1. Revenue concentration

Export partner-level revenue for the last 12 months and sort it. How much comes from your top five partners? Heavy concentration isn’t automatically bad, but it is a risk: if one partner changes its model or drops you, the channel drops with it. It also tells you where to look first.

2. Partner mix by type

Tag every active partner by type: content and review, comparison, coupon, cashback and loyalty, creator, sub-network, and so on. Then compare revenue share against commission share for each type. Coupon and cashback partners often sit at the end of the journey and pick up last-click credit for customers who were already buying. That doesn’t make them useless, but you should know how much of your spend goes to partners that introduce new customers versus partners that close existing ones.

3. New versus returning customers

If your network and tracking allow it, split affiliate orders by new and returning customers. A program that mostly pays commission on returning customers is closer to a discount scheme than an acquisition channel. Many networks support different rates for new customers, which is one of the simplest levers you have.

4. Commission structure

Write your commission structure on one page. Flat rates, tiers, bonuses, product exclusions, payout rules. Then ask three questions. Does it reward the behaviour you actually want? Is it competitive with what partners can earn from your competitors? Does it still work against your margins once you account for returns and cancellations? Tiered commissions and targeted bonuses usually beat a single flat rate, because they let you pay more for growth without raising costs on every sale.

5. Tracking and attribution

Place test orders through a few partner links on different devices and browsers, and confirm each one tracks. Check cookie windows, how cross-device journeys are handled, and how your network treats coupon codes used without a click. Then reconcile a month of network-reported sales against your own order data. Gaps here quietly erode partner trust: publishers notice when sales go missing, and they stop promoting.

6. EPC and conversion rate

Earnings per click is the number publishers use to decide whether you’re worth their space. Look at your EPC over time and by partner type. If it’s weak, the fix is rarely just a higher rate. Landing page conversion, average order value and offer strength all feed into it.

7. Average order value

Compare affiliate AOV with your site-wide AOV. A much lower affiliate AOV can point to heavy discount-code traffic. A higher one can justify a richer commission for the partners driving it.

8. Competitor partners

Search for your competitors on review sites, comparison pages, coupon sites and creator channels. Which publishers feature them and not you? This is usually the fastest way to build a recruitment list, because those publishers already have an audience for your category.

9. Compliance and brand bidding

Search your brand terms and look at who is bidding on them. Check your terms of service for paid search rules and confirm they are being enforced. Look for coupon codes leaking onto sites you never approved, and for partners making claims about your product that you would not make yourself.

10. Activation rate

Finally, count how many of your approved partners drove at least one sale in the last 90 days. In many programs the answer is a small fraction. A long list of inactive partners isn’t an asset; it’s a sign recruitment and activation stopped at the approval email.

Turning findings into a plan

An audit is only useful if it ends in decisions. Rank each finding by likely revenue impact and effort, then pick the three to five changes you will make this quarter. Typical early wins are fixing tracking gaps, introducing a new-customer rate or tier, tightening brand-bidding enforcement, and starting targeted outreach to the publishers your competitors already work with.

If you’d rather have a second pair of eyes, this is exactly what our free program audit covers. We review your partner mix, commissions, tracking and competitors’ affiliates, and send back a prioritised plan of what we would fix first.

Start with where your buyers research

Before building any list, map the journey. What does someone search before buying a product like yours? Which comparison pages, “best of” roundups, reviews, YouTube videos, newsletters and forums do they read? Search those queries yourself and note every publisher on the first pages of results. That list is more valuable than any network directory, because it reflects where demand actually is.

Find who already promotes your competitors

Look at the publishers featuring your competitors. A site that already earns from your category has the audience and the content format; it just needs a reason to include you. Note the article, the position your competitor holds in it, and how the link is tagged. That tells you what you are competing for.

Sort publishers into tiers

Not every publisher deserves the same effort. We group prospects into three rough tiers:

• Tier 1: major publications and the top-ranking review sites in your category. Few in number, high impact, often slow to respond and sometimes asking for a flat fee or hybrid deal.
• Tier 2: established niche sites, newsletters and creators with an engaged audience that matches your buyer.
• Tier 3: the long tail of smaller blogs and sites, often best reached through network recruitment tools or sub-networks.

