Affiliate recruitment: how to find affiliates for your SaaS

Most software affiliate programs fail quietly. The program exists, the link works, and nobody promotes it. The problem is rarely the commission. It is that the founder waited for affiliates to show up, or wrote to a hundred strangers with the same message. Recruitment works when you know which kinds of people sell software, go to each of them where they already are, and make saying yes take two minutes.

Who actually sells software

A SaaS affiliate is rarely a coupon site or a deal blog. The people who send paying customers to a software product fall into five groups, and each one needs a different approach.

Start with the first group and work down. The further down the table, the more people you have to contact for each one who says yes, and the more your terms have to do the convincing.

Get the program ready before anyone sees it

An invitation is a promise. Before you send the first one, check that the promise holds.

• Every product you sell has its own commission, written down.
• A test click, a test purchase and a test refund all landed where they should.
• There is a public page with the full terms: rate, how long it recurs, cookie length, refund window, minimum payout.
• You know who you will approve, and you will answer a join request within a day.

If any of these is missing, read how to create an affiliate program for your SaaS first. A recruit who clicks your link and sees nothing tracked rarely gives you a second chance.

Start with your own customers

Your best affiliates are usually already paying you. They know the product, they have the problem it solves, and the people around them have it too. You do not need to find them. You need to sort your customer list.

• Long-tenured accounts. Anyone who has paid for six months or more and still logs in.
• People who praised you. Search your support inbox and reviews for "love", "recommend" and "told my".
• People who already referred someone. Ask new signups how they heard of you; the names that come back are your first list.
• Public fans. Search your product's name on social networks and forums. Anyone who has posted about you unprompted is a warm lead.
• Customers with an audience. Check whether your users include people who run a newsletter, a channel or a consultancy. Their email domain often tells you.

Twenty well-chosen customers beat a blast to your whole list. Write to them one by one, and add a quiet line about the program to your account settings or footer for everyone else.

Search queries that find creators and review sites

The people who already write about your category are the ones who will write about you. Find them with a search engine, a video platform and a spreadsheet. Replace the brackets with your category and the names of the tools your customers compare you with.

• best [category] software and best [category] tools for [audience]
• [competitor] alternatives and [competitor] vs
• [competitor] review and [competitor] tutorial
• "[competitor]" "affiliate link", to find pages that already disclose an affiliate relationship
• site:youtube.com [category] tutorial, then sort by upload date to find active channels
• [category] newsletter and [audience] newsletter
• [category] podcast, then look at who has interviewed founders in your space

Look at the first two pages of every query. For each result, note who wrote it, when it was last updated, whether it links to tools through affiliate links, and how to reach the author. Someone already earning a commission on a competitor understands the deal and only needs a reason to add you. A list of forty names from an afternoon of searching is a good start.

Favour fit over size. A newsletter of three thousand people who all run small online shops will send more customers to a tool for small online shops than a general tech channel ten times larger.

Consultants, agencies and communities

Consultants and agencies set up tools for clients, so one of them can bring several accounts a year without publishing anything. Find them in the partner or expert directories of the tools yours connects to, on freelance platforms under your category, and through searches like [category] consultant or [adjacent tool] agency. They care about recurring commissions more than anyone, because their clients stay for years.

For communities, recruit the owner, not the members. Posting your program in someone else's group is spam. Writing to the person who runs it, with a discount for their members and a commission for them, is a partnership. Look for the Slack and Discord groups, forums and subreddits your customers mention, and read the rules before you write.

Outreach that gets a yes

A good recruitment message is short, personal and complete. The reader should be able to decide without clicking anything.

• One line on why them. Name the video, the post or the thing they said. If you cannot, they are not on your list yet.
• The terms in numbers. The rate, whether it recurs and for how long, and when they get paid.
• Something for their audience. A discount code with their name on it.
• One ask. Join, or reply with a question. Not a call.

Template: a customer

Subject: A thank you, and an offer

Hi [name], you have been using [product] since [month], and you mentioned it to [person or thread]. Thank you. We now pay people who recommend us: [30%] of every payment for [12 months] from each customer you send. Your code [NAME20] gives them [20% off for 3 months]. Joining takes a minute: [invite link]. If it is not for you, no need to reply.

Template: a creator or review site

Subject: [product] for your [category] roundup

Hi [name], I read your [title of post or video] and noticed you compare [competitor] and [competitor]. I build [product], which [one sentence on what is different]. If you want to try it, I have set up a free account for you. If it earns a place, the program pays [30%] of every payment for [12 months], your readers get [20% off] with your code, and the terms are all here: [program page]. Happy to send screenshots or answer anything.

Send one follow-up after a week, with something new: a feature, a screenshot, a question. Then stop. Track every message in your spreadsheet so nobody hears from you three times.

