Yes, your business should promote other companies’ products as an affiliate when the product picks up where yours stops and your customers already want it. Place the recommendation right after a customer finishes your material, and you earn a commission while giving them a next step. Skip any product that competes head to head with yours.

By Matt McWilliams, who has driven more than $1.8 billion in affiliate revenue, recruited more than 330,000 affiliates, and won Affiliate Manager of the Year four times.

Should my business promote other companies’ products as an affiliate?

Yes, if the product starts where yours ends, your customers already want what it covers, and you’d put your own name beside it. When all three are true, the recommendation helps your customer and pays you.

The first test keeps you from recommending a substitute. A product that starts where yours ends extends what your customer bought. The second test comes from your own customers, so read the questions they send after they finish your material and look for the topic that keeps coming up. The third protects your reputation, because a customer who buys on your word will judge you by how the product turns out.

A recommendation has a cost. You spend your customer’s attention, and the trust behind it, on someone else’s product, so a poor pick costs you more than a good pick earns. You also owe your audience a clear statement that you earn a commission. If you’re weighing how much room affiliate promotions deserve next to your own launches, my post on whether to focus on your own products or affiliate offers covers the balance. I wrote there that you can, and should, do both.

What does a good affiliate recommendation look like?

It looks like one recommendation placed at the moment a customer wants more. For us, that moment was the end of the blues lesson in Learn and Master Guitar.

I used to work for Legacy Learning Systems, and Learn and Master Guitar was one of our best courses. It cost $150 for 20 hours of instruction and covered everything from how to hold a guitar to how to entertain an audience. Lesson 14 introduced blues, and we gave it one hour. That barely scratched the surface, and a customer who wanted more blues had nowhere to go in our course.

Then we found Dan Denley, who sold a blues guitar course for under $100. At the end of our blues lesson, we told customers that if they wanted to learn blues guitar in depth, we recommended Dan’s course.

Our customers had already spent $150 with us, so another hundred or less for a full course on the one style they had sampled was an easy yes. We sold $250,000 to $300,000 of Dan’s course every year, and all of it came from a small subset of our guitar customers.

The arrangement ran in both directions. Dan promoted our course to people who hadn’t bought from him, and in a relatively short time he became our number one affiliate.

Over the years, roughly 5,000 to 10,000 copies of Dan’s course sold through us, and he made about $750,000 from our promotion. That volume showed us a $100 blues course would sell, so we built our own. Once it was ready, we stopped promoting Dan. We traded his commissions for the chance to sell our own blues course to those same customers.

The blues lesson placement is the story I use to show how a single recommendation can outsell a whole campaign. How to 10X Your Sales is my free two-hour training on growing sales in about an hour a day, and the Dan Denley story is in it.

How much can a business earn promoting other companies’ products?

A small list can earn real money. With a list under 2,000 people, I earned $13,847 in commissions on one Michael Hyatt promotion, and the next year, with a list of barely 2,500, I earned $19,991 promoting the same course.

My first Hyatt promotion happened in 2014. I had a list of roughly 800 to 1,000 people and a goal of two sales. I blogged about it, shared it on social media, and sent a couple of emails. I sold eight courses and made $588, four times my goal, and I was ecstatic. I also made plenty of mistakes. I had no opt-out for subscribers who didn’t want to hear about the course, and I hadn’t segmented my list well.

I fixed both. Now I tell my list up front that I’ll talk about a course a lot over the next few weeks, and I give them a link to click if they’d rather skip it.

The big jump came when I had a story. Before Michael became a client, I took his 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever course. It showed me how to set goals and get clear on what I wanted, and I think my income almost tripled over the following year. When I told my list that story, I made $13,847 on a $147 product, roughly 85 to 90 sales. I went up against some of the biggest names in internet marketing and, if I remember right, finished fifth. I cover that approach in getting personal in your affiliate promotions.

The $19,991 the next year still bugs me. If one buyer of the regular version had upgraded to VIP, I’d have hit $20,000.

In the three years after that first $588, I earned more than $240,000 in affiliate commissions, a little over $80,000 a year, before I had a product of my own. You already have one, which gives you something I didn’t have then, a base of customers who have bought from you.

In late 2019, my team promoted Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula with what I’d call a tiny list. We did more than $20,000 in sales and finished right outside the top ten on one of the most competitive leaderboards out there. I’ve also won a $20,000 first prize in an affiliate contest.

Those numbers came from my lists, my relationships, and a story I could tell. I can’t promise you the same results.

