Affiliates
The most successful Affiliate Program in 2025 so far is Icon.Me. Their partner page has helped the company grow from $0 to $5m in ARR in under 60 days.
SaaS companies can grow customers by developing programs that pay partners commission for leads. Selecting partners with audience reach enables companies to connect with potential customers through trusted networks. Programs require systems that track sales, pay partners, and provide materials for marketing. Companies should update programs with performance commissions and training to help partners improve sales.
The best SaaS companies figure out creative ways to keep fixed costs low. Hiring a massive full time sales team will kill your company if they don’t drive growth.
The easiest way to derisk this is to “hire” sales people that you don’t have to pay unless they close customers.
These are known as “Affiliates”.
Affiliates are one of the fastest, lowest cost, ways to grow your SaaS business to $5m in Revenue.
3 Requirements To Affiliate Success
- Your sales motion is bottoms up, Product Led Growth
- Your starting price points are in the range of $10-$300/mo
- You’re in a niche with a lot of content creators (youtubers, conferences, newsletters)
Million Dollar Affiliate Success Stories
Icon.Me grew from $0 to $5m in ARR in under 60 days using a genius Partner Page; https://icon.me/partner-kit. Notice how easy they make the share links, the graphic assets they provide, and the copy and paste email templates.
FloDesk is an email marketing tool that used Affiliates to break its first $5m in revenue. In 2024, they did $27m in revenue and paid out over $1m in commissions to 1,000+ affiliates. Flodesk uses a “two sided win” affiliate model where the affiliate makes $19 per signup (CPA) and the new customer gets 50% off their first year.
Chanty is a task management tool that did $6m of revenue in 2024 - 70% came from affiliates. When an affiliate sends Chanty a customer, the affiliate makes 30% of whatever the customer pays Chanty in the first 12 months. https://www.chanty.com/partners/
System.io is an all in one marketing platform that broke $10m of revenue in 2024. Since their launch in 2017, they’ve paid out over $5m to affiliates. They offer a rich deal: Affiliates make 60% commissions for life. https://systeme.io/affiliate-program
SurferSEO is an SEO tool that did $18m in revenues in 2024. They’ve raised no outside funding. Instead, they rely on affiliates to close customers. Affiliates make 75% of the first months payment, and then 15% per month for the 11 months after that. As of Feb 2024, 100 affiliates were driving Surfer $25k of new MRR per month! https://surferseo.com/affiliate-program/
Supermetrics hit $2m revenue in 2017 and relied heavily on its affiliate program which paid out 20% commissions. In 2024, the company did $89.5m of revenue and still actively recruits affiliates: https://supermetrics.com/affiliate
5 Steps to Launch Your Affiliate Program
- Set your program up on GetReditus.com
- Set your commission structure. Use 30% commissions for the first 12 months.
- Start recruiting affiliates. Start with the largest traffic referrers to your competitors.
- Help your affiliates sell by giving them template designs, emails, and promo materials
- Brag about their success to recruit more affilates
Marketplaces To Study Your Competitors
Once you’ve proven you can recruit affiliates, you can start to tweak your program.
Study what others in the industry are doing by scrolling through these marketplaces:
https://app.getreditus.com/marketplace
https://market.partnerstack.com/office-software
https://www.flexoffers.com/affiliate-programs/omnisend-affiliate-program/
8 Affiliate Management Tool Requirements
Provide sample designs and copy to your affiliates
Give affiliates unique tracking links
Enable affiliates to see reporting real time
Make it easy for affiliates to see commissions they’ve earned
Branded Portal
Auto=payouts
Customize cookie and commissions
Integrations with Stripe, Paypal, Paddle, Chargebee
Top 6 Tools
Getreditus
https://new.firstpromoter.com/
Tapfiliate
3 Ways To Find Affiliates Fast
Build a list of influencers on Youtube who have made videos about your competitors. Search [COMPETITOR NAME] plus words like "webinar", "test", "replay", "tutorial"
Recruit newsletter writers. Find big email lists in your niche at Paved.com
Email your customers. They'll always be your best affiliates (if they have an audience)
