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The audit is free.What you do next is up to you.

Every brand gets the full audit at no cost: 400+ checks across your programme, turned into your first 90-day prioritised task list, delivered within 24 hours. No card, no charge, nothing to cancel.

You are not choosing a package today. Run the audit first, see exactly what your programme needs, then decide what suits it and your budget.

Grab your free audit See the packages anyway

What a task actually looks like.

This is a real task, exactly as it arrives. Four tabs: what the opportunity is, why it matters, where in your platform to fix it, and the steps, each one carrying the screen to navigate to and a warning where it counts.

✓ #31 Implement publisher segmentation strategy based on traffic quality tiers 06/07/2026AME TeamHIGH

Growth Feedback

All 740 publishers are treated identically regardless of performance, traffic quality or strategic value. No segmentation exists for differentiated commission rates, communication or partnership levels.

Segmentation enables targeted incentives and communication. Treating every publisher the same means top performers are under-rewarded while underperformers receive identical attention. Left unfixed: your best publishers feel undervalued, the commission budget is spread evenly instead of performance-weighted, and growth potential is capped.

Publishers › Publisher Management · Commission › Commission Groups

01 Define publisher segments with clear criteria

Navigate: Reports › Publisher Performance

Create objective, data-driven segment definitions.

Platinum: top 5 publishers by 90-day revenue
Gold: publishers ranked 6-15 by revenue
Silver: publishers ranked 16-50 by revenue
Bronze: remaining active publishers with at least 1 transaction in 90 days
Dormant: zero activity in 60+ days

Tip: Use revenue rather than transaction count, because it aligns segmentation with business value.

02 Assign commission tiers to each segment

Navigate: Internal › Planning

Set rates that reward performance without becoming unsustainable.

Platinum: base rate +3pp, so 8% becomes 11%
Gold: base rate +2pp
Silver: base rate +1pp
Bronze: standard base rate
Dormant: standard rate, no reduction. They need incentives, not penalties

Important: Never reduce rates for dormant publishers. It punishes inactivity rather than incentivising performance.

03 Create commission groups and assign publishers

Navigate: Commission › Commission Groups › Create · Publishers › Assign

Implement the segmentation in the platform.

Create the commission groups: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze
Assign each publisher to their segment based on the 90-day data
Spot-check the top 20 publishers to verify correct segmentation
Document the assignment date for the first quarterly review

Warning: Double-check before assigning. Moving a publisher to a lower tier triggers a rate reduction they will notice immediately.

04 Communicate the tier structure to all publishers

Navigate: Communication Centre › Broadcast

Launch the programme with positive messaging.

Send a broadcast announcing the new publisher tier programme
Emphasise the upside, because higher tiers earn higher commission
Include current tier assignments, the criteria for moving up, and the review schedule
Offer a one-to-one call with any publisher who wants to discuss their tier

Tip: Frame it as a rewards programme, not a rate restructure. Publishers should feel incentivised, not penalised.

05 Set up the quarterly review and segment migration process

Navigate: Internal › Planning

Make the tiers live rather than a one-off exercise.

Diary a quarterly re-run of the 90-day revenue ranking
Promote and demote against the published criteria, not by judgement
Notify anyone whose tier changes before the rate does
Track how many publishers move up each quarter. That number is the programme working

Tip: Publishers chasing the next tier is the whole point. Tell them where they sit and what they need to do to climb.

Your own list is 24 hours away.

Get your free audit

Yours to keep, whether you work with us or not.

First

Run the audit

400+ checks across your programme, and your first 90-day prioritised task list within 24 hours.

Costs you nothing

Then

See what it actually needs

Not a guess. A ranked list of what is wrong, what is missing and what it is worth fixing first.

Still nothing

Only then

Choose the support that fits

Pick the level that matches what the programme needs and what your budget allows. Or take the plan and run it yourself.

From $200 a month, if you want it

Start free. Move across only as far as you need.

Every level runs the same system. The only thing that changes is how much of the work you hand over.

How much help do you need?

The audit Free

Who is on your programme

Yours to keep whatever you decide next.

Green shows what this level adds

Your monthly total

Free audit only. Nothing to pay.

$0/month

Side by side

The difference, in one table.

Read the top three rows and you have the whole decision. Everything below is detail.

