Affiliate Recruitment: Named Partners, Not Sign-Up Counts

A quarter of recruitment done this way produces thirty to forty-five signed partners, of which perhaps six to twelve will ever send a sale. We say that at the start, because the number that impresses in a pitch — hundreds of sign-ups — counts applications, and applications are free. How partners are found: We start from the queries that convert for you, not the ones with volume. For each, the pages ranking in the first ten positions in your market, filtered to those already monetising with affiliate links, which their disclosure page and outbound link pattern make obvious. Then the same pass across YouTube for review and comparison formats, and across your competitors' published partner lists. In Czechia this is a small and legible world: across kids, gaming and automotive together, perhaps sixty to ninety publishers matter, and we can name most of them without opening a tool. Worldwide the method is identical and the list is longer, not different. What the outreach actually is: A named person, a specific page of theirs that would carry the placement, the placement we propose, and the commercial offer attached to it. Not a program invitation. Publishers worth having receive twenty program invitations a week and read none of them. The offer is frequently hybrid — a flat fee for the placement plus a lower revenue share — because a publisher with real traffic will not do editorial work on pure performance, and is right not to. Negotiating placement rather than rates: Tenancy and paid placement pricing is checked against the publisher's traffic before we agree to it: third-party estimates alongside their own analytics, and if they will not share, we do not buy. Every contracted placement gets a review date and a kill rule — if it has not covered its fee in gross margin within two months, it is not renewed, whatever the relationship. That rule is agreed with you before the first placement is bought, so the awkward conversation happens once, in advance. The first thirty days after signing: Most programs lose their new partners here. The partner needs the product feed in the format their platform ingests, creative in the sizes they actually run, a deep-link tool that works, and somebody who answers within a day. We run that first month ourselves and hand over a documented routine, because a partner who has to chase you in week one has already decided about you. What we refuse: No marketplace invite blasts and no scraped-list email sequences. They cost your sending reputation and produce partners who never activate, which then pollutes every report you look at. No voucher or cashback recruitment before a content layer exists. For gaming: no key resellers, no cheat, trainer or account-trading sites, no incentivised install traffic — we have declined two gaming clients whose target cost per install only worked with incent. For kids and family: no creator whose disclosure practice is not already visible in their published posts, and nothing aimed at channels whose primary audience sits below the Czech digital consent age of fifteen. For automotive: no lead brokers reselling the same enquiry to four dealerships. Not included: We are not an influencer agency. Creator recruitment here means partners taking a performance deal and carrying a tracked link, not paid campaigns with usage rights, briefs and a shoot. Contracts are drafted and negotiated by us and signed by you; we do not sign on your behalf. Who this is not for: Programs without working tracking. Recruiting before tracking is verified is how you burn the twelve publishers who matter in your category, because they test a program once. Also not for clients who want new partner count as the weekly metric — we report partners producing margin, and for the first two quarters that number moves slowly enough to be uncomfortable if it was not agreed in advance.