How to Approach Publishers as an Affiliate Manager

Most messages that affiliate managers send to publishers look the same: "Hello, we came across your website and would like to offer you a partnership in our affiliate programme, commission up to 10%, we look forward to hearing from you." A publisher who has run a site for a few years gets several of these a week. They answer one in ten, and more out of boredom than interest. This article is about writing the one message that does get an answer, and about what to do afterwards so that the partnership actually produces something.

Why mass emails go unanswered

A publisher reads your message as someone with limited space. Their site has, say, thirty articles where a link can reasonably go, the newsletter goes out once a fortnight, and every additional recommendation takes credibility away from the previous one. When you write that you have a great programme, you are telling them nothing they need in order to decide. They need to know how much they earn on one order, how long the cookie lasts, whether three weeks of approval await them and, above all, why they should put your product into an article where a competitor already sits.

A mass email answers none of those questions because it is written for everyone. It lacks the publisher's name, the name of their site, a link to a specific article. A publisher spots a template within two seconds, and templates do not get read. The second reason is simpler: the message often comes from an address like affiliate@ or info@ that nobody answers, and the publisher knows they would be talking to a ticketing system. The third: it is not clear from the offer what they are supposed to do. Register with the network? Reply? Wait? When you do not know what is being asked of you, you do nothing.

The good news is that the competition in outreach is weak. If you give each publisher ten minutes of preparation, you will be better than ninety percent of the messages that reached them that month.

Preparation before the first message

A walk through the publisher's site

Before you write the first sentence, open the site and spend a while on it as a reader. Several things interest you. What does the publisher write about most often and in what tone - in-depth reviews, or rather overviews and comparisons? How old are the latest articles, in other words, is the site alive? Where are the affiliate links placed and for which brands? If they recommend three competing shops for garden tools, you know they work with affiliate and that there is something for you to step into. If there are no affiliate links at all, a longer explanation awaits you, but you also have no competition.

Look at the "About" or "Partnerships" page as well. Many publishers write there directly what they expect from a partnership, what their rates for sponsored articles are and what they refuse. If you ignore this information and offer something the publisher has explicitly ruled out, your message deserves to be deleted.

Where to find publishers

There are three ways to find publishers. Type into a search engine the queries your customers type ("best via ferrata gloves", "review of ...") and go through the first two pages of results - the sites that appear there have the traffic you need. Check who links to your competitors; these publishers are already interested in affiliate and your only job is to convince them of a better offer. And use a catalogue where publishers have listed themselves and stated what they want to work with - that is where the willingness to reply is highest.

How the publisher makes money

Each type of site has a different income model and your offer has to fit into it. A review site lives on affiliate commissions and the occasional sponsored article, so it cares about the commission rate and your shop's conversion rate. A comparison site needs a product feed and a stable pricing policy. A coupon site earns on volume, so it wants an exclusive code and fast approval. A newsletter sells its subscribers' attention and wants to know why it should recommend your product this particular week. A YouTuber needs the product in hand, because without it there is no video.

Once you understand this model, offers with no chance fall away by themselves. A gaming YouTuber does not need a commission from a baby-supplies shop, however large the audience. And a content site that has never used a discount code is not the place to build your first message around a coupon.

A place for your product

The strongest sentence in the whole message is the one where you tell the publisher exactly where your product fits. "In your article on gear for a first via ferrata you mention a helmet and a harness but not gloves - we sell those and they are among our best-converting items." This shows that you read the article, that you understand its audience and that you are saving the publisher work. They do not have to figure out where to put you. You tell them.

Finding such a place takes five to fifteen minutes. Look for articles where the publisher compares products, answers the question "which one to buy" or writes a guide in which your product is used. Note down the URL and briefly what you would add there. That note will also come in handy later when you evaluate the partnership.

What belongs in the offer

From the first message the publisher wants to know what they are working with. An offer without numbers looks like an offer you want to negotiate based on how much the publisher dares to ask for. So write it down straight away:

• A specific commission and cookie. "8% of the order, 30-day cookie, approval within 14 days after the return period ends." If your commission is tiered by category, give the range and the part that concerns this publisher most.
• Where you beat the competition. The publisher knows your competitors and often promotes them. Say where you have the edge: a longer cookie, a higher average order, free shipping from a lower amount, faster approval, a wider range in their topic. Do not lie - the publisher will check.
• A starting bonus. An increased commission for the first three months, a fixed reward for the first ten orders or a one-off payment for publishing the article. The bonus lowers the risk the publisher takes when giving you space before knowing how you convert.
• A product for review or a barter deal. With review sites, YouTube and influencers this is often a condition. Say what you are sending, whether the publisher returns it and how quickly you will ship it.
• An exclusive discount code for readers. A code carrying the site's or the publisher's name raises conversions and gives the publisher something to offer their audience. For coupon sites it is the core of the offer.
• Contact with a real person. Your name, direct email, perhaps a phone number. The publisher wants to know that when a month's commission fails to arrive, they will be writing to you and not to a form.

All of this fits into ten lines. Do not write a longer message; the details belong in the reply, once the publisher has shown interest.

A sample message

This is what a first contact with a content site about outdoor gear might look like. It is deliberately short, personal and contains a single proposal.

Dear Mr Novák,

I read your site regularly, and last week I used your article on gear for a first via ferrata to pick out a set for a friend. You mention a helmet, a harness and a shock absorber, but not gloves. We sell those (four models from CZK 490, roughly EUR 20) and they are among our best-converting items in this category.

I would like to invite you to our affiliate programme: 9% of the order value, 45-day cookie, approval within 14 days after the return period. 12% for the first three months. I will gladly send you two pairs of gloves to try, so that the recommendation rests on your own experience, and I will set up the code FERRATA10 for your readers.

