#everything-marketing

What types of affiliates? Publishers/media or more content focused like influencers? different approaches

Steal them from your competitors.

^this. go to your competitors tagged on IG and build lists from there. also consider brands that are tangential to your brand. for example I work with a meat company so we also pulled influencers that work with heavy lifting workout equipment companies

@Sankalp Bangwal
In theory, there are 4 category of affiliates you want to build:
1. Deals, Discounts, Coupon Codes, Loyalty Rewards Websites (not going to include any examples here, but think of sites like Retail-Me-Not) - Low commission (sometimes nil, as long as they can get a code to share with their audience) -- great for TOF awareness PLUS a lot of sales - we source a ton of traffic from sites like capital-one-shopping and the likes
2. Ad-Networks that do back-fill of ad-inventory on content sites like BuzzFeed, Forbes, etc. They are normally an amazing source of revenue because they will work on commissions as low as 3-5% and some of the biggest affiliate business for our clients comes from these categories.
3. Direct Affiliates (This is the type I imagine you're looking to build) - Bloggers, Newsletter publishers etc. - that you have a one-to-one relationship with, who take your banners/creative/text links either directly or through an affiliate partner network like commission junction and then run it on their lists/sites etc (most expensive in terms of commission rates as you pay them, you pay the network, and it is labor intensive - you have to manage the contracts, tracking pixels, fraud prevention, click injection that can fuck up your meta pixels etc)
4. Influencers on TikTok, Instagram etc., who will expect a sample, and/or a unique discount code to share with their audience, and then a commission or pay to post (TikTok makes it easy though, with their refundable samples and the affiliate network - IG & YT are getting their too and will be big in 2025)
Most social networks like IG, YT, & TT are now building an ecosystem to enable affilaite marketing, with a fat cut for themselves, and there's not much you can do about it, besides using them to power some sales, but building long term relationships with #1, #2, and #3 above directly.
You will need at least 3 type of contracts for these relationships, namely
1. Generic sales, lets' say 8% commission for all revenue up to a standard 10% discount code that you offer to everyone on your site
2. Discount Code based sales, so let's say you give them a unique 15% discount code to share with their audience, then you will give them only 3% commission and most wil be happy
3. Holiday Sales, like BFCM, Mothers Day etc. when you have excessive sales, so you either reduce your cookie tracking duration (15 days before the holidays) or you change your contract terms with relevant partners at the time of holidays
If all of this sounds complicated, don't be overwhelmed, it normally is more laborious than complex.
I have templates for a number of these, happy to share if you want let me know.
Remember - it's one of the most important channels for 2025 as it has the potential to beat Meta CAC by 20-40% in my experience
Overall, you need a strategy and a clear set of terms/conditions for all of them, or you can hire an agency (wink wink shameless plug 😉 ) and let them do this all for you, while you laugh your way to the bank
Happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thanks a lot for your inputs guys! Answering @Jared Holstad we're focussing on Influencers & Content Affiliates, with a few top deals/coupons affiliates. Don't prefer the coupon affiliates as much because we don't end up having much control on the codes they show on their websites. Plus, we want to build this as an acquisition channel, while most of the deals end up being used by our repeat buyers.

@Sandeep Bansal DMing you