Three terms in every affiliate agreement, and the ones beginners learn about only after not getting paid.
Hold
The period a network keeps your earnings before allowing withdrawal. It exists so they can filter fraud and return money on disputed conversions.
For you it is a working-capital requirement: costs today, money in two weeks. A profitable setup with a long hold and an empty wallet stops exactly like an unprofitable one.
Approval
The share of leads the advertiser confirmed and paid for. Critical wherever payment is per confirmed action.
A $10 rate at 30% approval is effectively $3. Comparing offers by rate without approval is meaningless, and that is precisely how beginners get caught.
Shaving
Some of your conversions do not appear in the network's statistics. Unlike the first two this is not a contract term but bad faith — and nearly impossible to prove.
Circumstantial signs: conversion falling on unchanged traffic, your numbers diverging from their report, payouts delayed without explanation.
The only defence
Your own statistics from day one. Without them you cannot tell shaving from bad traffic and will fix the wrong thing for months. How to set that up is in postback and tracker basics.