Measure activation, learn from the affiliates who moved, and fix it before you recruit more
After this lesson you can
Pull two lists from your reports, who published and who sent a click in the last 30 days, work out what the movers had in common, and apply that to the silent majority before adding anyone new.
Measure activation, learn from the affiliates who moved, and fix it before you recruit more
Six weeks in, the program has a list of approved affiliates and a smaller list of ones who did something. Everyone looks at the first list and asks why it is so quiet. The useful question is about the second list.
Two lists, every thirty days
From your reports, pull who published or sent a click in the last 30 days, and who did neither. Put your approval notes from Track 2 next to the names. Now you can see what the movers have in common: their type, where their traffic is, what you asked them for, whether they took a campaign. That pattern is the most valuable thing in the program, because it tells you who to recruit next and what to send everyone else.
Over 90% of affiliate-months produce no paid referral. That is the normal shape of a working program, not a verdict on yours. The question is never why the silent majority is silent. It is what the active minority did, and how to get more of it.
Make the active ones bigger
The affiliates already working for you are the cheapest growth you have. Consultants and agencies in particular tend to work one-to-one: they invite their own clients and nothing else, with nothing listed on their site. Their conversion is already good. Ask them for the scalable version, a listing on their site, a mention in their newsletter, a hosted article, and offer something for it. Turn one of them into a story you can tell the rest of the program: this partner earned this much in commission doing this. A peer's real earnings recruit better than any pitch.
Then fix, then recruit
Change one thing based on what moved people, before adding anyone new: the first ask, the material, the campaign, an email. Recruiting into an activation problem multiplies it; you will have more silent affiliates and the same pattern. Hand-activate while you are learning, exactly as you hand-recruited, and automate what repeats once you know what works. Never fully: a program nobody is looking at is a program whose numbers nobody understands.
When to stop hand-holding
When the asks and the material you send new affiliates are the ones that got the last cohort to publish, and the emails and campaigns carry them without you. Not before. Then Track 4 is about reading what all this produced.
Key takeaways
- Every 30 days: who published or sent a click, who did neither, next to your approval notes. Look at the movers.
- Over 90% of affiliate-months produce no paid referral. Normal. The question is what the active ones have in common.
- The cheapest growth is making active affiliates bigger, especially consultants and agencies who work one-to-one.
- Change one thing based on the movers before recruiting more. Recruiting into an activation problem multiplies it.
- No leaderboards: share what the best affiliates do, not who they are.
The detail lives in the help centre
This lesson tells you the order and the judgement. The clicks are in the articles below. Open one, do the step, and you will find a way back to this lesson at the top of the article.
Step-by-step: do this now
The exact clicks live in the help centre. Open the article, do the step, come back.
Reference: read if you need the detail
Background you can skip on a first pass.
Do this before the next lesson
Each step says how much counts as done. Doing a third of it and moving on is how programs stall.
Questions we hear at this point
Do you have leaderboards or gamification?
No, deliberately. A leaderboard exposes affiliates' earnings, which is personal information, and it motivates a handful while demotivating the rest. Affiliates get their own reports and insights instead, and you can tell the program what the best affiliates do without naming them.
How much time does running the program take each week?
The honest routine: Monday morning for applications, campaign applications and content submissions; through the week, the back and forth with affiliates to get content right, and the ongoing question of who to get in and who to activate. It is tedious work and it is the work. Nobody should fully automate it, because then nobody knows what is happening in the program.
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