Black Friday is 5 weeks away. Sounds like a long time, but your partners plan their Black Friday posts in October. That’s now 🫣 The good news is that there’s still time to get them selling for you. You can launch your partner program in one afternoon. Setup takes 15 minutes and tomorrow every partner has a tracked link and their own coupon code. Then the next few weeks are simple: -> Late October: invite partners. -> Early November: send codes and assets. -> Black Friday: every sale lands with the partner who drove it. To give you an extra push, here’s 20% off your first month. Check the details: firstpromoter.com/lp/prepare…

Your boss asks which creator brought in the sales. Is a coupon code all you’ve got to go on? For a lot of brands, it is. Here’s what our influencer marketing stats roundup shows: -> 45.9% of brands measure creator results with promo codes -> Only 26.0% use affiliate links -> 79% of enterprise marketers struggle to measure creator ROI -> 48% say attribution is their biggest gap -> And 87.49% expect bigger influencer budgets in 2026 So budgets are growing and the answer to your boss still depends on a buyer remembering a code. If you give each creator a code and a link, a forgotten code doesn’t have to mean a lost sale (that’s how creator tracking works in FirstPromoter). Check all the stats with sources: firstpromoter.com/blog/influ…

Your top affiliates are about to get very popular 📩 At the end of the year, every SaaS in your space starts sending them deals and “quick partnership ideas.” And in a surprisingly large number of programs, a tiny group of affiliates brings in nearly all the revenue. Which means losing even one of them hurts, especially in Q4. So: 1. Check in with them before the rush. 2. Make sure your offer is worth sharing. 3. Make sure your payouts land on time. Tautvydas Vasiliauskas, our Head of Marketing, talked about this on the SourceForge podcast with Beau Hamilton, along with why subscription tracking needs a direct connection to your billing. Full episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=FAg2YzCx…

Where does affiliate sit in your budget? If it's "whatever is left after paid," you'd better read on. Brands get 11 to 30% of their revenue from affiliate. And not just a few of them. 74% of them 🤯 And the return is from $11 to $21 for every $1. Do you remember any paid campaign that does that? Still, in many companies affiliate gets the budget leftovers. Often because its ROAS never lands in the same table as paid, SEO and other channels. But before you walk into that budget talk: 80% of programs still measure on last-click. Know which model made your number before you defend it. Here are all the 2026 numbers, with sources and more info: firstpromoter.com/blog/affil…

We're 100% sure you're not using 100% of your potential to get more affiliates. Well, ok, maybe 90% sure 😅 but that's based on what we've seen in thousands of programs over the years, so we're pretty confident. And it's usually the easy stuff, the places you already have but don't really use. Like your own website: people visiting it already know your product and like it, so a lot of them would happily promote you. They just can't join a program they don't even know about. Louis Anghel, our Head of Customer Success, goes back to the basics in the new video and shows the places where your first affiliates come from: youtu.be/l-ij_GxLwP0?si=GFN2… Some of them are so obvious you'll wonder how you missed them.

You need your affiliate program to grow fast. Everybody does, or at least thinks they do and fraudsters love you for it. Tautvydas Vasiliauskas said it straight on the Affiliate Marketing Podcast: new affiliate managers feel so much pressure to grow that they stop checking who they let in. The "lucky" ones lose a few months and reach the (often mistaken) conclusion that affiliate marketing isn't for them 👎 The less fortunate end up with legal trouble and commissions paid to fake partners, with no way to get the money back 👎 👎 Lee-Ann Johnstone suggests a smarter way: save free trials for partners you've actually checked, and give everyone else a discount to start. Black Friday season brings more partner applications than any other time of year. Watch the full episode before your next "approve all" moment: youtu.be/IAhV-cFoSik?si=kP_0… #AffiliateMarketing #AffiliateFraud #PartnerMarketing #AI

