Scaling Affiliate Marketing in a Complex Industry: Ohdoki’s Long-Term Growth Story with Tapfiliate

Affiliate marketing rarely feels the same in highly regulated and unconventional industries, and Ohdoki’s journey is a clear example of that. 

Discover how Ohdoki, a technology-driven hardware company, built a long-term affiliate growth channel with Tapfiliate while working with a small, distributed team.

Affiliate marketing has been crucial for us from the very beginning. Our partners are a key and important part of our sales.

Maria LunaOhdoki

Company background

Ohdoki is a Norway-based hardware company operating in the adult tech space. The team is best known for The Handy, a connected device designed to integrate with third-party software platforms and digital experiences.

From the very beginning, Ohdoki positioned itself as a technology company first. Instead of concentrating on traditional adult retail models, the team built an open, integration-friendly product designed to work closely with external platforms and partners.

Founded in 2018, Ohdoki grew from a small product startup into a globally distributed team. While its headquarters remain in Norway, the company operates across multiple regions and markets. This setup shaped how the team approaches growth, partnerships, and long-term strategy.

As Maria explains, this product-first mindset naturally shaped the company’s later approach to affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing in a complex industry

Playing in the field of the adult tech industry adds an extra layer of complexity to affiliate marketing. As Maria explains, the usual growth playbooks rarely apply.

Marketing in the adult space comes with a lot of limitations. From the beginning, we’ve focused on keeping our brand tech-driven and lifestyle-oriented.

Maria LunaOhdoki

Advertising restrictions vary significantly across markets, mainstream paid acquisition channels are often unavailable, and brand positioning requires constant balance. For Ohdoki, this meant relying less on short-term promotional tactics and more on trusted, long-term partnerships.

Affiliate marketing became a core channel because it aligned naturally with how the product works. The company collaborates closely with software platforms, adult websites, and creators who integrate The Handy into their ecosystems and contribute directly to the customer journey.

Our main partners are also our top affiliates, and they play a key role in our sales. — Maria Luna, Ohdoki

At this point, a few things became essential for scaling the program sustainably:

• Reliable tracking across different partner models;
• Clear attribution for complex sales paths;
• The structure, built for long-term collaboration.

Without this foundation, growing affiliate partnerships in such a complex environment would have been challenging.

Why affiliate marketing became a core growth channel

Since Ohdoki developed its product to integrate with third-party software, partnerships have become a natural part of the company’s business model. And here, affiliates are more than simply promoters; they are an integral part of the broader ecosystem.

According to Maria, the team made a conscious decision early on to treat affiliate marketing as a long-term growth strategy rather than an experiment. This allowed Ohdoki to build relationships with partners that evolve and avoid ongoing program structure upgrades.

Moreover, affiliate marketing also gave the team flexibility. It enabled collaboration with different partner types while maintaining a consistent framework for tracking performance and rewarding contributions.

Choosing Tapfiliate as a long-term partner

When evaluating affiliate software, Ohdoki prioritized practical needs over marketing’s catchy, ambitious feature lists. As Maria recalls, the team was still relatively small and lacked dedicated affiliate specialists.

We were a very small team, and we needed an easy tool that everyone could understand, not just the affiliate manager. — Maria Luna, Ohdoki

The goal was to find a solution that could support different partner types while remaining intuitive and cost-effective. And Tapfiliate fits naturally into this setup, allowing the team to launch and manage an affiliate program without adding unnecessary operational overhead.

Thus, instead of rebuilding the structure as the company evolved, Ohdoki concentrated on refining partnerships and incentives while keeping the foundation intact.

How Ohdoki uses Tapfiliate today

Today, Ohdoki uses Tapfiliate to manage a diverse affiliate ecosystem that continues to grow alongside the business. This includes large adult platforms, software partners integrating The Handy into their products, and smaller creators exploring new promotional formats.

The program relies on flexible commission models and bonus incentives that help reward performance while keeping day-to-day operations manageable.

The bonus program caught our attention from the very beginning, and it’s something we implemented right away.

Maria LunaOhdoki

This setup makes it easier for the team to segment partners, test new incentive structures, and adjust commissions as new opportunities emerge, without adding complexity to the workflow.

For companies like Ohdoki, where different partner types require different incentive models, flexibility in reward structures becomes a strategic advantage. Tapfiliate supports this approach through a range of flexible commission and incentive options, including:

Flexible commission and reward options

• Fixed or percentage-based commissions
• Recurring and lifetime commissions 
• Performance-based bonuses 
• Extra and segment-specific commission types 

By combining these tools, teams can refine how they reward affiliates without ever having to rebuild the core program structure.

Results beyond numbers

Rather than chasing short-term wins, Ohdoki built its affiliate program with long-term stability in mind.

As the program matured, affiliate marketing became deeply integrated into the company’s broader growth strategy. Partner relationships strengthened, the structure remained stable, and new opportunities could be explored without major restructuring.

Looking ahead

Affiliate marketing remains a key pillar of Ohdoki’s future plans. The team continues to explore new partnerships, refine existing collaborations, and dedicate additional resources to affiliate growth.

There’s still a lot of untapped potential in affiliate marketing for us. — Maria Luna, Ohdoki

With Tapfiliate as a long-term partner, Ohdoki is well-positioned to scale its affiliate strategy further while staying aligned with its product-first and technology-driven approach.

What made this partnership work

Looking back, a few factors consistently shaped how Ohdoki built and scaled its affiliate program with Tapfiliate:

• A stable foundation from the start
  The program was designed to scale without frequent structural changes, allowing the team to focus on partnerships rather than rebuilding setups.
• Flexibility without operational complexity
  Different partner types, incentive models, and bonus structures could evolve over time without adding friction to day-to-day management.
• An intuitive platform for a small, distributed team
  Tapfiliate’s ease of use made it possible to manage the program without dedicated affiliate specialists or heavy technical involvement.
  
• Long-term alignment rather than short-term tactics
  Instead of optimizing for quick wins, the setup supported sustainable growth and long-lasting partner relationships.
  

For Ohdoki, this combination made affiliate marketing not just a viable channel, but a reliable part of the company’s long-term growth strategy.

Ohdoki is one success story. Yours could be next.
Try Tapfiliate for free and build an affiliate program designed for long-term growth.

Ohdoki is one success story. Yours could be next.
Try Tapfiliate for free and build an affiliate program designed for ling-term growth.
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