Building a Robust Affiliate Program

We made $1M from affiliates in two years. Sounds glamorous. It wasn’t. Here are the truths nobody tells you about running an affiliate program: 1. Affiliates are your early-stage lifeline. When you’re unknown, your words don’t matter. Other people’s do. At our peak, affiliates drove 40% of revenue. Without them, we’d have suffocated in obscurity. 2. The most expensive channel you’ll ever love-hate. To attract affiliates, you give a generous commission. Then you realize each customer costs you 20% of revenue. It’s growth, sure — but it’s also the priciest CAC on the block. 3. Forget the vanity metrics. Hundreds of affiliates might sign up, but 95% will generate close to zero. The top 5% carry everyone else. Stop entertaining the freeloaders and double down on the ones who actually move the needle. 4. Policies don’t build trust. People do. Tracking links break. Customers forget to click them. We decided: if an affiliate proved they brought in a client, they got credit. That simple. Pay fairly, pay on time, or watch your reputation disintegrate. 5. Affiliate hijacking is a thing. Some “affiliates” run ads on your own branded keywords. Translation: they’re not referring customers, they’re stealing them. We had to shut the program to approvals only. (Pro tip: Use Marcode to detect affiliate hijacking in time, thank me later). 6. Payouts will break you if you let them. Fifty affiliates. Dozens of payment methods. Endless mismatches. Manual payouts nearly cost us weeks of time until we automated the entire process with Tolt. Best decision we made! 7. Affiliates are also your market scouts. The first to sign up are growth hackers and early adopters. If many of them suddenly start signing up from Poland or Saudi Arabia, take note. That’s your next growth market waving a flag. Affiliates don’t just sell for you, they show you where to expand next. ------------------------------------------------------------- Affiliates didn’t just bring us $1M. They gave us early traction when nothing else could, exposed us to hidden costs that most founders underestimate, and revealed new markets before we even considered entering them. That’s not luck. That’s what an affiliate program really does when you run it right. Check our affiliate program here: https://lnkd.in/d2sUSpDw

If you’re starting a new partner program, your first partners are not going to be Deloitte, Salesforce and Snowflake. I’ve helped 20+ startups build their partner programs. Everyone asks “How do we partner with [insert sexy logo w/huge customer list]?” That’s the wrong question. The correct question is, “How do we find the RIGHT early partners?” The ones that will drive value quickly and prove that partnerships work for your business. The answer can always be found with… Your customer. They’re already working with these partners. So, go listen to sales and CS calls. Dive into support tickets. Talk to your AEs and CSMs. Talk to the customer themselves. Find the gaps. The unmet needs. Map out your customer’s ecosystem. Ask, “What does our customer need that we don’t provide?” Find the sweet spot where your gaps and your potential partners’ capabilities align. This overlap is where you create value for everyone. Your customers are excited. Your product becomes stickier. Your partnership puts points on the board. It’s a win-win-win just waiting to happen. Start here and you’ll hit the ground running. Resit the urge to just chase the biggest logos. Build a program that delivers value throughout the customer journey. This will be your fastest path to success.

While I’m passionate about motivating my teams, I’m just as passionate about motivating our financial services publishers. Why? A healthy exchange can take the relationship—and your product and customer acquisition results—to the next level. If their affiliate program is underperforming, their first port of call is increasing the pressure. Often that means demanding more conversions and threatening to break off the relationship if a publisher can’t increase campaign traffic or exposure. But there’s one thing affiliate managers forget: publishers are more than just suppliers of net new customers or checking or savings account sign ups. They’re the givers in the relationship and have a direct connection to your audience. Over the 10+ years of working in the financial affiliate space, we’ve learned how to motivate publishers to produce better volume, better quality, and better exposure. One key element of that is: we share our data. By data, I mean not only campaign-related information, like lead quality, but also the company’s positioning and short and long-term goals. We do this because we know publishers often have a limited view of campaign results. While they have their own data and can see volume, they aren't necessarily aware of the nuances, like what campaign, messaging or channel is converting better. By sharing your data, you help your publishers to perform their jobs better. Some examples of insight we share include: ✅ How we see our product within the competitive landscape ✅ Which messaging increased conversions in other channels ✅ How other channels measure on volume, cost per acquisition, and key metrics, like AR and CR  ✅ The quality of conversions, such as lifetime value and deposit size Saying something like, “your campaign produced the client types we were looking for—they use the product a lot, churn less and stick around for a long time,” can motivate your publishers to go beyond your expectations. Strong relationships are key to getting the best results with affiliate marketing. And to take those to the next level, consider sharing more of your insights with your publishers.

