When to build an affiliate program and how to enable SaaS affiliates

I’m thrilled to have an affiliate marketing expert join me today. Dustin Howes is a 12-year affiliate marketing veteran. The former Head of Affiliates at WP Engine (which has one of the largest affiliate programs for any saas company), Dustin is going to provide us with what we need to know today in order to understand, qualify ourselves, and begin to set up an “Affiliate” program - not to be confused with an “expert” or “Solutions” partner program. 

In this episode, Dustin and I review: 

• Definitions of Affiliate vs Partner vs Reseller, and Channel, etc… 
• Who should not be thinking about affiliate programs?
• What is step 1 of building an affiliate program? 
• What are the pillars of affiliate program success?
• What to know about products that do well in this affiliate system.
• What are the best ways to enable affiliates? 
• When and what commissions make sense.
• What separates service provider partners from pure affiliates - in operation and enablement.

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Resources: 

Slides we spoke about in the episode.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerhub - for finding and managing your partnerships.

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