The Affiliate Playbook

The Affiliate Programme Framework by Mike Currey is a practitioner's playbook built on decades of experience, most notably scaling Quince's affiliate revenue from $2M to $54M in three years. Currey opens with a reframe that sets the tone for everything that follows: affiliate is not a channel, it's a payment model for other channels. From there, the playbook walks through seven phases — audit, platform selection, commission structure, seeding, scaling, reporting, and fraud — with specific case examples from Quince, Nike, T-Mobile, and Blue Nile. The through-line is operational discipline: most affiliate programmes underperform not because the model is broken, but because the fundamentals were never properly built.

Chapter / Module Outline

Introduction: Reframing Affiliate
Affiliate is a payment model, not a channel. Why that distinction matters for how you structure, measure, and integrate the programme across the business.

‍

Phase 1: The Audit
Case study: Quince, Grüns
Before touching anything, understand exactly where things stand — not where leadership thinks they stand. Seven checkpoints:

• Platform review (commission structures, tracking, cookie windows)
• Web perception audit (Reddit, coupon sites, editorial coverage)
• Follow the clicks (tracing redirects and link hijacking)
• Promo code structure (dormant codes, leakage, UTM consistency)
• Referral programme audit (link abuse, store credit exploitation)
• Bad actor management (case-by-case assessment and removal)
• Landing page audit (conversion continuity from ad to checkout)

‍

Phase 2: Platform Selection
The editorial vs. paid affiliate decision should drive everything. Key considerations: platform longevity (avoiding costly migrations), geography, cost stage-fit, and what each platform actually tracks beyond click-to-conversion.

‍

Phase 3: Commission Structure & Partner Tiers
Case study: T-Mobile, Blue Nile

• Editorial tiers by domain authority (DA 25–50, 50–60, 75+)
• Promotional partners: deliberate, limited, and monitored
• The subgroup tagging system for scalable publisher management
• Competitive benchmarking via CashbackMonitor and publisher accounts

‍

Phase 4: Seeding & TikTok Shop

• Finding the right creators: AI-assisted lookalike discovery
• Treating seeding as a real budget line, not a free sample exercise
• TikTok Shop as the entry point for brands without existing awareness
• The three-step sequencing playbook: TikTok Shop → Meta/Google → traditional affiliate

‍

Phase 5: Scaling
Case study: Quince, T-Mobile

• The content vs. promotional decision — and why you can't straddle both
• How editorial snowballs once anchor publishers are landed
• Tagging depth: tracking funnel steps, error pages, and secondary KPIs like newsletter sign-ups
• When to hire fractional vs. agency (and why fractional wins early)
• Cross-channel coordination: affiliate in the media planning room, and the affiliate-PR relationship

‍

Phase 6: Reporting

• Build reporting around business KPIs, not affiliate vanity metrics
• Weekly Business Review format: WoW, QoQ, YoY
• Return rates by publisher as a liability signal
• Top publisher dashboards for self-optimisation
• Experimentation: matching publishers to the funnels where their traffic converts best

‍

Phase 7: AI & Fraud

• Fraud patterns to monitor: code leakage, trademark bidding, link hijacking, referral abuse, attribution bleed
• Bot traffic as a growing cross-channel threat
• Where AI adds real leverage: audit automation, publisher recruitment, personalised outreach, lookalike seeding at scale

‍