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10 tips to find affiliates

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The main ingredient in the success of your affiliate campaign is an active and relevant affiliate base. Advertisers who reach their conversion goals are the ones who connect with high traffic niche publishers and build high value-added partnerships with them.

This lets them build brand awareness and, most importantly, sell their products and services. Unless you have a whole team of marketers, publisher sourcing is the key strategy. If you persist in building your own affiliate network, real economies of scale are waiting for you.

Here are the avenues to explore, from the fastest to set up to the slowest.

Before you start: make sure your affiliate program is attractive enough to convince publishers. Commission, cookie duration, affiliate terms, available creatives: they all get read before an affiliate replies to you. Read this first: 5 tips to make your affiliate program a success.

Start with the two recruitment tools built into Affilae

Before any manual prospecting, switch on the two levers already included in your account. They keep working while you search elsewhere.

The advertiser marketplace, to receive applications

The marketplace is the directory where affiliates in the Affilae network look for programs to promote. You publish a listing there and receive spontaneous applications without contacting anyone.

You manage it from your program Configuration, in the program communication section, with the Would you like to be listed on the advertiser marketplace? toggle. Your program must be Active and your descriptions written in every language you target. Affilae teams then validate the listing. Full details here: Listing your program on the marketplace.

Match AI, to go and find the right profiles

Match AI ranks the affiliates in the network by how close they are to your brand and by their recent commercial performance. You filter by type, content format or performance, open a profile card, and reach out with the Contact button.

It is the mirror image of the marketplace: the marketplace waits for applications, Match AI hands you a list of profiles to approach. See Match AI: find the best partners for your brand.

Tip: publish your marketplace listing before you start prospecting, not after. Applications come in while you are searching elsewhere, and an affiliate who finds you through your listing has already read your terms when they write to you.

10 tips to find your affiliates

1. Create a dedicated landing page

Create a page dedicated to your affiliate program, often placed in the footer of your site. It presents your brand, the benefits for affiliates who promote your campaign, and the terms of your program. Keep the name obvious: “Become an affiliate”, “Affiliate program”.

End it with a clear call-to-action button towards your sign-up form. A visitor who leaves that page without registering is a lost affiliate.

2. Identify the publishers in your market

The goal is to identify every site likely to promote your services and products. They come in several types: content sites, coupon codes, shopping engines, cashback. Each one expects something different from you, see The different types of affiliates.

Source popular sites, or sites specialising in the activity areas of your target customers, and use social networks and blogs too. Then approach them directly, and be patient.

A coupon code site needs codes to publish: have them ready before you get in touch, see How to create and track vouchers
A shopping engine needs your catalogue: prepare a product feed, see Explanations of product flows
A content site or a blog needs visuals, see How to integrate a banner on Affilae

3. Use your current publisher list

You may already have run one-shot deals with bloggers or influencers on product reviews. If those operations went well, reach out again and reward them on your sales instead. That is how a one-off post becomes recurring content and lasting visibility.

4. Use your customer relationship

Use your customer relationship to find out which online information sources your customers like. This may reveal affiliates you had not considered.

Take it one step further and ask your customers to recommend you.

5. Share your program

Highlight your affiliate program on sites specialising in the areas you target and on your social media accounts. If your brand is a visual one, Instagram is particularly productive, see Affiliate marketing on Instagram.

6. Contact emailers

Contact emailers who will mail their qualified prospect bases according to your target criteria. For this channel, prefer a cost per lead (CPL) over a commission on sales.

You can reserve that model for these partners only, without changing the rule for your whole program. See The main remuneration models in affiliate marketing and Configuring commission rules.

7. Research your competitors’ affiliates

Look at your competitors’ backlinks: they will help you identify the partners they work with. Nothing stops you from approaching them in turn. Tools such as SEMrush make this easier.

Check that these future publishers are relevant, and look at their reputation before you commit.

8. Use Google products

Use Google organic search. Typing “Samsung Galaxy review” or “robot vacuum review”, for example, surfaces shopping guides, shopping engines, cashback offers, bloggers and media sites. All of them are available affiliates: contact them.

Set up Google Alerts on keywords specific to your business. They will flag new content published in your market, and therefore potential affiliates, without you having to run the search again.

A more expensive option is a Google Ads campaign promoting your affiliate program. By setting an overall target acquisition cost, you can afford to invest more heavily in the channels that bring qualified traffic. Facebook Ads advanced targeting works the same way.

9. Publish your program in directories

Advertise and publish your affiliate program on affiliate program directories and specialised forums, or more broadly in online advertising, where publishers are always looking for new revenue sources.

10. Referrals

You can also invite your affiliates to recommend your program, by giving them a bonus for each referral.

One last tip: informal sources work too. Events, trade shows and conferences promote networking in your business area and will help you build lasting partnerships.

You have found an affiliate, what next?

Recruitment does not stop at the first contact. These three steps happen inside your Affilae program.

Add them to your program. From My affiliates, either send an email invitation or create their profile yourself to activate the partnership straight away: Quickly add an affiliate to your program.
Track where the partnership stands. Pending, active, refused: each status tells you who has to act. See Understanding partnership statuses.
Adjust their commission. A strategic partner can be paid differently from the rest of your program: How to customise a publisher’s remuneration.

Best practices

Qualify before you contact. A high traffic site that is off-topic costs you management time without converting. Site type matters more than raw audience.
Prepare your creatives first. An affiliate who joins your program and finds no banner, no coupon code and no product feed will never promote you.
Personalise your outreach. A message quoting a specific article on the site gets a reply. A generic message does not.
Match the commission model to the channel. CPL for emailing, commission on sales for content sites and shopping engines.
Recruit continuously. A program lives on renewing its base: some affiliates stop, others ramp up.

Frequently asked
questions

Three conditions must be met: the Would you like to be listed on the advertiser marketplace? toggle switched on in your program Configuration, the Active status, and descriptions written in every language you target. Even when all three are in place, the listing is validated manually by the Affilae teams, so it does not go live instantly.

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

A cost per lead (CPL) rather than a commission on sales. An emailer brings volumes of qualified contacts, not necessarily immediate sales. You can reserve that model for these partners only, through a dedicated commission rule.

From My affiliates, the round purple + button offers two methods: send an email invitation, which the affiliate has to answer, or create their profile yourself, which activates the partnership immediately. See the documentation Quickly add an affiliate to your program.

Yes. An affiliate who joins your program and 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 before your first outreach.

It depends on the channel. A marketplace listing and Match AI generate contacts quickly, since those affiliates are already on the platform. Manual sourcing, directories and search take several weeks between the first contact and the first campaign going live.