$15m migrated, performance intact
A global accessories brand with an affiliate program generating $15m a year. The program was run by an agency, so the brand had no direct control over it — and it sat on a network the brand no longer wanted to work with. Moving was the right decision. Moving badly would have been expensive.
Vertical
Accessories
Focus
Network migration
The problem
Network migration
Network migrations are one of the most delicate operations in affiliate. Every publisher has to swap links, contracts have to be re-signed, tracking has to be rebuilt — and all of it has to happen while the program keeps trading. Done badly, a migration means weeks of lost revenue and publishers who quietly deprioritise the brand and never come back. The goal of a good migration is that, from the outside, nothing appears to change: publishers keep earning, tracking never gaps, revenue doesn’t dip.
What I did
What an affiliate network migration involves
A migration moves a live program from one network to another without publishers, tracking or revenue noticing. Every link, contract and tracking pixel changes while the program keeps trading, so the order of operations is everything.
Coordinate every party in the move. The brand, legal on both sides, the account teams at the outgoing and incoming networks, and the publishers themselves.
Sequence the migration by value. Top-earning publishers moved first, with links live on the new network before anything was switched off on the old one.
Brief publishers early and directly, so nobody discovered the migration through a dead link or a missing commission.
Keep commercial terms continuous through the move, so no partner had a reason to pause promotion while the paperwork caught up.
Annual program revenue
Publishers migrated
To full pre-migration run rate
The results
What changed
Four weeks after cutover the program was trading at its normal run rate on the new network.
145 publishers moved, relationships intact, with no gap in tracking or commission.
The brand was in direct control of its program for the first time, instead of through an agency.
Common questions
01
Do you lose revenue when switching affiliate networks?
02
How long does an affiliate network migration take?
03
Should I tell publishers before migrating networks?
04
Why would a brand move affiliate networks?
05
