What to Expect from Passive Affiliate Recruitment

Affiliate recruitment may be split into two main types: active and passive recruitment. Simply put, active recruitment is when affiliates find out about your program through your outreach, whereas passive recruitment is when they find you by themselves.

Affiliate recruitment

Twenty days ago we “turned off” all active recruitment for a (non-paying) client, but, naturally, affiliates were still finding out about their affiliate program (through a sign-up link on their website, our past announcements, affiliate program directories, and the affiliate network’s own directory of programs run on it). The (past) client wasn’t reviewing them, and feeling bad for these affiliates (the program is still active, operating smoothly on an “auto deposit,” and affiliates can still make money on it) I went in to analyze their applications and approve those who should be approved.

Two pieces of (non-sensitive) info/data I’d like to share with you today:

Volume: roughly 1 application per day.

Distribution of Affiliate Types:

  • Coupons/Deals – 53%
  • Content affiliates – 17%
  • Directories – 12%
  • Social – 12%
  • Cashback – 6%

So… if you rely on passive affiliate recruitment only, be prepared for the above numbers. I’ve noticed very similar situations in other affiliate programs in the past as well. While the volume may/will differ, the distribution of affiliate types will be very similar to the above.

9 thoughts on “What to Expect from Passive Affiliate Recruitment”

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  2. Agree & thanks for sharing this Geno. Was hoping to read vs stats about active recruitment, similar to the break-down you have above. Any chance for a follow up post?

  3. Informative as always Geno. As mentioned in your previous posts, actively recruiting your Affiliates is important.

    I am guessing with Active Recruitment you have a much better no of Content Affiliates & Search Affiliates to show, which I believe is important.

    Looking forward to a follow up post on the Benefits of Active Recruitment

    1. Glad you’ve enjoyed the post, Rahul, and yes, you certainly have better numbers of the types of affiliates you reach out to (when recruiting), but the response rate is something to keep in mind. It is normally pretty low, but there are ways to increase it. More in the post on active recruitment (probably in a week or so).

      1. True. It would make for good read and information if you could also do a post on the response rates with active recruitment,and ways to increase it.

        It certainly is one of the biggest issues faced while actively sourcing relevant affiliates.

        Thanks Geno.

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  5. Thanks for this post Geno

    I’d be interested to know the split between active and passive recruitment when both are running..

    I mean the top line split.. e.g. “in a week we get x number of affiliates of which 60% are from our active campaigns and 40% from Passive”..

  6. Pingback: The Importance of Affiliate Recruitment

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