Affiliate programs that pay for performance, not vibes.

Most affiliate programs are not broken. They are unattended. Somebody installed a network, approved every applicant who applied, set one flat commission and then waited for revenue to appear. Two years later the program is 90% coupon sites intercepting people who were already buying, and the finance team is understandably suspicious.

Affiliate is a big channel now — roughly a $19B global spend, with US ecommerce affiliate budgets in the $13B range and growing around 11% a year, which puts it behind only paid search and paid social. But the outcomes are wildly uneven. Mature beauty and fashion programs can drive 18-30% of online revenue through partners; commodity and low-margin categories usually top out in the single digits no matter how hard anybody pushes. We tell you which of those two your business looks like before you fund anything.

The work is program design first: what a partner is worth, what you can afford to pay, which partner types actually create demand versus harvest it, and what the terms need to say so you are not paying twice for the same order. Then recruiting — outreach to publishers, review sites, newsletters, creators and comparison properties who already have the audience you want, rather than waiting for an application form to do the selling.

After launch it is maintenance and honesty: tracking and attribution that hold up, incremental measurement so you know what the channel added rather than what it claimed, controls on coupon leakage, trademark bidding and the other creative interpretations of your terms, and a monthly read that says what to change next. Partners perform when somebody is actually talking to them.

Affiliate rarely works alone. It pairs naturally with Content Strategy Consulting for the assets partners link to, Programmatic SEO for the pages that convert the traffic, and Influencer Partnership when the best partner turns out to be a channel we already own.

Good Fit

• Ecommerce and DTC brands with decent margin and a repeat-purchase story.
• Subscription and marketplace businesses where partners can explain the product better than an ad can.
• Categories with real publisher and review-site coverage worth being in.
• Existing programs that have quietly become a coupon rebate scheme.

Bad Fit

• Thin margins where any workable payout erases the profit.
• Nobody internally able to approve partners, pay invoices or answer an email inside a week.
• A need for revenue this month. Affiliate compounds; it does not sprint.
• An expectation that the channel will hit 30% of revenue because a beauty brand did.

Send us your current program — or the network login you have not opened since setup. We will tell you whether it is an acquisition channel or an expensive discount code.