How To Find And Analyze Affiliate Competitors [+7 Best Analysis Tools]

Let’s face it: The more competitive your affiliate marketing niche – especially in high-ticket niches – the more important it is to analyze the competition so you can find your unique selling proposition and ultimately beat other affiliates or advertisers.

Skillful affiliate competitor analysis helps maximize the effectiveness of your lead generation and sales campaigns. And it’s not that hard if you have a good framework – provided below – and access to analytics tools.

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Now, let me walk you through the best affiliate competitor analysis algorithm step by step.

Step 1 – Identify Your Main Competitors

The first step to outperforming your competition is to identify who they are. Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush allow you to analyze the affiliate marketing competition and link your target keywords to competitors. Then you can understand who you’re up against and where opportunities lie.

Read also: Affiliate Marketing Metrics and KPIs to Track

How To Conduct Affiliate Competitor Analysis in Ahrefs

Imagine you’re an affiliate looking to promote solar panels in the United States. A great starting point for your research is identifying the most popular keywords in the niche, such as “solar:”

However, the goal of keyword research is to find low-competition keywords with high search volume, giving you a good chance of ranking high in SERPs. Keep in mind that only the first few search results receive significant traffic, while the second page gets almost no exposure.

For this reason, “solar” is an extremely competitive keyword, and it’s not ideal since it’s broad and non-commercial—you can’t tell if users are looking for solar panels or general information.

To refine your search, you’ll need to dig deeper.

Navigate to “Matching Terms:

Adjust the search results to display low-competition, high-volume keywords. Set the keyword difficulty (in this example, I’ve capped it at 30) and a minimum search volume (I’ve also set this to 30).

Use the “Include” field to focus on commercial keywords typically used in listings and reviews, such as “best,” “top,” “review,” or “vs.” 

Once you’ve applied these filters, you’ll generate a list of high-volume, low-competition commercial keywords:

Now you have 13 actionable keywords that you can explore in more detail. These keywords get at least 1,000 monthly searches, but lower-volume keywords may also be valuable. It might make sense to dive deeper into these keywords to discover good matches.

One crucial factor to consider when researching keywords is their commercial value, which you can gauge by checking the CPC (cost per click) column. In my case, the most valuable keywords are “best solar company;” the least expensive ones are “best solar charger” and “best solar phone charger.”

However, CPC alone doesn’t give you the full picture, as it’s just an estimate for a keyword. To get a clearer idea, you have to analyze all keywords or identify companies ranking for your target keywords (direct competitors).

Read also: Do Affiliate Links Hurt SEO? Busting the Myth that Kills Your Money

How to Find Competitors in Affiliate Marketing using Ahrefs

To identify affiliate websites that could be your competitors, enter your target keyword in Ahrefs’ Content Explorer. Ideally, use one of the major keywords you want to rank for (in this case, I used “best solar company”) and select the “In Title” filter to display pages with that keyword in their title:

You’ll then see a comprehensive list of websites containing “best solar company” in their webpage titles, along with key metrics like domain rating, traffic volume, and estimated traffic cost.

Now, it’s time to sift through the results and focus on relevant competitors. 

I identified six websites with high traffic value, but I can exclude sites like Forbes and MarketWatch at once because I know they are not affiliate-geared websites. So, I can begin my analysis with https://solarreviews.com/ to determine if it’s an affiliate site and proceed with further research from there.

How To Find An Affiliate Niche Using Ahrefs

If you’re unsure about your niche or want to refine your focus, you can reverse-engineer affiliate marketing by analyzing what affiliates are linking to large advertisers like Amazon. This approach can help you discover niches where competition is manageable and profitability is high.

Start by entering the advertiser’s website (e.g., Amazon) into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer:

Next, navigate to the backlinks section to see which sites are referring traffic to Amazon. To narrow your results, filter by domain rating, traffic volume, and language, and choose to display one link per domain. This ensures you get one affiliate website per result.

