How to Find Your Competitors’ Affiliates

Did you know that spending from affiliate marketing is expected to exceed $15.7 billion globally in 2024? Those are some pretty big numbers to miss out on if you don’t have an affiliate marketing strategy.

Even if you do, how do you know if it’s going well? Are your affiliate programs as successful as your competitors’? You can find out by looking at how much traffic your competitors’ affiliates are driving to their site.

But first, you’ll need to figure out who your competitors’ affiliates are, so you can improve your own affiliate marketing program and get a bigger slice of that $15.7 billion affiliate marketing pie.

Want in? Learn everything there is to know about affiliate competitor analysis right here.

Before we get started – here’s a little note on the terminology we’ll use throughout this article:

• ‘You’ = owner of the affiliate program
• ‘Affiliates’ = publisher sites that partner with brands to send them traffic (for a fee)

What are competitor affiliates?

These are any websites that have referral links to your competitors’ websites.

It’s likely that your competitors spent a lot of time and effort finding top-quality affiliates, so save yourself time by simply discovering and (potentially) capitalizing on their existing affiliates, rather than digging around to find your own.

Once you know which affiliates are sending the most traffic to your competitors’ sites, you can approach them to work together.

But how exactly do you do this without hiring a private investigator? ️‍♂️

Let us show you.

How do you find competitors’ affiliates?

To find your competitors’ best affiliates you need to ace affiliate research. And for that, you need the right competitor analysis tools.

With Similarweb’s Affiliate feature, you can discover any website’s top affiliates by keywords, industry, or competitors.

First of all, you can use the Competitor Affiliates tool to find out all the websites that are sending traffic to your competitors’ sites:

Here, you can compare your website to four others at once to find out how much referral traffic you and your competitors are getting. You’ll also discover opportunities and websites where your competitors are beating you out.

Want to see it in action? In our example below, you can see that Nike and its competitors received more than 7.1 million referral visits from 1,576 sites in the last quarter of 2023:

Nike may have received the most referral traffic, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that it was the best performer…

Let us explain why. You’re not simply looking for the most traffic, you’re looking for the best-quality traffic. So, uou’ve got to dive a little deeper to figure out how successful the Nike’s affiliate partnerships really are.

With Similarweb, you’ll get the entire list of all 1,576 websites that refer traffic to Nike and its competitors:

You’ll see the domains and industries of the referral sites, how much traffic they’re sending, and to which competitors. From there, you can fully analyze, qualify and drive value from the data.

How do you analyze competitors’ affiliates?

Next up: competitor analysis. Now that you’ve found their affiliates, you can use this data to discover opportunities and improve your own affiliate marketing.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to go through each and every affiliate on your list. Next, we’ll show you how to filter the data and figure out top performers to single out the best targets for you.

Know your industry

Before we get into analyzing the individual affiliates, let’s take a step back. Sometimes when you get so focused on the details, you miss out on the big picture. It’s important to first understand your industry and how your competitors’ affiliates compare.

To do this, use Similarweb’s Find Affiliates tool – but this time, click on industry affiliates instead of competitor affiliates. Type in your industry to get an overview of the norms for affiliate marketing.

You’ll see the total number of referral visits for your industry and what percentage of all visits that makes up. This is a good benchmark to use to know whether you’re getting a solid amount of referral visits to your site or not.

You’ll also see the top publishers in your industry. Keep these in mind as you analyze which ones are working with your competitors and which ones could be good targets for you to partner with.

Know the affiliates

Not all affiliates partners are created equal. You want to know which ones are the most successful and see which of your competitors are receiving quality traffic from each referral site. Here are the metrics you’ll need to do so:

Engagement

Similarweb analyzes engagement from referral sites based on bounce rates, session duration, pages per session, and more. Just sending traffic isn’t enough.

Top affiliates send engaged traffic, and the more engaged visitors are, the more likely they are to convert

To make it easy for you, Similarweb actually notes the Engagement Leader for each referral site, or website that’s gaining the most engagement from the affiliate.

Some referral sites might be sending engaged traffic to multiple merchants. This is good to know because it tells you whether they’re focused on one competitor, or if they’re an effective affiliate for multiple partners.

You can also analyze competitors by their traffic and engagement score. This is all about understanding the quality of the traffic over the quantity. See which affiliates are sending the most engaged traffic to your website and to your competitors’ sites.

The goal? To work with affiliates who have already proven that they can send engaged traffic.

Gauge overall performance

To narrow down your competitors’ best affiliates, use Similarweb’s Affiliate Performance tool to analyze their overall website performance and engagement levels.

This top level overview of their visits, device distribution and engagement metrics gives you all the data you need to pick the most fruitful affiliate opportunities for your own brand.

Review outgoing traffic

While traffic is just one side of the coin, it’s important to get a broader view of the traffic that each potential affiliate is sending to other websites via affiliate links. With this data, you can better understand how these other domains are benefiting from the partnership.

Head to Similarweb’s Outgoing Traffic feature to see the potential affiliate’s total number of outgoing domains and total outgoing visits, as well as data on the list of domains by industry, rank and traffic share:

Check for similar sites

✋Don’t let any potential affiliates slip through the net.

By now, you’ve found many of your competitors’ top affiliates, so why not check for sites similar to them in terms of industry, audience, content and keywords? This could result in a ⭐️bonus ⭐️ list of affiliates to potentially partner with.

But, how do you track them down? It’s Similarweb to the rescue again with our Similar Sites feature.

