31 Tactics to Build an Affiliate Army that Sells $1m For You

Unlocking new growth channels is a top priority for any software company. One of the most effective, yet often misunderstood, tactics is leveraging affiliates. This isn’t just about paying commissions; it’s about building a powerful, scalable engine for user acquisition and revenue growth. In this article, you will learn how to build a high-growth affiliate program with real-world examples from top SaaS CEOs.

From referral programs that turn customers into advocates to strategic partnerships that open new markets, we’ll explore the playbooks used by founders who have successfully scaled their companies to millions in revenue. You’ll get a 5-part strategy to launch your own affiliate initiatives, in addition to 40 case studies you can use as inspiration. These examples are from top Founders like Surfer SEO’s Michał Suski, Adam Robinson at Retention.com, and ClickFunnels’s CEO Russell Brunson, who have collectively generated hundreds of millions in revenue by mastering this tactic.

The 5-Part Playbook for a High-Growth Affiliate Program

Building a successful affiliate program involves more than just offering a commission. It requires a strategic approach to recruiting, enabling, and motivating your partners. This playbook, based on strategies from leading SaaS companies, breaks it down into five core steps.

1. Define Your Affiliate Structure and Incentives: Decide on the type of partnership (e.g., referral, reseller, influencer) and create a compelling commission structure. Recurring commissions are highly attractive in SaaS as they provide predictable income for affiliates. ClickFunnels, for example, uses a tiered model where affiliates can earn up to 40% in recurring commissions as they drive more revenue, making it one of the highest-paying programs in the space.
2. Recruit the Right Partners: Your ideal affiliates are often your own happy customers, industry influencers, bloggers, and consultants who already have the trust of your target audience. XERO’s affiliate program is highly successful because it targets accountants and bookkeepers—niche experts who have the knowledge and network to effectively promote their accounting software.
3. Create a Simple, Frictionless Experience: Make it incredibly easy for both partners to sign up and for their audience to convert. Provide affiliates with unique referral links, ready-to-use marketing content (like blog posts, videos, and case studies), and a clear, user-friendly dashboard to track their performance and payouts.
4. Promote Your Program and Nurture Your Affiliates: Don’t just launch your program and wait. Promote it across your website, in email campaigns, and within your product. Treat your top affiliates like your best customers by providing ongoing support, sharing product updates, and even creating dedicated communities or newsletters for them. Convertkit offers a dedicated training course to help new affiliates succeed.
5. Track, Measure, and Optimize: Use affiliate management software to meticulously track key metrics like referral rates, conversion rates, and the ROI of your program. This data allows you to identify what’s working, reward your top performers with bonuses or higher tiers, and optimize your strategy for maximum growth.

40 Examples of High-Growth Affiliate & Partner Tactics

Below are 40 examples from SaaS founders on how they’ve used affiliates, referrals, and partnerships to scale their companies.

