I built an affiliate programme for SERPTool — now I need to figure out how to attract the right affiliates

I’ve been working on SERPTool, a keyword research and SERP analysis tool aimed at helping people find keywords they can realistically rank for.

The basic idea is simple:

Most keyword tools give you search volume, CPC, difficulty, and some kind of domain authority score. SERPTool tries to go a bit further by looking at the actual top 10 results and highlighting weakness signals — things like low-authority ranking pages, thin content, stale pages, weak meta, poor optimisation, and other signs that a keyword might be more achievable than the headline difficulty score suggests.

I’ve now added an affiliate programme:

https://serp-tool.com/affiliates

The current offer is:

20% recurring commission
Paid for 12 months per referred customer
60-day cookie
Last-touch attribution
PayPal payouts once the balance reaches $50
Transparent commission breakdown inside the dashboard

A worked example: if someone refers a customer on the $99/month Professional plan, the affiliate earns around $16.16 per paid invoice after Stripe fees and the plan cost allowance. Over 12 months, that would be around $193.92 from one retained customer.

The bit I’m trying to work out now is distribution.

I don’t want to just spam “join my affiliate programme” everywhere, because that usually attracts either nobody or the wrong people. I’d rather find people who already have an audience that makes sense for the product:

SEO bloggers
niche site builders
affiliate marketers
freelance SEO consultants
agency owners
YouTubers creating SEO/tutorial content
newsletter writers covering blogging, content marketing, or indie hacking
people teaching keyword research

My thinking is that SERPTool could be useful for affiliates because they can create genuinely useful content around it, for example:

“How I find low-competition keywords”
“How to spot weak SERPs”
“Why keyword difficulty scores can be misleading”
“Finding keywords small sites can actually rank for”
“Using SERP weakness signals instead of just DA/DR”

So rather than pushing the affiliate programme directly, the better angle might be helping potential affiliates create content that also benefits their audience.

That said, I’m still figuring this out.

For anyone who has successfully grown an affiliate programme for a SaaS or SEO tool:

What worked best for attracting decent affiliates?

Did you manually recruit people one by one?

Did you create swipe copy, landing pages, demo videos, or comparison content for them?

Did you list the programme on affiliate directories?

Or was it mostly about building relationships with people already creating content in the space?

I’d be interested to hear what actually worked, especially at the early stage when the product is live but the affiliate programme has no real momentum yet.