Affiliate marketing has become one of the most powerful growth tools for brands, online and offline.
Affiliate marketing turns loyal customers, fans, influencers, and content creators into an on-demand sales force, driving revenue through authentic recommendations, without the upfront costs of traditional advertising.
Whether you’re launching a new product or growing your existing business, the right affiliate partnerships can exponentially increase your brand’s reach, trust, and conversions.
While setting up an affiliate program is relatively straightforward, the real challenge lies in finding and recruiting the right affiliates.
In this guide, we walk you through some simple, practical, and proven ways to find effective affiliates for your program.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to grow an existing affiliate program, these strategies will help you find and connect with high-value affiliates to drive real growth for your brand.
Let’s get started!
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy in which a business (the merchant or advertiser) partners with third parties (called affiliates or publishers) who promote the merchant’s products or services.
Affiliates earn a commission for driving specific actions, such as sales, leads, or clicks, using unique tracking links.
The process is typically facilitated by an online affiliate network or affiliate management software, which tracks referrals, manages payouts, and ensures accurate reporting for both the merchant and the affiliate.
As a performance-based model, affiliate marketing is highly cost effective. You only pay when the desired action has physically been taken, so there is no wasted budget and affiliates are highly motivated drive real, tangible, results.
Affiliates (also known as affiliate marketers or affiliate publishers) join your brand’s affiliate program and receive a unique tracking link to use when promoting your brand.
They can use that trackable link on their website or blog, social media posts, or anywhere else they connect with their network or audience online.
When someone clicks on that link, they’re directed to your website to purchase directly from you. The tracking link allows you to accurately attribute that sale to the right affiliate and pay the commission on the sale.
You can build your own affiliate program and go directly to affiliates to recruit them or join an external affiliate network or platform with a database of affiliates and let them decide about your offer.
Affiliate commissions are payments made to affiliates (partners, creators, influencers, etc.) in exchange for driving a desired action, usually a sale, lead, or click, through their unique referral link.
When someone clicks an affiliate’s link and completes a purchase or action, the affiliate earns a commission.
Tracking is typically handled through affiliate management software or affiliate network platforms that assign unique IDs or tracking links to each affiliate.
These platforms monitor clicks, sales, and conversions, then calculate and pay out commissions based on pre-agreed terms, and the program’s specific commission structure.
Common affiliate commission structures include:
Your affiliate commission structure is a key factor that affiliates consider when deciding if they want to participate in your program so it’s important make it attractive and competitive!
Finding high-value affiliates to recruit is essential when you’re building and growing your program. Here are some proven methods to find affiliates that are a great fit for your brand:
One good option for finding affiliates is to work with an affiliate management agency specializing in finding and recruiting affiliates.
You can choose to use only the recruitment services and outsource the heavy lifting of recruitment, or you can outsource your entire program to an agency.
Either way, affiliate agencies can offer guidance on making your offer and commission structure more attractive to prospective partners.
A good agency can help you find and recruit the right mix of high-quality affiliates that are best suited to achieving your specific goals.
Perform[cb] Agency is an affiliate management agency that has been leading the charge since 2002 and specializes in building the perfect combination of partnerships and promotions tailored to meet any brand’s KPIs.
Their latest expert guide, The C-Suite’s Guide to Outcome-Based Marketing, is packed with strategic insights gathered over the last decade to supercharge growth across 24+ media channels, build data-driven relationships, and boost ROAS by up to 50%.
Fiverr Marketplace has its pros and cons however, you can find great gigs and dedicated affiliate marketers to work with.
One of the best and easiest ways to find an affiliate to promote your product is by choosing 10 sellers on Fiverr that offer a gig to promote your product and test them all with unique affiliate links to be able to track their performance.
Out of 10, you should find at least 1 or 2 that are performing well and are profitable. Then reach out to them and start to develop a long term partnership with them.
Rinse and repeat.
Popular and reputable affiliate networks like ClickBank and ShareASale offer access to a huge number of affiliates looking for programs to join. Some of them charge you to list your product, whereas others simply take a commission on each sale.
If you are a retailer, you can use Refersion, a free marketplace, to publish and promote your affiliate program. Their marketplace attracts many great affiliates who are looking for new products to promote.
The critical thing on these networks is to make sure that you offer a competitive commission structure and lucrative incentives.
Also, you might need to provide marketing material, such as banners or graphics for your affiliates.
The biggest benefit of joining these networks is they can help you steer your affiliate marketing in the right direction due to their years of experience and expertise.
You can directly talk to a support representatives or go to their knowledge hub, where many provide comprehensive guides and other resources to improve your program.
Aside from these networks, you can also find affiliate program directories to promote your program (many of these are free, such as this one).
Influencers with strong following, based on their expertise or popularity in a specific niche, make for great affiliate partners.
