The OG Publisher's Blueprint for Building Partnerships That Actually Last

Your affiliate program has hundreds of approved publishers, but only a handful are actively promoting you. Sound familiar? Stuart Miles, founder of Squirrel and former owner of Pocket-lint (which he grew to 12.5 million monthly readers before exiting), reveals why most affiliate managers are accidentally destroying publisher relationships before they even begin. Lee-Ann and Stuart discuss why product feeds matter more than commission rates, and the six tactical shifts that separate transactional affiliate programs from genuine partnerships that drive consistent revenue.

Talking Points Include:

• The relevance test every affiliate manager fails – how understanding audience profiles transforms your outreach from spam into valuable partnership opportunities
• Why making it harder for publishers to link to you kills conversions – the 15-minute friction point that costs you thousands in lost sales, and how removing barriers between story ideas and affiliate links changes everything
• The coffee shop approach to publisher relationships – why the best partnerships happen outside of product launches and promotional cycles, and what real-life relationship building looks like in 2026

Listen to Find Out More About:

• Why standardised product feeds matter more than you think, and how retailers without them are losing visibility across major publisher platforms
• The exact moment Stuart realised Pocket-lint competitors were stealing his affiliate links, and what Amazon's phone call revealed about attribution tracking
• How international audience expansion forced Pocket-lint to build automated localisation, and why showing UK readers US pricing destroys conversion rates
• The pub test Stuart used with new journalists to determine if a story was actually worth publishing, and how this filter led to explosive audience growth
• Why retailers that can't beat Amazon on price can still win publisher placements through customer service ratings and relevance scoring
• What happened when Stuart's team spent more time finding affiliate links than writing stories, and the efficiency breakthrough that led to Squirrel's creation

Call to Action

Ready to transform how you work with publisher partners? The strategies Stuart shared didn't come from theory – they came from two decades in the trenches building one of the world's most successful consumer technology publications. If you're serious about moving beyond transactional affiliate relationships into genuine partnerships that drive consistent revenue, subscribe to Affiverse's Affiliate Marketing newsletter for weekly insights that help you stay ahead of industry shifts. Our team translates complex partnership strategies into actionable frameworks you can implement immediately.

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