Strangers made me $30,000 last month

Do not index

In the last 30 days, Outrank.so did $29,649 in affiliate revenue. Revid did $9,700.

Combined that's $39,349 in revenue with $10,834 paid out in commission.

Looks like the easiest channel in the world (hint: it’s not)

A lot of people ask me when they should set up an affiliate program, and usually it's the moment they get any traction at all.

I did the same thing early on.

Here's what I got wrong, and what I'd tell you before you start 👇🏼

The thing everyone gets backwards

Affiliates don't create growth. They amplify growth that's already there.

Right now there are endless products competing for the same promotion.

If yours isn't converting, isn't easy to explain, or just isn't good enough yet, nobody has a real reason to push it over the hundred other things sitting in their inbox.

So prove the product is worth pushing first. Affiliates come after that.

What a good fit looks like

John (not his real name), one of our top affiliates for Outrank, drove 15 sales last month. $3,580 in revenue, $1,074 in commission for him.

He already had an audience of ecommerce founders and years of experience running affiliate deals himself.

That's the pattern. It's never a random signup. It's someone whose audience already overlaps with yours.

And before you ask me, no, I don't think affiliates beat ads. Ads still win on speed and scale.

What affiliates win on is risk.

The cost only shows up after the revenue does, and you're borrowing trust that already exists instead of building it from zero. Different tools solving different problems.

The MOST important step

I use Rewardful for all affiliate work (not affiliated). It plugs into Stripe, tracks recurring commission, and handles the whole signup and payout flow. Took about 2 days to get working properly for me.

The one thing that actually matters more than the tool itself:

NEVER send an affiliate straight to the raw signup link.

Send them somewhere you own, with real context on the program and how to actually sell it. This single step will show you a 10x improvement in your entire setup.

outrank.so/affiliate-program

revid.ai/affiliates

superx.so/affiliates

What we pay

Outrank: 30% recurring

Revid: 20% recurring

SuperX: 40% recurring

Outrank sits higher because partner trust and niche distribution matter more there. Revid runs at higher volume and has lower margin because of AI video cost, so 20% still creates real upside without eating too much margin.

The scam nobody warns you about

Affiliate programs almost always attract the same two tricks.

The first: someone bids on your own brand name on Google Ads.

They get cheap, highly relevant traffic since people are already searching for you by name, then claim the affiliate commission on a sale that would have happened anyway. That's 20 to 30% of your revenue gone for traffic you already owned.

The second: if you run discount codes through your affiliate program, people will try to rank organically for "discount code [your brand name]."

If your product has any real search volume, that page captures customers who were already going to buy, and takes a cut for doing nothing but sitting in the search results.

Both look like real affiliate activity on paper. But these are not new customers; they were always yours.

Block branded bidding in your program terms, and keep an eye on who's ranking for your own discount code searches.

Keeping people active

Most affiliate programs die quietly after signup. You send someone a link, and that's the last time you ever talk to them.

What we do:

> Send real revenue proof > Flag anything new worth promoting > Hand people specific content ideas they can just copy.

I don't even do this manually anymore.

I have an agent on MissionControlHQ watching my GitHub repo, pulling out the most interesting features shipped that week, and packaging that into a newsletter that goes out to affiliates automatically.

Costs me zero time now and keeps affiliates in the loop without me lifting a finger.

The only question worth asking on repeat: what can I give this person that makes promoting easier?

If your product isn't converting yet, don't start here. Fix that part first.

If it is, this is one of the lowest-risk channels you'll ever run.

Reply and tell me 👇🏼

If you were to set up an affiliate program, what % would you be willing to give to affiliates?

Think about your product before taking this decision 👀

Life of an Indie Maker #10 - the tale of 2 Tibos 😅

The latest episode of my weekly animated series is now out! Check it out here:

Tweet of the week

To all my indie maker friends trying a new product every week, keep going 🫡

Until next week,

Keep building

Tibo 💻

P.S. Send me your hardest business questions by replying to this email, if i have good answers, i will write an edition with the answer 👇🏼