The Right Fit: How Affiliate Marketing Helps Apollo Scooters Achieve 20% of Total Revenue

Apollo Scooters designs and manufactures high-performance electric scooters for urban transportation, built for comfort and performance with smooth throttles, powerful motors, and durable wheels.

The brand even built a mobile app that connects to their scooters, letting riders customize settings, track performance, monitor battery, and lock or unlock remotely.

But a long-lasting product creates a growth challenge: customers rarely buy a second scooter.

Why did affiliate marketing fit Apollo Scooters better than paid reviews?

Because the scooters have a long lifespan, a single customer hardly makes multiple purchases. To keep growing, Apollo turned to scooter reviewers to spread the word and raise brand awareness.

There was a catch. Booking reviewers meant paying a flat fee for a video, whether or not they drove any sales, not the best use of the marketing budget.

Affiliate marketing proved the right fit. Affiliate links let Apollo see which reviewers generated sales, and reviewers earned a commission each time someone bought through their link.

To keep all of this simple, Apollo chose UpPromote to track affiliate performance and make sure everyone was rewarded fairly.

With tracking in place, the team could design a program around what each affiliate actually contributed.

How does Apollo Scooters reward and equip their affiliates?

Apollo’s program rests on two ideas: pay affiliates in proportion to what they bring in, and give reviewers what they need to create honest content.

Two commission tiers based on contribution

Apollo rewards affiliates by contribution — the more sales they generate, the higher their commission. Using UpPromote, the team runs two programs.

The first is for high-performing affiliates, some of the most trusted reviewers in the e-scooter industry, who earn higher commissions. The second offers lower rates for affiliates with smaller reach.

So we have two or three affiliates that we work really closely with, and they bring in most of the traffic. They receive a higher commission…

Maria Asiain, Marketing Director at Apollo Scooters

That structure keeps spending tied to value and strengthens ties with the affiliates who drive the most traffic.

Sample products for authentic reviews

Since Apollo mainly works with reviewers, they goes a step further: send sample scooters to trusted affiliates so they can experience the product firsthand and create honest, high-quality content.

UpPromote’s in-app Gift feature supports exactly this — merchants send sample products to affiliates, who claim them from their dashboard, while the brand tracks what’s been sent and received.

The affiliates that we work with are reviewers. They’re scooter reviewers. We send them a sample product, and they create content, blogs, and videos

Maria Asiain, Marketing Director at Apollo Scooters

Because the scooters are high-value and bulky, Apollo is selective about who receives a sample, weighing each affiliate’s audience size, engagement, and relevance.

That same selectiveness extends to who gets into the program at all.

How does Apollo Scooters protect their program’s integrity?

Working closely with top reviewers is one side of the program. The other is keeping out people trying to game it.

Some individuals sign up, generate their own referral links, and buy products for themselves — pocketing a commission and a discount in one move.

What they do is use their own affiliate link to buy a scooter, so they get a bigger discount. So what we do is try to filter them out…

Maria Asiain, Marketing Director at Apollo Scooters

Now Apollo is more selective, approving affiliates they already know or who reach out directly with proof of an established audience.

UpPromote backs that up by detecting multiple sign-ups from the same IP address and flagging suspicious activity for removal. They can also ignore commissions on purchases an affiliate makes through their own link or coupon.

Together, the manual screening and automated checks keep the program fair and their results trustworthy.

What results has Apollo Scooters seen with affiliate marketing?

With UpPromote, Apollo Scooters has streamlined how they manage they affiliate program. Affiliate marketing now contributes a considerable 15–20% of total revenue.

The program has also grown their base, adding more than 1,000 engaged affiliates and extending the brand’s reach.

Looking ahead, Apollo plans to double down on affiliate marketing as a key growth channel, and is exploring more of UpPromote’s advanced features to engage affiliates and optimize performance.

For a brand whose customers rarely buy twice, affiliate marketing turned trusted reviewers into a steady source of new sales.