From there, look for websites with lower domain ratings but high traffic, ideally from a niche that interests you. After identifying a site, evaluate its commercial value to further refine your search.

Once you have a shortlist of competitor websites, check what programs they promote besides Amazon Associates (or the advertiser you’re analyzing). Most affiliates participate in multiple programs, so you may uncover niche programs you hadn’t considered.

Step 2 – Examine Their Unique Selling Proposition

Whether you’re an advertiser or affiliate, one of the most effective ways to analyze your competition is by researching competitor affiliate programs. This gives you several advantages: as an advertiser, you can design a more competitive program; as an affiliate, you’ll learn which programs to target and how much you can earn.

Read also: How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing Programs

Here are the key elements to examine in an affiliate program:

Commission Size and Structure

It’s obvious that larger commissions make an affiliate program more attractive, but commission sizes vary by industry and other factors. 

Here are general benchmarks:

• Physical products: up to 10%
• Digital products – 20% to 40%
• Financial products – up to 50%

However, it’s not just about the size of the payout. Some programs offer tiered commissions, rewarding affiliates with higher payouts as they generate more customers. Others include sub-affiliate networks, where affiliates can earn additional income from affiliates they recruit.

Read also: How To Pay Affiliates en Masse

The commission structure is also important. Most networks charge advertisers a percentage of the payout, typically up to 30%, so the latter usually look for networks with lower fees to maximize profitability. However, some networks may also charge affiliates.

Cookie Duration

The longer the cookie duration, the greater the chance the affiliate will receive commissions for all associated purchases. The standard cookie duration is 30 days, so you could increase it to get an edge over other advertisers or, if you’re an affiliate, look for a program with a longer cookie duration.

Read also: How Google’s Decision to Keep Cookies Affects Advertisers & Affiliates

Accepted Traffic

Understanding the type of traffic your competitors accept or generate is crucial to identifying gaps or under-served regions you can cater to. For instance, if you sell solar panels in rural areas, you might discover limited competition, such as a lack of qualified installation teams in specific locations.

You could also explore the traffic sources your competitors reject. While there are niche-specific reasons for blocking certain traffic (e.g., gambling or adult sites), there may be instances where taking a calculated risk could pay off; for example, social media traffic.

Read also: Free Traffic Sources for Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Tracking Software

Advertisers, affiliates, and affiliate networks can benefit galore from robust tracking and management software, especially when handling high traffic volumes. 

With solutions like Lynx, you can identify where your leads come from, how they interact with affiliates or advertisers, and what drives conversions.

Creative Materials

As an advertiser, you’d like to show that promoting your brand is easy, and they don’t need to create ads themselves. This is where templates come into play: banners, emails, product feeds, landing pages, social media content, promo codes, and other branded assets.

Step 3 – Evaluate Their Engagement Strategies

Now that you know who your competitors are and what they offer, you can analyze their traffic channels and engagement strategies. Knowing where they generate traffic and how the customer journey evolves will help you shape your sales funnel.

Engagement-wise, tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can provide insights into competitors’ keywords and smaller elements like titles and descriptions. To test competitors’ social media and email acquisition strategies, you can subscribe to their social media accounts and newsletters.

Read also: How to Master Affiliate Marketing on LinkedIn

The same can be done for their website, landing pages, and blog.

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When it comes to paid advertising, intelligence software like SpyFU, AdSpy, and WhatRunsWhere can help you research through a massive database of paid ads to see what creatives your competitors use, how they engage with their audience, and which ads perform better.

Step 4 – Find Out What Software They Use

By and large, the software used for managing affiliate marketing campaigns determines the accuracy and ultimate success of these campaigns, especially if we’re talking about larger advertisers and affiliate networks that handle thousands of acquisitions daily.

