I gave an influencer her own discount code: how do I work out the return on her fee from the orders that used it?
Add up the value of every order that used her code, after the discount, and enter it as revenue, with her fee as spend. Then enter your margin at the discounted price, not the usual one, because the code itself eats into your profit. Treat the result as a floor, since some people who bought because of her never used the code.
Step one: revenue from the code
In Shopify, Salla or whatever runs your store, pull the orders that used her code during the campaign. Total the product value of those orders as customers paid it after the discount, leaving out shipping and tax if you can, so the figure matches your margin.
Say she promoted a perfume that normally sells at 175 AED, and her code takes 25 AED off, so it sells at 150. The code was used on 52 orders, giving revenue of 7,800 AED. Her fee was 3,000 AED.
Step two: margin after the discount
The perfume costs 105 including shipping and fees. At the normal price your margin is 40%, but at the code price of 150 it drops to 30%, because the whole discount came out of your profit. You can check both figures in the Profit margin calculator. If the code is a percentage rather than a fixed amount, find the price after it first with the Discount calculator.
Step three: calculate and compare
- Enter revenue 7,800, spend 3,000 and margin 30 in the ROAS calculator: ROAS 2.6x, ad share of revenue 38.46%, break-even 3.33x, verdict below break-even, estimated loss 660.
- For comparison, entering the normal 40% margin shows break-even at 2.5x and a verdict above it with an estimated profit of 120.
The gap between the two runs is not a detail. The full-price margin makes a losing collaboration look profitable, so you repeat it at a higher fee believing it worked.
Why the result is a floor
- Some followers see the post and buy later without the code, or forget it at checkout.
- Some buyers come back and buy again at full price, which this calculation does not capture.
- On the other hand, codes sometimes leak onto coupon sites and get used by people who never heard of her. Watch whether use continues long after the campaign ends.
To estimate sales that skipped the code, put a tagged link in her post and compare store sales on posting days with ordinary days. Then rerun the calculation with the wider revenue to see the upper end.
Before the next collaboration
Run it backwards: at a 30% margin after the discount and a 3,000 fee, you need at least 3,000 ÷ 0.30 = 10,000 in code sales to break even, about 67 orders at 150. That is a figure you can negotiate the fee with, or use to propose part of the fee tied to orders. To see how fixed costs affect the wider picture, use the Break-even calculator.
Common questions
Do I count the whole order or just the promoted product?
If the orders include other products with different margins, it is more accurate to work out the average margin across everything in them and enter the full value.
Should the free product I sent her count as spend?
Yes. Its cost is part of the collaboration, so add it to the fee.
Does the calculator know there was a discount?
No. It uses the revenue and margin you enter, so the margin must be the one after the discount.