By using influencer marketing reach, selecting a suitable product based on the platform, and offering high-quality marketing material, you can increase your sales significantly.
There are several platforms where you can find influencers who can help you get good results for your business.
Typically, an influencer collaboration is a fixed-term campaign but influencers can continue to promote your brand as an affiliate if they choose to.
YouTube influencers are particularly good affiliate partners, with specialised niche followings and highly engaged audiences. For example, gaming influencers and YouTubers drive huge volumes of affiliate sales for online games.
A simple search on YouTube will bring you several gaming channels.
As you can see there are the ones with millions of subscribers and then there are micro-influencers with smaller follower counts, who are just as effective for affiliate marketing.
People often start blogging if they are passionate about something. For instance, if a person’s hobby is woodworking, a blog is a nice idea to keep yourself motivated as well as find like-minded people who are searching for anything related to woodworking on the internet.
Most often, if a person is good at something and provides helpful content on his/her blog to help other people with the same interest, the blog eventually becomes quite popular among those like-minded people. Using these already established blogs is a good way to start your affiliate marketing.
There are paid products that can help you connect with potential affiliates whose blog or site matches your needs (like this one or this one) or you can do it yourself.
You can also find niche blogs in your target market and directly offer them your affiliate program. For instance, if you are selling “pet toys” then a simple search of “dog care guide blog” in Google will bring you lots of results.
These are pet-focused blogs and people reading them are potential buyers of pet products.
You can contact these blogs or websites by going to their About Us or Contact page and send them an email. But make sure to offer something worthy enough to catch their attention.
Coupon sites are still unbelievably popular among customers. You can find several coupon sites, such as RetailMeNot, and contact them directly to discuss how to put your brand on their website.
With coupon sites, the reach of your brand grows dramatically, as it has the power to reach online shoppers that you would never do otherwise. Plus their visitors are customers so the conversion ratio is pretty high.
Keep in mind that these affiliates are coupon sites, so you must offer a discount for their customers as well.
You would be surprised to know how many people still use forums and groups, especially on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Say you are promoting a restaurant, then a restaurant or eating-out-related group or page on Facebook is your perfect chance to promote your product. You can contact the page or group owner and offer them your affiliate program.
Similarly, there are very active niche forums that attract both buyers and sellers. For instance, in the wellness and medical spheres, TalkHealthPartnership is the UK’s leading health-related community.
You can contact them and offer them your affiliate network. There is a sub-forum with the name “Online Clinics” where doctors participate and answer questions online.
You can reach out to these doctors by using the private messaging feature of forums and work out some sort of deal.
Additionally, you can reach out to the most active members of the forum and offer them your affiliate program so they can earn while helping people at the same time.
You might have heard that your customers are your best salespeople. As true as this statement is, this is the most underrated method of getting affiliates for your product or service.
A happy customer is more inclined to suggest your product to family or friends. What’s better than earning while doing this?
Now there is a pretty high chance that your customer is using multiple social media platforms and has a network of connections that are people just like them a.k.a people who are highly likely to also need what you offer.
With every order confirmation or delivery email you sent to your customer, you can tell them about your affiliate network.
There is a pretty good chance that if your customer is happy with your product or service, he is more than willing to promote your product.
But before asking your customers to recommend your product to their friends or family, make sure that he/she is satisfied with the product or service.
Here are some easy ways to find affiliates for your product. But remember that this is just the first part.
The key to a successful marketing plan is making your offer appealing, offering high incentives, and rewarding your affiliates based on their sales.
If carried out properly, affiliate programs can greatly benefit your business. They can increase sales, increase brand recognition, and even strengthen existing customers’ confidence in your business. Therefore, many businesses now rely on affiliate marketing in one way or another.
Always remember that when an affiliate chooses to work with you, they act as your brand ambassadors. And like any other business, you must ensure your brand integrity remains the same.
You need to be careful about which affiliate network to join and what material they use to represent your brand. If done correctly, affiliate marketing can greatly improve your eCommerce business and help you generate more sales.
Author Bio: Haseeb Najam has been working in search marketing since 2006. His expertise includes SEO, SEM, Link Building, Product Development, and critiquing local food.
Affiliate marketers can help you reach a wider audience, drive traffic to your website, and boost sales. They are often passionate about your niche and can create high-quality content that resonates with their audience.
Start by ensuring your customer service and support is of a high standard. This will go a long way in attracting the right affiliates to your program. Then show off your customer-to-affiliate success stories through sharing testimonials on you website. For other effective tips, read our full article on ways to find the perfect affiliates for selling your products.
Fake engagement: Inflated follower counts or engagement metrics purchased through bots.
Low-quality content: Affiliates who create spammy or irrelevant content that doesn't align with your brand.
Negative reputation: Affiliates known for promoting low-quality products or using unethical marketing tactics.
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