Affiliate: paying for the close

What it’s actually for

Affiliate is the channel that only charges when it works — a partner sends a buyer, the buyer converts, the partner gets paid. On paper, the perfect deal: pure performance, no result no fee. The catch hides in that word “converts”, because the hardest question in affiliate is not how many sales it produced. It is how many of those sales were going to happen anyway.

Its honest job is paying for the close it genuinely caused — incremental conversions a partner’s audience or content brought you that you would not otherwise have won. Used well, it extends your reach into pockets of trust you do not own. Used lazily, it pays commission on sales you already had.

Where it fires

Affiliate → Buys, named-earned mode. You pay on results — if the result was really yours to claim.

A named, earned channel.

On the marcomms map, affiliate fires at Buys, in named-earned mode. It operates at the sharp end of the funnel, near the decision, where a partner’s recommendation tips a leaning buyer over the line. It is not an awareness channel wearing a performance badge; its whole value is proximity to the close.

The numbers that matter

Activity metrics: partner-sourced conversions, cost per acquisition, partner mix. What goes to the board is incrementality — the conversions that would not have happened without the partner, separated honestly from the ones that would. A CPA that looks brilliant because it is quietly claiming organic sales is a CPA lying to your face.

When not to use it

The failure mode is cannibalisation: paying commission on customers already in your basket, dressed up as channel performance. And coupon-and-loyalty affiliates who intercept buyers at the checkout and bill you for the privilege of a sale you had already made.

One row of twenty

This is one row of the marcomms map: every channel, every stage, every targeting mode, on one page.

The full system lives on the Methodology page.