Tier 1 and tier 2 get personal outreach. Tier 3 gets a well-built, repeatable process.

Write a pitch worth answering

Publishers receive constant program invitations. Most are generic, and most are ignored. A pitch that gets answered usually has four things:

• It is addressed to a real person and references a specific article or video they made.
• It explains why your product fits their audience, in one or two sentences.
• It makes the commercial case: commission rate, cookie window, typical conversion and order value, and any tier or bonus they could unlock.
• It offers something to make the content easier to create: product access, an exclusive offer, data, or someone to answer questions.

Keep it short. The aim of the first message is a reply, not a signed deal.

Be ready to talk about placement fees

Many larger publishers will ask for a flat fee for inclusion or for a guaranteed position. Decide in advance what you would pay and on what terms. A hybrid deal, with a lower fee plus commission, often aligns incentives better than a pure flat fee. Whatever you agree, track the placement so you can judge it on revenue.

Activation is half the job

Getting a publisher to join is not the same as getting them to promote. After approval, send a short onboarding message: the products to feature, the angles that convert, approved claims, creative, and a clear point of contact. Follow up if nothing goes live within a few weeks. Small things like updated product details, a seasonal offer or a commission bump for a launch window often turn a dormant partner into an active one.

Measure partners on incrementality

Once content publishers are live, compare them on more than revenue. Look at new-customer share, order value and how often they are the first touch rather than the last. Content and review partners often look weaker on a strict last-click report than they really are, which is one reason many programs pay them more through tiers or bonuses.

Make it a habit, not a campaign

The programs that grow fastest treat recruitment as a weekly routine: a steady pipeline of researched prospects, personal outreach, activation and follow-up. Publisher relationships compound. A partner recruited this quarter can become one of your biggest revenue drivers a year from now.

Partner and publisher recruitment is one of our core services. If you want a researched list of the publishers already selling in your category, get in touch.

1. Flat fee

You pay a fixed amount for a defined deliverable: a dedicated video, an integration, a set of posts. The creator carries no performance risk, so this is the structure most of them prefer.

When it makes sense: awareness goals, creators whose audience you are confident in, or when you need content you can reuse in ads.

Watch out for: paying on follower count alone. Ask for recent performance data on comparable content, define deliverables and usage rights in writing, and always add a tracked link or code so you learn something from the spend.

2. CPA or commission only

The creator earns a commission for each sale or sign-up their link or code drives, usually through your affiliate network. You only pay for results.

When it makes sense: evergreen content such as reviews, tutorials and comparisons, creators who already work this way, and testing new creators at low risk.

Watch out for: expecting established creators to work for commission alone with an unproven product. Many will decline, and the ones who accept may not prioritise you. Commission-only deals work best when the rate is competitive and the creator can see that your product converts.

3. Hybrid: fee plus commission

A smaller fixed fee to cover the creator’s time, plus commission on sales. This shares the risk: the creator is paid for the work, and you are paying a meaningful share of the cost only when sales come in.

When it makes sense: most mid-sized creators, first collaborations with a creator you want to build a long-term relationship with, and products with a considered purchase where content keeps converting for months.

Watch out for: setting the fee so high that the commission becomes an afterthought. The fee should cover production; the upside should come from performance.

4. Tiered commissions and performance bonuses

Commission rates rise as a creator hits revenue or sales thresholds, or bonuses are paid for milestones in a period. Tiers reward your best partners without raising costs across the whole program.

When it makes sense: once you have creators who are consistently selling, and you want them to post more often or give you better placement.

Watch out for: tiers so high nobody reaches them. A tier that feels achievable within a month or a quarter motivates; one that feels out of reach is ignored.

How to choose

A simple way to think about it: the less you know about how a creator will perform for your product, the more the deal should lean towards commission or a small test fee. As evidence builds, you can move proven creators to hybrid deals, tiers and occasionally larger flat fees for content you will also put behind paid ads.