Affiliate marketing isn’t underperforming. It’s probably just being ignored. Programs don’t scale themselves. People do. Here’s how it usually goes: - Program launched - Commission set - Marketplace listing is live And then… meh. The belief tends to be, “If we build it, they will come.” It’s not a silver bullet, though. In reality, they don’t just show up. Affiliate marketing isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it channel. It’s sales enablement for a decentralized sales team. If you wouldn’t treat your in-house sales team like strangers, then why treat your affiliates that way? Affiliates are marketers. They need a reason to care. That means: - Offers that convert - Creative, they don’t have to rework - Real relationships and communication - Value beyond the payout Because if the value feels the same, they’ll just promote someone else. If you want more share of voice from your top partner, start here: - Create a red carpet onboarding process for highly sought-after partners - Give early access and exclusive hooks (This works best when aligned with PR) - Co-create campaigns, don’t just assign tracking links - Communicate often You’re not managing a program. You’re leading a performance-driven marketing team that gets paid on their ability to drive results. Treat it like that. Your affiliate channel isn’t broken. It’s just hungry for attention, direction, and real relationship building. Give it the attention it deserves and watch what happens.

*Long post alert* Last 2 months have been an eye opener on how performance marketing really needs a shift in the Indian digital advertising industry. I've been at the hilt of it from 2008 and sharing some best practices: 1. Standardization via platforms (Performance marketing platforms) - Yes, #PMPs are super important if you want to build and scale your performance marketing programs. They help you create workflows, manage partners, consolidate reporting and streamline all of your tasks (not to be confused with MMPs / attribution partners). 2. Keep nurturing your program - Most marketers get comfortable once they hit their KPI and start consolidating media under a few partners - harakiri moment, giving power to a handful of media partners to dictate terms. #Amazon works with almost almost 1,000,000 #affiliates globally! Perf marketing programs are all about building and catering to audience via long tail. Remember you are building a program and not running a one time campaign 3. Invest time to optimize your program partners - Its easy to give KPI to partners and ask them to perform or perish but the best marketers work with their partners to find success & build repeatable and scaleable #playbooks . A good playbook will usually cover, how to build consumer touchpoints, communication personalisation, SPIFFs and more. 4. Be innovative - Being innovative helps to differentiate, cut down costs & to create scaleable channels. Example speed dials on your mobile browsers are a great source of traffic. Another example: deeply integrated product experience within a keyboard. Performance programs are not just about buying unique audiences but about creating multiple touchpoints (you have nothing to lose as you pay on end goal). 5. Channel mix - Just working with a handful of affiliates and a large OEM partner to distribute your app/ increase your online sales? This should be a red-flag for any CMO! What about DSPs, Influencers, Gaming channels, OEMS, Native platforms, Keyboards, Telcos, display and other channels? 6. Effective communication and payments - This is one of the biggest problem and a big reason for publisher drop off - you can not expect publishers to drive sales today and be paid in 120 days! Lastly, #patience - rome wasn't built in a day!

