Many affiliates can drive plenty of traffic and very little revenue.

David Lomidze, Co-FounderContext AI

Most affiliate programs eventually run into the same challenge.

Recruiting affiliates is relatively easy. Finding the partners who consistently bring qualified traffic, conversions, and revenue is much harder.

Nemora, an AI companionship platform, discovered that firsthand while expanding beyond paid advertising.

The team launched an affiliate program to reach new audiences and diversify customer acquisition.

What followed proved to be a valuable lesson in identifying the right partners, accurately measuring performance, and building an affiliate channel that could support long-term growth.

Today, Nemora uses Tapfiliate to manage its affiliate program, track partner performance, and understand which affiliates contribute to customer acquisition.

In this story, David Lomidze, Co-Founder of Context AI, the company behind Nemora, shares what the team learned while building an affiliate program in one of the most competitive AI markets today.

The Challenge: Growing Beyond a Single Acquisition Channel

Google Ads became Nemora’s primary acquisition channel early on and remains an important source of new customers today.

The Story

When Nemora entered the market three years ago, the AI landscape was far less crowded. Competition was lower, customer acquisition costs were more predictable, and scaling campaigns was significantly easier than it is today.

As the market expanded, that started to change.

New competitors entered the space, advertising costs increased, and performance became harder to predict from month to month.

That’s why the conversation shifted from scaling a single channel to reducing dependence on it.

Affiliate marketing became one of several initiatives Nemora explored alongside CPA partnerships and other acquisition efforts.

The team saw it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, test additional traffic sources, and build a more resilient acquisition strategy over time.

More Affiliates Didn’t Automatically Mean Better Results

Launching the affiliate program was relatively straightforward.

The real challenge appeared later.

As more affiliates joined the program, the team started noticing something unexpected: a growing affiliate roster didn’t necessarily translate into more customers.

Some partners never became active. Others generated plenty of traffic but very few conversions.

Meanwhile, a handful of smaller affiliates were quietly delivering much stronger results.

One affiliate generated more than 200,000 visitors for Nemora.

At first glance, the partnership looked successful.

The traffic numbers were impressive. The conversion data told a very different story.

Despite the high traffic volume, the campaign produced only a small number of customers and eventually stopped delivering results.

Experiences like this gradually changed the way the team evaluated affiliate performance.

Looking at traffic volume or affiliate signups was no longer enough. The bigger challenge was understanding which partners were actually contributing to customer growth.

When the Numbers Didn’t Add Up

The more the program grew, the more obvious this challenge became.

On paper, the affiliate program looked healthy. New affiliates continued joining, traffic numbers kept growing, and there was no shortage of potential partners interested in promoting the product.

What those numbers didn’t reveal was which partnerships were genuinely contributing to growth.

Some affiliates generated impressive traffic volumes but little business impact. Others delivered far better results despite sending significantly fewer visitors.

The team needed a way to separate activity from performance and identify the partners worth investing more time and attention into.

That raised a question many affiliate managers eventually face:

How do you identify the affiliates worth investing in?

Tracking What Matters

To answer that question, Nemora needed more visibility into what was happening across the program.

Traffic alone wasn’t enough.

The team wanted to understand which affiliates were generating signups, which partners were bringing in paying customers, and which traffic sources were worth investing in further.

Looking Beyond Clicks and Traffic

That’s where Tapfiliate became part of the process.

Instead of relying on traffic numbers alone, the team could compare affiliate performance across the entire program and see what happened after the click.

Traffic by itself doesn’t tell the full story. You need to know which partners bring customers, not just visitors.

Having access to that data helped Nemora make better decisions about where to focus its efforts.

The team could identify high-performing affiliates, spot potential partnerships, and understand which traffic sources were driving actual business results.

One example stood out.

A single affiliate generated more than 200,000 visitors, yet produced only a small number of conversions.

Without proper attribution, that traffic volume might have looked impressive enough to justify further investment.

The conversion data told a different story.

At the same time, some of the program’s strongest-performing affiliates were generating significantly less traffic but consistently attracting users who were a much better fit for the product.

Those insights helped the team move beyond surface-level metrics and evaluate affiliates based on outcomes rather than activity alone.

Why One Small Affiliate Outperformed Larger Publishers

One of Nemora’s strongest affiliate partnerships didn’t come from a large publisher, media company, or affiliate network.

It came from a niche content creator in Turkey.

The affiliate runs websites focused on AI roleplay games and related topics, attracting an audience that already understands the category and is actively looking for similar products.

Compared to larger affiliates, the traffic volume wasn’t particularly impressive.

The audience fit was.

While some partners generated large amounts of traffic with limited business impact, this affiliate consistently attracted users who were much more likely to engage with the product.

For Nemora, it became a useful reminder that affiliate success isn’t always about scale.

Sometimes the most valuable partners are the ones who understand a very specific audience and know exactly how to reach it.

Everything comes from a good source of traffic.

That lesson continues to influence how the team evaluates new affiliate partnerships today.

Rather than focusing exclusively on traffic volume, Nemora looks closely at audience relevance, conversion performance, and long-term partner potential.

Final Thoughts

For Nemora, affiliate marketing became an important addition to a broader acquisition strategy.

Like many growing companies, they were looking for additional ways to acquire customers without becoming overly dependent on a single channel.

Along the way, the team discovered something many first-time program owners learn sooner or later:

Launching an affiliate program is relatively easy.

Building a successful one takes considerably more work.

Finding the right partners, helping them understand the product, providing the right assets, and maintaining strong relationships all play an important role in long-term success.

Affiliate marketplace

That’s one of the reasons we’re continuing to invest in the Tapfiliate Marketplace.

Over the years, we’ve seen the same challenge come up again and again: recruiting affiliates is rarely the difficult part. Finding partners who are genuinely relevant to your audience and your product is where most programs succeed or fail.

The goal of the Marketplace is simple: help advertisers discover new affiliate opportunities and help affiliates find programs that are a strong fit for their audience.

Want to build your own affiliate program?

Start your free trial and see how Tapfiliate can help you recruit, track, and grow your affiliate partnerships.