	Direction$200/monthNo commission	Done for you$600/monthplus 3% of affiliate revenue	Strategy$1,200/monthplus 3% of affiliate revenue	Full team$2,500/monthplus 3% of affiliate revenue	Consultant level$3,500+/monthplus 3% of affiliate revenue
Who works the task list	You	We do	We do	Two teams	Two teams
Who decides what is on it	The system	The system	System plus strategist	Strategist plus Nick	Consultant level
Your time per week	~5 to 8 hrs	~30 mins reading	~1 hr, mostly the call	~1 hr, mostly the call	~1 hr, mostly the call
Analysis and planning
400-point audit, rebuilt weekly	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Daily KPI review	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Prioritised Fix and Grow task list	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Every task explains what, why, where and how	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Partner recruitment
10 new partners a week, 5 in-network and 5 outside	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
You choose the mix: blogs, influencers or both	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Outreach written for every partner	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Outreach sent and replies handled	You send	✓	✓	✓	✓
Partner volume raised beyond 10 a week	✕	✕	✕	✓	✓
Execution
Fix-track repairs executed	You execute	✓	✓	✓	✓
Recruitment, reactivation and onboarding run for you	✕	✓	✓	✓	✓
Dedicated affiliate team	✕	✕	✕	✓	✓
Dedicated creator team	✕	✕	✕	✓	✓
Strategy and oversight
Dedicated strategist on the programme	✕	✕	✓	✓	✓
Commission structure and partner tier review	✕	✕	✓	✓	✓
Monthly strategy call and quarterly roadmap	✕	✕	✓	✓	✓
Nick directing both teams, 18 years in affiliate	✕	✕	✕	✓	✓
Consultant level veteran leading your programme	✕	✕	✕	✕	✓
Reporting and support
Weekly reporting and progress tracking	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Outcome reported per task	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Maximum 24 hour response time	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Compare

With

	Done for you	Strategy

A 3% commission on affiliate revenue applies from Done for you upwards. Direction carries none.

400+

checks per programme

5,672

management instructions behind them

100s

of tasks generated

5

programme areas covered

90

day execution plan

24h

to your first task list

The terms

30

Days' notice, both ways

No contracts at any level. Most of the industry asks for six to twelve months. We're confident enough in the results that we don't need to lock you in.

3%

Only when we do the work

Affiliate revenue only, and only from Done for you upwards. Level 1 and the entire influencer track carry no commission. The industry norm is 5–15% on everything.

24h

To your first task list

The 400-point audit and your first 90-day list cost nothing and arrive within a day. Keep them and use them to grow your programme.

Not sure which level fits? The audit tells you, free.

Get your free audit

400+ checks and your first 90-day task list within 24 hours.

The three things brands tell us before they start.

Not our opinion. These are the problems that come up in almost every conversation, and the industry research says the same. Over 60% of marketers name relationship management, brand consistency and fraud as their top three channel challenges, and brands surveyed at scale report programmes that are stretched, teams that are lean, and work that is still overwhelmingly manual.

Stretched and manual

The hours you have go to whatever shouted loudest

Lean team, growing programme, and the work has stayed manual. Nobody is idle, but the week gets spent on whatever surfaced, not on whatever would have paid best. Nothing is ranked, so everything competes equally for attention it does not deserve.

"The task list alone was worth it. Every finding had a specific action attached, not vague advice."Head of Ecommerce, Fashion & Apparel

Proving the channel

You cannot defend the budget you already have

Everyone talks about incrementality; very few brands can define it internally. If you cannot explain in plain terms what affiliate actually contributed, you cannot protect its budget, let alone argue for more. It is a narrative problem before it is a measurement one.

"£38,000 recovered. Not grown, recovered. Revenue already happening but not being tracked."Digital Director, Beauty & Skincare

Hidden damage

The topline looks fine, so nobody looks underneath

As a programme scales, visibility stops keeping up. Misconfigured tiers, unregistered codes, partners sitting on the wrong rate, revenue concentrated in two partners who could leave. It all stays buried in campaign reports while the headline number looks healthy. 96% of the programmes we audit have issues nobody knew about.

"We had commission tiers built out beautifully. The audit showed zero publishers were on them. Simple fix, massive impact."Growth Lead, Health & Supplements

The things almost every programme forgets.

None of these are advanced. They are the basics that quietly go missing once a programme has been running a while, and every one of them turns up as a named task with instructions attached.

01

Tiered commission that motivates every level

One flat rate treats a partner selling twice a year the same as one selling daily. Tiers give every affiliate and every creator something to climb towards, and give you a lever to reward performance without renegotiating.

02

Publishers actually assigned to those tiers

Building the tiers is the easy half. We routinely find programmes with five tiers configured and nobody assigned to any of them, so everyone sits on the default rate.

03

Bonus and milestone rules for top partners

Your best five partners get the same terms as everyone else, so nothing stops a competitor outbidding you for them next quarter.

