creator should price the two halves.
Does performance pay change the disclosure rules?
No, it adds to them. The Competition Bureau's position is that "influencers should always clearly disclose material connections with companies," and Ad Standards' Fall 2025 guidelines say that a commission, discount or free product earned through posted links must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed, with #CompanyPartner or #CompanyAffiliate style wording rather than #ad on its own. A creator paid per sale or per walk-in has a material connection by definition.
Which model should a Canadian small business choose?
Pay a flat content fee for the post, because the work is real whether or not it sells, and then pay for the one result you are buying. An online store pays a commission on tracked orders. A business with a door pays per verified walk-in. A brand buying reach adds views. Avoid pay per click unless the click is the product, and avoid any pure performance deal that asks the creator to carry all the risk of your tracking. The guide to performance-based marketing sets out how Onlure prices each result and the pricing page has the plans.
Frequently asked questions
What is performance-based influencer marketing?
Paying a creator for a result the brand can count, such as a sale, a click, a view or a verified store visit, instead of or on top of a flat fee for the post. Modash found 61% of marketers used some form of performance-based pay in 2025, most often with a flat fee paid up front.
What commission do brands pay creators on sales?
It varies by category and margin. Amazon.ca's affiliate rate card runs from 2% on most categories to 10% on luxury beauty, and Influencer Marketing Hub's affiliate survey found 42.4% of programs paying a percentage of sales against 48.9% paying flat rates. On Onlure a brand sets its own rate between 1% and 50%.
Does a creator have to disclose a commission deal?
Yes. Ad Standards' Fall 2025 guidelines say a commission, discount or free product earned through links the creator posts must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed, with wording like #CompanyPartner or #CompanyAffiliate rather than #ad alone, and the Competition Bureau says influencers should always clearly disclose material connections.
