Our thinking on affiliate programs, partner networks and AI search, and what the product ships.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not from a cold list. From people who already sent you customers, competitors' reviewers, and the communities where your buyers ask questions.
What a partner actually earns per referred customer, what it costs you, and why churn decides whether the number is generous.