Front-load the incentive
A flat twenty percent forever sounds generous and converts badly. Partners feel the effort of a referral now and the reward in fragments over two years.
A large first-month share pays for the effort immediately, and a meaningful recurring share keeps the partner invested in retention rather than churn-and-burn volume.
Attribution should be boring and long
A ninety-day window covers a realistic B2B evaluation cycle. Shorter windows quietly steal credit from partners who did the work, and partners notice.
Store attribution in both a cookie and local storage, claim it at signup rather than at click time, and never let a failed tracking call block the visitor from reaching the product.
Design for the refund case before launch
Commission engines are easy to build for the happy path and painful to retrofit for refunds, cancellations and reactivations. Decide up front whether an unpaid commission is reversed and whether a paid one is clawed back against the next payout.