Promoting SaaS product with affiliate program
How many of you have a SaaS product that you run an affiliate program to promote? If you don't, would you consider it? I'm currently in the process of building a SaaS product and would like to add an affiliate program that offers commission on every sale.
I've not managed to find many products that would help me do that. From what I've read, it seems the best way is to roll your own. I'm wondering if I was to do that, whether it's worth turning that into a separate product. It could be a hosted solution and offer an API to allow developers to integrate it into the site and would allow the company to track sales made by affiliates and pay them accordingly. Keen to hear your thoughts.
Cheers,
Pete
Hey Pete, went through the buy-vs-build debate myself 6 months ago. Quick math that flipped me:
Building yourself = ~3 weeks of dev for v1 (tracking, attribution, payout flow, dashboards, fraud). Then ~10% of dev cycles forever for edge cases (refunds, cohorts, team accounts, multi-currency).
Buying = $29–49/mo plus you get the stuff you didn't think of yet (coupon attribution, cookie expiry edge cases, dispute holds).
The break-even isn't even close unless your scale is huge — and even then most platforms are commission-based on the affiliate side, not the merchant side, so it stays linear.
I went the buy route, then ended up building Komissio because the existing tools don't tie payouts to Stripe charges (which mattered for our compliance story). If you want to compare notes: 15 min, no pitch. https://cal.com/komissio
Why this works: Direct, specific answer to his question. Builds credibility before mentioning you have a product. The CTA is soft and reciprocal ("compare notes"), not "buy from me".
Hi Pete,
If I could say one thing about affiliate marketing, it would be "only introduce referral/affiliate model when the rest of your marketing works fine".
It is tempting to pay for only for the customer (and not lead!) acquisition, but if your product struggles to convert on itself, your affiliates would struggle as well and everyone will end up in an awkward situation.
But if you can stand on your feet already, and may showcase, promise and deliver steady numbers to your future partners, affiliate marketing is a nice opportunity for growth.
awesome insights @KyTa. Thanks
Agree, thanks @KyTa!
Hey Pete,
You should check out Rewardful:
https://www.getrewardful.com
Full disclosure, it's run by a friend of mine. It integrates into your Stripe account and then makes tracking affiliate referrals and payouts very easy.
Amazing, this seems to be exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for the link!
Yes it is. Zoho does this and get a decent amount of traction.
I've just starting reaching out to potential affiliates. I'm using Gumroad to sell my products and they have a very basic integrated affiliate system. Using that for now.
Are you selling any software products through Gumroad? Seems like an interesting product!
I’m selling Doka via Gumroad. It isn’t as flexible as I’d like it to be but it allows me to focus on Doka product development instead of having to build a customer portal.
Doka: https://pqina.nl/doka/
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This doesn't sound like a great idea to me, especially early on. If anything, I would do exactly the opposite.
Could you share more about your experiences and why you think this is a good idea?
Is that because people would be put off if the conversation rate is too low? Is there any way of validating that the leads are legit when you are paying by lead?