Things to agree in every creator deal

• Tracking: a unique link or code on your affiliate network, so every sale is attributed to the creator who drove it.
• Deliverables: format, length, number of posts, timing and any key points the content must include.
• Usage rights: whether and for how long you can reuse the content, including whitelisting or Spark Ads through the creator’s own handle.
• Disclosure: clear sponsorship or affiliate disclosure in line with the platform’s rules and the advertising rules where the content runs.
• Payment terms: when fees are paid, how commission is calculated and how returns or cancellations are handled.

Scale what works

The real advantage of performance-based creator deals is what happens after launch. When every creator is on a tracked link, you can see which creators and which formats actually sell. Re-book those creators, raise their tiers, and put their best content behind paid amplification. Stop paying for what doesn’t move the numbers.

Creator and influencer partnerships are one of our core services. If you want a second opinion on how your creator deals are structured, get in touch; we work on creator programs too.

1. Where are the partners you want?

Start with partners, not features. List the publishers, creators and sites you most want to work with, then find out which networks they are on. Many large publishers work across several networks, but smaller ones often stick to one or two. If the partners you care about are concentrated on a particular network, that is a strong argument for it.

2. Which markets do you sell in?

Networks have different strengths by region. Some have deep publisher bases in North America, others are especially strong in the UK and Europe. If you sell internationally, check the publisher base and support in each market you care about, and how multi-currency payments and local tax rules are handled.

3. Does it fit your business model?

Ecommerce, subscription software, B2B and lead generation programs have different needs. Subscription and SaaS brands may want recurring commissions, trial-to-paid tracking and integrations with their billing system. PartnerStack, for example, is built around B2B SaaS partnerships, while networks like CJ, Awin and Rakuten Advertising have deep ecommerce and retail publisher bases. Impact positions itself as a broader partnership platform covering affiliates, creators and other partner types.

4. How does tracking work?

Ask how the network tracks conversions: browser cookies, server-to-server or API-based tracking, mobile app tracking, and coupon-code attribution without a click. Server-side tracking is generally more resilient to browser privacy changes. Ask how cross-device journeys are handled, and how easily you can reconcile network data against your own order data.

5. What does it really cost?

Network pricing usually combines some mix of setup fees, monthly platform fees, and a network fee or override on top of partner commissions. Get a written quote that covers all of them, and model the total cost at your current and expected volume. A network that looks cheap at launch can look very different once commissions scale, and vice versa.

6. How flexible are commissions and payouts?

Check whether you can set different rates by partner, product category or customer type, run tiered commissions and time-limited bonuses, and handle returns and cancellations cleanly. Payment terms matter to publishers too; reliable, on-time payouts are part of how a program earns their attention.

7. What does the reporting show?

You will live in the reporting. Make sure you can see partner-level revenue, new versus returning customers if your data supports it, EPC, conversion rate and order value, and that you can export the raw data. Ask for a demo using real program data, not just a polished sample.

8. Compliance and fraud controls

Look at how the network helps you monitor brand bidding, coupon leakage, cookie stuffing and suspicious traffic, and what happens when a partner breaks your terms. Some of this you will still need to do yourself, but good tooling saves time.

9. Can you leave?

Ask about contract length, notice periods and data export before you sign. Migrating between networks is entirely possible, but it means re-onboarding partners and changing tracking, so plan it carefully. Some brands run more than one network to reach different publisher bases, at the cost of extra management.

A note on ShareASale

ShareASale is owned by Awin, which has been moving ShareASale programs and publishers onto the Awin platform. If you are on ShareASale today or considering it, check the current migration status and what it means for your program before making plans.

Our take

Choose the network where your target partners already are, in the markets you sell in, with tracking that fits your business model and a total cost you have modelled at scale. Then put most of your energy into recruitment and activation; the network matters, but the partners matter more.

We run programs on Impact, CJ, Awin, Rakuten Advertising, ShareASale and PartnerStack. If you are choosing a network or thinking about migrating, get in touch and we’ll include a network recommendation.