Affilr

Posted my Show HN this morning. 2 upvotes. One of them was mine.

That's fine. Here's what Affilr is and why I'm still going.

The problem I solved for myself

Last year I was building a niche site and needed to join 30 affiliate programs. Every single one required me to Google "[product] affiliate program", dig through footers, follow redirects, and half the time I'd end up on a dead link or a program that closed months ago. Two days wasted on research that should take minutes.

So I built Affilr. You give it any product name and it finds the exact current affiliate signup URL automatically. It also flags programs that are closed or paused before you waste time applying.

Where things stand after 4 weeks

• Launched on Product Hunt — peaked at 35 visitors in a day

• Published 10 SEO blog posts targeting "how to join [product] affiliate program"

• Submitted to 5 directories today

• Fixed a silent reCAPTCHA bug that was blocking most signups

• Real daily visitors: about 5–10 humans (Cloudflare shows 200 but that's bots)

• Paying customers: 0

What's working

The blog posts are indexed and starting to get impressions in Search Console. The product actually works — when people use it, it finds the right pages. The landing page converts reasonably well when traffic is warm.

What's not working

Cold traffic doesn't convert. HN apparently doesn't care. Getting real humans to the site is harder than building the product.

What I'm doing next

Staying consistent. One blog post per week. One new directory per day. Building the affiliate program so users can refer others. Reaching out personally to bloggers who write about affiliate marketing.

If you're a blogger or niche site builder who manually hunts for affiliate programs, I'd genuinely love to give you free access in exchange for honest feedback.

→ affilr.com — 10 free searches, no credit card

Happy to answer questions about the build or the marketing grind.

Today was supposed to be launch day for Affilr.

I'd spent weeks building, testing, and preparing. Set the Product Hunt launch for midnight. Wrote the first comment. Shared everywhere I could.

By noon I had 3 upvotes and zero signups.

Here's what went wrong and what I learned in one day.

What I built

Affilr finds affiliate program pages for any product instantly. You type in "ConvertKit" or "yoga mat" and it returns the exact affiliate signup URL — no Googling, no digging through footers, no dead links.

I built it because I spent two days manually finding affiliate programs for 30 products and decided no one should ever have to do that again.

What went wrong on PH

Two things killed the launch:

1. I hunted it myself — no hunter audience to amplify at midnight

2. My WhatsApp contacts all created fresh PH accounts to upvote — the algorithm silently filtered most of them out as low quality accounts

The result: buried on page 4 with 3 visible upvotes by the time real voting started. No impressions, no traffic, no signups from PH.

What went right

Despite zero PH traction I kept moving. By end of day:

• Submitted to Fazier, Microlaunch, Alternativeto, SaaSHub

• Launched a two-sided referral program — refer a friend, you both get 5 free searches

• Posted the PH forum thread with a live demo hook

• Got one real signup — emailed them personally within minutes

One signup. Not the day I imagined. But a real person found Affilr and created an account.

What I'd do differently

Build the audience before the launch, not after. PH rewards founders who already have followers. With 100 Twitter followers and a fresh LinkedIn, I was launching cold.

What's next

Building Reddit karma this week so I can post in r/juststart and r/affiliatemarketing. Writing SEO content. Cold outreach to bloggers. The slow, unglamorous work.

If you're a blogger or niche site builder who's ever wasted time hunting for affiliate programs — try it free at affilr.com. 10 searches, no credit card.

And if you've had a similar launch day experience, drop it in the comments. Would love to hear how you got your first real users.

Got my first real user insight this week.

Someone searched for "band aids" — not a SaaS product, just a consumer item they want to promote. Made me realize the original assumption was too narrow. Not everyone is a blogger promoting software tools. A lot of people run niche sites around physical products, health, home goods, you name it.

So I added a product search feature. You can now search for any item or niche and Affilr will find affiliate programs that carry it — Niche networks, brand-specific programs.

Works for "band aids", "yoga mats", "dog food" — anything people actually buy.

Drop something in the comments and I'll run it through Affilr.

After 2 weeks of building solo, Affilr is live.

The idea came from a personal frustration — I spent two days hunting down affiliate program pages for 30+ products. Every time: Google the product, find the affiliate page, bookmark it, repeat.

Affilr automates that research. You add a list of products, the agent searches the web and finds the affiliate program page for each one. No more hunting.

Tech stack: Python, Flask, Playwright, Gemini AI, SQLite, Docker on Oracle Cloud Free Tier — total infra cost $0/month.

Current status: Live at affilr.com with a free trial. Still early — looking for feedback from bloggers and niche site owners.

Would love to hear from anyone in the affiliate marketing space. What's your biggest pain point when researching affiliate programs?