Publisher-led affiliate network

Turn your network into a revenue stream.

You recruit the brands, set the commission, and keep the rate you agreed. Your audience. Their stores. Your commission.

Get started See how it works

£0 until we've tracked your first £250 · 5 founding publishers

A publisher at her kitchen table, recommending a product to her audience from her phone — Botanical Living
Ceramic vase£48.00
Your commission£4.80

The Nuclio way, the brand works with you

You, the publisher

Your audience. Your brand.

Recruit brands directly, propose the rate, own the relationship end to end.

Your terms

Them, the brand

Their store. Their rules.

Rate caps, exclusions, coupon policy, territories, set once and enforced automatically on every sale.

Their guardrails

I have an audienceRun your own network I have a storePay only for proven sales

Your network is already worth something. Here’s what others are earning from theirs.

1 in 10
of UK online retail flows through affiliate channels: 70k
active UK affiliates promoting 7,400 brands: 25–35%
skimmed by traditional networks on top of your rate: 0
full-stack competitors that hand publishers the controls

UK-first · Shopify & WooCommerce at launch · founding cohort onboarding now

First, the cast

One sale. Three parties. One of them is optional.

Strip out the jargon and affiliate marketing is a chain of three. A reader is browsing a magazine’s website, sees a coat it recommends, taps the link and buys it on the department store’s site. That click is what proves the magazine made the sale, and what earns it a commission. Here is who does what, and who takes a cut for standing in the middle.

Vogue

for example

You, The publisher

Anyone with an audience that listens online, a magazine site, a blog, a newsletter, a YouTube channel, an online newspaper, a trade-fair organiser.

Recommends it, and links to it

Awin

for example

The middleman, The network

The company sitting between the two of you, tracking which recommendation led to which sale, and setting the terms you both work under.

Tracks the click

John Lewis

for example

Them, The brand

Any shop selling its own products online, fashion, toys, coffee, skincare, computers. It only wants to pay for sales that are real.

Sells the coat

The coat sells for £100, here is where the commission lands

John Lewis pays

£10

Commission on the sale, paid gladly, it was a real one.

Awin keeps

£3

25–35% of your commission, for tracking a click. Every month, forever.

Vogue receives

£7

What reaches the publisher who actually made the sale happen.

Nuclio deletes the middle column. You recruit the brand yourself and agree the rate between the two of you, so nothing is skimmed off your commission, £9.75 of the £10 reaches you. The only deduction is a published 2.5% covering the payment rail and refund reserves, not a cut of your rate. Our margin is the flat monthly fee, and nothing else.

How it works

Four steps from your audience to your payout.

No affiliate manager to hire. No fraud analyst, no payments-ops specialist. Nuclio is the whole stack, you bring the audience.

An independent toy shop owner arranging wooden animals and plush toys on his shelves

# a sale, settled

click → session → order #4471 · £130.00

goods £120.00 · rate 10% · v#14 pinned

confidence 97 · token verified · rules passed

commission £12.00 · confirmed · payout 1 Aug

01,
Recruit the brand
Invite a brand directly, or pick one from the curated directory. You agree the commission between you.
Your terms
02,
They install once
A one-time, lightweight integration, Shopify or WooCommerce in minutes. The brand becomes “Nuclio Ready”.
≈ 10 minutes
03,
You drive the sales
Share smart links across your content. Every click and conversion is tracked server-side and logged with an Evidence Pack.
Cookieless-ready
04,
You get paid
Verified sales become an auditable invoice line. Payouts run automatically through Stripe Connect, on a clear settlement calendar.
Auto payout

The tracking, compared

Seven places a sale goes missing.

Affiliate tracking was designed for a web that no longer exists. Layer by layer, here is how Nuclio carries a sale from click to payout, next to the setup most networks still run.

Carrying the click

A cookie set in the shopper's browser. Safari caps its life to days; blockers and consent banners kill it before the purchase.

A signed, opaque token travels with the link and the store keeps it first-party. A cookie exists only as a fallback, and is never accepted as evidence for a payout.

Cookies blocked or refused

No cookie, no sale. The commission silently never happens, and nobody is told it was lost.

Attribution doesn't depend on the cookie, so the sale still tracks. Consent is recorded at the click and honoured, a denial is a denial.

Confirming the sale

A pixel on the thank-you page. If the page is slow, blocked, or closed a second early, the pixel never fires.

The store's own backend reports the order server-to-server, cryptographically signed. Browser closed, tab killed, blocker on, the order still arrives.

A sale that isn't certain

Binary. It either tracked or it didn't, and when it didn't, there is nothing to review.

Every conversion carries a confidence score. Doubtful ones are held for review, visible to both sides, instead of silently paid or silently dropped.

An order refunded

Weeks in a validation window, then a deduction appears in a later report.

The commission adjusts automatically and is shown against the original order, partial refunds included, with the arithmetic on the record.

The proof behind a payout

A line in a report. The evidence, if any exists, stays inside the network.

