2nd October 2026
Most affiliate programmes don’t have an affiliate shortage.
They have an active, relevant affiliate shortage.
An ecommerce brand might have 2,000 publishers approved on its affiliate network while the majority of revenue comes from fewer than 20.
Hundreds may never have generated a click.
Others joined years ago and haven’t promoted the brand since.
Meanwhile, publishers capable of introducing entirely new audiences may not even be on the programme.
That’s why successful affiliate recruitment isn’t about getting as many affiliates as possible.
It’s about finding partners with:
At Conversion Digital, we view affiliate recruitment less like network administration and more like business development.
You identify an opportunity.
Research the organisation or creator.
Understand what would make the partnership commercially interesting.
Approach the right person.
Build the relationship.
Negotiate.
Activate.
Then develop the partnership over time.
Here’s how ecommerce brands can build that process.
Affiliate recruitment is the process of identifying, approaching, onboarding and activating publishers or partners capable of promoting a brand through its affiliate programme.
The word activating is important.
Recruitment isn’t complete when a publisher joins your affiliate network.
If 100 publishers join and none promote the brand, you’ve recruited 100 accounts but created almost no commercial value.
A better recruitment funnel looks like:
Prospect identified → Contacted → Interested → Negotiating → Joined → Activated → Revenue-generating → Scaled
Each stage matters.
And measuring recruitment properly means understanding movement through the entire funnel.
Most established affiliate programmes eventually encounter concentration.
A relatively small group of partners generates the majority of revenue.
This isn’t necessarily a problem.
Strong publisher relationships should generate meaningful revenue.
The risk comes when the programme becomes dependent on those relationships without developing the next generation of partners underneath them.
Suppose your programme generates £200,000 per month.
If £140,000 comes from five publishers, losing one major partner could have a significant impact.
More importantly, those five partners may already be close to their realistic ceiling.
If you want affiliate revenue to reach £300,000, continually asking the same publishers for more exposure may not be enough.
You need new sources of growth.
That’s where recruitment becomes critical.
One of the least useful affiliate KPIs is:
“We recruited 250 new affiliates this quarter.”
It sounds impressive.
But what happened next?
How many:
If 250 publishers join and two become active, the recruitment number tells you very little.
We prefer to think about recruitment quality and activation.
For example:
50 prospects identified
↓
35 contacted
↓
12 conversations started
↓
8 joined
↓
6 activated
↓
4 generated revenue
↓
2 developed into significant ongoing partners
That provides a much more useful picture of recruitment effectiveness.
Don’t start recruitment by opening Google and searching for “affiliate websites”.
Start with your existing programme.
Break revenue down by publisher type.
You might discover:
That immediately gives recruitment some direction.
The problem isn’t necessarily that cashback and voucher are too large.
The problem may be that content and creator discovery are underdeveloped.
Your recruitment brief could therefore become:
Recruit publishers capable of introducing the brand to consumers earlier in their purchase journey.
That’s considerably more useful than:
Recruit more affiliates.
This is why affiliate recruitment should always follow a publisher mix audit.
There isn’t one ideal affiliate for every ecommerce brand.
A partner that’s highly valuable to a fashion retailer could be irrelevant to a premium food brand.
Build several partner profiles instead.
For example:
Audience: UK women aged 25–45
Content: Fashion, lifestyle, shopping
Opportunity: Product recommendations and editorial coverage
Commercial model: CPA, tenancy or hybrid
Objective: Discovery + new customers
Audience: Highly engaged niche community
Platform: Instagram/TikTok/YouTube
Opportunity: Product content and ongoing creator commerce
Commercial model: Gifting + CPA or hybrid
Objective: Discovery + influence + conversion
Audience: Relevant professional or demographic community
Opportunity: Exclusive member offer
Commercial model: CPA
Objective: New customer acquisition
Now recruitment has a clear target.
You aren’t searching for “affiliates”.
You’re searching for specific partners capable of solving specific growth problems.
Competitors provide one of the best starting points for publisher discovery.
Why?
Because another brand may already have done part of the validation for you.
If a relevant publisher repeatedly promotes your competitors, there’s a reasonable basis for investigating whether your brand could also be suitable.
