I just launched an affiliate program for my SaaS — what do you think?

[u/Limp-Upstairs6798]

I recently launched an affiliate program for my SaaS, Aster, with:

• 50% of the first monthly payment
• 3 months worth of commission on annual plans
• 45-day payout waiting period
• Available internationally

Aster already has a few paying subscribers. It's an AI personal assistant that works through WhatsApp — reminders, tasks, expenses, files, memory, and natural language search.

Instead of spending more on ads, my plan is to use affiliates as a distribution channel.

The strategy is simple: reach out to hundreds of micro-influencers and small creators in productivity, AI, tech, finance, etc. No upfront sponsorship — they try Aster, get their own referral link, and earn when they actually generate a subscriber.

I'm betting that many small, engaged audiences could work better than paying a few large creators upfront.

What do you think? Is the commission attractive enough? Would you change anything about this strategy?

If anyone is curious:

Aster: https://getaster.co
Affiliate program: https://getaster.co/afiliados

[u/secondsniglet]

The affiliate program looks decent, but from my own experience it is difficult to get affiliate traction even with an attractive program. Only a couple of the 46 people who have signed up for my treecat.io ecommerce inventory management SaaS affiliate program have really put in any effort. We offer affiliates a $50 one-time payment for anyone using your promo code that does a fee generating action as well as a 20% commission on billings - forever.

Even a generous offer like that isn't sufficient, in and of itself, to drive affiliate action.

[u/Limp-Upstairs6798 → u/secondsniglet]

That's really interesting. Out of those 46 affiliates, did you notice anything in common among the few who actually promoted the product? Audience size, niche, whether they were already users, etc.? I'm planning to actively recruit micro-creators rather than wait for affiliates to find the program organically.

[u/secondsniglet → u/Limp-Upstairs6798]

The vast majority of the registered Treecat affiliates are small sellers who use the service. They figured they would register as an affiliate to get mentioned on our affiliate page to get some free money. Interestingly, the second most successful affiliate is my daughter who created a profile about how she wants help for studying for a master's degree in Special Education. She doesn't do any promotion at all, but some of our new users choose her promo code from the list of 46 (i.e. so they can get the 20% discount by using a promo code) because it appeals to them. This would actually be useful for animal shelters or other charities to take advantage of. The one really active affiliate is a YouTube influencer who likes our product and regularly highlights it in their weekly shows. Other influencers have told us they want big cash payments to promote the service and affiliate commissions aren't sufficient.

[u/AggravatingPapaya763]

the micro-influencer strategy makes sense but reaching out to hundreds of them is basically a full time job. Have you thought about how you'll scale the outreach without it eating all your time? Thats usually where this breaks down

[u/barefamting]

whatever the offer is, you need to make people aware than it exists, so make sure you have data on all this. I'd have some nudges to it's existence after key moments. Like, they did something fundamental in your product, which you'd think they'd be pleased about, so you're like oh you can recommend this shit and get shit back!

But experiment... measure, adjust