Read also: Your Best 14 Paid Media Tools for Affiliate Marketing

Here are some essential tools marketers use aside from link tracking software:

Lead and Call Management Software

In Step 1, you’ve estimated the competitor traffic and its approximate value, but this doesn’t mean much unless advertisers are crafty enough to convert potential customers into clients. For that, bigger businesses usually use dedicated lead management systems that help them track, distribute, and analyze web and call leads on the fly and strategically.

Read also: How to Create Affiliate Marketing Content Using Generative AI

A good example of an effective lead management suite is a combination of LMS Sync and Call Logic software: the first takes care of web leads, while the latter covers phone calls from top to bottom, giving sales reps a head start in the conversation while allowing businesses to control multiple campaigns from a single dashboard.

Read also: Your Best Guide To Pay-Per-Call Affiliate Marketing

Here’s what it looks like:

Take a product tour to experience the synergy of Phonexa’s eight proprietary performance marketing products. No strings attached – you can explore the software suite for free.

User Behavior Analytics Software

For affiliates and advertisers, it’s crucial to know how customers interact on their website: where they click, which elements they engage with, and what facilitates and hinders conversions. Doing this in-depth analysis is only possible with special user behavior software.

Here’s how on-site user behavior analytics software works:

 

Predictive Modeling Software

As businesses or affiliates scale, they aim to minimize risks by gradually increasing budgets. Predictive modeling software allows you to simulate future campaigns based on business data and market trends, reducing risks and helping you test multiple strategies before committing.

 

Step 5 – Finally, Play to Your Strengths

Once you’ve identified gaps in the market and areas where you excel, leverage those strengths. Focus on what you do best while adapting to the ever-evolving market landscape.

The good news? Much of this work can now be automated, allowing you to focus on the bigger picture.

Top 7 Tools for Affiliate Competitor Analysis

Ahrefs – Organic Traffic Analysis of Competitor Affiliates

Ahrefs is one of the top tools for analyzing affiliate competitors, particularly in organic traffic. From backlink profiles to website content analysis and content gap identification, Ahrefs helps you develop a cost-effective lead generation strategy to gain market share.

I’ve already covered how to use Ahrefs, so I won’t repeat that here. However, it’s worth mentioning that they’ve recently introduced a discounted Starter plan for $29 per month.

SEMrush – Organic and Paid Traffic Analysis of Competitor Affiliates

While Ahrefs focuses on keywords, backlinks, and content, SEMrush also covers paid search, making it an excellent tool for comprehensive competitor analysis. It includes tools for organic and paid traffic, social media tracking, and rank tracking. 

SEMrush provides five key competitor analysis tools:

• Traffic Analytics
• Organic Research
• Advertising Research
• Social Media Tracker
• Map Rank Tracker

SEMrush offers a 7-day free trial, so you can test its features before committing.

BuzzSumo – SMM Analysis of Competitor Affiliates

BuzzSumo is a leading tool for social media analytics, helping you track competitor affiliates’ social media performance. It offers insights into backlinks, social engagement (shares and likes), and trending content. You can also identify key influencers in your niche and see how they promote your competitors’ content.

BuzzSumo helps you spot trends and evergreen content that maintain long-term engagement. It offers a 7-day free trial for new users.

There’s a 7-day free trial to try the software.

SpyFu – PPC and SEO Analysis of Competitor Affiliates

SpyFu is an excellent tool for PPC research, allowing you to see which keywords competitors are bidding on in Google Ads, along with their ad creatives. You can also use SpyFu to uncover SEO strategies, spot keyword gaps, and analyze domain intelligence across ranks, ads, and backlinks.

SpyFu currently offers a basic plan starting at $9 per month (limited-time offer).

Similarweb – Organic and Paid Traffic Analysis of Competitor Affiliates

Similarweb is a comprehensive toolkit for in-depth analytics of competitor affiliate, SEO, and PPC campaigns. With all essential data stored in their tracker, you can analyze up to 25 affiliates simultaneously.

