10 Super Easy Ways to Find Affiliates for Your Business in 2023

Knowing how to find affiliates for your business that are suitable and effective simultaneously is a skill that many desire in this day and age.

Getting good affiliate partnerships is indispensable for small businesses and large, well-developed corporations alike. In fact, next to marketing strategies that most businesses already know all too well and employ daily, affiliates are what will probably bring you that extra exposure and attention. We could even say that in the developed business world of today, the revenue that your affiliates bring is what makes or breaks your business, period.

But it is precisely this what makes the whole search so difficult. A successful business usually operates in a well-defined niche that offers customers a unique service. Therefore, finding affiliates that will suit you and benefit you requires thorough research and patience.

For that reason, we’ve created an affiliate marketing guide consisting of the 10 best and easiest ways for you to recruit affiliates that will make your business grow exponentially! Keep reading to find out more!

Consult Affiliate Networks

We are starting with one of the easiest alternatives on this list - becoming part of an affiliate network. Many such networks, like ShareASale, ComissionJunction, or others, can help give you a head start in finding affiliates for your business.

You’ll be able to have a preliminary exploration of the market and see what other businesses offer to potential affiliates regarding financial business deals and collaboration compensations.

Thanks to this, you’ll be able to model your approach to recruiting affiliates, both within the network and separately.

As part of your subscription, you’ll also be able to consult professionals who’ll give you personalized advice on how to manage affiliates successfully, making sure to keep them coming while offering them convenient deals for all parties.

The best part of resorting to an affiliate network, at least for small businesses, is that the affiliates will automatically come to you. Such networks have an integrated affiliate tracking software that will help you link up with potential collaborators that may be fruitful.

Get Those Big-Name Business Influencers

To put it simply - in the internet age, influencers are the key to booming revenue. Yet, there are multiple types of influencers, and, depending on various factors, including your business, some may be more useful than others.

For instance, if your business is predominantly B2B, social media personalities won’t really cut it when it comes to establishing your affiliate partnership network. You’ll need to delve deeper into the current state of your business niche and locate the most intelligent, most influential, and groundbreaking personages right now.

Whether it’s an academic, a speaker, the leader of a related company, or a professional with a well-developed online presence, you need to have all these people in mind. Approach them carefully but diligently, and show them why they would need you as a partner.

Such affiliates will primarily get you that business credibility that you - and all business owners - crave. Moreover, you’ll get first-hand exposure to a broad and relevant audience, who’ll immediately start respecting your business on the mere basis of you collaborating with a person they admire.

Get Some Smaller Influencers Too

And almost the same thing can be said for the other type of influencers, too - the smaller, more personal ones, including the bloggers.

An admirable quality of contemporary businesses is their willingness to collaborate with the everyman, the person your customers and audience can relate to and empathize with. Hence the online personalities and the influential bloggers with niche audiences.

Not only will such affiliates probably have lower financial expectations from you as a business partner, but they’ll also give you exposure to more niche audiences. Such audiences tend to develop a personal connection to the online figures they follow, so if these figures endorse and promote your business, their customers will almost immediately become your customers as well!

Your partnering with such smaller enterprises or individuals will be a good opportunity for said enterprises to grow significantly, while you’ll reap the benefit of extra exposure and advertising. It’s up to you to use today’s online ecosystem to your advantage the best you can.

Offer Affiliates Deals They Will Not Be Able To Refuse

Your commission rate is, ultimately, what will make or break a potential affiliate partnership. After all, nobody would be foolish enough to accept a deal that doesn’t suit them, so you have to know to offer substantial and, if possible, quite lucrative deals to recruit affiliates and keep those you already have.

However, you need to be extremely careful not to promise something that you - and your entire business - won’t be able to make good on. An affiliate should help you grow, not drain your business of its finances, leading to your bankruptcy.

To ensure that this functions as it should, the first thing that you’ll need to do is analyze the affiliate market and know your competitors. Not all potential affiliates will require the same commission rates, and you need to be able to tell which ones would be satisfied with less.

Know to offer a good deal that will benefit both parties at least somewhat equally, and that will help you stand out from your competition. In the long run, by doing so, you’ll let your affiliates know that you’re good at leading a business, and through word of mouth, you may get acquainted with other potential affiliates. Leaving a good impression is key, regardless of the particular circumstances.

Attract Affiliates With a Welcoming Online Aesthetic

The other side of this coin is the way you present your business visually. And, considering how most businesses operate nowadays, this means having a good, welcoming online presence.

