# Building a product is hard. Getting people to notice it is harder

Source: https://sonpiaz.com/writing/building-a-product-is-hard-getting
ID: https://sonpiaz.com/writing/building-a-product-is-hard-getting#entity

Date: 2025-09-21
Original source: https://sonpiaz.substack.com/p/building-a-product-is-hard-getting

A practical way to design a partner program so customers, creators, and the business can keep working together.

Product work has a clear feedback loop. You make a change, put it in front of a
user, and learn whether it solved the problem. Distribution often has no loop at
all. A founder posts in several places, runs a campaign, talks to creators, and
cannot tell which part should happen again.

A partner program can create that loop, but only when it works for every side.
Customers, creators, agencies, and publishers have different reasons to
participate. The business cannot treat them as an unpaid sales team, and partners
cannot treat the product as a link that produces a commission without
responsibility for the customer.

## Start with the relationship

The strongest first partners are often people who already understand the
product:

- customers who have experienced the result;
- creators who teach the problem the product solves;
- agencies that already advise the same audience;
- publishers whose readers need a clear comparison.

The invitation should explain the product, the audience, what counts as a valid
result, and how the partner will be supported. If those details are unclear,
adding more partners only multiplies the confusion.

## Make the record visible

Both sides need to understand the path from recommendation to result. The
business needs to review invalid activity and returns. The partner needs to know
that a confirmed result will not disappear inside a private spreadsheet.

That means attribution, commission review, and payout should be parts of one
record. Communication belongs there too. A partner who has to ask in a different
channel for every missing update will eventually stop promoting the product.

## Design for continued participation

A program works when good behavior remains worthwhile over time. The business
should reward partners for bringing customers who fit. Partners should have
enough context to make accurate recommendations. Customers should arrive with
the right expectation instead of a promise the product cannot keep.

No single commission rule creates that balance. The useful test is whether each
side can explain the agreement, inspect the result, and decide to continue.

[Affitor](/projects/affitor) is the software I built for this process. It
connects partner onboarding, tracking, commission holds, communication, and
payout. The current implementation belongs on the product page. The enduring
idea is that partner distribution is a shared system, and shared systems only
last when the record is visible to everyone involved.

## The problem this came from

A product team needs distribution, but a partner channel fails when incentives, attribution, and communication are not designed together.

[Affitor](https://sonpiaz.com/projects/affitor) · Live

Runs affiliate programs for SaaS brands, from click tracking through commission holds to partner payouts.

→ https://sonpiaz.com/projects/affitor