If this makes sense, just reply and I will send the registration link. I am also available by phone.

Jan Svoboda, affiliate manager, [shop]

Notice what is not in the message. There is no company history, no "we are a fast-growing shop" and no list of every programme benefit. There is proof that you read the article, specific numbers, one proposal and a clear next step.

Timing matters less than people say, but a few rules hold. Write on weekday mornings, when the publisher is dealing with email, not on Friday evening. Send a seasonal offer six to eight weeks ahead - the publisher needs time to write the article and let it get indexed. And if the publisher has just published an article in your topic, write within a few days; the subject is fresh in their mind and adding to it costs them very little work.

The follow-up after a week

Roughly half of publishers do not reply to the first message even when it is good. They have no time, they forget, or they put it aside for later and later never comes. A second message after seven to ten days brings replies from about a third of them. It should be even shorter than the first and should not try to induce guilt.

Dear Mr Novák,

just a quick reminder about the partnership offer for your via ferrata article. The gloves are ready to ship, I only need an address. If the timing is wrong, please let me know when I should get back to you, or that it does not make sense - that is fine too.

Jan Svoboda

Do not send a third message. If the publisher does not reply the second time either, make a note and come back in six months with a new reason - a new product, a change in commission or a seasonal campaign.

Offers by publisher type

The same offer does not work on everyone. The table below summarises what each type of publisher usually cares about most.

Content sites and reviews

A content site decides slowly and the partnership lasts years. The publisher wants to try the product, needs good photos or the chance to take their own, and appreciates technical materials that are not in your shop. The article that results will link to you three years from now, so it pays to offer a bonus for publication and to keep checking that the links still work.

Coupon sites

A coupon site brings volume quickly, but part of the orders will come from people who would have bought from you anyway and were only looking for a discount. Decide in advance whether you accept that and what commission you pay for it. If you do, give the coupon site an exclusive code that exists nowhere else and tell them about promotions before you launch them. Nothing annoys them more than discovering a better discount on your own site than the one they have.

YouTube and influencers

No product, no video. Send the product with no return condition, give the creator freedom in how they show it, and combine a fixed fee with commission. The link in the video description works for a long time, but most clicks come in the first days after publication - make sure what the creator shows is in stock then.

Newsletters

A newsletter author has one shot a week or a fortnight and does not want to waste it. Give them a reason to write now: a new product, a promotion with an end date, a code only for their subscribers. Prepare a short text and a link they can use straight away, but expect them to rewrite it in their own words.

Long-term care of publishers

The first message is the beginning; most of the value comes later. A publisher with a good experience of you will add you to further articles without prompting and recommend you to colleagues. A publisher who waited two months for a commission quietly swaps the link for a competitor and never tells you.

Care rests on a few habits. Approve commissions on time, ideally right after the return period ends, and if something is delayed, say so in advance. Reply within two working days - even if only "looking into it, I will get back to you on Friday". Send news, but only news that helps the publisher earn: a new product in their topic, a promotion, a higher seasonal commission. A mass newsletter about the company team-building day interests nobody. Once a quarter, go through your ten best-performing publishers and write to each personally: what went well, what could improve, whether they need anything from you. And ask those whose results dropped why - you will often find a broken link or a competitor who raised their commission.

It pays to keep notes on every publisher: when you wrote, what you promised, what you sent, what their habits are. With ten publishers you remember it; with fifty you do not.

The most common manager mistakes

From the publisher's point of view, affiliate managers' mistakes are surprisingly similar across shops.

• Not replying. The publisher asks about the commission on a specific category and gets an answer in three weeks or never. In the meantime they have replaced the link.
• Changing terms without notice. Cutting the commission, shortening the cookie or excluding a category without a prior email is the fastest way to lose trust. Announce changes at least thirty days ahead and explain the reason.
• Late approvals and payouts. The publisher is counting on the money for promotion delivered two months ago. When the payout is late, they stop counting on you.
• An offer without specifics. "We offer attractive commissions" means you offer what everyone else does and cannot even say so.
• Declining commissions without explanation. A cancelled order is a legitimate reason; "declined" with no comment is not.
• Forgetting the publisher after the first article. A publisher you have already won is cheap to keep and expensive to win again.

Outreach through AffilPlanet

Most of the work described above you have to do yourself - read the sites, think about the offer, write personally. AffilPlanet saves you the mechanical part: finding publishers and keeping track of who you have talked to.

In the publisher catalogue you filter by type (content site, reviews, coupons, YouTube, newsletter and more), topics and target country. Every publisher has a profile with a description of the site, topics and audience type, so the first sieve takes a few minutes instead of hours on Google. Contact details and site addresses are visible only to verified affiliate managers with an approved programme - publishers know a real shop is writing to them, and you are not competing with agencies' mass mailings.

You send messages directly in the portal. The publisher gets an email notification, replies in the same thread and the whole history stays in your account. The "My publishers" overview shows who accepted the partnership, who declined and where you are waiting for a reply, with notes on each. Publishers you found outside the catalogue can be added as your own contacts so that everything is in one place. For seasonal promotions there are campaigns with a checklist: whom to contact, what to send, when to follow up.

Listing a programme is free, registration takes about ten minutes and the details are on the page for shops. If your programme is already in the catalogue (we imported more than 1,700 programmes from the networks), you just claim it and fill in what we cannot read from the network: bonuses, codes, your contact details.

Whether you use AffilPlanet or not, the principle stays the same. One publisher, ten minutes of preparation, one specific offer, a reply within two days. It is slower than a mailing to three hundred addresses, but at the end of the year you will have publishers who write about you instead of a list of people who ignore you.