> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.blink.store/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Revenue Sharing Models

> A guide to Affiliates, Splits, and Payees, and when to use each for your revenue share model.

Blink provides three distinct mechanisms for revenue sharing and money movement. Because they serve different purposes, choosing the right one is critical for your application's architecture.

## 1. Affiliates (Referral Marketing)

**Best for:** Creators, influencers, and marketers who refer customers to your store.

The Affiliate system is designed for **referral links**. When a customer clicks an affiliate link (`?via=code`) and makes a purchase, Blink automatically calculates the commission and attributes the sale to the affiliate.

* **Commission:** Fixed amount or percentage per sale.
* **Payouts:** Managed centrally by the merchant via PayPal, Wise, or manual payouts (or automatically via Stripe Connect if configured).
* **Dashboard:** Affiliates get their own dashboard to generate links, view clicks, and track conversions.

**When to use it:** You want to pay people for sending traffic to your store.

## 2. Splits (Collaborator Revenue)

**Best for:** Co-creators, business partners, or joint ventures.

Splits allow you to automatically divide revenue for a specific product across multiple Blink accounts. If you co-authored an ebook with another creator, you can set a 50/50 split on that specific product.

* **Trigger:** Applies to every sale of the connected product automatically (no referral link needed).
* **Payouts:** Payouts are transferred automatically to the collaborator's Blink account balance.
* **Visibility:** Collaborators can see the sales of the split product in their own Blink dashboard.

**When to use it:** You co-created a product with a partner and want to automate the revenue split forever.

## 3. Payees (Multi-Vendor Marketplaces)

**Best for:** Headless marketplaces, platforms, and aggregators where sellers own the product.

Payees is our deepest API integration designed for **Stripe Connect** multi-vendor platforms. Instead of simply referring a sale (Affiliate) or splitting revenue (Splits), a Payee is the *actual seller of record*.

* **How it works:** When generating a checkout session via the API (`POST /v1/checkouts`), you pass a `payee_id` (the Stripe Connect account of your vendor) and an `application_fee_amount` (your platform's cut).
* **Payouts:** The money flows directly into the Payee's Stripe account at checkout, minus your application fee. You never hold the funds.
* **Headless Only:** Payees are managed entirely via the API and do not get a Blink dashboard.

**When to use it:** You are building a custom marketplace (like an AI tool directory or a course platform) where users list and sell their own products on your frontend, and you take a platform fee.