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Happy Friday to all the SaaS founders who made it through another week without crashing out over their MRR (publicly) 🤝
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Read this if your SaaS affiliate program feels too slow👇
If you’re treating affiliate marketing like paid ads, sorry to break it to you, but that’s why it feels too slow.
You launch, recruit a few partners, wait 30 days, and when signups don’t jump you decide it’s too expensive. Affiliate just doesn’t run on that clock.
Here’s roughly how it goes:
Months 1 to 2 ➡️ validation
Early referrals come from existing customers and friendly creators. You’re testing tracking, commissions and positioning. It rarely looks profitable yet.
Months 3 to 6 ➡️ it starts to move
Blog posts start ranking. Reviews get picked up in niche communities. Affiliates tune their own funnels. In our experience, this is when most SaaS programs begin to feel profitable.
After that ➡️ it grows
Paid ads stop the day the budget does. Affiliate content keeps working in the background.
What decides whether the math works is retention. A commission looks expensive in month one. If that customer stays a year, it doesn’t.
So if you’re judging it like a one month experiment, you’ll probably shut it down right before it starts working.
If you’re treating affiliate marketing like paid ads, sorry to break it to you, but that’s why it feels too slow.
You launch, recruit a few partners, wait 30 days, and when signups don’t jump you decide it’s too expensive. Affiliate just doesn’t run on that clock.
Here’s roughly how it goes:
Months 1 to 2 ➡️ validation
Early referrals come from existing customers and friendly creators. You’re testing tracking, commissions and positioning. It rarely looks profitable yet.
Months 3 to 6 ➡️ it starts to move
Blog posts start ranking. Reviews get picked up in niche communities. Affiliates tune their own funnels. In our experience, this is when most SaaS programs begin to feel profitable.
After that ➡️ it grows
Paid ads stop the day the budget does. Affiliate content keeps working in the background.
What decides whether the math works is retention. A commission looks expensive in month one. If that customer stays a year, it doesn’t.
So if you’re judging it like a one month experiment, you’ll probably shut it down right before it starts working.
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3 ways affiliates could be quietly eating into your program's ROI 👀
1️⃣ Self-referrals to earn commissions
2️⃣ Coupon sites ranking for your brand without offering discounts
3️⃣ Paid ads bidding on your brand name
Are you paying for new customers or ones you'd get anyway?
1️⃣ Self-referrals to earn commissions
2️⃣ Coupon sites ranking for your brand without offering discounts
3️⃣ Paid ads bidding on your brand name
Are you paying for new customers or ones you'd get anyway?
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In our latest Ask Emmet episode, we cover how to protect your program, improve onboarding & get affiliates actually promoting.
Watch it here: youtube.com/watch?v=n2UOiK…
Watch it here: youtube.com/watch?v=n2UOiK…
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7.6% of affiliates ever send a single referral. Only 1.28% ever make a sale. That’s from the 2k+ active SaaS affiliate programs we analyzed.
So a program with 200 affiliates has about 15 who send anyone your way, and maybe 2 or 3 who actually close a sale.
Most founders respond by recruiting more but the programs that last do the opposite.
Only 15.6% keep operating long term, and the ones that do go back to the handful who are working, find out why, and make it easier for the next batch to copy it.
They also look after the quiet ones in the middle, who would have started if someone had answered their question in the first week.
A bigger list isn’t a bigger program. Activation is the whole game.
So a program with 200 affiliates has about 15 who send anyone your way, and maybe 2 or 3 who actually close a sale.
Most founders respond by recruiting more but the programs that last do the opposite.
Only 15.6% keep operating long term, and the ones that do go back to the handful who are working, find out why, and make it easier for the next batch to copy it.
They also look after the quiet ones in the middle, who would have started if someone had answered their question in the first week.
A bigger list isn’t a bigger program. Activation is the whole game.
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The full numbers are in our State of SaaS Affiliate Programs report: rewardful.com/articles/state…
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The most damaging thing an affiliate can do isn’t a fake signup.
It’s running search ads on your own brand name, then collecting commission on customers who were already looking for you.
New Ask Emmet is live and we cover that and how to stop it: youtube.com/watch?v=n2UOiK…
It’s running search ads on your own brand name, then collecting commission on customers who were already looking for you.
New Ask Emmet is live and we cover that and how to stop it: youtube.com/watch?v=n2UOiK…
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What affiliates actually care about:
-> Getting paid
-> Getting paid on time
-> Knowing exactly when that will be
Commission rate comes after all three.
-> Getting paid
-> Getting paid on time
-> Knowing exactly when that will be
Commission rate comes after all three.
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The best affiliate you will ever see?
Just the one who actually used the product and told the truth about it.
Just the one who actually used the product and told the truth about it.
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From 0 affiliate marketing experience to 1,900+ affiliates and $1M in revenue (in under 2 years!)
Aragon turned affiliate marketing into one of its biggest growth channels, with affiliates driving 50%+ of revenue.
And you can be next!
Aragon turned affiliate marketing into one of its biggest growth channels, with affiliates driving 50%+ of revenue.
And you can be next!
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Here’s how they built it with Rewardful 👇
rewardful.com/case-studies/a…
rewardful.com/case-studies/a…
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SaaS founders will spend 3 hours debating button copy and then approve a completely new pricing strategy in a 7-minute Slack thread
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The 3 questions that tell you if you're ready for an affiliate program:
-> Is anyone already recommending you unprompted?
-> Can users explain your product in one sentence?
-> Is retention stable enough that a referral won't churn in month one?
(if you're still not sure, our free course walks through the rest: academy.rewardful.com)
-> Is anyone already recommending you unprompted?
-> Can users explain your product in one sentence?
-> Is retention stable enough that a referral won't churn in month one?
(if you're still not sure, our free course walks through the rest: academy.rewardful.com)
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We’ve made a lot of FREE stuff for SaaS affiliate marketers.
Like A LOT: playbooks, templates, courses, calculators, guides, AI tools, videos (you name it!)
So we put everything in one place: rewardful.com/library
(your bookmarks folder can thank us later)
Like A LOT: playbooks, templates, courses, calculators, guides, AI tools, videos (you name it!)
So we put everything in one place: rewardful.com/library
(your bookmarks folder can thank us later)
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Somewhere right now a SaaS founder is changing their pricing page instead of fixing the onboarding 👀
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Somewhere in a Slack group chat right now:
“Anyone know a good tool for X?”
Someone drops your SaaS.
(that’s affiliate marketing before you put a program behind it)
“Anyone know a good tool for X?”
Someone drops your SaaS.
(that’s affiliate marketing before you put a program behind it)
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Picture having 100+ people selling your product without adding 100 people to payroll.
For Huntr, that network has already generated tens of thousands in affiliate revenue.
That’s the power of affiliate marketing for lean SaaS teams and yours could be next too 😉
For Huntr, that network has already generated tens of thousands in affiliate revenue.
That’s the power of affiliate marketing for lean SaaS teams and yours could be next too 😉
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You can read Huntr's full story here: rewardful.com/case-studies/h…
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