How to find affiliates for your SaaS: a free method you can start today

Jimi Barkway · 9 October 2026 · 5 min read

The best affiliates for your SaaS are already writing about your competitors. Find them first.

An affiliate is someone with their own audience who sends people to your product. When one of those people pays, you pay the affiliate a cut. That cut is their commission.

Most founders wait for affiliates to find them. They put a link in the footer and hope. It rarely works. The people worth having are busy, and they don't browse footers.

So go to them. They're easier to find than you'd think.

Start with who already reviews your competitors

Someone who wrote "Best invoicing tools for freelancers" has done half your pitch already. They know the category. Their readers want a tool like yours. And they've shown they'll write about software for money.

Here's the search. Open Google and type each of these, with your competitor's name in place of the brackets:

[competitor] review
[competitor] alternatives
best [your category] tools
[competitor] vs

Open every result that isn't the competitor's own site. Note the writer, the site, and the date it went up. A post from this year beats one from 2021. It shows the writer is still active.

Do this for three competitors. That gives you a working list in an hour or two.

Find who links to a competitor's affiliate link

This is the sharpest list you can build. Someone who already uses a competitor's affiliate link is a working affiliate in your category. They know the drill.

First, learn what the competitor's affiliate links look like. Many affiliate tools add a short tag to the end of the address. For example, Rewardful's default tag is ?via= followed by the affiliate's name (Rewardful help, checked 24 September 2026). So a link might end in ?via=sam.

Then look at who links to the competitor. Ahrefs has a free backlink checker (checked 24 September 2026). Put in the competitor's domain. It shows a sample of the pages that link to them.

Scan the list for links carrying a tag like that. Each one is a person who already promotes a tool like yours for a commission.

The free version only shows a slice of the links. That's fine for a first list. You're after ten good names, not every name.

Search YouTube for review videos

YouTube reviewers are some of the best affiliates in software. A video keeps getting found long after it goes up.

Search YouTube for the same phrases: [competitor] review, [competitor] tutorial, best [category] software. Then filter by upload date. Look at the last 12 months.

Open the video description. Many reviewers put their affiliate links there, with a line such as "I earn a commission". That's your signal. They already do this as a job.

Check the channel's other videos too. A channel with five reviews in your space beats one with a single review.

Look at newsletters and podcasts

Newsletters are quieter. But the reader chose to get that email, so they tend to read it.

Search Google for [your category] newsletter. Or look at the sponsors listed in a competitor's newsletter ads. Most newsletters publish an archive online, so you can read three issues before you write to anyone.

Podcasts work the same way. Search your category in a podcast app. Look for shows that interview founders or review tools. Read the show notes for affiliate links.

Check they're a fit before you write

A long list isn't the goal. A short list of the right people is.

Ask five questions of each name:

Do their readers match your buyers? A blog for freelance designers is a poor fit for a tool built for accountants.
Have they posted in the last three months? An abandoned blog sends no one.
Do they already use affiliate links? If they do, they understand the deal. You won't have to explain it.
Do they write honest reviews? Look for a post where they named a downside. Readers trust writers like that.
Can you find a way to reach them? Look for a contact page, an email in the About page, or a partnerships address.

Drop anyone who fails the first two. Keep a note of why you picked each person who stays. You'll use that note in your first email.

Put it in a spreadsheet

You don't need a tool for your first ten. A spreadsheet works. Use these columns:

Name and site
Where you found them (review, backlink, YouTube, newsletter)
The post or video that made you pick them
Their email
Date you wrote to them
What they said

The third column matters most. It's the one fact you'll open your email with.

Why the first 20 matter so much

Most affiliates never send anyone. FirstPromoter looked at 3,425 subscription programs (checked 24 September 2026). In the median program, only 15% of approved affiliates ever sent a referral.

The same data found that the top 10% of affiliates brought in 58.5% of referred revenue in the median program.

So a few people do most of the work. That's why hand-picking beats a big, random list. Twenty people who already review tools like yours are a better start than 200 strangers from a footer link.

What slows this down

The method works. It's also slow. Let's say your list is long. You open each site, read a post, look for an email and log it. That's a full afternoon. Then you do it again next month for the new posts.

That's the part RecruitAffiliates.ai does for you. It reads who links to your competitors, and which blogs and newsletters cover your category. Then it finds a verified email for each one.

Either way, start today. Pick three competitors. Run the four searches. Write down ten names.

Find your first 20 affiliates

If you'd rather skip the afternoon of searching, try it free. Find your first 20 affiliates free. It's 7 days with no card.

Sources

Rewardful help centre, tracking visits from existing affiliate links: https://help.rewardful.com/en/articles/12856689-tracking-referred-visits-from-existing-affiliate-urls (checked 24 September 2026)
Ahrefs free backlink checker: https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker (checked 24 September 2026)
FirstPromoter, affiliate program management data (July 2026 dataset, 3,425 programs): https://firstpromoter.com/blog/affiliate-program-management (checked 24 September 2026)