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10 tips to find affiliates

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An affiliate program lives on its partners: active publishers, close to your brand, who speak to your customers. Here are ten tips to find them, starting with Match AI, Affilae’s recruitment tool.

Before you start: make sure your program is appealing. Publishers read your commission, cookie duration, terms and creatives before they reply to you. Read this first: 5 tips to make your affiliate program a success.

Start with Match AI

1. Work from Match AI suggestions

In the sidebar, click Match AI: the Match AI page suggests publishers close to your brand. The Top similar brands and Top category shortcuts isolate the best performers with brands like yours or in your category. The Filters panel narrows the list by affiliate type, content format, country or performance.

Click a suggestion to open its profile, read the Why this match? section, then click Contact. The full guide: Match AI: find the best partners for your brand.

2. Polish your program page before you write

On the publisher side, Match AI also recommends programs that are listed and approved by Affilae: publishers read your description, commissions, advertising assets and terms there. Match AI relies on your description to match you with publishers whose content resembles yours.

Review your page in your program Configuration, in the Program communication block. Details: Write your program page.

3. Personalize your first message

The Send a message window accepts up to 400 characters. Mention a specific piece of the publisher’s content or a point from Why this match?, then say what you offer. A generic message often goes unanswered. Templates to adapt: Reaching out to publishers: guide and message templates.

4. Follow up once, no more

The conversation continues in Messaging. No reply after a few days? Follow up once with something new: a dedicated coupon code, a revised commission, a new product. Then move on to the next publisher.

Widen your search

5. Target the right types of publishers

Content sites, coupon code sites, shopping engines, cashback: each type expects something different from you, see The different affiliate types. Prepare what they need before you get in touch:

a coupon code site: codes to publish, see How to create and track vouchers
a shopping engine: your catalog as a product feed, see Product feeds: what they are for and what your file must contain
a content site or a blog: visuals, see How to integrate a banner on Affilae?

6. Study your competitors

Look at your competitors’ backlinks: they reveal the partners they work with. Nothing stops you from approaching them in turn.

7. Use Google

Type your customers’ searches, for example “robot vacuum review”: shopping engines, buying guides, blogs and media sites are all potential affiliates. Also set up Google Alerts on your keywords to spot new content in your market.

8. Ask your customers

Ask your customers which sites, blogs or accounts they follow: you will discover affiliates you had not thought of. Your most loyal customers can even become your advocates.

9. Promote your program

Create a “Become an affiliate” page on your site, linked from the footer. Present your brand, what affiliates earn and your terms, with a button to join. Spread the word on your social networks and at trade shows in your industry. If your brand is visual, see Affiliate marketing on Instagram.

Once your program is listed, publishers can also discover it on the Marketplace and apply on their own.

10. Use referrals

Invite your affiliates to recommend your program to other publishers, with a bonus for each new recruit. You pay it from your program’s Conversions page, by adding a commission of the Bonus type.

You have found an affiliate, what next?

Already on Affilae: if they are interested, they apply to your program and their application lands in My affiliates. See Understanding partnership statuses.
Not on Affilae: invite them by email or create their profile from My affiliates, see Quickly add an affiliate to your program.
A strategic partner: pay them differently from the rest of your program, see How to customize a publisher’s remuneration?

Best practices

Qualify before you reach out. A high traffic site that is off-topic costs you time without converting: its type matters more than its audience.
Recruit continuously. Some affiliates stop, others ramp up: your base needs constant renewal.

Tip: come back to Match AI every month. The New shortcut shows profiles created less than 30 days ago.

Frequently asked
questions

The entry only appears once at least one of your programs has been analyzed by Affilae. If you have just created your program, that analysis has not run yet: contact your Affilae representative if the entry stays missing.

By default, Match AI hides publishers who are already approved, pending or blocked on your program. To show them, switch off Exclude my existing partnerships in the Filters panel.

From My affiliates, the round purple + button offers two methods. Invite an affiliate by email sends them an invitation: the partnership starts when they apply. Create an affiliate profile approves the partnership straight away.

Yes. An affiliate who finds no banner, no coupon code and no product feed cannot promote you, and their interest fades fast. Prepare at least a set of banners in standard formats.

It depends on the channel. Publishers suggested by Match AI are already on Affilae, so contact is more direct. A publisher found elsewhere must first discover your brand and sign up, so expect a longer wait before they go live.