Our thinking on affiliate programs, partner networks and AI search, and what the product ships.
No managed payouts, no Amazon channel, no agency services, no percentage pricing. Saying no is most of the product.
Scoped API keys, tools for terms, partner search, campaigns and the ledger. Money and team changes stay human-only.
The InsightWonder integration is live: paste your key, opportunities sync hourly, one click turns a gap into a content campaign, delivered URLs are checked for AI citations.
A competitor shipped the feature we think matters most. Here is what it does, where it stops, and what we do differently.
The foundation shipped: Stripe invoice attribution, append-only commission ledger, monthly payout batches with PayPal and Wise exports, partner portal with links and balances.
Platform-sent email lands in spam and reads like a platform. A short note from a founder's real address, three at a time, gets replies.
The difference is who the partner belongs to. In software, each brand has its own list. In a network, the partner has one account and a track record that travels.
Collect one form per partner before the first payout, keep it on file, and issue 1099-NEC forms to US partners above the IRS threshold. Everything else is detail.
A campaign is a brief, a bounty per delivered piece, and commission on what the piece sells. It is how a brand gets the specific page an AI assistant will cite.
Click-based tracking knows a sale happened. Invoice-based tracking knows how much, when it renewed, and when it was refunded. For subscriptions only the second is correct.
Fraud in small programs is boring: a partner buying through their own link, a script hitting a link, a traffic source that never converts. Three rules catch most of it.
Each type wants a different thing. Pay them the same rate and the creators leave; pay bounties to everyone and the affiliates game it.
Creators are starting to ask assistants "which programs in my niche pay best?". If your terms are a PDF, you are not in the answer.
A viewer hears a recommendation in a video, types your name into Google a week later and buys. No click, no cookie. A code still pays the creator.
Platforms that collect from brands and pay partners become banks, with the licensing, float risk and delays that implies. The CSV is better.
Not from a cold list. From people who already sent you customers, competitors' reviewers, and the communities where your buyers ask questions.
We asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini 200 buyer questions in five SaaS categories. The pages they cite have three things in common.
What a partner actually earns per referred customer, what it costs you, and why churn decides whether the number is generous.
Three models exist: flat tiers by partner revenue, a percentage of commission, or a quote. Here is what each costs at $5,000, $20,000 and $50,000 a month.
Affiliate software tracks partners you already have. Nobody helps a small SaaS find the first twenty. That gap is the company.