How to Find and Recruit High-Quality Affiliates for Your App

To find affiliates for your app, start with the people who already use it, then list your programme where affiliates look for apps to promote, then contact creators in your niche one by one. To recruit them, make a specific offer (what they earn, how they are paid, why their audience would care) and make joining take minutes, not days.

How do you find affiliates for an app?

There are five places worth looking, and they differ mostly in how much work each affiliate costs you to find. Start at the top of this table and move down only when the source above is producing less than you need.

Start with the users you already have

Your users are the cheapest affiliates to find because you do not have to find them. They know what the app does, they can describe it in their own words, and their friends tend to have the same problem the app solves.

Two groups are worth separating:

• Ordinary users with a handful of friends to tell. These suit a refer-a-friend screen inside the app, where the reward is usually free premium time or credit instead of cash.
• Users who happen to have an audience. A subscriber who runs a running club, a study channel or a niche newsletter is a creator you already have a relationship with. Invite these people personally and pay them commission.

To spot the second group, look at who tags you on social media, who leaves detailed reviews and who shares your app without being asked.

Insert Affiliate handles the first group with in-app referrals: a ready-made Refer a friend screen that gives each user their own code and link, counts the friends they bring in, and lets you reward them with free premium time, cash commission or both.

If you reward users with free subscription time, grant it through the stores' own mechanisms. Apple's subscription offer codes give people "a free or discounted price for a specific duration", and customers are limited to redeeming one code per offer, so plan for users who refer several friends.

Put a signup page where people will see it

Some affiliates will come looking for you. They search "[your app] affiliate program" or check your website footer. If there is nothing there, they move on.

A signup page needs to answer five questions without a call:

1. What do I earn per sale, and do I earn on renewals?
2. How and when am I paid?
3. What do I get to share (a link, a code, a discount for my audience)?
4. Is there anything I am not allowed to do?
5. How long does approval take?

Then link to that page from your website footer, your in-app settings screen, your onboarding emails and your social profiles.

List your programme on an affiliate marketplace

A marketplace is a directory that works in both directions: affiliates browse apps that are recruiting, and companies browse affiliates who are open to offers. The people in it have already decided they want to promote something, which is the hardest part of cold outreach.

Insert Affiliate's marketplace is free to use. You opt in from your company settings, add your commission rate, a description and your App Store and Google Play links, and affiliates can then request to join. You can also search the affiliate list yourself, filtering by niche, audience size, country, platform and the payment types each affiliate is open to (a sign-on payment, a payment per post, a percentage of sales or a CPM rate), then message or invite the ones who fit. There is a longer walkthrough in our guide to finding affiliates with the affiliate marketplace.

Complete your profile. An affiliate comparing two apps will pick the one that states its rate and shows both store links.

Search for creators in your niche

This is the slowest source and often the best one, because you choose exactly who you approach.

You can do it by hand for free:

• Search YouTube, TikTok and Instagram for the problem your app solves, not for the app category. "How I plan my week" finds better partners for a planner app than "productivity apps".
• Search Google for "best [category] apps" and note who wrote the articles that rank.
• Check the comments. A creator whose viewers ask "which app is that?" has an audience that acts on recommendations.

Creator search tools shorten this. Creator Discovery, which is part of Insert Affiliate's Enterprise plan, searches TikTok, Instagram and YouTube from a plain-language prompt, with filters for follower count, engagement rate and location. You save the creators you like to a shortlist, track each one from New to Contacted to Joined, and unlock a verified email address only for the people you decide to contact. We cover the workflow in how to find affiliates with Creator Discovery.

Look in communities and at competitors' partners

Subreddits, Discord servers, Facebook groups and niche forums contain people who care about your category and sometimes have audiences of their own. Take part first: answer questions, share what you know, and mention your programme only where the community's rules allow it.

Creators who already promote a competing or adjacent app are also worth approaching. They understand the category and their audience is primed for it. Search for reviews and "alternatives" content, and look for discount codes in video descriptions. When you write to them, do not criticise the app they currently promote. Explain what is different about yours and who it suits better.

What makes a high-quality affiliate?

A high-quality affiliate is one whose audience matches your user, not one with the largest follower count. Twenty affiliates who each bring in a few subscribers a month are worth more than five hundred who signed up and never posted.

Signs of a good fit

• Niche match. Their content is about the problem your app solves, or about the person who has that problem.
• Audience response. Comments are specific and conversational. People ask follow-up questions and the creator answers.
• A record of recommending things. They have promoted products before, and those posts did about as well as their normal content.
• Consistency. They have posted regularly for months.
• They would plausibly use the app. The most convincing recommendations come from people who do.

Signs to pass

• Comments that are generic or unrelated to the post.
• A feed that is nearly all promotions.
• Promotion methods you would not want associated with your brand, such as bidding on your app's name in search ads.

Should you approve affiliates manually?

If your signup page is public, yes, at least at the start. Manual approval costs you a few minutes per applicant and protects you from paying commission to people whose methods you would not have agreed to.

Most affiliate tools offer this as a setting. In ours, self-signup approves affiliates instantly by default; switch on Require Affiliate Approval and each application waits in a pending list until you approve or reject it, with an email to tell you a new one has arrived. The self-signup guide explains the steps, including how to embed the signup form on your own website.