04

Dormant partners nobody ever went back to

Approved, integrated, sold once, then silence. Reactivation converts far better than cold recruitment and almost nobody runs it.

05

Voucher codes registered in the offers system

Unregistered live codes put transactions at risk of being declined, which is revenue you earned and then handed back.

06

Validation periods left far too long

A 39-day hold on partner payment is a good reason for a publisher to prioritise somebody else's programme over yours.

07

Deeplinks instead of homepage links

Sending traffic to a homepage instead of the product being written about is the single most common conversion leak we find.

08

A product feed for content and comparison partners

Content, CSS and comparison publishers cannot promote you properly without one. Most programmes never build it.

Every one of these arrives as a task with what is wrong, why it matters, and the exact steps to fix it. Not a list of things to go and think about.

What everyone else charges.

Outsourced programme management is a real service and a good one, and we are not knocking it. But the entry point sits around $1,500 a month before any override, and the price is almost never on the website.

	Typical OPM agency	Affiliate Marketing Express
Monthly retainer	$1,500 – $5,000 typical	From $200 / month
Performance override	5% – 15% of programme revenue	3% of affiliate revenue, and only once we run it
Setup fee	Common, and rarely quoted up front	None
Commitment	Typically 6–12 months	30 days' notice, both ways
Price published	Almost never	Every level, on this page
Attention	An account manager who may carry ten or more programmes	Audited weekly and reviewed daily at every level
Influencer sourcing	Opted-in creators from a marketplace, priced accordingly	Creators found before the market finds them

Even against the bottom of that range, level one is a seventh of the price, because at the entry level you aren't paying for anybody's hours, only for the audit, the ranking and the reasoning. Executing it is the easy half, and you only start paying us to do that when your time is worth more than the fee.

Ours starts at $200, and the audit costs nothing.

Get your free audit Back to the packages

No card, no charge, nothing to cancel.

Figures reflect typical mid-market outsourced programme management. Larger agencies charge considerably more. Hiring in-house typically only becomes the cheaper option well into six figures of monthly affiliate revenue.

Teams that stopped guessing what to do next.

Every one of these started with the same free audit that's on offer at the bottom of this page.

★★★★★

"Flat revenue for 6 months. It found our content recruitment gap in about 20 minutes, and the task plan turned the programme around completely."

Ecommerce Manager, Wellness & Supplements

★★★★★

"I had no idea the payment freeze was killing our health score. It explained exactly what was happening and the fix was done in a week."

Founder, Premium Home & Garden

★★★★★

"We'd run our programme for two years and thought we knew what we were doing. It found 14 issues we had no idea about. Three were costing us real money every day."

Marketing Director, Sportswear & Activewear

Common questions.

If the answer you need isn't here, the free audit call is the fastest way to get it.

Which level should I start on?

Almost certainly the cheapest one that fits. If your programme is new or has been drifting, start at $200 and find out whether you'll actually work the task list. That single fact tells you more than any sales call. If your constraint is capacity rather than knowledge, start higher. We'll tell you which before you pay anything, and we'll tell you when it changes.

How is this different from a normal audit report?

A normal audit hands you a PDF of problems. This hands you an action list. Every one of the 400+ checks becomes a task with a priority, a timeframe and the exact context to execute, so the report does work instead of sitting in a drawer.

Which platforms does it work with?

Every major one: Awin, ShareASale, Impact, CJ Affiliate, Partnerize, Rakuten and others. The methodology is platform-agnostic; tell us which platform you're on and the task list is tailored to it.

What do you need to get started?

Your programme URL or platform ID and a short onboarding form, about five minutes. Your first task list arrives within 24 hours.

When does the 3% commission apply?

Only on affiliate revenue, and only from Done for you upwards. At Level 1 you are doing the work, so there is no commission at all. The influencer track never carries one. Where it does apply it sits on top of the monthly fee, against an industry norm of 5 to 15%, and it is deliberately small: it means we are not paid to keep you busy, we are paid to make the programme bigger.

How quickly will we see results?

Fix-track tasks typically show measurable improvement within the first 30 days: approval rate, health score, commission accuracy. Grow-track results compound over 60–90 days, and your health score updates monthly so you can see what moved.

Can I cancel any time?

Yes. No long-term contracts at any level. Cancel with 30 days' notice, and move down a level rather than out if that's the better answer.

Start here

Still deciding? Start with the audit.

You do not have to pick a level today. Take the free audit, see the quality of the thinking, and choose afterwards. We will tell you honestly which level fits, including if that is the $200 one.

Get a free audit Takes minutes to book · hello@affiliatemarketing.express