Search Google for combinations such as:
[Competitor] review[Competitor] discount codebest [product category]best [product category] UK[Competitor] alternatives[Competitor] vswhere to buy [product category][product category] gift guideThen investigate who appears.
You’re looking for publishers with:
Build these into your recruitment pipeline.
Google is useful, but relying solely on search results will leave significant gaps.
Publisher discovery should span multiple environments.
Search Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and other relevant channels for:
Search existing network publisher directories and review publishers already applying to the programme.
Look at websites already linking to or mentioning your brand.
A publisher already discussing the brand without an affiliate relationship can be an excellent recruitment opportunity.
Identify publications and websites linking to competitors.
Track journalists and publications regularly writing about your product category.
Some of your best potential creators may already buy from you.
Strong affiliate relationships often create further introductions.
The more mature your programme becomes, the more publisher discovery should become an always-on activity rather than a quarterly project.
A generic contact form is rarely the strongest route into a valuable publisher.
Find the person responsible for the relevant commercial area.
Depending on the publisher, that could be:
For major publications, editorial and commercial teams may be separate.
Understanding that distinction matters.
A commerce editor may decide what products appear in an article.
A commercial partnerships team may control tenancy and paid opportunities.
An affiliate team may manage tracking and CPA.
Strong publisher development often involves relationships across more than one person within the organisation.
This is where a huge amount of recruitment fails.
Consider this message:
Hi,
We’d love to invite you to join our affiliate programme. We offer 10% commission, a 30-day cookie window and regular promotions.
Please apply here.
The publisher may receive dozens or hundreds of messages like this.
There’s very little reason to respond.
Now compare that with:
We’ve noticed your recent coverage of premium UK gifting brands and think there could be a strong fit with our Christmas range. Our average order value is £85, we’ve got several exclusive gift products launching in October, and we’d be happy to discuss samples, exclusive offers and commercial support around relevant seasonal content.
The second message demonstrates:
The objective isn’t simply to tell the publisher your programme exists.
It’s to explain why working together might be worthwhile.
Publishers generally don’t care that your programme is available on a particular network nearly as much as advertisers think they do.
The network matters operationally.
But it isn’t usually the reason someone wants to promote your brand.
Lead with:
Then explain how the relationship can be tracked.
The affiliate programme is the infrastructure behind the partnership.
It isn’t necessarily the partnership itself.
Different partners care about different things.
A creator and a national publication should not receive the same pitch.
Think about:
Think about:
Think about:
Think about:
Think about:
The underlying principle is simple:
Recruitment works better when the proposition reflects what the publisher actually needs.
Not every valuable affiliate relationship will operate entirely on CPA.
This is particularly important when recruiting:
Commercial arrangements can include:
The question shouldn’t be:
“Can we get this for free?”
It should be:
“Does the expected commercial value justify the investment?”
Affiliate gives brands excellent performance measurement infrastructure.
That doesn’t mean every worthwhile media opportunity will be purely performance-based.
Commission matters, but it isn’t the only thing you can negotiate.
A publisher relationship might include:
This is another reason why strong affiliate management requires actual publisher relationships.
If the entire relationship consists of changing a CPA percentage inside an affiliate network, you’re leaving a lot of partnership potential unexplored.
Joining the programme isn’t the finish line.
It’s the halfway point.
Once the publisher is approved, help them activate.
Provide:
Then follow up.
Ask:
When are you planning to go live?
Is there anything you need from us?
Are there upcoming opportunities we should prepare for?
That final activation stage is where many recruitment programmes break down.
Affiliate recruitment should have its own reporting.
A useful recruitment dashboard could include:
This helps answer two very different questions:
Are we doing enough recruitment?
and:
Is our recruitment actually working?
If you’re contacting 200 publishers and receiving two responses, you may have a targeting or outreach problem.
If 30 publishers join but only one activates, you may have an onboarding problem.
If publishers activate but generate no sales, you may have a partner-fit or proposition problem.
Recruitment reporting should help diagnose where the funnel is breaking.
There’s no universal number.
“Recruit 100 affiliates per month” sounds measurable, but it can incentivise the wrong behaviour.
