By industry · Business services
Company Affiliate
Programs
You Are Paid to Introduce an Organisation, Not to Close a Person
At company size a purchase is made by several people over several weeks: one is sent to look, one holds the budget, one approves rather than wants. Your link only ever reaches the first of them — which is why these campaigns pay on a screened enquiry, and why a page that can be forwarded beats a page that closes.
- No audience threshold published
- Lead definition set per campaign
- A person screens every submission
- What you are paid for
- An introduction to a company, not a person's purchase
- Who usually clicks
- Somebody sent to look, not the person with the budget
- Who decides
- A person at the advertiser, against a written definition
- A rejection to expect
- A duplicate of an account already in their pipeline
Who is on the page
One purchase, three different people
A company does not buy the way a person does. Three roles touch the same decision, they arrive at different moments, and only one of them will ever see what you published.
-
Person one
The one sent to look
Clicks, and cannot buy.
Given a problem and an afternoon. They collect two or three names, skim what each one is for, and stop. Nothing they do converts on its own, so the job of your page is to be forwardable — short enough to be pasted into a message, clear enough to survive being retold by somebody who read it once.
Write to be forwarded, not to close.
-
Person two
The one who holds the budget
Signs it off, arrives late.
Often never opens your page at all. What reaches them is the shortlist somebody else assembled, which means the facts you published have to travel without you: what the thing is for, what it replaces, and roughly what shape the price is. Anything that needs your page open to make sense is lost here.
One clear reason per option, no more.
-
Person three
The one who approves
Security, legal, procurement.
Their question is not whether it is good but whether it is allowed: data handling, contract terms, renewal. Every one of those answers belongs to the advertiser. You may point at where they are published and say that the step exists — you may not answer them on the advertiser's behalf, and a page that tries is the fastest way to a breach.
Route the question; never answer it.
Company SIZE is a separate question to the roles above, and it is sorted into four rungs on B2B affiliate platforms. The rung where one person is all three of these at once — owner, budget and approval — has its own page: affiliate programs for small businesses. What the category sells, and what an accepted lead looks like, is on the parent, business service campaigns.
The line that decides the rest
You are introducing an organisation, not closing a buyer
Every mechanic on this shelf comes out of one fact: the thing being paid for is an introduction to a company, and a company is not the person who clicked. Five consequences follow, and none of them applies to a consumer campaign.
- 01
The click and the purchase belong to different people
An affiliate link touches the first person in a chain of three or four. That is the structural reason campaigns on this shelf pay on a screened enquiry rather than on a sale: the sale is made by somebody your link never reached, in a room you cannot see.
- 02
One company arrives many times
Several people from the same organisation can reach you over weeks. The report sees separate sessions; the advertiser sees one account. Where a brief says so, a lead matching an account already in their pipeline is returned as a duplicate — the parent lists that among the things that get sent back, and it is not a verdict on your traffic.
- 03
The decision runs longer than any session
Evaluation happens in meetings, over weeks, between people with other jobs. An attribution window measures browsers, which is a different unit entirely. Read the screening window on the brief instead — it tells you when a verdict lands, and that is the number this shelf actually runs on.
- 04
Your leverage ends at the handover
Once the enquiry has been submitted and screened, nothing you publish changes the outcome. What you still control is the quality of the introduction: the right company, a person with a reason to be asking, a stated need and a market the advertiser can work in.
- 05
Approval is a different question to interest
A company can want something and still not buy it, because somebody else has to clear it. A page answering only “is this any good?” stalls at that gate. A page that also says what adopting it involves — who has to approve, what it replaces, what switching costs in time — keeps moving after you stop reading the report.
Row two quotes the network's own published list of what gets sent back — duplicates of a lead the advertiser already holds sit on it, alongside free mailboxes, unfindable companies and wrong markets. All of them are on business service campaigns. Who screens a submission, and against what, is on CPL affiliate programs; the states a conversion passes through before it is payable are on payouts.
Where your influence stops
Five stages, and you are present for two
This is the buyer's chain rather than the money's. It is worth reading once in full, because the third column stops being about you halfway down — and knowing that is what stops a publisher rewriting a page that was never the problem.
| Stage | Who is acting | What you can still do |
|---|---|---|
| Somebody is sent to look | One person inside the company, usually not the buyer. | Be findable and readable in one pass, and keep a link that survives being forwarded intact. |
| An enquiry is submitted | The same person, on the advertiser's form or on yours. | Set expectations plainly: what the form is for, who replies, and roughly when. |
| A person screens it | The advertiser's team, against a written lead definition. | Nothing — what you sent is fixed. Label the click first so you can tell later which page sent it. |
| It is discussed internally | The budget holder, the team that will use it, and the gate. | Nothing directly, though a page that survives being retold is still working for you here. |
| It is approved, or it is not | Procurement, legal or finance, on their own timetable. | Nothing. Where the campaign pays on the screened lead, your payout was settled two stages ago. |
This chain is the buyer's, not the money's: pending, approved, hold and payment run are a separate sequence and the parent sets it out in full at business service campaigns. Labelling the click at stage one is what makes a rare conversion traceable months later — link anatomy and the five sub ID slots are on tracking links, and the dates a cleared balance moves on are on the payment schedule.
What gets asked internally
Eight questions your page is forwarded into
Once your page leaves your site it has to answer questions you never see asked. Two of these are genuinely yours to answer. The rest are the advertiser's to state, and the difference is the whole compliance question on this shelf.
-
What does it cost at our size?
The advertiser's published pricing. Quote it with the date you checked, because tiers move and an undated figure ages badly.
-
What is it actually for?
The part you genuinely own. Your own plain description of the job it does is why a reader forwards your page instead of a brochure.
