Happy Thursday!

I had a conversation last week that made me realize most founders have no idea what affiliate actually looks like when it’s working.

Not the coupon site version. Not the “set up an Impact account and wait” version. The version where independent media buyers are doing 1,200 to 1,500 sales per day on a single offer and keeping the spread. That version.

Aaron Paul runs Paul Street. He’s driven over $500 million in affiliate revenue for brands like Goalie Nutrition, HexClad, Liquid IV, and Onnit. And his hottest take on this episode is one I keep coming back to: the brands that fail at affiliate don’t fail because the channel doesn’t work. They fail because they treat it like a machine instead of a relationship.

Here’s the thing. Most DTC founders have barely scratched the surface of this channel. This episode goes deep on what it actually looks like when someone who’s been in the trenches for six years builds it the right way.

I pulled 5 of the biggest takeaways.

The fastest-growing ecom brands haven't swapped paid ads for CTV. They're running them together. See, CTV ads build name recognition.

And when audiences recognize your name, they click on your Meta ads. They convert.

This is called blended CAC, and it basically means your paid ads are working harder thanks to your CTV strategy.

And no, you don't need a 6- or 7- (or 8-)figure budget to get started.

I'm hosting a free session on April 29th on how to do this. Grab your spot.

Aaron is the co-founder of Paul Street, an agency that runs PR affiliate, mass media performance, influencer, and media buyer affiliate programs for some of the best brands in consumer. He’s been in the affiliate space for six years, and his perspective on what affiliate actually means has evolved well past the standard platform and commission model.

The first thing he told me: PR is no longer a discovery channel. Nobody is finding your brand through a Forbes article in 2025. That’s just not how it works anymore. What PR does now is build the credibility foundation that makes affiliates willing to work with you and makes consumers comfortable buying when they see your ad on Facebook. It’s a sprint tool for specific moments. A fundraise. A product launch. A celebrity partnership. Not an ongoing retainer you’re paying $15K a month for.

But the part of this conversation that really got me was media buyer affiliates. Let me tell you why this matters.

These are independent operators who run paid traffic on any channel available. Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, AppLovin. They get paid on a pure CPA model. A brand agrees to pay $150 per sale. The affiliate acquires customers for $80. They keep the $70 spread. The best ones are doing 1,200 to 1,500 sales per day on a single offer. Read that again.

These operators came up in the black hat era when there was no compliance or oversight. That forced them to become elite storytellers and landing page builders out of necessity. The brands that figured out how to work with them, like Goalie, Athletic Greens, and Pet Lab, used them to scale faster than their own paid channels ever could. The Joe Rogan Alpha Brain advertorial at article.onnit.com is one of the cleaner examples still worth studying.

Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

• PR is now a credibility tool, not a discovery channel: I need you to internalize this. The days of a Fortune placement sending qualified traffic to your site are mostly over. What PR does now is give affiliates a reason to care about your brand and give consumers a reason to trust it. Aaron’s approach is sprint-based: use PR around a specific story moment (new product, celebrity partnership, fundraise), not as a monthly retainer chasing placements. If you’re spending $10K+ a month on a PR retainer with no specific story to tell, that money is better spent elsewhere.
• Your affiliate program is a mirror of how the market sees your brand: This one’s uncomfortable but it’s true. If your top affiliates aren’t excited about an offer, that’s data. Affiliates check organic publisher coverage before agreeing to work with a brand. If no one is writing about you independently, the best partners won’t touch you. The quality of your affiliate program tracks closely with the overall health of your brand. It’s like a real-time brand health score you’re not paying attention to.
• Media buyer affiliates are the most underused growth channel in DTC: These operators have been running traffic and building advertorials since before most DTC brands existed. They know what converts better than most internal paid teams because they’ve been doing it for a decade and they only get paid when something works. Zero risk for you. If you’re willing to offer a competitive CPA and give them room to build their own creative and funnels, the scale is significant.
• Every affiliate deal is a negotiation, not a rate card: The best affiliate relationships involve custom structures. Exclusivity arrangements. Whitelisting deals where the affiliate runs traffic from your Facebook account. CPC tests to validate content before moving to CPA. Flat fees to hold a top placement in a listicle. Aaron’s point is clear: thinking about affiliate as a platform you set up and leave is how brands end up with coupon sites and nothing else. Treat it like a partnership or don’t bother.
• 80% of your affiliate revenue will come from 15-20% of your partners: That concentration is the starting point for how to allocate attention. Find those partners, understand what they need to keep scaling, and structure the relationship to make it worth their while to stay exclusive or prioritize your offer. That might mean a higher CPA, access to better creative, or paid newsletter placements on top of commission. The math works if the relationship works.

If you’ve never seriously looked at affiliate as a growth channel, this episode is the place to start. Not the watered-down version. The real one. Aaron is coming back for a part two on attribution and deal rollout by brand size, and I’m looking forward to that one.

It’s Thursday. Week’s almost done. Have a great weekend, stay hydrated, and I’ll see you Sunday.

Nik

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