My team and I recorded a recap of the Product Launch Formula promotion. Behind-the-Scenes on Our Affiliate Promotion for Product Launch Formula shows how we used live videos, bonuses, and list segmenting.

How do you choose which products to promote?

Choose products that complement yours. A complementary product extends what your customer bought, and a competing product asks them to pick a side.

Run any candidate through these four questions.

• Does it start where mine ends? Our course gave blues one hour, and Dan’s gave it a whole course.
• Is the price an easy yes next to what my customer already paid? Dan’s course was under $100 for people who had paid $150.
• Do my customers already want it? Read the questions they send after they finish your product and see which topic comes up most.
• Would I put my name on it? The first rule of affiliate marketing is to promote only what fits your audience.

Commission rate belongs after those four. In my guide to choosing an affiliate offer, I show that a 50 percent commission on a product converting at 0.3 percent earns less than a 20 percent commission on one converting at 3 percent. Run that math before you say yes.

The relationship counts too. I’ve written that if you promote 10 offers in a year, 4 to 6 of them should have the potential to be reciprocal, meaning the other company might promote you back. You might choose someone with only 18 affiliates because the fit is good and they’ll send their audience your way. Dan’s course worked that way for us, since he promoted our course too.

If the best fit sells something close to yours, the rules change a little. Working With Competitors As Affiliates covers four ways to partner with a competing product, including upsells and downsells.

Where should you put the recommendation?

Put it where the customer already wants more. Three places fit that moment, and they are inside your product, right after purchase, and in your email list.

Inside your product, the best spot is the end of the lesson, chapter, or module that introduces the topic. Our blues recommendation sat at the end of the blues lesson, and it sold $250,000 to $300,000 of Dan’s course a year. A recommendation at that point reads as the next step.

After purchase, put your own onboarding first and the recommendation second. A new customer should get what they bought before anyone asks them to buy something else. I don’t have numbers to share on this placement, so test it on a small segment before you roll it out.

In your email list, tell subscribers what’s coming and let them opt out. Then plan the promotion like a launch. My team and I meet once a month to plan content for the next four to eight weeks, and we put the affiliate promotions on the calendar next to our own launches. Once a promotion is scheduled, we build a day-by-day promo plan for it so promoting gets less stressful.

Wherever the recommendation goes, tell people you earn a commission. The FTC says you must disclose a financial relationship with a company you recommend clearly, close to the recommendation, and in plain wording (FTC guidance on disclosures, checked October 15, 2026). My post on what affiliate link disclosure requires covers what to say, and your attorney can confirm the wording that fits your business.

Frequently asked questions

Will promoting other products cost me sales?

It can if the product overlaps with yours, which is why the test is whether it picks up where yours stops. Our blues recommendation went to people who had already bought our $150 course, so it didn’t compete for that first sale. It sold $250,000 to $300,000 of Dan’s course a year.

Do I have to tell people I earn a commission?

Yes. The FTC expects a clear disclosure of any financial relationship with a company you recommend, placed with the recommendation where people can’t miss it. Rules vary by format and situation, so have your attorney review your wording before you publish.

How many affiliate products should my business promote each year?

It varies. In my post on how many affiliate launches you can promote each year, I wrote that some people promote as few as two while others have promoted as many as 15. Start by watching how your audience responds, including unsubscribes, replies, and click-through rates.

How big does my email list need to be?

Smaller than most business owners expect. My first Hyatt promotion went to roughly 800 to 1,000 people and made $588. A list under 2,000 made $13,847 on a later promotion, and a list of barely 2,500 made $19,991 the year after.

Should I use the product creator’s swipe copy?

Use it as a guide, but don’t send it as written. I tell people to write from their own experience and their own transformation with the product. My $13,847 promotion worked because I told my own story about the course, and that story couldn’t come from anyone else’s email.

Your next steps

Start with one product and one placement.

• List the questions customers ask after they finish your product and find the topic that comes up most.
• Find one product that picks up on that topic, goes deeper or costs less than yours, and passes the four questions above.
• Write a two-sentence recommendation, place it at the end of the lesson, chapter, or email where the topic ends, and disclose the commission.

If you’d rather have other businesses promoting your product, the work runs the other way. Your First 100 Affiliates is my free report on how I recruited 604 affiliates and built a program that reached $1 million a month in 18 months.

Learn How My Resources Page Makes Me $10,000+ Each Month… and How You Can Create One Easily!  Grab The Free Guide Here