Setting up an affiliate program for a product launch doesn't have to be complicated—but most businesses do it completely wrong. For his $100 Million Leads book launch, Alex Hormozi generated 500,000 registrations, and nearly one-third of those people had never heard of him before. They showed up because someone else told them to. That someone else was an affiliate. Not a paid media buyer. Not a Facebook ad. A real person with a real audience who had a real reason to spread the word. Here's the full tactical breakdown of exactly how that machine was built—and how you can copy it.

How Do You Set Up an Affiliate Program for a Launch?

An affiliate is simply a lead getter. It's an independent business or individual who tells their audience to check out your stuff—in exchange for money, free products, or both. Think of them like referrals on the surface, but under the hood they operate more like a business partnership. They have their own audiences, their own credibility, and their own incentives.

The entire affiliate system Hormozi built for his $100 Million Money Models launch rests on four pillars working in sequence:

  • The Offer — What are you giving affiliates in exchange for their promotion?
  • The Machine — Where do affiliates sign up, get their links, and track performance?
  • The Promotion — How do you get people to actually become affiliates?
  • The Activation — How do you make sure affiliates follow through and succeed?

Miss any one of these four pieces, and the whole system breaks down. Most businesses stop at the offer and then wonder why nobody is promoting their product.

What Is a Two-Tier Affiliate Structure and Why Does It Work?

A two-tier affiliate structure means you have compelling prizes and incentives for the top performers and for the everyday person with a small audience. You don't want a system that only rewards whales, because you'll lose the long tail—the people who can bring in 10, 20, or 30 friends from a Slack group, a WhatsApp chat, or a local community.

Here's how Hormozi structured it for his launch:

Top 10 Affiliates

The top 10 people on the leaderboard earn an in-person fireside Q&A at Hormozi's headquarters, plus a private dinner. The genius here isn't just the exclusivity—it's that the prize benefits the affiliate's audience, not just the affiliate. Their followers can submit questions to be asked on their behalf. So the affiliate isn't hard-closing their audience on a product. They're bringing a gift to their community. That distinction protects the affiliate's goodwill and dramatically increases engagement.

Top 50 Affiliates

The next tier earns an in-person group Q&A session at headquarters. They get to be in the room, network with other top affiliates, and still have a shot at getting a question answered. It's an approximation of the top-10 experience—still incredibly valuable, still in person.

10+ Opt-Ins (The Long Tail)

Anyone who drives at least 10 opt-ins gets access to an exclusive audiobook—not the launch book, but a separate recording Hormozi made specifically for affiliates: 70+ one-minute tactics that drive profit in businesses. They also get entered into a raffle for one of 50 seats at the in-person event, plus a recording of the entire session afterward. The minimum bar is set at 10 because the friction is low—it's just an email opt-in—so the threshold needs to be high enough to mean something.

The underlying principle: the prizes you give affiliates must benefit their audience, not just the affiliate. When the affiliate's followers have a reason to click the link, the affiliate doesn't feel like they're burning goodwill. Everyone wins.

How Do You Create an Affiliate Offer People Actually Want?

Start where you'd start with any business offer—what are you giving and why should anyone care? For affiliates, your offer options are money, free stuff, or a combination of both. Hormozi chose free stuff for this launch for two reasons: the paperwork headache of issuing 1099s to thousands of people, and the fact that non-monetary value can far exceed a percentage-based cash kickback—especially when the product being promoted isn't high-ticket.

When designing your affiliate offer, prioritize these qualities:

  • Make it big and sexy at the top. Something unscalable and exclusive—like an in-person Q&A that only 10 people can attend—creates real desire and real competition.
  • Create approximations on the way down. Each tier should feel like a meaningful step toward the top prize, not a consolation prize. Recordings, raffles, and group access all serve this purpose.
  • Benefit three parties. You, the affiliate, and the affiliate's audience. If it doesn't serve all three, redesign it.

Should You Pay Affiliates Cash or Give Them Free Stuff?

