I've watched hundreds of founders and affiliate managers at SaaS companies panic when their affiliate programs stall. Most of the time, they were trying to rebuild it using this combination of attempts:
- Bump the affiliate commission rates from 20% to 30%
- Recruit more affiliates (quantity over quality)
- Send another "motivational" email blast
- Wait for results
It's very rare that any of these approaches magically address the root cause of why their affiliate programs are not working.
Let's take a moment to be really honest about what is more likely to be the issue of why your affiliate program is underperforming, so you can actually fix it without simply throwing money at the problem.
The Symptoms of an Underperforming Affiliate Program
When affiliate programs struggle, most affiliate managers will see the following warning signs:
- Low conversion rates
- Inactive affiliates
- Declining monthly referrals
- Stagnant revenue
These signals usually appear after your program has been running for a few months. But even programs that have been performing well for over a year can suddenly experience them. The frustrating part is that these symptoms often show up quietly: dashboards may look fine at first glance, and a handful of active affiliates can mask the bigger issues.
So, how do you fix an affiliate program?
Higher Affiliate Commissions Can’t Always Fix Your Affiliate Program
The usual affiliate program strategy to address this situation is: "We need to pay more!" or "We need more partners!"
After managing Rewardful's own affiliate program and watching 2,600+ companies build theirs, I can confidently say that: you can do more harm than good if you start attracting the wrong type of partners with big commissions and low requirements.
Here’s how to tell if the problem is actually related to commissions:
- Affiliates signing up but never promoting
- Direct feedback: "Your rates aren't competitive"
- Affiliates openly promoting competitors with higher rates
- Strong initial activity that drops off sharply
- Questions about commission structure during onboarding
And here’s how to spot if the issue is truly a lack of affiliates:
- High conversion rates but low volume
- Your top 5-10 affiliates consistently hitting their revenue cap
- A waitlist or consistent inbound requests to join
- Affiliates asking for exclusive territories or niches
- Strong performance across your entire active affiliate base
If you don’t see these patterns in your program, then adding more affiliates or raising commissions won't fix your affiliate program performance. You’d just be throwing resources at the wrong problem.
What Causes Underperforming Affiliate Programs?
Don't make any assumptions about what does and doesn't work before you do a proper affiliate program audit. Increasing affiliate commission rates or recruiting more partners costs you money; you don’t want to wrongly spend it on things that aren’t actually broken. To give you an idea of where to look, here are the most common issues I've seen that get ignored far too often.
Problem 1: Affiliates Aren’t Self-Running Programs
Let’s be honest: did you launch an affiliate program and expect it to run on autopilot? You welcome new affiliates to the program, onboard them, and then disappear.
If you really want to see results from your affiliate program, forget autopilot and leave the ‘set it and forget it’ mindset behind. Your affiliates aren’t transactions but partners. Treat them that way, and watch the magic happen.
A lot of affiliate managers I talk to spend maybe 2-3 hours a month on their program. They check the dashboard, approve a few new affiliates, maybe send an update email, and that’s it. At the same time, they wonder why engagement is flat.
Unfortunately, there's no tool that is going to magically increase engagement. It really takes a human touch and real effort. This is because what your top-performing affiliates actually need is:
- Pre-written promotion content or product updates they can adapt (not a logo and your homepage URL)
- Personalized landing pages that convert better than your homepage
- Quick responses when they have questions (not 3-day email chains or automated replies that aren't actionable)
- Performance insights beyond "Here's how much you earned this month"
- First dibs on new features, beta access, exclusive announcements
I've seen affiliate programs completely change by having someone spend 30 minutes per week personally reaching out to the top 20% of affiliates, instead of spending 3 hours Googling what commission to offer to be the best paying partner in the game. The return on ''investment'' was huge.
Problem 2: You Don’t Train Affiliates to Know Your Product Inside Out
If your affiliates can’t clearly articulate why someone should choose your product over a competitor’s, they won’t promote it effectively. In fact, they might unintentionally hurt your brand by attracting the wrong audience: people who end up disappointed and spreading negative word-of-mouth.
Too often, I see affiliate dashboards are filled with generic, copy-paste material: “Best-in-class solution for…” or “Revolutionary platform that…” None of that helps affiliates stand out.
In affiliate partner marketing, your affiliates are competing against hundreds of others promoting similar tools. They need clarity—specific, defensible reasons why your product wins in real-world situations.