An Evidence Pack per commission: click → session → order, the order totals, the rules that fired, and the rate version pinned at the click.

The code doing the tracking

A closed tag you are asked to trust.

The store integrations are open source. A brand's developer can read exactly what is collected and sent, before installing it.

“A typical network” describes the common last-click, cookie-and-pixel setup, not any single provider. Some networks offer server-side options; the comparison is with the default most programmes still run.

Why it's broken

Affiliate marketing was built for the network. Not for either of you.

The same system fails both sides. Publishers do an owner's work and get treated like suppliers. Brands pay for sales they can't verify, to a middleman who did nothing to earn it. The network takes its cut from the middle of both.

A reviewer at her desk writing about the headphones, speaker and smartwatch laid out in front of her

For publishers

If you publish, the network holds every lever.

You built the audience and you drive the sales. These are the four things you cannot control, and each one costs you money.

01,

The brand sets your rate

Mainstream retail pays 2–10%, take it or leave it. You have the audience; you have almost none of the leverage.

02,

Programmes vanish overnight

A brand closes its programme and a real chunk of your revenue disappears with no notice and no recourse.

03,

You don't own the relationship

The network sits between you and the brand. You can't take your audience to a better deal, because it was never yours.

04,

The network takes a cut of everything

Tracking fees plus overriders add an effective 25–35% on top of what you earn, money skimmed before it reaches you.

For brands

If you sell, you are paying without proof.

You want more sales and you are happy to pay for real ones. The problem is that nothing in the old model lets you tell the real ones apart.

01,

You pay on trust, not proof

A commission lands on an invoice with no chain of evidence behind it. You either pay it or start an argument you can't win with data.

02,

You can't see who actually sold it

Attribution happens inside the network's black box. The publisher who genuinely drove the sale and the one who dropped a cookie at the checkout look identical.

03,

You pay for customers you already had

Without new-vs-returning logic you're paying commission on people who were coming to you anyway, the most expensive discount in retail.

The fix

Take the middleman out of the middle.

Same sale. Same brand. Same audience. One party removed, and the terms move to the two people who actually did the work.

The old way

A network in the middle

You

Apply. Accept the rate. Hope it lasts.

The network

Owns the tracking. Sets the terms. Takes 25–35%.

The brand

Pays on trust. Can leave whenever.

And the sales that never reach you at all

Tracking that depends on third-party cookies quietly fails.

Safari and Firefox block third-party cookies by default
Every shopper who declines the consent banner is invisible
Ad and tracker blockers drop the click entirely
Read on mobile, bought on a laptop, the trail breaks

You did the work and drove the sale. There is simply no record of it, so nobody pays you, and you never find out.

You never held the relationship, so you could never take it anywhere.

With Nuclio

Nobody in the middle

You

Recruit the brand. Name the rate.

The brand

Sets its own rules. Pays on proof.

Nuclio, underneath, not in between

Tracking, evidence, rule enforcement, invoicing and payouts. A flat monthly fee, never a cut of your commission.

Attribution that does not depend on cookies. Every click is signed server-side and verified at the sale, so a blocked cookie, a declined banner or a switch from phone to laptop does not lose you the commission.

£9.75: of every £10 commission reaches you
0%: override on your rate, ever
2.5%: published payout fee, payment rail and reserves

Your deal, agreed directly with the brand, and enforced by infrastructure that takes no cut of it.

Inside the platform

This is what running your own network looks like.

Three views, one loop: you agree the rates, every sale proves itself, and the brand pays an invoice it can audit.

BrandsInvite a brand

BrandPlatformRateNegotiate

Alba Livingwoocommerce12%propose new rate →

Fern & Foundryshopify15%propose new rate →

Motif Studioshopify8%offered 10%AgreeDecline

Your brands, your rates, proposed, countered, agreed. Nothing changes without both sides saying yes.

Why brands trust it

Verifiable enough that the CFO signs it off.

Inverting the relationship only works if both sides trust the numbers. Nuclio replaces the spreadsheet and the handshake with infrastructure neither side can fudge.

An events organiser with a tablet talking with a stallholder at a busy trade market

Attribution Evidence Pack

Every payout carries a full click → session → order chain with a confidence score. A commission becomes an auditable invoice line, not a dispute.

click → session → order #4471
confidence 97 ✓ · token verified · refund-aware

Merchant Rules Engine

The brand's rate caps, exclusions, coupon policy and territories run against every single conversion, with the fired rules traced on the record.

territory UK ✓ · minimum order £40 ✓ · coupon policy ✓
rate 10% (capped) · rule_version #14 pinned

Integration Health Center

A daily green/amber/red score per store, last-good-signal per webhook, and a one-click test order. Both sides can see it's working, every day.

orders webhook 14:02 ✓ · pixel active ✓
health GREEN · test order passed

Reserves & clean settlement

Monthly invoices with rule-trace line items, automated payouts, rolling reserves against refunds, no surprise clawbacks, no mystery maths.

invoice £1,240.00 paid ✓ · reserve 10% held
payout £1,103.60 → account ****2201

Who's it for

If you have an audience that buys, you can run a network.

