At Waalaxy, affiliate marketing accounts for about a quarter of customer acquisition. Toinon Georget, co-founder of the company, explains why Waalaxy pays out 50% of subscriptions to its partners, how they recruit affiliates and why they chose FirstPromoter to run the program.
At Waalaxy, about 25% of customer acquisition comes from affiliate marketing. The company has already paid nearly 1,500 affiliates and, according to Toinon Georget, was paying them more than €1 million in commissions per year.
The principle is simple: when an affiliate brings in a new customer, they earn 50% of the amount of that customer's subscription, for its entire lifetime. A particularly high payout for SaaS software.
But Waalaxy is not trying to turn all of its users into ambassadors. The company mainly targets professionals who can naturally recommend its software as part of their work: consultants, trainers, coaches or content creators specialized in prospecting.
This program has become one of its main acquisition channels, in a company that has historically grown through self-service, without a traditional sales team.
Why affiliate marketing works particularly well at Waalaxy
Waalaxy is a LinkedIn prospecting automation software. A large share of its customers are small businesses, freelancers or professionals who help other companies with their sales development.
Among them, Toinon Georget mentions in particular coaches, consultants and trainers. These are profiles that often have the opportunity to recommend software to their own clients.
A consultant who uses Waalaxy to prospect can recommend it to the companies they work with. A trainer can build it into their training programs. A content creator specialized in prospecting can present it to their audience.
Affiliate marketing therefore fits into a professional activity that already exists. Partners do not need to build an audience solely to promote Waalaxy.
For the company, this approach has another advantage: it multiplies the number of people talking about the product. Affiliates publish content, explain how to use the software and recommend it to their communities.
Toinon compares this mechanism to UGC, since Waalaxy's visibility no longer depends solely on its own communications. He also believes that this multiplication of recommendations contributes to the software's presence in search engines and in LLM answers.
Why Waalaxy pays out a 50% lifetime commission
The commission rate is one of the program's distinctive features. Where many SaaS companies offer a payout of around 20%, sometimes limited to the first year, Waalaxy chose to pay out half of the subscriptions brought in, for as long as the customer remains subscribed.
“The SaaS average is more like around 20%, often limited to the first twelve months. We offer 50% for life.”
In concrete terms, if an affiliate brings in a customer who signs up for a €100 per month subscription, they receive €50 every month for as long as that subscription stays active.
Over time, these commissions can add up to attractive recurring income. Some affiliates thus earn €500, €800 or €1,000 per month from the customers they have referred.
On Waalaxy's side, this model represents a high acquisition cost relative to the revenue generated. But it is a deliberate choice: rather than spreading its investments across many channels, the company prefers to pay generously the partners who bring it customers.
“We've always preferred to offer a very lucrative affiliate program and focus our efforts on it.”
Why Waalaxy recruits its affiliates from among its customers
Waalaxy tried to recruit affiliates outside its user base. But this approach did not deliver the hoped-for results.
Today, affiliates are recruited mainly from among existing customers.
The company tries to identify users whose activity lends itself particularly well to recommendation.
The most relevant profiles then receive targeted communications, in particular by email or directly in the product, introducing them to the affiliate program. The advantage is that these future partners already know the software and can recommend it based on their own experience.
Why Waalaxy dropped its referral program
Before focusing its efforts on affiliate marketing, Waalaxy had also tested a referral program. The experiment was not conclusive enough to be continued.
For Toinon, the problem with referral programs is that they can reward recommendations that would have happened anyway. A satisfied user may already talk about a piece of software to a colleague or a friend. Offering them a few euros or a free month of subscription does not necessarily generate many additional recommendations.
Referral programs also add administrative complexity: you have to manage discounts, credits, free months and their impact on existing subscriptions. With customers who have monthly or annual subscriptions in 
Stripe, these adjustments can quickly become burdensome.
Waalaxy therefore preferred to drop the referral program and focus its resources on affiliate marketing. The goal is to work with professionals capable of bringing in new customers on a regular basis, rather than rewarding occasional recommendations.
Why Waalaxy replaced its in-house platform with FirstPromoter
In 2022, Waalaxy could not find a SaaS product that met its affiliate marketing needs well enough. The company had therefore decided to build its own platform to track referrals, subscriptions and commissions.
The system worked, but it required a lot of maintenance. As the program grew, the team had to manage more affiliates, calculate recurring commissions, correctly attribute subscriptions and organize payments.
The international dimension made things even more complicated. According to Toinon, Waalaxy's affiliates are spread across about a hundred countries, each with different administrative and invoicing constraints.
The team therefore had to spend time maintaining a tool that was not at the core of its product. Waalaxy finally decided to replace this in-house platform with specialized software.