What to offer

An affiliate weighs three things: what a customer is worth to them, how likely their audience is to buy, and how much work it takes. Make all three visible.

The terms, worked out. A percentage means little without a price. Do the sum for them. As an illustration: on a $29 monthly plan, 30% recurring for 12 months is $8.70 a month, or $104.40 over the first year of each customer. If your minimum payout is $50, say so too: in this example, six paying customers in a month ($52.20) clear it, while five ($43.50) carry over to the next month.

A code for their audience. A discount gives a listener a reason to act and gives the affiliate something to say. It also credits sales that a link would miss, like a podcast mention or a video description copied into a notes app. See how affiliate discount codes work.

Assets. Keep a short kit ready to send:

• A free account or an extended trial, so they can show the real product.
• Three to five current screenshots, and your logo.
• A one-paragraph description and a one-line one, in your words.
• An honest list of who the product is for and who it is not for.
• The pages worth linking to: pricing, a feature page, a comparison page.

Directories and marketplaces

Affiliate directories are where people who are already looking for a program go to compare terms. They are worth being in, because they let a creator who found you elsewhere check your terms in one place, and they put you in front of affiliates searching your category. They are not a recruitment plan. A listing does not send anyone your way by itself, and most of your first affiliates will still come from the outreach above.

Klibon lists active programs at klibon.com/programs, where affiliates filter by category, commission and recurring payments and see each product's rate before they join. Klibon lists and ranks programs; it does not promote any of them or bring you affiliates. When you join any directory, write the listing for an affiliate, not a customer: who buys the product, what a sale earns, and how long a customer typically stays.

Onboarding and activating recruits

A recruit who joins and never posts costs you nothing, but earns you nothing either. An affiliate's interest is highest the week they join, so that is where your effort goes.

1. Approve quickly. A recruit waiting in a queue loses interest, and a sale made before approval usually earns nothing.
2. Send a welcome message on day one. Their link, their code, the asset kit and one suggested first piece: "a short post on how you use [feature]".
3. Watch for the first click. No click after a week means they have not started. Ask if anything is missing.
4. Celebrate the first sale. Write to them personally. It is the moment they decide whether you are worth more effort.
5. Give them news to share. A launch, a new integration or a price change is a reason for an affiliate to post again.

For a specific piece of work, such as a review or a tutorial video, offer a fixed reward on top of the commission. It turns "promote us sometime" into a task with a deadline.

What to track

Treat recruitment as a funnel and measure each step for each source, so you know whether customers, creators or agencies are worth your next afternoon.

• Contacted, joined, active. How many you wrote to, how many joined, how many sent a click in the last 30 days.
• Time to first sale. A recruit with no sale after 60 days needs a nudge or a different approach.
• Per affiliate: clicks, conversions, revenue, and commissions owed.
• Revenue per unit of commission. What each affiliate brings in for every dollar you pay them. This is how you decide who gets a better rate.
• Refunds and cancellations by affiliate. A source of customers who leave in the first month is not a good source.

Expect a few affiliates to bring most of the sales. Spend your time on them, and on finding more people like them. If you see refunds clustering around one affiliate, read how to prevent affiliate fraud.

How Klibon handles recruitment

Klibon gives each program the pieces this guide relies on. They are on your program's Affiliates tab, and the details are in recruiting and paying affiliates.

• An invite link per program, klibon.com/join/<your-program>, to put in an email, a footer or a reply. Anyone who follows it joins on your terms, automatically or into your approval queue, depending on the approval mode you chose.
• Email invitations for the people you have in mind. An invited address is approved on arrival, because you typed it yourself. Invitations expire after 30 days. Free sends up to 20 every 30 days; Growth and Scale send them in volume.
• A public program page with the terms an affiliate needs: each product's rate, whether it recurs, the cookie length, how long a commission is held, how approval works and the minimum payout, which is never below $50. Link to it in every message.
• Coupon codes per affiliate, on every plan. On Stripe, Klibon can create a code like SARAH20 for each affiliate you approve. Elsewhere you register the code you made. See coupon codes.
• Missions, on Growth and Scale: a paid task such as a review or a video, with a fixed reward or a rate per 1,000 views. Approved affiliates submit proof, you approve it, and the reward joins their next statement.
• Per-affiliate numbers: clicks, conversions, revenue, commissions, where the clicks came from, and revenue per unit of commission.

Free runs one program with up to 25 active affiliates, with no card and no end date. Paid plans are a flat monthly fee that lifts the limits; see pricing. Klibon never takes a cut of commissions, so the rate you put in your message is the rate your affiliate receives. You pay them from the monthly statement by whatever means you already use, and record the payment in Klibon.