Get a professional web designer to make a user-friendly and easy-to-manage website so that all visitors will be able to find their way around your menus and systems quickly.

The portal for attracting affiliates, especially, needs to feel smooth and easy to comprehend. It should paint a picture of your business as a steady and upfront one, which is always clear to state and express what they want and what they’re willing to give in return.

Like it or not, affiliates are either individuals - people - or businesses - led by people - so they are prone to falling for a pleasant aesthetic impression. For that reason, make sure that you don’t scare potential collaborators off with a convoluted online presence and difficult-to-follow terms, rules, and contact information. The more welcoming you are, the more guests you’ll have - simple.

Know How To Tell Potential Allies From Rivals

Yet another thing that’s essential for both small businesses and larger corporations to be aware of is to know which are your competitors and which are your potential allies. The two can often get confused. When you start researching a certain professional branch or niche, on the one hand, you’re happy to discover companies that do the same things as you, but on the other, they are precisely your biggest rivals.

This is why you need to know which companies are those that you can actually partner with. For example, if you offer one kind of product or service, and another company offers a complementary product or service, you may benefit from contacting them and recruiting them as an affiliate.

You’ll both simultaneously benefit from each other, promoting one another to customers who are likely to need similar products and services. That way, your customer base may significantly grow, as it may end up fully incorporating that of your affiliate partner over time.

In the long run, you may even be able to start sharing affiliates with your affiliate, establishing a large and complex network that will keep growing by the day, getting you more revenue, more exposure, and an ever-increasing reputation.

Consider an Affiliate Recruitment Agency

An affiliate recruitment agency is also a good, smart, and relatively clean way to get extra affiliates. Operating somewhat similarly to affiliate networks, except with a much more dedicated, personalized, and hands-on approach, affiliate recruitment agencies will actively look to pair you with potential affiliates.

Of course, you’ll still be the one to come up with the commission rates and financial compensation deals, but the agency will be the institution to try and put you in touch with different affiliates. Considering how many businesses and individuals also prefer to rely on an agency, you’ll encounter one - or more - suitable partners sooner or later.

Such agencies function with the help of a special affiliate tracking software that helps them recognize and immediately establish connections between two or more parties with shared interests and potential services to offer to one another. This way, you’ll be able to dedicate your time and energy to other areas of your enterprise while leaving it to the agency to find affiliates for your business.

One final point is that such agencies are great for small businesses that are still finding their footing in the affiliate landscape and for well-developed companies looking to extend their reach even further but are too busy to go hunting for partners manually.

Your Customers Can Carry the Brunt of The Burden

Yet another thing to bear in mind is that your affiliates can also be your customers. Just think about it. If you’re more of a B2B kind of company, you’ll spend most of your time offering services to other businesses. You may happen upon a business that provides a service very similar to your own, which you would need for your business.

And precisely, this could be the starting point of a very beneficial partnership. If both you and your customer happen to have something to offer to each other, you could take them as your affiliate and allow them to promote you and spread the word.

Yet, you don’t need to be a B2B company for this to occur! B2C companies, being regularly in touch with customers and consumers, are ideal for leaving a good impression. A happy customer will not hesitate to spread the word, using their own personal experience to vouch for your quality.

Now, it would be especially fortunate if your customer happens to be an influencer or blogger of some sort, allowing them to pass on the knowledge of your high-quality delivery of services to a significantly wider audience, thus promoting you further. And trust us, it’s easy to tell if your affiliate is promoting you just because they were paid to do so or if they’re doing so genuinely because they’ve used your services and products and have been honestly impressed by them.

Social Media Communities Could Do The Trick

We hardly need to mention how important and influential social media is. Luckily, you can benefit from this. Join a social media group or a forum dedicated to your niche and see what kinds of people or businesses are also members. Among them, you’ll probably be able to find potential affiliates that will do you much good for the growth of your business.

People circulating in such groups, especially if these groups are tightly connected to your business, are probably looking for a service precisely like the one you’re offering. Promote yourself to them, and, once they’ve used your service, allow them to spread the word online. You may become an online phenomenon in no time!

Make Your Affiliate Hunt a Priority

Perhaps the most important advice we could give you if you really want to succeed in this is to prioritize your affiliate program. Be incessant, devoted, and thorough in your search to find affiliates for your business. Employ various techniques and keep trying until you slowly get more and more affiliates. The more you succeed in acquiring, the more will follow.

Trust us, once you start - there’s no going back