As an advertiser, you can use Similarweb to choose the best-performing affiliates based on their reach, traffic, and engagement. Likewise, you can synergize your affiliate and referral campaigns, qualifying existing referrals and monitoring your competitors’ practices.

There’s a 7-day free trial to get the hang of the software.

AdSpy – Social Media Traffic Analysis of Competitor Affiliates

AdSpy does exactly what its name suggests: analyzes Instagram and Facebook advertising campaigns. You can monitor how other affiliates perform, uncover trending products you can promote, and identify the best market to tap into.

Here are some of the core features of AdSpy:

• Enhances search by the advertiser’s name, ad text, media type, likes, etc.
• Search through social media ad comments
• Demographics analysis of ad clickers
• Finding ads by affiliate networks, affiliates, and offers

Adplexity – Paid Advertising Analysis of Competitor Affiliates

Adplexity is one of the best spy tools for affiliates, granting access to millions of ads across industries, platforms, device types, locations, and other criteria. You can find the most profitable publishers and traffic sources and copy their specific elements like, for example, landing pages.

The platform also provides pre-tested ad copies and visuals, and you can set alerts for your competitors so you do not miss their moves and see how they adapt to the market changes. The data is updated in real-time, so you can always be on the wave’s crest.

How To Build Your Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Tech Stack

As insightful as competitor analysis for affiliate marketing can be, it’s only the first step in building a winning affiliate marketing campaign. Once you’ve researched the market and theorized your strategy, you still have to bring it to life, for which you need the right tech stack.

Here are the two approaches affiliates can take:

• Smaller affiliates may simply use the software provided by their advertisers and affiliate networks. More often than not, you can get free access to a basic link tracking toolkit to ensure the correct attribution and get some performance insights.
• Bigger affiliates who need full control over their campaigns – for example, affiliates who have their own product or want to expand – might have to run their own affiliate management software suite that covers affiliate and traditional marketing campaigns.

Read also: 19 Top Affiliate Marketing Software Suites for Affiliate Management

Here are the essential components of a complete affiliate marketing suite:

Affiliates	Advertisers	Affiliate Networks
Basic: Link tracking software to ensure accurate attribution and timely payouts Advanced: Lead management software for affiliates who also offer their own product (and all other software advertisers use)	Basic: Link tracking and customer routing software Advanced: Lead analytics and predictive modeling software to analyze incoming traffic and simulate campaigns with no risk	Everything affiliates and advertisers need, plus a ping tree software for creating an affiliate lead marketplace

Here’s how Phonexa combines it all within one performance marketing software suite:

 

Want to learn how it works? Book a free consultation with software experts.

Manage Your Affiliate and Traditional Marketing Campaigns from One Central Platform

Whether you’re an advertiser or affiliate, it’s much more convenient to manage all your affiliate campaigns from a single place and – if you want an overarching strategy for your business – coordinate them with your other marketing channels like email, SMS, calls, and social media.

This is what Phonexa is about – top-to-bottom marketing management from a single place, with maximum automation and minimum manual effort. Eight proprietary solutions for click and calls will ensure smooth data flows between systems without the need to juggle between systems and reports.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

 

Here are the eight solutions you get at only $100 per month (online price calculator):

Get your all-in-one performance marketing software suite now, or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is affiliate marketing competitor analysis important?

Analyzing the competition in your affiliate marketing niche helps you uncover your unique selling points and strategies to drive targeted traffic. With this information, you can develop a data-driven approach that leverages your strengths while addressing areas that need improvement.

How can I find competitor affiliates?

You can find competitors in affiliate marketing by analyzing niche keywords, reviewing industry reports, and exploring the marketplace of your affiliate network (if applicable). Additionally, tools like BuzzSumo can help you track social media trends and uncover affiliates in your niche.

What are the best tools for affiliate competitor analysis?

Two of the best tools for affiliate competitor analysis are SEMrush and Ahrefs. These platforms allow you to research competitors’ keywords, backlinks, organic and paid traffic, and other aspects of customer acquisition.