-
Will it fit what we already run?
The vendor's own integration list, attributed to them. You may quote it; you may not certify that it will work with a stack you cannot see.
-
How is our data handled?
The advertiser's documentation, always. Point at it and stop — this is the answer publishers are most often tempted to summarise.
-
Who else like us uses it?
Only references the advertiser publishes itself. Never invent a customer, a logo wall or a sector claim to fill the gap.
-
How long are we tied in?
Contract length, notice and renewal are terms, not features. They belong to the advertiser and are worth linking rather than paraphrasing.
-
What does switching cost us?
Time and process, which is where first-hand experience is worth most — described as your experience rather than as a promise.
-
Who has to approve this?
Nobody outside the company can answer it. Naming that the step exists is what keeps your page useful once it has been forwarded.
Quoting is allowed; certifying is not. Anything factual about a product has to be the advertiser's own wording, prices have to be live or dated wherever you show them, and no outcome may be promised — all of it in the campaign guidelines. Software bought by companies is read on its own shelf rather than here: SaaS and cloud campaigns.
Before you publish
What travels, and what comes straight back
The left column is what keeps a page useful after it has been pasted into somebody else's message. The right is the network's own list of what a screener returns — worth reading before you build volume rather than after.
-
What travels
- One line saying what the thing is for, before any feature list
- Price shape carried with the date you checked it
- What it replaces, in plain words a non-specialist can repeat
- The vendor's integration and compliance pages, linked and attributed
- A next step that names who will reply and roughly when
- The disclosure, on every page where the link appears
-
What gets sent back
- A free-mailbox submission, which most campaigns here reject before a person reads it
- A company that cannot be found, or one the service plainly does not fit
- The right business in a market or jurisdiction the advertiser does not serve
- A duplicate of a lead the advertiser already has in its pipeline
- Form fills bought with an incentive on a campaign that carries no incentive tag
- Recycled, scraped or resold contact lists
The first four on the right are fit problems — the wrong mailbox, the wrong company, the wrong market, an account already held — and targeting is what changes them. The last two are breaches, and the ladder runs in three rungs: the campaign is paused with a notice, the affected conversions are invalidated, and severe or repeated breaches end the account. The six rejection reasons read from the small end of this shelf are on affiliate programs for small businesses.
Questions
Company campaign questions, answered plainly
What publishers ask before writing for buyers who need somebody else's approval before anything is bought.
What are the best company affiliate programs?
No ranking is published here, and a ranked list elsewhere is usually the list-maker's own links. The useful test on this shelf is whether you can feed a campaign honestly: does the lead definition match the companies your readers actually work at, is the market list one they sit in, and does the brief say what comes back when a lead is refused. Live listings, filterable by model and category, are in the campaign index.
Do company-facing campaigns pay per sale?
Sometimes, but at this size a screened enquiry is the more common payable event, because the sale itself closes off-site weeks later. The parent sets out the three ways a business campaign pays and what fires each one; the brief names which applies to a given campaign.
Why was my lead rejected as a duplicate?
Because the advertiser already had that account. Several people from one company can find you separately, and the advertiser's own sales team may have been talking to them already. Duplicates of a lead already in the pipeline are on the network's published list of what gets sent back, and no change to your pages prevents it.
The person who filled the form is not the decision-maker. Does that matter?
It depends entirely on the lead definition. Many briefs ask for company, role and size, and a researcher can satisfy that honestly while somebody else signs the contract. What is never acceptable is dressing the submission up as somebody it is not — that is the kind of rejection that follows an account rather than a lead.
How long should I wait for a verdict on a lead?
The screening window is a line on the brief, and it is the number to plan around rather than the click. Pending is not approved here — a person is still reading it. What a network has to hand back once that person has decided is covered on the B2B platforms page.
Can I publish a comparison of two vendors?
Yes, built on facts both of them publish — price, plan limits, contract terms, their own stated coverage — each quoted and dated. What you may not do is promise an outcome, and you may not compare on something neither vendor states. The creative rules are in the campaign guidelines.
Can I answer security or contract questions for the advertiser?
No. Data handling, certifications, contract and renewal terms are the advertiser's to state, and a publisher restating them becomes the source of a claim they cannot stand behind. Link the advertiser's own page and say that the step exists — that is genuinely helpful and it stays inside the rules.
Do I need a large B2B audience to be approved?
No audience-size threshold is published here. Access is matched to the traffic sources you declare and how they fit each campaign, so a small, specific publication read by the right job titles is assessed on the same terms as a large one. What a reviewer opens is on how approval works.
Which channels suit company buyers?
Whatever the campaign permits, declared honestly at application. In practice this shelf rewards places a page can be forwarded from — a written comparison, a newsletter a team shares, documentation-adjacent content — more than it rewards volume. The parent's channel section sets out what each one is good for here.
Should I start with enterprise-sized campaigns?
Usually not. Few conversions and slow verdicts make a large-buyer campaign a poor place to learn what your pages are doing. The smaller end answers faster and screens on the same rules — that is what the small business page is for, and the buyer ladder on the platforms page says the same thing.
Keep reading
- Business service campaigns The parent: twelve service types and what an accepted lead is
- B2B affiliate platforms Judging the network by what comes back after screening
- Small business programs The other end of this shelf: consumer speed, company screening
- CPL affiliate programs The lead model in full: what makes one valid, and who accepts it
- SaaS & cloud campaigns Where software sold to companies is read instead of here
- Campaign guidelines Creative accuracy, the incentive tag and the three-rung ladder
Write something a stranger can forward
Create your publisher account, then apply to the business campaigns whose lead definition matches the companies your readers actually work at — and read what each brief says comes back when a lead is refused.