Want to stop paying for fake views? Then look at how the numbers grew and not just how big they are. A fake publisher costs you commissions + all the hours you spend on someone who was never going to sell anything. So here's what to check: 👉 Bought views grow in neat and even steps, like 100 views, then 200, then 300. Real people just don't watch things like that. 👉 Real growth is messy. It jumps around and some days it even drops (and that's fine). 👉 The channel page only shows you totals, so you have to check the daily numbers over time. Tautvydas Vasiliauskas explains it all in the clip. And if you want more tips like this, our free AI guide for affiliate managers is here to download for free: firstpromoter.com/landing/af…

Hey Affiliate Managers, show this one to your SEO and content people👇 Urszula Kamburov-Niepewna, our Content Marketing Manager, wrote about how brands end up named in ChatGPT answers and it's less mysterious than it sounds: 💡 AI tools take what already ranks, so solid SEO now pays off twice. For your program this means your publishers do a second job now. A partner's review that ranks well is how your brand ends up in a ChatGPT answer, right where people decide what to buy. The article covers what makes AI cite a page and every step in it works for your own site too: linkedin.com/pulse/where-doe…

51% of B2B software buyers now start their research in an AI chatbot more often than Google. A year ago it was 29%. Everyone reads this as a job for SEO and content teams. It lands on affiliate programs just as hard. AI answers are built on agreement between websites, so a partnership is no longer judged by the backlink alone. The mention itself does work now, even without a link. That changes the partner brief. We ask partner writers to include three things an AI can quote: the brand name next to the category, one clear number, and a plain description of what the product does. Ten partner articles repeating the same true claim will do more for AI visibility than one great post on your own blog. All 2026 affiliate marketing stats, with every source: firstpromoter.com/blog/affil… #AffiliateMarketing #AISearch

When you see it once, you start seeing it everywhere. Affiliate managers already have a good eye for fake publishers. The thing is, they learned to spot them on blogs and websites, and the fakes moved somewhere else. Right now they gather on two platforms and in two niches. Short video hides mistakes, small screens hide details and there's enough money there to make faking worth it. We cover where they hide, the red flags to watch for and how to vet publishers in the AI era in our free guide: firstpromoter.com/resources/…

Fraud used to take skill, but now all it takes is a prompt. One person can build dozens of real-looking websites, fill them with content and run AI personas that comment and engage. All without coding, big budget or a team. That's the scale affiliate managers are up against now. Lee-Ann Johnstone talked it through Tautvydas Vasiliauskas on the Affiliate Marketing Podcast. A few things you'll hear from them: -> why old fraud tactics like fake sites and bot traffic are coming back stronger, -> which red flags to check before approving a partner, -> why mass recruitment stopped being a safe strategy, -> and why a real relationship with partners is the strongest anti-fraud tool right now. Watch the full episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=IAhV-cFo…

The best advice about cold emailing affiliates is actually quite simple: don't do it until you're ready. And here's why 👇️ A good affiliate opens your program, sees a low commission and nothing to work with. So it's no surprise they leave. You did all the work to find them and then lost them at the door. Louis Anghel, our Head of Customer Success, spent years helping companies launch affiliate programs. In his recruiting process, outreach is step 8 out of 9. The steps before it get the program ready: -> a commission people actually want -> a signup page that filters out the junk -> assets they can grab and post the same day -> a welcome email so you don't onboard everyone by hand He shows the whole thing in the new video and approves the first real applications on camera. Full walkthrough here: youtu.be/l-ij_GxLwP0?si=EDJF…

10 x 100 = 1,000. Dollars. That's what it costs when you pay 100 influencer commissions of 10 dollars each for customers who didn't stay. And it's not some impossible scenario. A customer signs up through a coupon code, cancels two weeks later, and the commission still gets paid out. The tool stopped tracking after the first payment, so it never even noticed the customer left. That's ok for online stores, where you sell something once and that's it. But definitely not for SaaS and subscription businesses, where customers cancel, refund and change plans all the time. We compared 5 influencer marketing platforms with this in mind. Here are the most important things to check before buying a tool and full comparison: firstpromoter.com/blog/best-…