We would rather see:
10 strategically relevant publishers recruited and activated
than:
500 low-quality publishers approved.
Targets should reflect:
Premium publisher recruitment also takes time.
Securing a major editorial partnership may require multiple conversations over several months.
A smaller creator can potentially activate within days.
Those shouldn’t be measured as though they are identical recruitment tasks.
The highest-value stage of affiliate recruitment often happens after you’ve discovered that the partnership works.
Suppose a newly recruited publisher generates:
The next question shouldn’t be:
“Who else can we recruit?”
It should also be:
“How do we turn this £10,000 relationship into £30,000?”
That might involve:
Recruitment finds the opportunity.
Publisher development scales it.
Affiliate marketing is sometimes presented as an automated channel.
The tracking is automated.
The relationships aren’t.
A network can:
It cannot replace a strong commercial relationship.
Publishers are more likely to bring opportunities to advertisers they know.
They are more likely to respond quickly.
They understand the brand better.
They may offer early access to campaigns or placements.
This relationship capital compounds over time.
It’s also one of the major reasons established affiliate teams and specialist agencies can create value beyond simply administering a network account.
One of the most important things to establish when choosing an affiliate agency is what “publisher recruitment” actually means within the service.
Ask:
A recruitment promise without a process behind it isn’t particularly meaningful.
A strong affiliate agency for ecommerce brands should be able to explain its recruitment methodology clearly.
A large publisher count doesn’t automatically create a strong programme.
Publishers need a reason to care about your brand.
Some of the best potential partners won’t discover your programme themselves.
A creator, journalist and cashback platform have completely different requirements.
Premium opportunities may require wider commercial investment.
A publisher joining the programme isn’t the same as a publisher promoting it.
Partnership development often requires follow-up.
Potential opportunities may already exist inside the programme.
Recruitment should ultimately create active partnerships and incremental value.
Our starting point isn’t:
“Who can we add to the programme?”
It’s:
“Where is the programme missing growth?”
That means understanding:
We can then build targeted recruitment lists around those gaps.
The process becomes:
Audit → identify opportunity → research → prospect → outreach → negotiate → onboard → activate → measure → scale
This approach also changes how recruitment success is measured.
We’re less interested in how many publisher accounts have been approved.
We’re much more interested in how many valuable new partnerships have been created.
For an established ecommerce programme that has become passive, a simplified recruitment plan could look like this.
The crucial point is that recruitment doesn’t end on day 90.
By that stage, it should have become an always-on growth function within the affiliate programme.
Start by auditing your existing publisher mix and defining the types of partners you need. Research competitors, search relevant content and social platforms, build targeted prospect lists and approach publishers with personalised commercial propositions.
Potential affiliates can be found through affiliate networks, Google, social media, competitor research, backlink analysis, creator platforms, existing customers, media publications and direct publisher research.
There is no ideal number. Focus on the number of relevant publishers you can successfully activate rather than the total number joining the programme. A smaller group of strategically relevant active partners can create more value than thousands of inactive affiliates.
Personalise your outreach. Explain why the brand is relevant to the publisher’s audience, identify the specific opportunity and outline the commercial proposition. Avoid relying solely on generic programme details such as CPA and cookie duration.
It varies significantly by publisher. Smaller affiliates and creators may activate quickly, while premium editorial publishers and strategic partnerships can require longer relationship development and commercial negotiation.
Publishers don’t generally need to be paid simply to join an affiliate programme, but premium placements, creator campaigns and strategic media opportunities can involve fixed fees, tenancy, gifting or hybrid commercial arrangements alongside affiliate commission.
Recruitment gets a relevant publisher into the programme. Activation gets that publisher actively promoting the brand and generating meaningful activity. A successful recruitment strategy needs to achieve both.
If your affiliate programme has plenty of approved publishers but too few active growth partners, simply adding more affiliates is unlikely to solve the problem.
Conversion Digital helps ecommerce brands identify gaps in their publisher mix, research new opportunities, recruit relevant partners and develop those relationships into commercially valuable sources of growth.
Speak to Conversion Digital about your affiliate recruitment strategy.