Recruiting Your First Affiliates

Definition

Recruiting is the step before an affiliate program has anyone in it: making the product visible enough that partners find you, locating people already paid to promote your category or already making content about the problem you solve, and getting them from "yes" to a live tracking link with as few steps as possible. It is distinct from operating the program once partners are in — landing page, commission rate, fraud rules, activation — which is Running an Affiliate Program After Product Conversion.

Perspectives

Tibo (2026-08-20, web)

Publish revenue, product improvements, and results before looking for affiliate candidates, to lower the reputation risk for both the product and the person recommending it; inbound affiliates who find you this way tend to be the best ones. Candidates are found by pulling a competitor's backlink profile (Ahrefs, in Tibo's example) and filtering for strings like refer, then emailing them better terms, or by searching Google and YouTube for how to content about the problem the product solves and asking for a mention or a description-box link rather than hard-pitching. Reaching out directly to people already making content on the topic and getting paid commissions is preferable to affiliate marketplaces, where too many products compete for the same attention.

The pitch should be short and carry a specific detail from the person's content, the fit between product and audience, the recurring commission rate, a tracking link, and shareable numbers or screenshots. Requiring a separate signup after they've agreed can make them drop off, so the steps should be reduced; Tibo is testing Affonso on a newer product. Going from 0 to 10 affiliates is the hardest part — after that, the ones who see it working start recruiting for you — and a competitor's affiliate who ends up earning more from you than from the competitor is a strong signal.

How to apply

• Fits once you have public proof to show — revenue, product improvements, customer results, as in Founder-Led SaaS Pre-Demand and Launch; without it every pitch asks a partner to stake their reputation on an unknown.
• Assumes a category where competitors already run affiliate programs (their backlinks are the candidate list) or where how to content on your problem exists on Google and YouTube; a brand-new category has neither and depends on inbound alone.
• Read Running an Affiliate Program After Product Conversion first to confirm the product converts — recruiting partners to a product that doesn't sell burns the candidate list.
• After a yes, the only job left is shortening the path to a live link; Affonso is the author's current option. Whole flow: Referral & Affiliate.

Limits

• The backlink filter, content search, marketplace avoidance, and direct-pitch approach are the author's recommendations, with no comparison of candidate response rate, activation rate, or incremental revenue disclosed.

• Affonso's no-separate-signup flow is the author's single use experience; its pricing, tracking, and payout features are not confirmed in this source.

• Ahrefs' features and pricing were not verified; the backlink method depends on competitors publishing affiliate links at all.

• The author already operates several products with an audience, so "get found before you find people" presumes reach a solo builder may not have.

• Original post