Here’s a quick test: Can your affiliates explain your core differentiation in one sentence? Can you? If you hesitated, that’s your answer.
If you want to turn your affiliates into long-lasting partners then you have to educate them, make them feel part of the team, and give them all the right materials to do their job.
Take the time to sharpen your story internally, then make sure your affiliates understand and can communicate it. The clarity will pay off.
Problem 3: You’re Tracking the Wrong Affiliate Metrics
This might be controversial, but I think total affiliate signups is a vanity metric, so is total clicks. Even total conversions can mislead you if you're not looking deeper. Am I saying that analytics is dead? Absolutely not. This isn't LinkedIn.
Based on my experience, the metrics that actually predict affiliate program health are:
- Repeat referral rate: What percentage of your affiliates bring more than two referrals? If it is under 30%, you have an activation problem, not a commission problem.
- Time to first referral: How long after signing up does an affiliate make their first referral? If it's over 30 days, your affiliate onboarding is broken. Here’s how to improve your affiliate onboarding process.
- Content creation rate: How many affiliates are actively creating content about your product? Not sharing a link, but actually creating.
- Affiliate lifespan: How long do affiliates stay active? If you're churning affiliates every 3-4 months, you have a support problem.
- Response rate to communications: When you email affiliates, do they engage? This tells you if they're paying attention.
There are affiliate performance metrics that reveal the truth about your program's foundation, but they only work in context. Fix them, and the revenue should follow. Ignore them, and no commission rate will be high enough to save you.
Problem 4: Half Your Conversions Aren’t Being Tracked (And You Don’t Know It)
Affiliates can drive dozens of sales that never get credited. They get frustrated, stop promoting, and you’re left wondering why—because from your dashboard, everything looks “fine.” Meanwhile, orders are coming in, so it’s easy to assume there’s no problem, but behind the scenes, missed attributions are quietly undermining your program.
Common affiliate tracking issues include:
- Cookie durations are too short for your sales cycle
- Tracking breaking on subdomains or during checkout
- Conflicts with other marketing tools (retargeting pixels, email links)
- Mobile attribution dropping
- Coupon codes that bypass affiliate links
One of my favorite hacks, especially when I’m optimizing Rewardful’s affiliate program, is to sign up as an affiliate myself. I go through the entire customer journey on different devices, browsers, and methods (direct link, coupon code, email, social) to see if attribution works every time.
If you haven't done this test in the last 30 days, you can’t be sure your tracking is accurate. To guarantee that your affiliate tracking will always work 100%, I recommend using Rewardful.
Affiliate Marketing Isn’t a Passive Revenue Stream
Many affiliate programs don’t fail because the economics are wrong or your audience isn’t a fit. More often, an underperforming affiliate program is caused by poor affiliate management.
After all, an affiliate program is not a passive income stream that you set up and forget. It takes hard work—but with the right affiliate software and strategies, it can bring hundreds of thousands of revenue to your SaaS business. Take Aragon, for example, their affiliate program drove $1 million in revenue, powered by around 2,000 affiliates.
After all, an affiliate program isn’t a “set it and forget it” revenue stream. It takes consistent effort. With the right affiliate program strategies and software, it can generate hundreds of thousands in revenue. Take Aragon, for instance. Their program drove $1 million revenue, powered by roughly 2,000 affiliates. Read Aragon's success story here.
The bottom line: if you’re not actively supporting your affiliates, fixing affiliate tracking issues, improving promotional materials, and engaging with your partners, increasing commission rates won’t help. Recruiting hundreds of new affiliates won’t fix a broken foundation—you’ll just end up with hundreds of inactive affiliates instead of a few high-performing ones.
Let’s Rebuild Your Affiliate Program
Before you make any radical changes based on your gut feeling, spend one week auditing your affiliate program. Test your affiliate tracking, optimize your affiliate funnel, review promotional materials, and talk to your top affiliates.
And if you find that commission rates really are the issue, you'll have the data to back it up. You'll know exactly which rates to target based on real feedback from real affiliates. That's better than guessing.
Want to see how Rewardful helps prevent the common pitfalls of underperforming affiliate programs? Our platform is built around the strategies we’ve discussed: accurate tracking to ensure every conversion is credited, automated refund handling to protect affiliate relationships, and simple payout management so you can focus on supporting and engaging your top partners.
Start your 14-day free trial and see the difference a solid operational affiliate program foundation makes.
