Referral & Affiliate
Recruit partners, stage creator payouts and protect incremental affiliate revenue
Performance-based distribution can begin with established partners who bring an audience or with campaign creators who learn formats on accounts they operate. The first route needs a product that already converts, public proof, a low-friction tracking link and terms that protect incremental revenue. The second can pay partly for discovery, then move from hybrid compensation toward pure CPA only as formats, attribution and creator earnings become credible. The current evidence comes from two operator self-reports, not audited incrementality or retained-profit comparisons.
Start here
- Running an Affiliate Program After Product Conversion — The preconditions and the incrementality trap; decides whether you should be in this channel at all.
- Staging Creator Payouts Toward Pure CPA — How to absorb format-discovery risk before asking campaign creators to work on outcomes alone.
- Recruiting Your First Affiliates — How the first established-audience partners are found and pitched once the product converts.
- Affonso — The one tool option the sources confirm, for the signup-friction step after a yes.
Pages
- Running an Affiliate Program After Product Conversion — Tibo's Outrank, Revid and SuperX programs; when checkout already converts and partners exist or are on the way
- Staging Creator Payouts Toward Pure CPA — Andrei Shemet's creator network; hybrid discovery pay that moves toward pure CPA after attributed earnings appear
- Recruiting Your First Affiliates — Tibo, going from zero to the first ten partners; when you have public results and competitors already run affiliate programs
- Affonso — Tibo's current test on a newer product; the step between a partner's yes and a tracking link
Gaps
- Audited comparisons of established-audience affiliates and campaign-account creators on incremental retained profit.
- Cases comparing response rate, activation rate, and time to first sale across candidates.
- Incrementality experiment design that separates affiliate links from organic traffic.
- A tax, worker-classification, chargeback, and payout-dispute checklist a solo builder can manage.
- Controlled comparisons of
CPM + CPA, fixed-fee-plus-CPA and pure CPA on creator retention and marginal profit.