Josh Kennedy didn’t come up through the traditional affiliate marketing world—and that’s exactly why he spotted what everyone else missed. While working at a “premier” affiliate agency that got acquired during his tenure, he looked behind the dashboard and discovered their top 10 revenue-driving partners weren’t creating any value. They were just intercepting customers in the final moments before checkout and collecting commissions on sales that were already happening.

The math is broken across the industry. Loyalty platforms like Honey and Capital One Shopping plus coupon sites make up two-thirds of most affiliate programs, but they sit in the lower funnel doing nothing except gaming last-click attribution. A customer finds you through a YouTube review, joins your email list, goes through your nurture sequence, then clicks Honey to check for coupons—and Honey gets 100% credit while the YouTuber who actually drove discovery gets nothing.

Josh’s solution flips the entire model. Instead of recruiting affiliates through networks and hoping they promote you, Imagine Marketing reverse-engineers partner discovery through search research. They identify where your customers are already searching—specific comparison articles, YouTube channels, review sites with real traffic—then build direct relationships with those creators. For one international client, this uncovered 150 high-value content placements across the US, UK, and Australia that genuinely influence purchase decisions at the awareness stage, not the checkout flow. This content-first approach has generated over $10 million in documented revenue, and Josh backs it with a 90-day pilot so brands can test if it works for their stage and category before committing.

👉 Audit your top 10 partners for cannibalization. Pull your highest-revenue affiliates and ask: are these driving new customers or intercepting existing ones? If loyalty platforms (Rakuten, Capital One), coupon sites (RetailMeNot, Honey), or toolbar extensions dominate your list, you’re likely paying commissions on sales that were already happening.

👉 Switch to multi-touch attribution to reveal true performance. Last-click systematically rewards whoever touches customers last—meaning lower-funnel partners gaming checkout always win while upper-funnel creators who influenced the decision get no credit. Use first-click or multi-touch models to see which partners generate awareness versus harvest existing demand.

👉 Reverse-engineer partner discovery through search research. Instead of recruiting through networks and hoping affiliates promote you, start with where customers already search. Identify comparison articles, YouTube reviews, and blog posts ranking for your target queries, then build direct relationships with creators who have traffic and trust.

👉 Prioritize upper-funnel content partnerships over checkout interception. SEO blogs, comparison sites, YouTube reviewers, and editorial content sit at awareness and consideration stages where they genuinely influence decisions. They’re harder to recruit than coupon networks, but they deliver measurably better incrementality by reaching customers before purchase intent locks in.

👉 Launch or restructure during Q4/Q1 for maximum momentum. High purchase intent during Black Friday/Cyber Monday and New Year resolution season makes October through February ideal for affiliate programs. You can build relationships with content partners planning holiday guides or use purchase volume to prove which partners perform versus ride your coattails.

👉 Test incrementality by pausing partnerships and measuring revenue impact. The only way to confirm a partner drives incremental value is to pause the relationship and track what happens. If stopping commissions to a loyalty platform barely affects revenue, you’ve proven they were cannibalizing existing sales—giving you empirical data on which partnerships justify their cost.