Why FirstPromoter was preferred over Affilae, Reditus and PartnerStack
Before choosing 
FirstPromoter, Waalaxy looked at several solutions, including 
Affilae, 
Reditus and 
PartnerStack. Affilae had already been tried before, without fully meeting the company's needs.
In the end, FirstPromoter was the one selected, in particular for its ease of integration and its features. The platform makes it possible to manage affiliate links, tracking, recurring commissions, different payout tiers and the information needed for payments.
It also offers options to customize the program or run contests between affiliates.
But for Waalaxy, the benefit is above all operational: no longer having to build and maintain the entire commission management system.
The price is also attractive. Toinon mentions a cost of about €200 to €250 per month for FirstPromoter. Compared with the €1 million in annual commissions paid out by Waalaxy, he finds the value for money particularly attractive.
The company therefore chose to go back to a specialized SaaS product to manage its affiliate marketing, even though it sometimes makes the opposite choice for other parts of its software stack.
Tools in this section
How Waalaxy handles tracking and payments with FirstPromoter and Stripe
Each partner has a personal space in FirstPromoter, where they can get their referral link and track the customers they have brought in, their subscriptions and the corresponding commissions.
When a prospect clicks on an affiliate link, a tracking mechanism identifies the source of their visit. If they then sign up for a paid subscription, Stripe passes on the information needed to track the transaction. FirstPromoter can then attribute the subscription to the right affiliate and calculate their commission.
Since Waalaxy pays its partners for the entire lifetime of the subscriptions, commissions keep being calculated every month for as long as customers remain subscribed.
Affiliates can view their earnings from their personal space. For its part, Waalaxy has a centralized system to track commissions, without having to maintain its own custom development.
Administrative management is also a major issue with nearly 1,500 paid affiliates in many countries.
In France, Toinon explains that affiliates must have a legal structure that allows them to invoice for their services, for example a microenterprise or a company.
Waalaxy chose not to rely mainly on gift vouchers or subscription credits. When a partner earns several thousand euros in commissions per year, this type of payout would create accounting and tax difficulties.
Internationally, the differences between countries make operations even more complicated. This is one of the reasons for the move to FirstPromoter: centralizing commission tracking and making it easier to prepare payments, rather than managing these operations with a tool built in-house.
A WhatsApp community of 300 affiliates, but little engagement
Despite the program's financial results, Toinon admits that Waalaxy has never really managed to build a very active affiliate community.
The company has tested several initiatives: regular communications, resource sharing and group facilitation. In particular, it has a WhatsApp community of about 300 people, but engagement remains limited.
Many affiliates simply get their link in FirstPromoter, recommend the product when they have the opportunity and collect their commissions. They are not necessarily looking to interact with the other partners.
On this point, Toinon mentions a discussion with David Zitoun, of 
SubMagic, who had put a lot of energy into running a small community of TikTok creators. Waalaxy has never pushed the engagement of its affiliates that far.
The company is now looking to revitalize its program, but its historical success does not rest on a particularly engaged community. It comes mainly from the financial appeal of the commissions and from the affiliates' ability to recommend the product in their professional activity.
How Waalaxy compares with Lemlist and LaGrowthMachine
The payout level also plays a role in the competition between prospecting software products.
Toinon mentions in particular 
Lemlist and 
LaGrowthMachine, which also offer affiliate programs and target audiences close to Waalaxy's.
A consultant specialized in prospecting may know several of these software products and end up recommending them to their clients. In this context, a 50% lifetime commission is a strong financial argument.
But payout alone is not enough. To recommend a piece of software regularly, an affiliate also has to know it, be convinced of its usefulness and have clients or an audience likely to need it.
This explains Waalaxy's choice to recruit its partners mainly from among its own users, rather than trying to convince external affiliates who do not yet know the product.
Summary of the software this article mentions in Waalaxy's stack
| Status | Workflow | Tool | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| In use | LinkedIn prospecting | Waalaxy | Product developed and sold by the company, recommended by affiliates |
| In use | Affiliate marketing | FirstPromoter | Tracking, attribution, recurring commissions and program management |
| In use | Payments and subscriptions | Stripe | Subscription management and transaction tracking |
| Replaced | Affiliate marketing | AffilaeReplaced | Solution tried previously, without fully meeting the needs |
| Dropped | Affiliate marketing | ReditusDropped | Alternative considered before choosing FirstPromoter |
| Dropped | Affiliate marketing | PartnerStackDropped | Alternative considered before choosing FirstPromoter |
| In use | Communication |  Meta | Community of about 300 affiliates, with limited engagement |
