Sort the commercial model first: margin, commission, budget and target partners. Choose a network on publisher offering, not price. Test tracking end to end before launch. Build your publisher list before go-live, not after. The two things that kill new programs are no budget and no active management once it is live.
01Are you actually ready to start an affiliate program?
Not every brand is, and that is worth being honest about before spending time on a launch. Affiliate suits ecommerce brands that already have decent sales, a conversion rate that holds up under a bit more traffic, stock to fulfil demand, and enough margin to fund a commission on top of everything else. If any of those is missing, fix that first – affiliate will not create them for you.
It is not right for brands with no conversion rate to speak of, no budget set aside, no reliable stock, or no margin left once product and operating costs are covered. Publishers are quick to work out which programs are worth their time. A brand that cannot support a competitive commission or keep products in stock gets ignored fast, and a slow start is harder to recover from than a delayed one.
None of this is permanent. A brand that is not ready today can still get there – fix the conversion rate, sort the stock position, rebuild margin into the pricing – and revisit affiliate once the fundamentals hold up. The honest version of "not yet" is more useful than launching anyway and blaming the channel when it does not perform.
02What commercial model do you need to set first?
Before you touch a network, settle four things: margin, commission, budget and target partners. Margin sets the ceiling on what you can afford to pay. Commission has to be competitive enough inside your category to earn publisher attention – too low and partners will simply not bother promoting you. Budget and target partners flow from there: decide roughly who you want driving traffic before you go looking for a platform to host them on.
Budget is not just the commission line. It is network fees, the time or agency cost of managing the program properly, the commission itself, and – for categories where it matters – paid placements with cashback or loyalty partners to get onto their higher-visibility spots. Treat all four as one number when you plan, not as separate decisions you will figure out later.
03How do you choose the right network?
On the publisher offering, not the price. A network's fee structure is a minor input compared with whether the cashback, loyalty, content, coupon and technology partners you actually want are active on it in Australia. A cheaper network with the wrong publisher mix for your category is a worse deal than a pricier one with the right partners already switched on.
Ask each network directly which publishers are genuinely active in your category here, not globally, what support looks like after you sign, and how tracking, reporting and contract terms actually work day to day. For a category-by-category comparison of the main Australian options, see our Commission Factory vs Impact vs Partnerize vs Rakuten breakdown.
Treat the sales pitch and the goals conversation as separate things. Every network will tell you why it is the right fit; fewer will ask what you are actually trying to achieve before answering. A network worth signing with engages with your goals first – category, target partners, growth stage – and lets the platform recommendation follow from that, rather than leading with features you may not need yet.
Most brands think affiliate is plug and play. It is not. Someone still has to run the thing.
04What is the actual launch sequence?
Do these in order. Each step depends on the one before it, which is why programs that skip ahead – signing up for a network before the commercial model is settled, or going live before tracking is tested – end up circling back to redo work once it breaks or underperforms.
- 01
Audit any existing setup
If you have ever run affiliate before – even informally, through a handful of direct partner deals – review what is already there. Old tracking, legacy commission terms and half-dormant publisher relationships all need to be accounted for before you build on top of them.
- 02
Lock the commercial model
Confirm margin, commission rate, total budget and the rough profile of partners you want, before anything else moves. This is the input every later step depends on, so treat it as a decision to get right, not a placeholder to revisit later.
- 03
Set up the network and test tracking
Implement tracking on the network you have chosen and test every conversion path end to end – desktop, mobile, app if relevant, and any checkout variations – before a single publisher goes live. Tracking that has not been tested pre-launch is the single most common source of early disputes with partners.
- 04
Build the publisher list before go-live
Identify and shortlist the cashback, loyalty, content, coupon and closed-group partners you actually want, and do this before launch, not as an afterthought once the program is already live. A program that goes live with no publisher list attached simply sits there with no traffic.
- 05
Run outreach with a real offer
Approach shortlisted publishers with commission terms and creative assets already in place, not a vague invitation to "check us out". Publishers respond to programs that have clearly done the preparation – it signals the brand will be worth their ongoing time.
- 06
Launch first campaigns
Start with a small number of committed partners and a clear campaign rather than opening the program broadly and hoping. Early campaigns are also your first real test of tracking, commission accuracy and reporting under live conditions.
05What actually kills new affiliate programs?
Two things, almost always in combination: no budget, and no active management once the program is live. A program launched without enough budget to pay competitive commission or fund any paid placement never gets publisher attention in the first place. A program launched with a fair budget but then left unmanaged – nobody chasing outreach, nobody watching reporting, nobody following up with partners – quietly stalls even though nothing about the setup is technically wrong.
The network will not catch either problem for you. It is a platform, not a strategy – it gives you the infrastructure to run a program, not the plan for running it well. Someone still has to own commercial decisions, publisher relationships and day-to-day management, whether that is an in-house hire or an agency doing it on your behalf.