We generated $83,143.70 in revenue in 4 months just with affiliates We used to have a complex affiliate program that took into account views, conversions, max payouts, and it was just way too confusing We made it complex because we thought our new affiliate system would 'stand out' from other affiliate programs But of course, we were wrong, and for a long time affiliates were one of our weakest channels So 4 months ago we scrapped everything and implemented the boring and standard solution where affiliates get a link and they just get paid per conversion, nothing fancy Really boring and I expected it to do slightly better than before Instead, we now have 1000+ active affiliates and we will likely add over $1M in revenue just via affiliates by end of year Had we not started with the complex affiliate program and just immediately did the lean and boring solution, we likely would already be past $1M from affiliates And the funniest part is, we are very lean when it comes to product decisions, but we just hadn't learned this lesson when it came to our marketing decisions But now the lesson is very clear, in the early-stages of a startup, everything must be lean

When I was running the e-commerce business at Winc, 1 particular channel absolutely crushed it for us during the holiday season. And no, it wasn't Facebook or Google. It was affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing can be an incredibly powerful & scalable marketing channel, when using it correctly. Moiz Ali and Nik Sharma shared a deep dive on the channel in the latest Limited Supply podcast (go give it a listen!). Here's the formula we used to grow affiliate marketing at Winc: 1. START EARLY Affiliate marketing isn't a channel you can just "turn on". You have to build a network of publishers in your affiliate program who want to promote you. This means you need to start well in advance of the holiday season (like now). ShareASale.com and impact.com are 2 great places to start. 2. KNOW WHAT PUBLISHERS WANT This one is easy... they want to make money. This means that your commission rate to them has to be appealing and they have to believe that your site is likely to be appealing to their readers (AKA, they'll click the links and buy your product). 3. DON'T USE IT IN ISOLATION Affiliate marketing doesn't work on its own. It's a highly-effective middle/bottom of funnel channel, but you still have to do the leg work of making your brand known via channels like paid social, search, and influencers. The more well known your brand is, the higher likelihood it'll be picked up by publishers. If your brand isn't well known; it's not a dealbreaker; just know that affiliate marketing will grow exponentially for you as your business grows in awareness. 4. USE CAUTION WHEN WORKING WITH COUPON SITES If you choose to allow coupon sites (like Honey) into your affiliate network, do so with caution. Most of the customers that come through these channels were likely going to convert anyway and/or will have significantly lower LTV. If you do choose to work with these types of publishers, make sure your commission is the bare minimum and your forecasts account for reduced recurring revenue from these customers. 5. HIRE AN EXPERT TO HELP Affiliate marketing isn't like running Facebook or Google Ads— you can't just spin up an account and learn on the job. Seasoned affiliate marketers have established publisher relationships and a deep understanding of publisher incentive structures. Publishers want to work with pros, not guide newbies through the process. Want to hire freelance affiliate marketers who've grown brands like HelloFresh, Caraway, Thrasio, and Tipsy Elves? Join The Starters and I'll hook you up. The bottom line is: affiliate marketing can be massive if you use it correctly. If you want to take advantage of it this holiday season, start NOW!

A list of things to know before you start an #affiliateprogram. - There is no army of people or affiliates that want to promote you, unless you have a viral product or service. Once that ends, so does the stream of applications. - Affiliate is not a rev share only channel. There is always a cost. You have to pay affiliate manager salaries, network fees, media fees, send product for review or to be featured or for quality control, costs per click and conversion, etc... - There is and will be a ton of applications when you launch that want to intercept your own traffic. These partners do not bring you customers, they intercept mid-funnel and at the end-of-funnel. They will claim it is XY% new customer acquisition because they are new to file customers. But that is a skewed metric. If you have no program at all, these touch points still exist, if you let them in you now have to pay for them. Allowing them to intercept your own traffic could result in new traffic exposure on their site or platform in other areas, but it is unlikely they'll give you this traffic unless you pay for it on top of the interceptions. You need to decide what you want profitability wise before approving them in and launching. - If the affiliate has their own traffic and is not parasitic (i.e. intercepting your own traffic through mid and end-of-sale touchpoints), you have no say in when or how they promote you. You do control if they remain in the program and you control the payment amounts, but it is their website, their traffic, and their audience. You need them, they don't need you. - Your product and service is not special or unique, and nobody wants to talk about it. There is always a competitor, a knock off on amazon or eBay, or a complementary company that will pay for the space. Treat your affiliates well or they will leave you. - The channel is about relationships, it is harder to rebuild a bridge than it is to construct and maintain one. - It is one of the highest risk channels in that it is government regulated, your brand is always at risk and if you allow sub networks and link cloaking, or auto-approve, you no longer know where or how your brand is being represented. - Affiliate programs are the most labor intensive of the marketing channels if you have a value-adding program. It is a massive amount of work and takes the longest time to start seeing results. Twice as long as SEO and infinitely longer than PPC or paid Social. The only exception is if you can bring on non-trademark PPC and paid social partners, influencers with traffic (but this is short term, not regular), get featured in list posts and articles with active and evergreen traffic, or email houses that continuously pump out email campaigns (although this could be a CANSPAM issue). - Not every company is a fit. If agencies are telling you it isn't a match, listen to them. Just because you want something to be real or possible does not mean it is. #marketing #ecommerce #advertising