Both work, but the right answer depends on your product and your margins. Cash commissions make sense for high-ticket products where a 10–20% payout feels significant. For lower-priced products like books, experiential prizes or exclusive access can be worth more to a motivated promoter than a few dollars per referral. The key insight: if you have something remarkable to offer—access, experiences, insider knowledge—lean into that. It's often more motivating than a check, and it creates a story the affiliate can tell their audience.

How Do You Actually Recruit Affiliates to Promote Your Stuff?

Once the offer is built, you need a place for people to learn about it and a plan to drive traffic there. Hormozi uses an affiliate sales page—essentially a landing page that sells people on becoming a promoter. It explains the prizes, the mechanics (opt in, get a custom link, track the leaderboard), and how you'll support them along the way.

To drive traffic to that page, he uses multiple channels simultaneously:

  • Email to his existing list — Two emails max. One announcement, one reminder. He doesn't want to spend his email equity promoting the affiliate program instead of the actual book.
  • Last year's affiliates — A separate, targeted email to the 30,000+ people who promoted the previous launch. They already know the system works. A simple "want to run it back?" is enough.
  • Thank-you page integration — Every person who pre-orders the book lands on a thank-you page. At the bottom sits a button: want to earn free prizes by sharing this? One click takes them to the affiliate sales page. The buyer funnel feeds the affiliate funnel automatically.
  • Content like this video — A YouTube video that explains the entire affiliate machine while simultaneously functioning as affiliate recruitment content. It's both education and promotion, wrapped in one.

How Do You Onboard Affiliates So They Don't Go Silent?

Recruiting affiliates is only half the battle. Most affiliate programs fail at activation—people sign up and then do absolutely nothing. The solution is to remove every possible point of friction and create immediate feedback loops.

Here's the onboarding sequence that actually works:

  • Immediate custom link. The moment someone signs up, they get their unique tracking link. This signals that your attribution is real and that their referrals will be counted. No custom link, no trust.
  • Live leaderboard. Affiliates can see exactly where they rank in real time. People who are competing want to know their position daily. The leaderboard is that feedback loop. Send it frequently.
  • Pre-built collateral. Emails, social posts, ad copy, text message scripts—all written, tested, and ready to copy-paste. Don't ask affiliates to build a campaign from scratch. That's a big ask that most people will ignore. Hand them what's already working.
  • Behind-the-scenes data. For Hormozi's audience specifically, sharing how each email is performing, which ads are converting, and what's happening inside the launch is a major draw. Affiliates get to learn the process in real time—making it one of the most underrated benefits of participating.

What Marketing Collateral Should You Give Your Affiliates?

Think of affiliate collateral in two phases: what you launch with, and what you update based on performance.

Phase one is your Black Book—a complete pack of plug-and-play assets covering every major channel: email sequences, social media posts, paid ad creative, and text message templates for Slack groups, WhatsApp threads, and work channels. Write everything you'd want a top-performing marketer to have, then hand it to everyone.

Phase two is the winners update. As the launch runs, you surface which hooks, angles, and formats are outperforming. Share that data with your affiliates so they can double down on what's working. The affiliates who are actually competing will use this to pull ahead. The ones who aren't competing will appreciate feeling like insiders.

One final note: make sure your collateral is channel-specific. Instagram creators need short captions and visual hooks. Email newsletter writers need longer-form copy. Paid media buyers need ad creative that's pre-approved and ready to run. The moment there's friction between an affiliate's channel and your assets, they stop promoting. Build for every type of promoter, and you'll capture every type of audience.

The Bottom Line: Advertising for Free Actually Works

Affiliate marketing—whether you call it influencer advertising, referrals, joint ventures, or centers of influence—is fundamentally the same thing: people telling other people about your stuff. When you build a system that makes it worth their while, makes it easy to participate, and makes it rewarding to perform, you unlock a channel that scales in ways paid media simply can't match. Hormozi's affiliate program powered a significant portion of his companies' growth across multiple businesses. The mechanics aren't complicated. The execution just has to be deliberate.