Ahrefs’ Affiliate Program. We Don’t Have One (& Here’s Why)
By Tim Soulo
CMO at Ahrefs
While browsing search queries in our Google Search Console, we noticed that quite a few people search for “ahrefs affiliate program” each month. And, unfortunately, the pages that rank at the top seem quite sketchy (and misleading).
So let’s set things straight.
Ahrefs does not have an affiliate program
We used to have one around five years ago, but we had to discontinue it for several reasons (see below).
So today, in 2023, we don’t have an affiliate program.
And we have no plans to relaunch it in the future.
If you notice a blogger linking to our website with an affiliate link, it's probably from an old article. Either way, that affiliate link no longer works.
Why did we discontinue our affiliate program?
Just in case you’re interested, there were two main reasons why we did that:
- It created technical debt on the billing side. As our software evolved, so did our billing. We had to move between various payment processors and introduce new packages and add-ons. Supporting all these changes with an affiliate program took a lot of work.
- 3% of our affiliates generated 90% of leads. After a few years of running our affiliate program, we noticed that most affiliates sent us few or no leads. As for our top affiliates, we realized we could strike some personalized deals with them—which didn't require having an affiliate program. (Interested in partnering with us? Reach out to Igor.)
So there's that!
Tim Soulo is the Chief Marketing Officer and Product advisor at Ahrefs. For the past 12 years Tim has been a prolific and notable contributor to the industries of SEO and digital marketing.
His data research studies were cited by thousands of online publications including Inc, Techcrunch and Venturebeat and he has spoken at some of the largest industry conferences around the globe, such as PubCon (Las Vegas, US), BrightonSEO (Brighton, UK) and Digital Marketers Australia Conference (Melbourne, AU).
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