Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’ve gotten through the initial launch of your product. You saw some success with the launch, generating sales and validating your market, but the post-launch slump has crept in. Now you’re looking for ways to generate money beyond the low-hanging fruits and your immediate network.
In the midst of your research, you discover ✨Affiliate Marketing ✨.
It’s a no-brainer! There’s tons and tons of people on the internet. YouTubers, influencers, bloggers, and they all have big lists of people who are just waiting to be sold to.
Convinced this is your next big breakthrough. So you hustle to set up your affiliate program. You build the landing page, create the form, debate over your rate and terms, slap an affiliate agreement on your site and hit publish. The business company’s affiliate program is officially open for business!
Now if only any of those influencers knew about you. Hmm.
So, you go about the mission of finding your affiliates. You discover a marketplace where you can post your product so affiliates can find, and sign up for your program. Sweet! you think, now it’s just a matter of time before people start signing up.
And much to your delight, they do! Within days of you promoting your affiliate program, and posting it on a few listing sites, subreddits, and other corners of the web, you’ve got 100 affiliates, to have signed up.
Then the real work begins.
As sign-ups come in, you start getting requests for deep discounts so your affiliates can sell the product easily. You get requests for pre-written copy. Some affiliates send you pre-made questionnaires. An “interview” they call it, to feature you on their website.
After days of filling out these forms, working with people, and providing them copy, answering their questions you start seeing special dedicated landing pages for your product popping up on different discount sites. You’re tired, but excited that all your effort will soon pay off. This is going to create so much traction! you think.
Fast forward one week. Zero sales. Two weeks. Still nothing. You review your analytics, and these affiliates are driving almost no traffic whatsoever. In-fact, all they did was copy and paste the interview you did with them verbatim. They didn’t use it in any meaningful way. They didn’t try to sell anything, they literally just plopped your post on a listing alongside dozens of other products. The website names include things like “Deep discounts R US” and “Freemio”.
You review your list, and discover that out of all of your affiliates, about 20 of them actually reached out and did anything at all. The other 80? They haven’t even logged into their account. And the 20 that did? They don’t care about your product – they’re just slurping up every affiliate program they can, and doing the minimum effort needed to publish an affiliate link. Looking closer, you realize that…they’re actually trying to rank for a discount code for your product.
Then it clicks.
These people aren’t selling anything. They’re just leeches, riding on your marketing coattails. People don’t find you through them, your people search for these discounts looking for you. In other words, you’re paying these affiliates to give your customers a discount!
What a waste of time. you think, as you terminate your affiliates agreements, and take the entire program down.
I hear variations of this story time, and time again. Sometimes they figure out how ineffective these are. Other times, people keep the program up for years, with thousands of affiliates, and only a few of them actually generate sales every year. The result is that they spend more time on taxes and affiliate management than it’s worth.
The ugly reality is most affiliate programs suck.
A vast majority of affiliates never generate a single sale, creating the illusion of productivity without any real results. You see dashboards filled with inactive affiliates, countless unused marketing materials, and endless promises that never translate into sales. This isn’t growth; it’s clutter.
These programs relentlessly devour your time and resources. Hours spent creating custom banners, writing weekly newsletters, fielding endless questions, and managing compliance quickly add up. This constant overhead isn’t just tedious, it’s a massive distraction from activities that truly move your business forward.
Worst of all, most affiliate programs fail to drive genuine new sales. Affiliates often simply chase quick commissions rather than authentically recommending your products. Their audience sees through this lack of authenticity, resulting in low conversion rates and minimal impact on your bottom line.
How Did We Get Here?
A lot of it is related to the narrative driven by Most affiliate solutions. They built tools that allow you to have infinitely large affiliate programs, so naturally they want to push that as a big benefit. Or perhaps it’s a marketplace, who is more interested in getting as many people on as many programs as possible so they can bolster their numbers. Or maybe it’s the guru selling you on the utopic “passive income” promise.
Regardless, the (completely false) ongoing narrative that affiliate programs need to be massive and passive continues to this day.
It’s not hard to see why this promise is so alluring. On the surface, the idea of having people promoting your business, and you pay them a commission based on performance seems perfect (and in many ways, it really is!), but there’s more to it than meets the eye. The reality is, the affiliate programs that actually work are ones that are not massive and passive at all.
It’s an epidemic in business right now, and we’re here to put an end to it.
Running An Affiliate Program That Actually Works
Avoiding these pitfalls is simpler than you might think. You just need to be ruthlessly selective about your affiliates. Do the complete opposite of massive and passive, and make a program that’s selective and effective.
In other words, instead of trying to recruit as many affiliates as possible, carefully choose partners whose audience genuinely aligns with your ideal customer.
Look for business owners, content creators, and community leaders who have already established trust and credibility. These affiliates thoughtfully introduce your product as a solution to their audience’s real challenges. They work with you on product launches, and in return you drive and provide value to their customers.
Instead of focusing on how many affiliates you have, you focus on creating strong relationships with affiliates who act more like venture partners than a nameless website. And the result? With a handful of key affiliate partners, you’re able to generate the sales and the growth that affiliate marketing promised.
When you focus on quality partnerships rather than quantity, amazing things happen. Your affiliate program stops draining your resources and starts amplifying your sales. You spend less time managing affiliates and more time building meaningful, strategic relationships. Your conversions improve dramatically because your partners genuinely understand and believe in your product.
Shift your mindset from “How many affiliates can I get?” to “How can I attract the right affiliates?” Prioritize partners who care deeply about their audience’s success, who understand your value proposition, and who consistently engage their followers with thoughtful recommendations.
By embracing the selective and effective approach, your affiliate program can become your most powerful marketing tool. Remember, one successful partnership is worth infinitely more than a hundred inactive affiliates.
