3 shops raise their commissions and look for their affiliate champions
3 shops raise their commissions and look for their affiliate champions
BusinessLeague grew and developed as a paradox: when the temptation is to keep your numbers in a drawer, far from anyone's eyes, we built the system precisely on transparency. When the market rewarded performance subjectively, we doubled the applause with cash prizes. And when e-commerce people wondered who "the real stars of the industry" were, we named names. And once again, numbers.
We are very proud of the players in the ecosystem who, once they understood what we do, discovered that we have a lot in common. Initiative, for example. The entrepreneurial spirit doesn't exist without initiative.
Today we will talk with and about three of these players:
- Alex Stanciu (Cărturești), #8 in Corporations.
- Georgiana Irimus (ApiLand.ro), #2 in Start-Ups.
- Vlad Ion (Craftup.ro), #5 in Start-Ups.
They are three shops and three people who have launched their own opportunities in BusinessLeague: contests dedicated to affiliates, with the immediate goal of boosting sales, but with a broader and fairer stake: strengthening relationships.
👉 Total cash prize pool: €1,600+
👉 50% boost to the commission value
👉 Accepted promotion channels: ALL
If you've clicked the picture above to read what each shop offers, we can move on.
So we sat down with Alex, Georgiana and Vlad, the pros behind the campaigns. All of them are marketers through and through, and we wanted to learn a few things from them, both for us and for the BusinessLeague ecosystem. We're not keeping anything to ourselves, so here it is:
Why this challenge for affiliates? What are the main goals?
Alex Stanciu (Cărturești): At Cărturești we try to offer various bonuses to the partners in our affiliate programme, and we believe a challenge is the perfect format in the BusinessLeague context. Beyond sales, we're interested in building long-term relationships. We believe rewarding everyone's work is very important for creating long-term relationships. As I said, besides increasing sales over a certain period, we want to keep affiliates closer to us.
Georgiana Irimus (Apiland.ro): We wanted to give our partners one more reason to discover ApiLand products and promote them in a way that makes sense for their communities. We chose a 15% commission for 3 months because we want it to be a real opportunity for affiliates, not just a one-off action lasting a few days. At the same time, it's a very good opportunity for us to see which products, which types of content and which approaches work best. Through this challenge, we'd like to discover new partners, but also to bring those who already know us closer again.
Vlad Ion (craftup.ro): Our programme rests on a few very good partners who bring in most of the sales. The first contest is for them: to recognise their work and help them enter the season with energy. The second is for those who signed up and haven't got round to promoting us yet, or stopped along the way. We have a large catalogue of packaging and accessories for makers and small businesses, and partners with audiences in handmade, gifts, events or natural cosmetics can reach people we can't reach right now. The goal is simple: more active partners, with different audiences.
How important is it for you to reward partners directly for their results in the programme?
Alex Stanciu (Cărturești): We greatly value affiliates with good results. Merit should be rewarded with something more than paying commissions on time. If a partner delivers good results, it's in our interest to reward them, so they feel seen.
Georgiana Irimus (Apiland.ro): Very important. After all, an affiliate invests time, energy, creativity and, perhaps most importantly, the trust of their own community when they recommend a brand. We think it's only natural for good results to be rewarded accordingly, and the 15% commission is our way of showing that we concretely value our partners' contribution. We want the relationship to be fair and beneficial for both sides.
Vlad Ion (craftup.ro): Very important. An affiliate puts in their time and money before seeing any results. A bonus tied to what they bring in is the fairest way to show them we care about their work, not just about volume.
Beyond increasing sales during the challenge, do you also see this initiative as a way to strengthen your relationship with affiliates and encourage them to invest more in promoting the brand?
Alex Stanciu (Cărturești): Of course; in fact, that's the main goal. Behind the various campaigns, posts, budgets and tracking scripts, we have to remember there are people. Strengthening long-term relationships has helped us stay present in the programme over the years.
Georgiana Irimus (Apiland.ro): Yes, definitely. For us, the most interesting part is precisely what can be built from here. ApiLand has many product categories and many stories that can be told around them: royal jelly, raw pollen, bee product tonics and many other hive products. This means an affiliate can find several directions for their communication and choose the products that best suit their audience. We'd like our partners to get to know the products better, understand them and be able to recommend them as naturally as possible, not just in a strictly promotional context.
Vlad Ion (craftup.ro): Yes, that's the part that matters in the long run. At the end of each month we send them the list of our best-selling products, so they don't promote blindly and know where it's worth putting their effort.
Looking ahead to the coming months, how does this initiative tie in with your plans for the end of the year / Q4 / Black Friday, and what do you want to build together with affiliates going forward?
Alex Stanciu (Cărturești): The Școlărești campaign, or Back to School as the industry calls it, is the perfect moment to reward performance and also to reactivate some partnerships that are no longer delivering results. The challenge is in line with our Q4 plans because it helps us increase the visibility of our affiliate programme. Q4 is the time of year when everyone is focused on sales. Without people to help you grow sales, you can't perform. With affiliates, we aim to grow sales even further in Q4, strengthen long-term partnerships and, why not, discover new people who can promote Cărturești.
Georgiana Irimus (Apiland.ro): The coming period is very important for us. With autumn and the cold season, interest in bee products grows, and then we enter an intense period, with Black Friday and the end-of-year campaigns. That's exactly why we wanted to start the challenge early, so affiliates can test products, messages and formats and see what works best for their community. In the longer term, we'd like affiliate marketing to become more than a channel that's active only during campaigns. We want to build steady relationships with partners who are a good fit for ApiLand, who understand our products and who manage to talk about them authentically. We see this challenge as a good start for discovering who we can build something good and long-lasting with.
Vlad Ion (craftup.ro): November is our biggest month. The contests are the warm-up: we want partners to enter Black Friday already active, with campaigns already tested on our products. Going forward, we want partners with niche audiences (makers, handmade, events), not just search traffic.
(note: this article was translated from Romanian using AI)