Affiliate Program Checklist

Advertisers often rush to recruit publishers before deciding on payout structure, lead-quality criteria, or compliance rules, and end up renegotiating terms mid-flight, which damages trust with exactly the publishers they most want to keep. This checklist is designed to be worked through before your program's public launch, not after your first cohort of publishers is already sending traffic. It pairs well with the real-world lessons in our advertiser success story, which shows several of these principles in practice.

Fraud prevention deserves attention at launch, not after your first fraud incident. Build basic monitoring into your program from day one, informed by the patterns covered in our affiliate fraud prevention guide, since new programs are frequent targets for exactly the fraud tactics that guide describes. Similarly, review your compliance rules against our affiliate compliance guide before launch rather than reactively drafting rules after a publisher's creative causes a problem.

A well-structured program launch takes real upfront effort, but it pays for itself many times over by avoiding the churn and disputes that come from unclear rules discovered too late. Explore more advertiser-focused playbooks in our publisher and advertiser guides category.