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How to find affiliates for your Shopify store (and who to ask)

Jimi Barkway · 20 October 2026 · 6 min read

To find affiliates for your Shopify store, look at who already promotes shops like yours. Search for your rivals' names with "review", "discount code" and "best", then email the people whose pages come up.

An affiliate is someone with an audience who sends you buyers and earns a cut of each sale. A commission is that cut. You don't wait for them to find you. You ask the ones who already cover your kind of product.

Who promotes physical products?

Physical products get promoted in a few set places. Each one suits a different kind of shop.

Start with the review sites and the bloggers. They write the pages shoppers read just before they buy. Coupon sites send traffic that was already about to buy, so check they aren't just taking credit for sales you'd have had anyway.

How do I find the ones covering my competitors?

Use your rivals as a map. Anyone who's written about a shop like yours has already shown they'll write about shops like yours.

Search Google for these. Swap in the names of your rivals and your product:

• "best [product] brands"
• "[rival] review"
• "[rival] discount code"
• "[product] gift guide"

Open each result. Write down who made the page, what it says about your rival, and whether it has a link that earns them money. Then look for an email on their site, usually on the contact or about page.

This works. It's also slow. Ten rivals and four searches each is 40 rounds of Googling, before you've opened one page.

You can speed it up with a link checker. Open a review page, hover over the buy buttons and read the link. A link that runs through a network name or a code at the end tells you the writer is already an affiliate. Those are your warmest leads. The same method works for any product, and our guide to finding affiliates for SaaS walks through it step by step.

What commission do DTC brands pay?

Most DTC (direct-to-consumer) Shopify brands pay between 10% and 20% a sale. UpPromote, an affiliate app for Shopify, puts the median at 12% to 15%, though it doesn't name the data behind that figure (UpPromote, checked 20 October 2026).

The same page gives rough ranges by category:

(UpPromote, checked 20 October 2026.)

Treat these as a guide, not a rule. UpPromote sells software, and the same page gives supplements two different ranges, so some of its numbers are loose. Your own margin sets the real limit.

Let's say a mattress topper sells for £100 and leaves you £40 after cost and shipping. Pay 12% and the affiliate gets £12. You keep £28. If you'd have spent £30 on ads to get that sale, the affiliate is cheaper.

For more on rates, how long to pay them, and when, read what to offer affiliates. It's written for SaaS, but the sums work the same.

Should I send free samples first?

Send them to reviewers. A reviewer can't write about a duvet they've never slept under. A sample gives them something real to say.

Gifting also changes the ask. "Can I send you one to try?" is a smaller ask than "Will you promote us?". Nobody has to commit until they've held the product.

Keep it light:

1. Offer the sample in your first email. Don't ship until they say yes.
2. Send one item, not a bundle.
3. Don't make the post a condition. Say "no strings".
4. Follow up a week after it lands.

Shopify's own tool supports this. Shopify Collabs lets you send gifts or discount codes to creators (Shopify Help Centre, checked 20 October 2026). Reviewers also have to say when they got a product free, so a gift won't hurt their trust with readers.

How do affiliates get tracked on Shopify?

Each affiliate gets a link, a discount code or both. When a shopper buys through one, the app credits that affiliate with the sale and works out the commission. You pay it out later.

You have two main routes.

Shopify Collabs. This is Shopify's own app. Per Shopify, you can invite creators directly, share commission offers through an open programme, or take applications from a page on your store. It also tracks affiliate sales and lets you send payments (Shopify Help Centre, checked 20 October 2026). That page says Collabs isn't taking new creator sign-ups right now, so check whether it fits before you plan around it.

App Store affiliate apps. Several third-party apps do this. UpPromote says it attributes sales through links and coupon codes, and through customers or products you link to a partner (UpPromote, checked 20 October 2026). Others work in a similar way. Compare the pricing pages, since plans change.

Tracking is the part these apps do well. They don't tell you who to ask. That's the gap this post is about.

Where does RecruitAffiliates.ai fit?

RecruitAffiliates.ai does the finding and the first email. Your affiliate app keeps doing the tracking and paying.

You type in your shop's website. It suggests your competitors, then finds the websites, blogs, review sites, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels, and Instagram and TikTok creators already promoting them. Each one comes with the page that shows it. It ranks them, so the best fits sit at the top.

Then it finds their email and shows the page each address came from. AI drafts a personal first email for each person, built from real facts about them. Three follow-ups come after it, four emails in one thread. It sends from your own inbox after you approve, and stops on a reply, bounce or unsubscribe. A board tracks each person from found to joined.

When someone says yes, you add them to your affiliate app as usual. If you don't have one yet, AffiliateRail (same founder) tracks sales and pays commission. See the Shopify page for the five steps.

Launch is $79 a month for one brand, with a 14-day free trial and no card. Want to compare it with doing the search yourself? Read RecruitAffiliates.ai against doing it by hand.

In short

How do I find affiliates for my Shopify store?

Search for your rivals' names with "review", "best" and "discount code". Open each result and note who wrote it. Then email those people with your offer.

What commission should a Shopify store pay?

Most DTC brands pay 10% to 20%, and beauty and supplements sit near the top of that range. Work back from your margin before you pick a number. Your margin sets the limit, not the average.

Do I need to send samples?

For reviewers, yes. A sample gives them something real to write about. Offer it in your first email and ship only after they say yes.

Can I use Shopify Collabs to find affiliates?

Collabs lets you invite creators, send gifts and track sales. Shopify says it isn't taking new creator sign-ups right now, so check how many creators you can reach before relying on it.

Find them before your rivals do

We find your first 20 emails free with RecruitAffiliates.ai. It's 14 days free, no card.

Sources

• UpPromote, Shopify affiliate commission rates by category (median 12% to 15%, category table): https://uppromote.com/blog/shopify-affiliate-commission-rates/ (checked 20 October 2026)
• Shopify Help Centre, Shopify Collabs (invites, gifts and codes, sales tracking, payments, creator sign-ups paused): https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/collabs (checked 20 October 2026)
• UpPromote, home page (attribution by links, coupon codes and linked customers or products): https://uppromote.com/ (checked 20 October 2026)