1. Michał Suski of Surfer SEO shared that their affiliate program, which offers a 30% recurring commission, is managed by a single half-time person and partners with 3,000 affiliate marketers.
2. Adam Robinson from Retention.com leverages a partnership model which has been instrumental in growing the company to $22 million in revenue.
3. Inflectra Corporation’s CEO, Adam Sandman, described using their SEO company for link exchanges to magnify the impact of their content, helping them grow to over $10 million in ARR.
4. Muhammad Younas explained how vFairs uses system-driven word-of-mouth and referrals from their customer success team to break $30 million in revenue.
5. Boomerang’s meeting scheduling feature, as explained by Aye Moah, has a built-in viral loop where guests who book meetings become new users, creating a free user acquisition channel that helped the company reach $8 million ARR.
6. Mark Abbott of Ninety.io detailed how they leveraged a community of thousands of business coaches as a primary sales channel to grow to over $10 million ARR.
7. Robert Warner of Ppc Ad Lab utilized partner launches with affiliates, running one-week promotions that sign up over 30 new paid users per campaign, helping them reach $700k ARR in a year.
8. Chris Marentis of Surefirelocal built a partner program that contributed to scaling the company to $26 million in ARR by providing a local marketing cloud for professional services companies.
9. Charlie Fritsch from Hotel Investor Apps explained their strategy of building on an existing ERP platform, which allowed them to leverage a vast ecosystem of integrated software vendors as a channel to grow their business.
10. Roland Polzin from Wing Assistant scaled from $1M to $11M by focusing on bottom-of-the-funnel keywords like “hire virtual assistant,” attracting ready-to-buy customers through targeted ads.
11. Cledara’s CEO, Cristina Vila, mentioned that after growing 5x, they successfully expanded into the US by selling to their first 50 customers remotely from their UK office before establishing a physical presence.
12. Ari Salafia of TaxTaker detailed how affiliate agreements and revenue share partnerships have been key to their growth, yielding over a million dollars in revenue without any paid ad spend.
13. The team at Tally, a bootstrapped form builder, found their first users by cold-outreaching people on Product Hunt who had upvoted similar products, a tactic that helped them get to $50k MRR.
14. Liam Martin of Time Doctor built a successful affiliate program that was a key channel in bootstrapping the company to $20 million ARR.
15. Sara Roberts of Bayview Talent helps companies like Rippling and Gorgias build their go-to-market teams, emphasizing the importance of hiring individuals with experience in specific customer segments to drive growth.
16. John Doherty of Getcredo built his company on relationships and referrals, a strategy that generated nearly $100 million in digital marketing leads in 2021.
17. Rami Essaid of Finmark, formerly of Distil Networks, grew his previous company through strong thought leadership and analyst relations, a key part of their go-to-market strategy that led to over $60M in funding.
18. Markus Stahlberg of N.Rich explained that their account-based experience platform helps customers automate revenue generation by identifying high-velocity ideal customer profiles.
19. Jamie Akhtar of CyberSmart mentioned that a shift towards a partner channel, selling through managed service providers, was key to improving their unit economics and driving growth to $3M ARR.
20. Kirsty Finlayson from Chameleon highlighted that a significant portion of their $2.5 million in influenced pipeline comes from organic channels, including reviews on platforms like G2.
21. Michael Cooney of WhatConverts leveraged his existing digital marketing agency to identify the initial problem and customer base, which was crucial for patiently bootstrapping the company.
22. Michael Maximoff of Folderly Inc used his marketing agency’s clients as the initial low-hanging fruit to test and sell his SaaS idea, generating revenue for the new product before it was even fully built.
23. Josh Aharonoff of Mighty Digits built a massive following on LinkedIn, which he leverages as an authority-led channel to generate inbound leads for his fractional CFO agency.
24. Aleksandr Yampolskiy, CEO of Security Scorecard, shared how a simple widget developed by an engineer on a weekend became a massive lead generation mechanism, with over 80,000 companies downloading their free security report.
25. Mikael Dia launched Funnelytics through a Facebook group, growing it to 3,000 members in two months and generating $28,000 in 48 hours, a playbook that now makes over a million dollars per year.
26. AJ Eckstein of Creator Match helps brands partner with LinkedIn creators, leveraging the trust and niche audiences of influencers to drive growth for companies like HubSpot.
27. Cliff Simon of Carabiner Group detailed how he used community-led growth by being present and helpful in Slack communities like Pavilion and RevOps Co-op, booking an average of 83 meetings a month.
28. Sri Swaminathan of Factors.ai emphasized founder-led marketing, with both founders growing their LinkedIn follower counts to over 20k each and using social posting as a low-cost, high-leverage channel for growth.
29. Brian Yam from Paragon uses a highly specific ICP to build targeted account lists from data providers like Apollo and Crunchbase, which forms the foundation of their successful LinkedIn ads strategy, helping them reach mid-seven figures in ARR.
30. Guy Rubin from ebsta highlighted that in B2B, relationships drive revenue, and their data shows that high-performing sales teams double down on strengthening relationships to win new business and retain existing customers.
31. Nathan Latka of Founderpath described how leveraging other people’s traffic (OPT), such as being featured on other platforms or podcasts, is a fast and cheap growth tactic used by many successful SaaS founders.
32. Ryan Staley of Whale Boss implemented a go-to-market strategy focused on identifying and replicating the characteristics of their top five biggest and fastest wins, a playbook that helped them hit $30M ARR with only four sales reps.
33. Michael Burns from vFairs noted that a key part of their playbook is understanding their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by analyzing churn data and marketing performance in different segments to ensure their messaging is effective.
34. Alina Vandenberghe of Chili Piper explained that a significant portion of their brand engagement comes from channel partners, which has been a major driver in their growth to $25M ARR.
35. The team at vFairs, having grown to over $30 million in revenue, uses customer referrals as a key part of their inbound traffic and growth engine.
36. James Isilay of Cognism, now at $37 million ARR, mentioned acquiring a company with a strong community, recognizing the value of a product-led growth motion to complement their top-down sales approach.
37. Karsten Rendemann of Cookie Information highlighted that after reaching the $5 million ARR threshold, his company became highly attractive to potential partners, demonstrating the value of achieving stable growth.
38. Stefan Smulders of Expandi grew his company from $0 to $7M in 20 months by creating winning playbooks and engaging with micro-influencers to drive distribution.
39. Vladimir Blagojevic from Fullfunnel.io uses an account-based marketing framework on LinkedIn, targeting the entire buying committee at a select list of accounts to generate five and six-figure inbound opportunities.
40. Zack Oates from Ovation unlocked B2B influencer marketing by focusing on a specific niche and connecting with “pip cats”—Partners, Investors, Press, Customers, Advisors, and Thought Leaders—to build credibility and drive growth.

Conclusion

You just learned how top SaaS founders use affiliate, referral, and partner programs to add millions in revenue. By building strategic relationships and leveraging the audiences of others, these CEOs have created scalable and efficient growth engines. The key is to start with a clear strategy, make it easy for partners to succeed, and continuously optimize your approach based on data. To start growing your own revenue with these tactics, visit Founderpath to explore non-dilutive funding options that can help you launch and scale your own affiliate program.

Founderpath invests in ambitious founders looking to grow fast. Click here to submit a capital request