How Do I Find Affiliates for My Affiliate Program? Wrong Question. (#27)

The Wrong Question

One of the most common questions I see from businesses starting an affiliate program is: “Where do I find affiliates?”

Are there Facebook groups? Should I join Reddit communities? Should I go to affiliate conferences? Should I use an affiliate network? Is there some enormous database containing thousands of affiliates just waiting to hear from me?

I’ve managed affiliate programs since 2005, and this question often sends businesses in the wrong direction. A much more useful one is: who already owns the audience I want? That one change in thinking makes affiliate recruitment considerably easier.

Who Counts as an Affiliate

An affiliate is somebody who has access to potential customers and can influence them to buy your product. Those people may not even describe themselves as affiliates. They could be:

• A comparison website
• A YouTuber
• A blogger
• A newsletter publisher
• A consultant
• An industry expert
• A paid search affiliate
• A media buyer
• A review site
• A creator on TikTok
• Another business selling a complementary product to exactly the same customers you want to reach

Define Who the Customer Is

Before I recruit anybody, I want to understand one thing very clearly: who is the customer? Not vaguely. If your target audience is “small businesses”, that’s almost useless. Ask:

• What type of small business?
• How big are they?
• What industry are they in?
• Who makes the purchasing decision?
• What problem are they trying to solve?
• What are they searching for?
• What websites do they read?
• What YouTube channels do they watch?
• Who do they trust?
• What products are they already buying?

Once you know that, affiliate recruitment becomes much more logical.

An Example: Accounting Software for Freelancers

Say you’ve built accounting software for freelancers. I wouldn’t begin with a broad search for “affiliate marketers looking for SaaS programs.” I’d look for people who already reach freelancers:

• Websites writing about freelance accounting and tax
• YouTubers teaching people how to become freelancers
• Newsletters for independent professionals
• Blogs comparing accounting software
• Consultants who advise freelancers
• Communities for designers, developers or writers working independently
• Publishers already ranking for searches like “best accounting software for freelancers”, “QuickBooks alternatives”, “best invoicing software” or “how to manage tax as a freelancer”

Those are your potential affiliates. They already have the audience. Your job is to give them a commercial reason to introduce that audience to you.

Look at Your Competitors

One of my favorite recruitment methods is extremely simple. If you have five major competitors, search Google for:

• “[Competitor] review”
• “[Competitor] alternatives”
• “[Competitor] vs”
• “Best [your product category]”

Then look at who appears. You’ll quickly find publishers who already monetize exactly the type of customer you want.

They’re particularly interesting as you don’t need to educate them about affiliate marketing. They understand the economics, comparison content and tracking links. Most importantly, they’ve shown they can attract the right audience.

You can do the same on YouTube. Search for reviews of competing products. Search the category. Look at creators producing tutorials, comparisons and buying guides. Then do the same on TikTok, Instagram, newsletters, podcasts and industry publications. Follow the audience.

Quality Beats Quantity

Another mistake businesses make is becoming obsessed with quantity. “We want to recruit 500 affiliates.” Why? I’d much rather have 10 highly relevant affiliates actively promoting the program than 500 sitting in the network doing absolutely nothing. Most affiliate programs have plenty of those.

Signing somebody up is only the first step. The commercial objective is to generate useful traffic and customers.

Treat Recruitment as a Pipeline

Think of recruitment as a pipeline. I normally want to know:

• How many prospects did we identify?
• How many did we contact?
• How many replied?
• How many were interested?
• How many joined?
• How many generated a click?
• How many generated a sale?

Each drop-off tells you something:

• 500 recruitment emails and nobody replies: that tells you something
• People reply but don’t join: that tells you something else
• They join but never generate a click: another issue
• They generate lots of clicks but nobody buys: another part of the funnel to investigate

Recruitment continues well beyond the point where somebody joins the program.

The Offer Still Decides

This brings me back to my first video: the offer. You can identify the perfect affiliate. You can write the perfect recruitment email. You can build a beautiful affiliate signup page. But if your economics are bad, good affiliates still won’t care.

Serious affiliates have choices. If they’re sending commercial traffic, they want to know what that traffic is worth:

• What’s the commission?
• What’s the conversion rate?
• What’s the EPC (earnings per click)?
• What’s the average order value?
• If it’s subscription software, do you pay recurring commission?
• How long does the customer typically stay?
• What happens with refunds?
• How long is the attribution window?
• How reliable is your tracking?
• How quickly do you pay?

These matter considerably more than a welcome pack or a nice-looking affiliate newsletter.

I’ve worked with affiliates generating very substantial volumes, and the basic commercial logic doesn’t change. If your competitor makes them twice as much money from the same traffic, you’ll struggle to persuade them to send that traffic to you. Recruitment and commission strategy are closely connected. You need relevant partners, and the offer has to be strong enough to get their attention.

