The affiliate outreach playbook for agencies

Build the list around commercial intent, not domain rating

An affiliate partner is worth contacting when their audience is already deciding what to buy. Roundups, comparison pages and category buyer guides convert. Generic news pages do not, whatever their authority score says.

• Pull the pages that already rank for your money keywords, then find who owns them.
• Check whether the page monetises with affiliate links today, that is your proof of fit.
• Record the point of contact once, in a shared contact book, so the next campaign starts warm.

Pitch the placement, not the partnership

Site owners say yes to a concrete ask. Name the exact URL you want to appear on, the position you are asking for, the commission and who handles tracking links. A two line email with one clear ask beats a page of company background.

Keep commercial terms in writing from the first message. When the brand later asks why a deal cost what it cost, the thread is the answer.

Track the deal, not just the email

An affiliate program has more states than sent and replied. Negotiating, waiting for brand approval, approved, live, verified. If those states live in a spreadsheet, nobody outside the outreach team knows where anything stands.

This is the part Backlinq replaces: each prospect has an owner, a status, a private contact record and an approval thread with the brand, so a placement moves from found to won without a status call.