How Your Competitors Find Their (and Your) Affiliate Partners

Your affiliate partners aren’t exclusive to you. It’s the nature of affiliate marketing to share them with other brands. As long as they bring in steady revenue and the ROI is good, you’re O.K. with that. You monitor their performance and are aware of what they are doing.

But so does the competition. They know who your affiliate partners are, how much traffic they generate to your site, and how they do it.

If competitors like what they see, you can be sure that they don’t sit back and watch you gobble up the cream by yourself. Competitors want their share, and they are after your best affiliates. It’s the best way for them to find their own affiliate partners.

In this article, we’ll show you how your competitors investigate your affiliate marketing activities.

You can’t stop them, but you can keep your competitive edge by monitoring the affiliate landscape in your industry and in general. You can see what everyone else is doing, who’s winning, and who’s losing, and find the best affiliate partners to keep developing and optimizing more profitable affiliate partnerships.

First, let’s see what affiliate marketing means for the partners involved.

What are affiliate partnerships and what are they worth?

Affiliate partnerships can be a long-term mutually-beneficial cooperation. As an affiliate manager you know how important it is to nurture those relationships. But you also need to keep an eye on those hungry competitors lest they steal your best partners.

Affiliate marketing involves three or four parties: The seller or vendor, the publisher or affiliate, and the customer. Sometimes there’s an affiliate network involved.

When we talk about affiliate partnerships, we refer to the cooperation between vendor and affiliate.

The vendor can be a brand, a retailer, or a merchant – basically, anyone who has something to sell online. That’s you.

You’re in good company. In 2021, more than 80% of brands worked with affiliate partners. 65% of merchants report that up to 20% of their revenue comes from affiliate marketing.

The affiliate is a company or individual who publishes content to promote your brand or offering. For many, it’s a core business, and they are a trusted, well-known source of traffic for multiple brands in an industry.

One statistic says 65% of affiliate marketers are bloggers; another reveals that 68% connect with customers over social media.

In an affiliate partnership, both sides benefit. For the brand, it means expanding reach and saving resources. The affiliate receives compensation for the service they provide. Because payment is performance-based, the seller has relatively low risk.

It’s estimated that affiliate marketing is worth $12 billion globally. The biggest player is America, with a share of 39%.

There’s an affiliate partner type for each business

Affiliates come in many shapes and sizes, and each industry has its preference regarding the type.

Today, most people think of influencers when they hear affiliate marketing. But that’s because influencer affiliate marketing is the current fad of growing eCommerce. The truth is, there’s so much more to affiliate marketing, and it reaches a lot further than most people think.

How do we immediately know that Jenn Im in this video is an affiliate? Check out what she says about the video, right underneath. She names a sponsor and offers a coupon code for their site.

Previously, affiliate marketing was mainly associated with fin-tech and gaming. These sites use mostly search affiliates who run paid search and display campaigns for the vendors.

Technology companies often partner with bloggers and review sites that publish informative content to a specific, relevant target audience with a high focus on generating organic traffic.

Example of an affiliate site that tests, reviews and ranks VPN services.

ECommerce sites use coupon sites and loyalty sites as affiliate partners. Influencers’ product reviews and shopping comparisons have also become popular for many online sellers.

Media outlets are great platforms for anyone needing to reach a broad audience or offering local services.

Your affiliates’ lawn looks greener to competitors

What would you do if you were new and wanted to know how to get started with affiliate marketing? You’d learn from those who’ve been doing it for a while and see what competitors do. You’d check who successful competitors partner with. Affiliates aren’t exclusive – some of the best work with the biggest competing brands in an industry.

You don’t need to be an analytics genius to uncover the best affiliates in an industry or niche.

The list of industry affiliates shows industry-popular affiliate sites and their details

With a little bit of affiliate research, anyone can find who your affiliate partners are, which drives the most traffic, and how.

Let’s say you are rei.com, a leader in outdoor and sports clothing. With only a few clicks, an aspiring new brand in the industry that has developed smart outfits for mountain bikers can get the entire list of your affiliates. They could immediately understand what type of affiliate you prefer and why because they can analyze each of your affiliates’ performance in detail.

If they use Similarweb, they would identify the channels and keywords that generate your traffic, dive into engagement stats, and discover which social media platform is most successful.

The ambitious entrepreneur can discover which of your most valuable affiliate sites are relevant for their product type. What’s to stop them from offering that affiliate a slightly better deal?

Affiliates generating traffic to rei.com, including information on industry and traffic to help you identify relevance

This view shows which other sites the affiliate partners with.

Established competitors have it even easier. They can directly compare their own affiliate activities to yours. Equipped with this knowledge, they could seriously challenge your leading position. 

A competitor such as Backcountry.com will discover additional affiliate opportunities and affiliates who produce more traffic to your site than theirs. This lets them identify gaps in their affiliate partnerships and affiliate marketing strategies. It’s a perfect starting point to develop new affiliate partnerships and optimize existing ones, review affiliate marketing programs with underperforming sites, and expand partnerships with high performers.

Comparison of traffic share competitors receive from the same affiliate.

Defending your place at the top

The way to the top of the competition is tough. But maintaining that position is even more challenging. Be aware that your competitors probably have the tools to precisely determine what you’re doing. They will try to copy, learn and steal your success.

But you are smarter than that, aren’t you? That’s why you’re already successful. You can use to your advantage the same tools and information your competition uses against you.

The secret to staying on top of the competition is to consistently optimize and look for ways to renew. More than your challengers, you need to be aware of upcoming trends in your industry. Research affiliates to see who’s growing faster than others. Detect shifts in the use of channels or keywords and be alert to any irregular data behavior.

See your competitors’ affiliates and compare performance to detect potential weak spots. A competitive analysis of competing affiliates or brands lets you discover threats and opportunities for your affiliate marketing optimization.

The Similarweb advantage

Similarweb Digital Marketing Intelligence offers you three paths to monitor and analyze affiliate partners:

1. Keyword affiliates
2. Industry affiliate
3. Competitor affiliates

But there’s more. The tool lets you deep-dive into every individual affiliate site’s activities. And you can keep tabs on their performance. Create a list of affiliates you want to watch and track performance in context.

Competitors may steal affiliates, but don’t let them steal your market share and position. Use the Similarweb advantage and stay on top of the action and the market.

by Ruth Trucks

Senior Marketing Writer

Ruth, with 15 years in marketing, transforms complex data into engaging content. She enjoys gardening, motorcycle tours, and family time.