Keep Outreach Simple

Outreach doesn’t need to be complicated. I think businesses often over-engineer it. I don’t like enormous generic emails telling somebody how incredible the company is.

If I’ve identified a publisher as they rank for “best payroll software”, I already know why I’m contacting them. I’d make that clear. Something along the lines of: “I saw your comparison of X, Y and Z. We operate in the same space and have an affiliate program that may be a good fit for your audience.”

Then give them the information they care about:

• The commission
• The conversion rate, if you have reliable data
• The product price
• Any recurring element
• The geographies you accept
• Something genuinely compelling about the product

Then ask whether they’d be interested in discussing it. That’s it. Personalized enough that it’s obvious you’ve looked at what they do, but not a 700-word sales pitch.

Larger Affiliates Negotiate

For larger affiliates, recruitment becomes considerably more commercial. I’ve worked with major publishers where you’re negotiating private commission rates, fixed placements, hybrid deals, minimum guarantees, newsletter exposure, exclusive offers and sometimes substantial media budgets. That’s still affiliate recruitment. It’s just at a different scale.

It’s another reason I don’t like the question “Where can I find affiliates?” There isn’t one type of affiliate. A blogger earning a few hundred dollars a month and a major comparison publisher generating millions in commission are technically both affiliates. Recruiting them is completely different.

Creators Want Different Deals

The same applies to creators. Many businesses assume they can offer a YouTuber 20% commission and the YouTuber will happily make a video. Maybe. But plenty of established creators will want a fixed fee. Some will want commission. Some will want both.

You need to understand their business model. Don’t force every partner into exactly the same commercial structure.

Look at Existing Business Relationships

Another group that’s often overlooked: businesses that already sell something complementary to your customer.

Suppose you sell HR software. These might all be interesting:

• Payroll consultants
• Employment law advisors
• Recruitment firms
• Other software companies serving the same HR department

They’re better described as referral partners or channel partners than traditional affiliates, but I wouldn’t get hung up on the terminology. If they have the right audience, can influence the purchase, and can be tracked and compensated economically, I’m interested.

Don’t Forget Your Own Customers

Your happiest customers may know plenty of other people with exactly the problem your product solved. That’s particularly useful for referral programs.

A customer referral program can be a useful part of the mix. On its own, it usually isn’t a complete affiliate acquisition strategy.

If I Started Recruitment Tomorrow

I’d take it in this order:

1. Define exactly who the customer is.
2. List the places where that customer already goes for information, advice and recommendations.
3. Identify the people and businesses controlling those audiences.
4. Look at competitors and reverse-engineer who’s already promoting them.
5. Prioritize the prospects.

Some partners can send 10,000 qualified visitors. Others have a blog that hasn’t been updated since 2019. They obviously shouldn’t receive the same level of attention.

Contact People and Track What Happens

Then start contacting people, and track what happens:

• Who replies?
• What objections do you hear?
• Are they asking for more commission?
• Are creators asking for fixed fees?
• Is a publisher telling you the conversion rate isn’t competitive?
• Are affiliates joining and then doing nothing?

That feedback is incredibly valuable, particularly when you’re launching a new program.

If you’re the founder, I strongly recommend doing some of the early recruitment yourself. Not forever, but initially. You’ll quickly discover what the market thinks of your offer. You’ll hear the objections directly. And if 20 relevant affiliates all tell you the economics don’t work, that’s telling you something important about the offer itself.

Don’t Dismiss the Long Tail

I’ve managed programs where individual smaller affiliates might only generate one or two sales a month. That’s fine. If those sales are incremental and profitable, I’ll take them. Get enough of those partners and they add up.

But don’t expect hundreds of tiny affiliates to transform your program within 60 days. Building the long tail takes time and management.

So I normally use a fairly simple approach. High-touch recruitment and management for partners capable of delivering serious volume. Then a more systematized approach for the long tail: emails, newsletters, promotional ideas, new creatives, commission incentives and product updates. Things that help activate more partners without spending hours managing each one individually.

The Right Question

The fundamental principle is very simple:

1. Start with the audience.
2. Work out who already reaches them.
3. Understand how those people make money.
4. Give them an offer that makes commercial sense.
5. Make it as easy as possible for them to promote you.

Get those fundamentals right and you don’t need thousands of affiliates. You need enough of the right ones.

Want Help Finding the Right Partners?

If you need help finding and recruiting those partners, that’s one of the services I provide through Affiliate Manager Expert. I work directly with businesses on affiliate recruitment, activation and ongoing program growth.

Affiliate Manager Expert provides founder-led affiliate program management, audits, tracking reviews, compliance reviews, and program cleanup for SaaS, software, fintech, e-commerce, and digital product brands.

Book a free 30-minute program review.

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