To clear excess inventory with an affiliate promotion, choose one of two paths: run a public discount with a bigger commission when you need the space more than the margin, or raise commissions for affiliates who already sell the product, tied to a sales target, when you want to protect your retail price. Both work. They cost very different amounts.
I’ve done both. The first cleared a warehouse in three weeks and left us with almost nothing per sale. The second cleared a client’s overstock in two weeks and cost about 2 percent instead of the 40 percent discount the client was ready to eat. Which one you reach for depends on whether you need the shelf space more than you need the margin, or you’d rather protect your retail price and pay for speed instead.
Two ways to clear excess inventory with affiliate partners
The first method is a public discount paired with a commission big enough that affiliates will push it hard, even knowing you’re barely breaking even. The second method keeps the price where it is and raises commissions only for the affiliates already selling the product, tied to a sales target, so the discount never touches your retail price at all.
The first method moves volume fast, because anyone can buy at the discount and any affiliate can promote it. The second protects your brand and your price, because the only people getting a better deal are affiliates earning a bigger check for hitting a number, not customers paying less. I’ve used both. The one I reach for first depends on what’s running out: space in a warehouse, or time before a client’s product gets marked down in a way that’s hard to walk back.
What a 50 percent off, 50 percent commission sale nets you
Around 2010, I had about 12,000 units of a $150 product filling a warehouse. We’d landed an overseas deal that cut cost of goods by about 25 percent, then ordered way too many on the strength of it. I ran the product at 50 percent off ($75) and paid affiliates a 50 percent commission ($37.50) instead of our usual 30 percent.
The math on one unit looks like this. A $75 sale price, minus $37.50 in commission, minus about $31 in cost of goods, leaves about $6.50 before card processing fees and other transaction costs. Once those came out, we were making about a dollar a sale at best and losing $3 to $4 at worst. We moved about 10,000 units in three weeks.
That sale made us close to nothing. Some units lost money outright. We did it anyway because the alternative was a warehouse full of product with no room to bring in anything else, and no good way to unload 12,000 units any faster. If you’re deciding how to price your product for an affiliate program in the first place, this is the tradeoff to run the numbers on before you ever get to a clearance situation. A promotion like this only makes sense when the cost of holding the inventory is higher than the cost of selling it near break-even.
A commission bump only works if affiliates send more than one email about it. The Sample Affiliate Promo Plan is the plan I’ve used to help affiliates earn tens of thousands in commissions during a single push, built to get affiliates sending 5 to 20 or more emails instead of mentioning your offer once and moving on.
Why raising commissions for existing affiliates cost one client about 2 percent, not 40 percent
A planner client of mine once wanted to take 40 percent off with two weeks of selling time left in a season. Instead, we doubled commissions from 15 percent to 30 percent for the 14 affiliates who’d already been promoting the product, and tied the new rate to a sales target each one had to hit.
Sales more than doubled. We nearly cleared the warehouse. And the whole move cost the client about 2 percent instead of 40 percent, because a blanket discount cuts the margin on every single unit sold, while a commission bump only pays out on the sales those 14 affiliates drove, and only after they hit their number. I wrote up the full version of this story, including the rest of what got that program moving that year, over at How to Grow Your Affiliate Program Without Recruiting a Single New Affiliate, so I won’t re-run through it here.
The commission bump above was one of several moves from that same stretch of running the program. I laid out the rest in How to Grow Your Affiliate Program Without Recruiting a Single New Affiliate, including what else got sales moving without adding a single new affiliate to the roster.
Which affiliates to ask for help clearing inventory
Start with whoever already promoted that specific product. They’ve written the email before, they know the offer, and you don’t have to explain why it’s a good deal. The 14 affiliates on the planner program were not new recruits. They were people already selling the product who got a better reason to send one more email.
Resist the urge to recruit a wave of brand-new affiliates for a two or three week push. New affiliates need onboarding, a reason to trust you, and usually more than two weeks to get a promotion in front of their audience. If you’ve got affiliates who’ve gone quiet, a clearance push with a real deadline and a bigger commission is one of the better reasons to wake them up, but they’re still a second wave, not your first move.
Getting a quiet affiliate to send one more email usually takes more than a generic “hey, we’ve got a sale” message. The Affiliate Activation Templates are the email templates I use to get affiliates active and promoting again, built for exactly this kind of push.
How long to run an inventory clearance promotion
Two to three weeks works for both methods above. Long enough for affiliates to send more than one email and for the offer to make it through a full newsletter cycle, short enough that it reads as urgent instead of permanent. The 2010 sale ran three weeks. The planner commission bump ran two.
A longer window doesn’t move more units. It gives your audience permission to wait. If you want something closer to a structured push with a prize at the end instead of only a deadline, the same two to three week window works well as an affiliate contest, with the sales target standing in for whatever prize you’d normally offer.
When not to run an affiliate inventory clearance promotion
Don’t do this with anything you plan to keep selling at full price for the long haul. Both tactics above work because they’re temporary and tied to a specific inventory problem. Run a 50 percent discount or a doubled commission on a product you intend to sell at full margin next quarter, and you’ll train your best affiliates and your customers to wait for the next sale instead of buying now.
It also isn’t the right move if you don’t have an inventory or deadline problem to begin with. A standing discount or a permanently higher commission is a pricing decision, not a clearance tactic, and it belongs in a conversation about what a sustainable commission rate looks like for your product, not in a two week push.
Disclosure: I own AffiliateHQ. If you’re tracking a push like this on a platform that buries you in reports instead of showing you which affiliates hit their target, AffiliateHQ’s Starter plan ($99 a month, checked October 2026) supports every commission structure, including a one-off bump like this one, with tracking set up on any platform and no developer needed.
Is this worth the margin you give up
Measure it against what the inventory is costing you to hold, not only against what you’d normally make per unit. A product sitting in a warehouse for another quarter costs you storage, cash tied up, and the chance to stock something that sells. Run the comparison the same way you’d evaluate affiliate program ROI anywhere else in your business: what did this cost you, and what did it get you back, not only in revenue, but in space and cash freed up.
Frequently asked questions
How much of a discount should I offer to clear excess inventory?
Enough to move the volume you need to move in two to three weeks, and no more. I ran 50 percent off on a $150 product because I had about 12,000 units and a warehouse problem. A smaller overstock might only need 20 to 30 percent to clear in the same window.
Will a clearance promotion hurt affiliates who already sold the product at full price?
It can, if you don’t tell them first. Give your active affiliates a heads up before the promotion goes out broadly, and consider letting the affiliates who already promoted the product get the first shot at the bigger commission, the way the planner client’s 14 affiliates did.
Do I need to recruit new affiliates for an inventory clearance push?
No. Start with the affiliates who already promoted that specific product. They already have the email written and an audience that’s seen the offer before. New affiliates take longer to onboard than a two to three week window allows for.
Should I discount the price or raise the commission?
Raise the commission if protecting your retail price matters more than speed, the way the planner client did at a cost of about 2 percent. Discount the price if you need units gone fast and have the margin to absorb it, the way I did with about 12,000 units filling a warehouse.
What if affiliates don’t respond to the bigger commission?
Tie the increase to a sales target instead of handing it out for free, and give affiliates a real deadline. The planner promotion worked because all 14 affiliates had a specific number to hit, not only a vague ask to promote more.
About the author: Matt McWilliams has driven more than $1.8 billion in affiliate revenue and recruited over 330,000 affiliates. He’s a four-time Affiliate Manager of the Year, winning the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award and the AbestWeb Affiliate Award twice each, and he owns AffiliateHQ. Read more about Matt.