Referrals don't scale. Period. But what if I told you there's a way to make them predictable, consistent, and worth millions? Most agencies chase clients through ads, cold email, and LinkedIn like everyone else (though they have their place) Meanwhile, the smart ones are building something different: affiliate networks that deliver high value clients on autopilot. Here's how to build your own client-generating machine in 4 steps: Step 1: Target the right people in the org chart - skip the CEO and CMO for now. They're too busy and don't need your referral fees. Instead, focus on VPs, Directors, and CCOs who: ➝ Move between companies frequently ➝ Attend industry conferences regularly ➝ Have deeper rolodexes than C-suite executives ➝ Are motivated by financial incentives Step 2: Map your affiliate spiderweb Your potential partners are everywhere: ➝ Existing clients (obvious but underutilized) ➝ VCs and private equity groups with portfolio companies ➝ Software platforms your ideal clients use ➝ Manufacturers and 3PLs (for physical products) ➝ Payment processors and other service providers Think about it: if they serve your ideal client, they have connections to them. Step 3: Create the deal triangle Give up a small percentage of each contract. GIVE UP MONEY TO MAKE MORE MONEY. When someone can walk you directly to the decision maker and say "You need to meet these people," you skip months of cold outreach and immediately gain credibility with brands you wouldn't land meetings with through traditional methods. I've closed million-dollar deals using this exact method. Step 4: Nurture like your business depends on it. Because it does. Have monthly 15-minute check-ins with every affiliate. Share what's new in your business. Learn what's happening in theirs. Make it mutually beneficial. 99% of people sign affiliates and ghost them. Don't be that person. The reality? While your competitors are burning through cold email sequences, you're getting warm introductions to their dream clients. The result? Consistent, predictable deal flow that compounds month after month. Most obvious strategy in the world. Barely anyone executes it properly. Question: When's the last time you asked your best client for a referral? If you can't answer immediately, start there. Then build your network. Your future self will thank you.

Launching a high ticket affiliate program for your Shopify store can be a game-changer. Here's why it works and how to do it right: Traditional marketing channels often fall short for expensive products. Ads can't always educate and build trust effectively. That's where affiliate marketing shines. By partnering with influencers and experts in your niche, you leverage their credibility to expand your customer base. These affiliates can provide the in-depth education and persuasion needed for high-value purchases. To create a successful program: 1. Analyze past campaigns to learn from successes and mistakes. 2. Set clear, measurable goals for your program. 3. Study competitor programs for insights. 4. Offer competitive commissions that motivate affiliates while maintaining profitability. 5. Implement a tiered structure to encourage long-term engagement. 6. Use tools like Safelinks to prevent code leaks and fraud. 7. Activate affiliates with strategic email flows. 8. Track key metrics regularly to optimize performance. Remember, high ticket sales require patience and persistence. Support your affiliates with resources, maintain open communication, and be prepared to adjust your strategy based on results. With the right approach, a high ticket affiliate program can significantly boost sales and lower acquisition costs compared to traditional advertising. It's all about leveraging trust, expertise, and targeted promotion to connect premium products with the right customers.