Enter up to 5 websites you would like to partner with and get a full list of domains that have the most overlap with them:

Filter the domains by ‘affinity’ to order them by the strength of their overlap, or by ‘rank’ to evaluate them by their traffic numbers. 

Find new and trending

Let’s be even more thorough, shall we? Another great way to find affiliate marketing opportunities is to look at your competitors’ newly discovered or trending affiliates.

Newly discovered: These are brand new affiliates that didn’t appear in the previous month. These could be great potential partners who are just setting up their own affiliate programs and might be eager to excel. They might be looking for websites like yours to send traffic to!

Trending: These are affiliates who recently experienced a jump in how much traffic they’re sending to merchants. They could also be great potential partners looking to improve their affiliate activities. It’s a great idea to partner with these trending affiliates early, because if they keep growing, so will you!

While in the view, use the Competitive Traffic filter to further analyze your competitors’ affiliates:

Here you can filter affiliates to gain key insights:

Referral Opportunities: See affiliates that are sending traffic to your competitors, but not to you. These could be good potential partners for you to approach to move some of their referring traffic your way.

Referral Wins: See where you’re getting the most traffic compared to your competitors. You want to make sure to keep your relationship strong with these affiliates so you don’t lose traffic to competitors.

Competitive Referrals: See affiliates that are sending traffic to all your competitors’ sites and yours. The competition here is tough, so keep a finger on the pulse to ensure you don’t start losing your share of referrals.

Referral Losses: See affiliates that you’re pursuing, but your competitors are gaining more traffic from. But instead of cutting your losses, analyze why you’re losing out to the competition here and see if you can make improvements by changing text, calls to action, or anything else that could affect traffic.

Social media influencers

No guide on affiliate marketing is complete without touching on social media influencers.

People are more likely to buy something if it’s recommended by a source they trust, such as a celebrity or expert in the field. Today, many of these experts are social media influencers who create content specially for their target audience.

Influencer affiliate marketing is huge. Today, at least 81% of brands work with influencer affiliates to promote their products or services.

If your social media influencers also have blogs, you can also use Similarweb to analyze their blogs’ affiliate performance.

Just plug their blog address into the Similarweb Website Performance Tool, and you’ll see how much traffic they send to merchants, how many merchants they work with, which industries, and even the specific links where they’re sending traffic.

Now that you’ve completed the above steps, you’ll have found out both the top affiliates and best potential partners in your industry. But before you approach them with an offer, you’ll also want to understand why they’re so successful.

Understanding this will help you know what you can offer them, and what to expect from them when working together. Take a look at their websites to see how they promote the merchants they currently work with. Here are some questions to ask:

How do they promote affiliate links? How do affiliate links to your competitors’ websites appear on their site? Maybe they weave them into their own text, or maybe they outright promote the brand.

Do they offer coupons? Everyone likes a good deal, so coupon marketing could lead to more clicks. Are your competitors offering special deals for their affiliates?

How do they manage their affiliate program? There are lots of elements that go into affiliate programs, such as how long the referral links last, how much commission the affiliates receive, and whether they’re paid per click or per sale.

Once you have a better understanding of these elements, you’ll be ready to start reaching out to potential affiliates and begin building your winning affiliate network.

There’s no time like the present to get started! But first, check out these other articles on affiliate marketing to ensure you’re totally prepared to succeed:

Affiliate Marketing: A Beginners Guide to Opening an Affiliate Program

How to Manage Your Affiliates: Helpful Tips and Tricks to Drive Success

5 Affiliate Marketing Secrets Revealed

3 Affiliate Marketing Strategies To Realize Growth In 2021

SEO for Affiliate Marketing: How to Boost Your Traffic

In conclusion

Let’s wrap up our journey into the world of affiliate competitor analysis.

We’ve covered all the nuances of identifying and analyzing your closest competitors’ best-performing affiliates. But most of all, we’ve underlined the importance of quality traffic over sheer volume.

With Similarweb’s comprehensive set of competitive analysis tools, you’ll spot every affiliate opportunity, understand their true impact and catch any rising stars to ensure that your affiliate marketing strategy is as powerful as possible going forward.

When you base your choice of affiliates on our reliable competitive data, there’s less room for error and more opportunity to build an extensive and robust affiliate network.

Ready to boost your traffic? Try Similarweb for free.

FAQs

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a strategy where businesses partner with individuals or other companies (affiliates) to promote their products or services. In return, the affiliates earn a commission for each sale or lead they generate.

What is affiliate competitive analysis?

Affiliate competitor analysis involves examining your competitors’ affiliate partnerships to understand which affiliates they work with, how successful these partnerships are, and what strategies they use. It’s about learning from what’s been tried and tested to build and optimize your own affiliate program.

Why is affiliate competitive analysis important?

Conducting an affiliate competitor analysis is crucial because it offers insights into successful strategies, helps identify high-performing affiliates and reveals gaps in your own strategy. By understanding what works for your competitors, you can adapt and improve your affiliate program, ultimately boosting your traffic and (ideally) sales.

How can Similarweb help me carry out affiliate competitive analysis?

Similarweb provides a wide range of tools that will help you analyze your competitors’ affiliate networks in depth. With features like the Competitor Affiliates and Affiliate Performance tools, Similarweb helps you identify which affiliates are driving traffic to your competitors, gauge their engagement levels, and understand the overall success of these partnerships. This data allows you to make informed decisions about which affiliates to target for your own program.