Keep Your Program Healthy with Monthly Reviews
An affiliate program that runs without regular review gradually degrades. Inactive partners accumulate, top performers go unrecognised, and small issues compound into larger problems. A monthly health check takes 30 to 60 minutes and keeps your program performing at its best.
Here is what to review every month.
Revenue and Performance Metrics
Total affiliate revenue: How much revenue did affiliates generate this month? Compare to previous months and track the trend. Flat or declining revenue signals a problem. Investigate before it worsens.
Number of active affiliates: How many partners generated at least one click this month? Compare to total roster size. If your active rate drops below 20%, focus on re-engagement or recruitment.
Conversion rate: What percentage of affiliate-driven clicks converted to installs, and what percentage of installs converted to paid? Declining conversion rates may indicate issues with your app store listing, paywall, or onboarding.
Average commission per affiliate: Total commissions divided by active affiliates. Is this number growing, stable, or declining? Growing averages indicate healthy program economics.
Revenue per click: Total affiliate revenue divided by total affiliate clicks. This holistic metric captures the quality of both the traffic and your conversion funnel.
Partner Activity
Top performers: Review your top 10 affiliates by revenue. Are they consistent? Growing? Any signs of fatigue? Reach out personally to thank your best partners and ask if they need anything.
New affiliates: How many new partners joined this month? Review their first-week activity. Are they completing onboarding and starting to promote?
Newly inactive: Identify affiliates who were active last month but inactive this month. These are your best re-engagement candidates because they were recently motivated and might just need a nudge.
Long-term inactive: Review partners who have been inactive for 60+ days. Decide whether to attempt re-engagement or remove them from your active roster.
Operational Health
Payment processing: Were all payouts processed on schedule? Any failed payments that need resolution? Unresolved payment issues erode trust quickly.
Support requests: Review any affiliate support tickets or questions from the past month. Are there recurring themes that indicate a systemic issue?
Webhook reliability: Check that purchase verification webhooks from RevenueCat, Adapty, or your direct store integration have been delivering consistently. Any gaps in webhook delivery mean missed attributions.
Link health: Spot-check a sample of affiliate links to ensure they are resolving correctly. Broken deep links mean lost attributions and frustrated affiliates.
Content and Compliance
Content review: Scan recent affiliate content (blog posts, videos, social posts) to ensure compliance with your program guidelines. Look for inaccurate claims, missing disclosures, or messaging that does not align with your brand.
Competitor activity: Briefly review competitor affiliate programs. Have they changed commission rates, launched new features, or recruited any of your partners?
Strategic Assessment
What is working? Identify the top-performing content types, platforms, and partner profiles. Double down on what works.
What needs attention? Identify the single biggest issue affecting program performance and plan to address it this month.
Next month's priorities: Set 1 to 2 specific goals for the coming month. Recruit 5 new partners, improve conversion rate by 10%, or re-engage 10 inactive affiliates.
Creating the Habit
Schedule your monthly review on a fixed date, such as the first Monday of each month. Block 60 minutes and follow the same checklist every time. Consistency turns this review from a chore into a habit that keeps your program healthy and growing.
Insert Affiliate's dashboard provides most of the metrics you need for this review. Combine dashboard data with a brief scan of affiliate content and a quick operational check, and your monthly health assessment is complete.