How much money do creators lose to broken affiliate links? (with math)

Ask a creator "how much money do you think you're losing to broken affiliate links?" and you'll get one of three answers: "probably nothing," "a little," or "no idea." The honest answer, with math, is almost always bigger than the guess.

This isn't marketing scare copy. The inputs below are conservative. A creator with 100 active links will plausibly see $500-$1,200 in missed commissions per year from link rot alone. Here's the calculation.

The inputs we need

How fast affiliate links rot

Public data is thin (no affiliate network publishes this), but anecdotal reports from creators running their own audits suggest that 15-25% of active affiliate links older than 12 months are in some form of "broken" state: product unavailable, program discontinued, tag drift, or destination moved. We'll use 18% as a middle estimate.

Average EPC by platform

EPC (earnings per click) varies enormously. Amazon Associates pays creators between $0.10 and $0.50 per click on average, with big swings by product category. Higher-paying programs (SaaS, finance) can run $1-$5+ EPC. Across a diversified creator catalog, $0.40 EPC is a reasonable blend.

Your active link count

The number of affiliate links you have out there across all platforms. Not the number you "track". The number actually posted. Most creators underestimate this by 2-3×.

The math for a "small" creator (50 links)

50 active affiliate links, posted over 12-24 months. 18% rotted = 9 dead links. If each would have generated, conservatively, 20 clicks/month at $0.40 EPC = $8/month per link = $72/month = $864 per year in missed commissions.

That's from a source the creator already built. No new content needed. Just fixing.

The math for a mid-creator (200 links)

200 active links × 18% = 36 dead links. 36 × $8/month = $288/month = $3,456 per year.

This is the creator who has a YouTube channel, a newsletter, and a blog. Their links span multiple years and multiple platforms. They probably have no process for tracking which links are where.

The math for a larger creator (500 links)

500 active links × 18% = 90 dead links. 90 × $8/month = $720/month = $8,640 per year.

At this scale, the leak is a meaningful share of the creator's affiliate income. Often 10-20% of total affiliate earnings. And nobody in the creator's workflow is explicitly looking for it.

Why these estimates are conservative

Not counting lost affiliate tags

The math above assumes every "working" link is credited correctly. In practice, redirect chains strip affiliate tags on a non-trivial fraction of clicks. The link works, the tag is gone, the commission is missed. If you've never verified your tag survives the final redirect, you're likely losing another 3-8%.

Not counting seasonal changes

Products go out of stock seasonally (Black Friday, holiday SKUs). Programs change terms mid-campaign. A snapshot of link health in March misses what happens in October.

Not counting program discontinuations

Smaller SaaS affiliate programs shut down all the time, often with 30 days' notice that you miss because you don't check that email account regularly. Your URL still resolves; the program is gone.

How to check your actual leak

Two options. Manual: pick 20 of your oldest affiliate links, open each, check the destination, verify your tag survives redirects. If more than 3 fail, extrapolate. See the full audit checklist.

Automated: a monitoring tool (Affiliyo, if you want to try ours) runs HTTP + AI checks on every link and alerts you on the transition from healthy to broken. Free plan covers 10 links. Usually enough to confirm the pattern and decide whether monitoring scales to your full catalog.