Setting up an affiliate program for a SaaS or digital product
Marc Lou's affiliate setup that earned $50k+ — only once the product sells, Rewardful + Stripe, a dedicated SEO page written for affiliates (earnings proof, calculator, brand assets), in-app recruiting at the end of the user journey, 30–50% commission, a branded-keyword ban and a 30–60-day payout hold against self-referral refunds.
Setting up an affiliate program for a SaaS or digital product
TL;DR
- Don’t start one until the product already makes money — otherwise you waste your and affiliates’ time.
- Be generous: at least 30%, up to 50% if margins allow (copying a proven business makes 50% safe).
- Tooling: Rewardful plugged into Stripe with a tracking script.
- Recruit from power users, inside the product, at the “I’m done / I succeeded” moment.
- Rules: ban bidding on your brand keywords; hold payouts 30 days (60 for new zero-history affiliates) to beat self-referral-then-refund fraud.
Details
Marc Lou says affiliates brought $50k+ for some of his products at minimal effort; the cost is the commission.1 Mechanism: power users join, get a unique link, share with their audiences, and earn a commission when referrals buy.2
- Software: Rewardful (he says it is not a paid promotion), integrated with Stripe via a small script.
- Affiliate landing page on its own SEO-able URL, written to affiliates, not customers — they want to make money. Elements: photos/social proof of affiliates already earning, an earnings slider (referrals → commission), concrete examples (“167 visitors → $358 in commissions”), and a download button for brand assets (logo, headlines).
- Promotion: on social if you have an audience; otherwise inside the app. ShipFast (his boilerplate) shows “become an affiliate” at the bottom of the deployment step, the end of the customer journey. DataFast users like Jack Friks post screenshots of their analytics dashboard with an affiliate link.3
- Working product first.
- Commission ≥30%, up to 50%.
- Ban branded keyword ads: someone was running Google Ads on “ShipFast” with an affiliate link; Marc spotted the paid-ad URL parameters and deleted the referral cookie. State it in the program terms.
- Minimum 30-day payout window — some affiliates buy through their own link, collect commission and then refund or charge back. Marc uses 60 days for new affiliates with zero commissions and lowers it to 30 later.
Disagreements / caveats
- App affiliate programs in this base run lower commissions (15–40%, None to Run pays 20%) — see Affiliate programs for subscription apps — commissions, tracking, recruiting. Marc’s 30–50% reflects ~90% margin digital products and one-time sales.
- Single-founder anecdotes; no data on what share of revenue affiliates drive versus organic.
See also
- Affiliate programs for subscription apps — commissions, tracking, recruiting — tiered bonuses, creator paywalls, short codes
- Building distribution into the product — share loops, badges, leaderboards, guest hosts — users sharing dashboards is the same loop
- Marc Lou
Footnotes
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How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 07:58 — Marc Lou ↩
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How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 09:31 — Marc Lou ↩ ↩2
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How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 11:02 — Marc Lou ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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How I made $2,000,000 with my side projects @ 12:35 — Marc Lou ↩