⏰ Last call to sign up and hear what fraudsters hope you skip. Tomorrow at 11:00 AM GMT+1, Tautvydas Vasiliauskas and Lee-Ann Johnstone from Affiverse sit down to talk AI and affiliate fraud. They'll spend an hour on a technology that works both ways. Here is what you can expect: -> how fraudsters use AI to bring back old tricks in new disguises, -> why fake influencers and AI-generated partners are a growing problem, -> the warning signs to check before you approve a new partner, -> why recruiting fewer affiliates might be the smartest move this year. The webinar is free and if you work with partners in any way, it's a good hour to invest. You can still book your sit here: linkedin.com/events/ai-affil…

It takes years to build a real audience. And it takes an afternoon to fake one. That math is why affiliate fraud is about to get worse, and why the vetting checklist you wrote two years ago is already a museum piece. Tautvydas Vasiliauskas and Lee-Ann Johnstone from Affiverse go live this Thursday on what replaces it. 🗓️ September 3, 11:00 AM GMT+1. 📩 Sing up here: linkedin.com/events/75001897…

Around 20% of affiliate traffic is invalid, so one in five clicks you're paying for might not be real. That number scares smaller programs into thinking they need expensive tools to fight it. But the truth is - you don't. A small team has one real advantage: attention. Fewer applicants means you can actually look at each one. And the process is simpler than it sounds. -> For a video, watch the views over time. -> For a site, traffic and keywords over time. -> Then look for the fluctuations, the natural ups and downs a real audience creates and a fake one doesn't. Spot those, and you've got a vetting process good enough to start with. All without enterprise software and a big team. Just knowing what to look at. In this video Tautvydas covers just a small piece of our AI guide, practical stuff any affiliate manager can use to stay ahead of unavoidable AI changes. Whatever the size of the program. Here you can download this guide for free: firstpromoter.com/landing/af…

Q4 peak season is coming. Are you getting ready for it? Ads, discounts, email flows: probably already in the plan. Checking who's actually earning your affiliate commissions? Usually not on the list. And that's exactly what fraudsters are hoping for. They love peak season: traffic is huge, everyone's busy, and commissions get paid out to people who never sent a single customer. Nobody notices until the money's gone. So we're teaming up with adment to get ahead of it. On September 3, our Tautvydas Vasiliauskas and adment's CEO Adomas Ronkaitis will show how this fraud works, share fresh 2026 data, and go through real cases from brands who found it in their own programs. 45 minutes, live Q&A, recorded if you can't make it. Details and registration here: watch.getcontrast.io/registe…

Rejecting affiliates can make your program more money. Sounds backwards, but trust us - the math checks out. Louis Anghel, responsible for Customer Success at FirstPromoter, explains why in this video: youtu.be/l-ij_GxLwP0?si=_vnQ… Short story: the wrong affiliates bring refunds, fraud and support tickets, and cleaning that up costs more than whatever revenue they generate. Louis also shows how to set up the filter that keeps them out: -> screening questions on your signup page, -> manual approval, -> and what to check before you say yes. He even reviews real applications on camera, so you can see how he decides who gets in. See yourself 👇️

Want to get cited in AI overviews? Do affiliate marketing. Sounds backwards, we know. After all, AI overviews are the thing eating affiliate clicks. But those answers come from somewhere and a big part of it is affiliate content: reviews, comparisons or detailed analyses on YouTube. Publishers have noticed it too. Some now ask for flat placement fees instead of commissions, others are moving to YouTube, where links and coupon codes still track. Our Head of Marketing Tautvydas Vasiliauskas talks about all of this on the SourceForge podcast, hosted by Beau Hamilton. Plus recruiting, fraud prevention and how to launch a program from scratch. Full episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=FAg2YzCx…

You set up the affiliate program and you wait. And wait 🥱 Still waiting, but no affiliates are coming. Lots of people think that setting up a program and publishing it on the website or company's social media will make the deal. It's not true. Your affiliate program is as good as your affiliate recruitment. And we know it's not an easy task. But we also know there are a lot of strategies that can help you make money and lower the effort. We gathered them in one guide: firstpromoter.com/blog/how-t…