A reviewer filming a product review at his desk, camera on a tripod

Fashion & lifestyle publishers
Deals & comparison sites
Niche review sites
Loyalty & cashback platforms
Newsletter publishers with shopping
Influencer & creator agencies
Voucher-code publishers
Newspapers & media titles

Pricing · for publishers

Free until we've made you money.

You run the network, so the subscription is yours, and you pay nothing until Nuclio has tracked your first £250 of commission. Then a flat monthly fee, no commission override, no tracking levy, plus a transparent 2.5% processing fee on payouts, the same whether the sale comes from a human editor or an AI engine.

Starter

For getting your first brands tracked properly.

£99/mo

you keep 100% of your commission rate

£0 until your first £250 tracked

One network, up to 10 brands
Core analytics
Self-serve Shopify & Woo install
Health Center basics

Start here

Growth

For running a real network with brands that pay on evidence.

£249/mo

you keep 100% of your commission rate

£0 until your first £250 tracked

Unlimited brands
Attribution Evidence Pack
Merchant Rules Engine
Program terms & rate versioning
Assisted onboarding & priority support

Get started

Scale

For multi-network operators, media groups and AI integrations.

POA

you keep 100% of your commission rate

£0 until your first £250 tracked

Multi-network & white-label
Full API (incl. AI publisher access)
Benchmarking & holdout experiments
Dedicated onboarding & account manager

Get started

Plus a 2.5% processing fee on commission paid out, covers payment rails, rolling reserves and dispute handling. Founding-cohort publishers lock their tier price for 24 months and help set the roadmap. And if you're a brand: joining costs nothing, no subscription, no platform fee. You only ever pay the commission you agreed with your publisher.

FAQs

Questions people ask us.

Anything not answered here, get in touch and we'll walk you through it.

Get in touch

Getting started

Not at all. If you can run a website and send an email, you can run a Nuclio network. The businesses in your network connect their stores themselves, it takes them under 5 minutes and requires no technical knowledge.

Install a lightweight app once, Shopify or WooCommerce, and set their rules: rate cap, excluded products, coupon policy, territories. After that it runs itself. Their Integration Health Center shows them it's working, every day.

Shopify and WooCommerce are supported at launch, that covers most UK independent retail. BigCommerce, Squarespace, Wix and Magento follow, plus a universal integration for anything else. Tell us what your brands run and we'll sequence accordingly.

The money

You share smart links to brands in your network. Every click carries a verified token; when it becomes a sale, the conversion is checked against the brand's rules, scored for confidence, and a commission is created. Brands are invoiced monthly and you're paid out automatically.

No. You pay a flat subscription plus a small processing fee on payouts that covers payment rails, rolling reserves and dispute handling, shown transparently on every invoice. Your commission rate is yours.

Trust & data

Never. Isolation is enforced in the database itself, each brand sees only its own rules, conversions and invoices; you see your network. That guarantee holds even if application code has a bug.

Where we are

We're onboarding a founding cohort of five publishers now. Founding publishers get a direct line to the team, locked-in early terms, and their network live on infrastructure they'd otherwise pay £500k to build.

Founding cohort · 2026

We're taking on five founding publishers.

Not a waitlist. A small group we build the first version with, a direct line to the team, terms locked in early, and your network live on infrastructure you'd otherwise pay £500k to build. If you have an audience that buys, let's talk.

Create your account I'm a brand, get Nuclio Ready

Publishers set their own network up; brands connect a store. Either way, £0 until we've tracked your first £250 of commission.

Turn your network into a revenue stream.

Your network is already worth something. Here’s what others are earning from theirs.

One sale. Three parties. One of them is optional.

Four steps from your audience to your payout.

Recruit the brand

They install once

You drive the sales

You get paid

Seven places a sale goes missing.

Carrying the click

Cookies blocked or refused

Confirming the sale

A sale that isn't certain

An order refunded

The proof behind a payout

The code doing the tracking

Affiliate marketing was built for the network. Not for either of you.

If you publish, the network holds every lever.

The brand sets your rate

Programmes vanish overnight

You don't own the relationship

The network takes a cut of everything

If you sell, you are paying without proof.

You pay on trust, not proof

You can't see who actually sold it

You pay for customers you already had

Take the middleman out of the middle.

The old way

With Nuclio

This is what running your own network looks like.

Verifiable enough that the CFO signs it off.

Attribution Evidence Pack

Merchant Rules Engine

Integration Health Center

Reserves & clean settlement

If you have an audience that buys, you can run a network.

Free until we've made you money.

Starter

Growth

Scale

Questions people ask us.

Getting started

Do I need to be a tech company to use Nuclio?

What do the businesses in my network have to do?

What if one of my businesses uses Squarespace, Wix, or Magento?

The money

How do I actually earn commission?

Does Nuclio take a cut of my commissions?

Trust & data

Will the businesses in my network be able to see each other's data?

Where we are

Is this live already?

We're taking on five founding publishers.