How do you recruit affiliates once you have found them?

Recruiting is a short, specific message followed by an easy first step. Most outreach fails because it is long, generic and asks for too much.

What to say in the first message

Keep it under about 120 words and cover four things:

1. Proof you know their work. Mention one specific video or post and what you liked about it.
2. What the app is, in one sentence. Say who it is for.
3. The offer. State the commission, whether it covers renewals, and any discount their audience would get.
4. One small ask. "Would you like a free account to try it?" is easier to say yes to than "Would you like to become an affiliate partner?"

Send it wherever the creator takes business enquiries, usually an email address in their profile. If you hear nothing, send one polite follow-up a week later, then move on.

We have a separate guide on writing affiliate recruitment emails that get responses, with wording you can adapt.

What to offer

Be clear about four things.

The rate. Work backwards from what a subscriber is worth to you after store fees. Apple's App Store Small Business Program sets a 15% commission on paid apps and in-app purchases for developers who earned up to $1 million USD in proceeds in the prior calendar year, and Google publishes its own Google Play service fees. Say your app charges $60 a year and the store keeps 15%. You receive $51. A 20% commission on the full $60 is $12, leaving you $39 in the first year. Whether that is affordable depends on how many subscribers renew, which only your own numbers can tell you. Our guide to affiliate commission rates for mobile apps goes through the options.

Renewals. Decide whether affiliates earn on the first purchase only or on renewals as well, and say so plainly. Recurring commission gives a creator a reason to keep mentioning you.

A discount for their audience. A creator finds it easier to recommend something when their followers get a better price through them than they would by going direct.

How they are paid. State the method and the schedule, then keep to it. Whether you pay by hand each month or use automatic payouts, a late or unclear payment is the fastest way to lose a good affiliate.

Larger creators may ask for a fixed fee as well as commission. If you agree one, put in writing what it covers.

Make it easy to say yes

Have these ready before you send the first message:

• A free or extended premium account so they can use the app properly.
• Their link and code, working, on the day they join.
• Screenshots, a short screen recording, your logo and two or three talking points.
• A dashboard where they can see their own clicks, sales and earnings.

Tell new affiliates to say clearly that they earn commission when they recommend your app. Platforms have their own rules as well: YouTube asks creators to declare paid promotion in the video details, which adds a label at the start of the video.

What do you need in place before recruiting affiliates?

Recruiting before tracking works is the most expensive mistake in this process. An affiliate who posts and then sees no sales recorded will not post again, and will tell other creators.

For an app, the difficult part is that the purchase happens inside the app, after an App Store or Google Play install, so an ordinary web affiliate link loses the connection at the store. You need three things:

1. Links that survive the install. These are called deferred deep links. Insert Links are the ones built into our platform: they detect whether the person is on iOS or Android and whether the app is already installed, send them to the right store if not, and remember which affiliate referred them when the app is first opened. Branch and AppsFlyer links can be used instead if you already have them.
2. Verified purchase tracking. Commission should be based on purchases confirmed with the store or your subscription provider, including renewals and refunds, not on clicks or installs alone.
3. A way to pay. Decide the payout method, the minimum balance and the schedule before the first affiliate asks.

Test the whole path yourself on both platforms: tap a link on a phone without the app, install, subscribe in a sandbox, and check the sale appears against the right affiliate.

One company that recruited ambassadors ahead of a launch described the result like this: "We hit near the top of our category on launch day. Incentivising our ambassadors with Insert Affiliate played a big part in that." (Charles, Chief Product Officer, top 50 world wide news app.)

How do you keep the affiliates you recruit?

Many affiliates who join never post, so the weeks after signup count as much as recruitment.

• Get them to a first post quickly. Suggest one specific piece of content that suits their format, and offer to check facts before it goes out.
• Tell them when something works. A short note saying "your video brought in six subscribers this week" does more than any newsletter.
• Reward results. Raise the rate for affiliates who reach a sales target, or give your best partners a better deal individually.
• Review your sources. See which source produced the affiliates who are selling, and spend your recruiting time there.

Where to start this week

Pick the source at the top of the table. Write down what you will pay, set up a link that tracks through to an in-app purchase, test it on both platforms, and invite ten users who already talk about your app. Their results will tell you what to offer everyone else.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find affiliates for my app?

Begin with your existing users, because they already know the app and need no convincing. Then publish a signup page, list your programme on an affiliate marketplace, and contact creators whose content covers the problem your app solves. Move to the slower sources only when the easier ones stop producing.

Where can I find affiliates for free?

Your own user base, your website and your social profiles cost nothing to use. Searching YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Google by hand is free apart from your time, and some affiliate marketplaces charge nothing to list a programme. Paid creator search tools save hours once you are contacting people in volume.

How many affiliates does an app need?

Fewer than you might think. A small group of well-matched affiliates who post regularly will usually outperform a long list of inactive signups. Recruit a small batch, see who produces sales, and learn from that before recruiting more.

How much should I pay affiliates?

Enough that the affiliate earns something worthwhile per sale, and little enough that you still make money on each subscriber after store fees. Work it out from your own subscription price and renewal rate. Paying commission on renewals as well as first purchases makes a lower headline rate easier to accept.