Most Forex affiliates look for new customers. The best inroducing brokers or IBs do the opposite: they grow by keeping traders active, predicting volume, and tracking forex rev share LTV. (lifetime value) That’s where the money is.

The forex market is still growing quickly. In April 2025, the daily trading volume hit $9.6 trillion, which is 28% more than in 2022.

This guide will help you learn how to predict trading lots, use retention cohort analysis, understand the customer lifetime value formula, and make better decisions about your affiliate strategy.

These ideas will change your forex affiliate business, whether you’re comparing CPA (Cost per acquisition) and RevShare models or improving your forex per-lot commission structure.

Why Forex Rev Share LTV Is More Important Than Ever

Today’s successful IBs know that the calculations for forex rev share LTV guide all of their big business decisions:

• – Budget allocation: Be clear about how much you can spend to acquire each trader while still making a profit.
• – Traffic quality assessment: Find out which sources give traders the most lifetime value.
• – Business forecasting: Use past retention patterns to confidently predict monthly revenue.
• – Marketing optimization: Put most of your efforts into trader segments that will bring in the most long-term value.

Think about this:

Each of the two affiliates sends 100 traders. Before they leave, Affiliate A’s traders make $800 in commissions, while the traders at Affiliate B make $3,200.

Affiliate B makes four times as much money, even though they have the same number of acquisitions. What’s the difference? Understanding and improving the LTV of forex rev share.

What does “lot” mean in Forex? The Base of Your Income

Before you start figuring out your LTV, make sure you know what a lot is in forex. This will help you figure out how much you make in commissions. A lot is a standard unit of currency for trading:

• – Standard Lot: 100,000 units of the base currency.
• – Mini Lot: 10,000 units.
• – Micro Lot: 1,000 units.
• – Nano Lot: 100 units.

Example:

• – Trader: 35 standard lots per month
• – Pay: $8 per lot

Monthly Sales:

35 × $8 = $280

The Forex Affiliates’ Customer Lifetime Value Formula

In forex, the customer lifetime value formula looks at trading volume instead of how often a customer buys something:

The Basic Forex LTV Formula:

LTV = (Average Monthly Lots × Commission Per Lot) × Average Customer Lifespan

Example:

$2,700 LTV = 45 lots/month × $7.50 × 8 months

A smart approach takes into account retention rates:

Advanced Formula:

LTV = Σ(Monthly Lots × Commission × Retention Rate for Month N)

Here is a realistic projection for the next 12 months:

This formula for customer lifetime value shows that the average trader makes $1,403 in the first year. Notice how retention rates have a huge effect on total LTV. This is why retention cohort analysis is your most powerful tool.

Forecasting Trading Lots: Making Predictions About Your Income Stream

How well you can predict your forex rev share LTV depends on how well you can predict trading lots. Important factors that affect volume:

• – Trader experience: Beginners trade 2 to 5 micro lots, while experienced traders trade 50 or more standard lots every month.
• – Market volatility: 2025 volatility can make trading happen 40 to 60% more often.
• – Account size: There is a strong link between the amount of money you deposit and the amount of trading you do.
• –Trading strategy: Day traders do 3–5 times more trading than swing traders.

Sort traders by what they did in the first month:

Retention Cohort Analysis: Your Secret Weapon

Retention cohort analysis is the best way to boost your forex rev share LTV. This method puts traders into groups based on when they signed up and keeps track of their behavior over time.

For traders in January 2025, here is a sample cohort analysis:

This retention cohort analysis shows that:

• – The initial churn is high (32% drop after Month 1), but it levels off after Month 3.
• – Surviving traders trade more in months 2–4.
• – 24% are still active after six months, which is better than the industry average of 18%.

Choosing Between CPA and RevShare: What to Do

Understanding CPA vs. RevShare is important for getting the most out of your forex rev share LTV strategy.

• – In the CPA model, a trader pays a one-time fee of $200 to $1,850 when they meet certain conditions, such as signing up, making a deposit, and trading a certain amount.

• – Model for RevShare: Ongoing commissions based on how much you trade: $3 to $12 for each lot, or 20% to 35% of the spread or commission revenue.

Choose CPA when:

• – You need to quickly check the cash flow of new traffic sources.
• – Traffic doesn’t keep people around as long (less than 25% at Month 3).
• – They don’t have enough money to wait for long-term revenue to build up.

Choose RevShare when:

• – Traffic has a high retention rate (over 30% at Month 6).
• – You’re creating an affiliate business that will last for a long time.
• – You’re confident about the quality of the broker partner’s platform.

A break-even analysis that looks at CPA vs. RevShare:

RevShare overtakes CPA by Month 3 and keeps building value as long as the trader stays active.

Making the Most of Your Forex Per-Lot Commission Structure

The amount you make from each forex lot directly affects your forex rev share LTV calculations. Standard rates for 2025 are $5 to $12 per standard lot and $0.50 to $1.20 per mini lot.

Things that affect commission:

• – Commitments to trading volume—higher rates with guaranteed minimum volumes.
• – Quality of traffic: High retention raises commission by 20–40%.
• – Levels of client funding: Deposits of $5,000 or more start premium tiers.

Progression:

For example, starting at $6.50 per lot, with 35% retention, it goes up to $8.25 per lot, and with volume, it goes up to $9.50 per lot. This 46% rise boosts LTV without adding more traders.

Example of a full Forex Rev Share LTV Calculation:

Let’s figure out the total forex rev share LTV for a traffic source that costs $85 per trader:

LTV for 12 months: $1,317

Cost: $85

Profit: $1,232

ROI: 1,449%

Conclusion:

Building long-term, profitable forex affiliate businesses requires understanding and improving your forex rev share LTV. Therefore, apply accurate lot forecasting, careful retention cohort analysis, and smartly use of the customer lifetime value formula.

To be successful, you need to know a lot about how traders act, how they keep their money, and how to get the most value out of it.

When you learn how to calculate forex rev share LTV, you can use data to make choices about where to get traffic, which brokers to work with, and how to pay your employees.

Your forex per-lot commission structure makes LTV go up. Retention cohort analysis reveals the truth about traffic quality. You can settle the CPA vs. RevShare debate once you understand retention curves and lifetime values.

Join VT Affiliates. This well-known MT4 and MT5 broker offers competitive commission structures, advanced analytics tools, and support systems that help you get the most out of your lifetime value calculations.