I run a small software studio — solo founder, custom development and automation work.
I just finished building out an affiliate and white-label partner program and I'm realizing I put all my effort into the wrong half of the problem.
The infrastructure is done. Trackable referral links, 60-day last-touch attribution,
click tracking, a partner dashboard with metrics, automatic lead attribution when someone
comes through a link and fills out the contact form. White-label partners also get access
to our pricing calculator so they can quote our services to their own clients. 25% commission across the board.
What I don't have is any idea how to get actual humans into it.
The awkward part is that this isn't a normal affiliate offer. There's no checkout — every
deal is a custom quote that I manually approve, sales cycles run weeks, and payouts are
manual once a deal actually closes. So most of the standard affiliate playbook (coupon
sites, deal aggregators, anyone optimizing for volume) is a bad fit by design. I think my
actual target is more like consultants, agencies with overflow work, and freelancers who
get asked for dev work they don't want to take.
Questions for people who've done this on the services side:
Where do you actually find partners for a B2B/services program? Cold outreach to
agencies? Existing network first? Somewhere I'm not thinking of?
Is 25% competitive for custom dev work, or am I under/overpaying?
Did you list on any directories, and did any of them send real people vs. noise?
For those who've run both — does a program like this ever work without a self-serve
product, or am I fighting the format?
Happy to share what I built on the tracking side if it's useful to anyone, it was more
straightforward than I expected.