Summary
CHALLENGE
- Content affiliates, deal partners and influencers each came with a different contract, commission rate and cookie window.
- One shared program could not hold partners on terms that far apart.
- Managing payment tracking, promo materials and product packages by hand did not scale as the influencer roster grew.
SOLUTION
- Seven separate programs in UpPromote, each matching one partner type or contract.
- A tier structure with tier one reserved for influencers.
- A 40% commission program for a single high-volume partner, priced against customer lifetime value instead of first-order margin.
- Personal vetting: every affiliate is known personally, with a monthly call, plus product seeding for affiliates and influencers.
RESULTS
- One affiliate on the 40% program has driven more than 700 referrals.
- Around 95% of the customers that partner sends are new to the brand.
- A deliberately small roster of 33 affiliates with no dead weight in it.
- Tracking, materials and payouts run in UpPromote, which makes adding four to five influencers a month feasible for a small team.
LESSONS
- Match the program structure to the contract, not the other way around.
- Price commission against lifetime value when the category earns on the second purchase.
- Screen affiliates on relationship depth, not volume, in a category full of coupon and paid-search arbitrage.
- Remove the admin work first, then scale the roster.
Brandl Nutrition is a German sports nutrition brand selling protein, creatine, vitamins and greens to people who train seriously. The products are made in Germany and each batch is independently lab tested.
Like most supplement brands, Brandl earns its money on the second purchase, not the first. That single fact shapes everything about how co-founder Konstantin runs the affiliate program, including a commission rate most merchants would refuse.
He works with 33 affiliates. One of them has sent over 700 referrals.
How do you build a program structure that fits every contract?
Brandl does not treat affiliates as one audience. Content affiliates, deal partners and influencers each arrive with their own terms, so the program structure has to match.
We have different kinds of affiliates, and we have different contracts with different affiliates. Every affiliate has their own rules, own commission, own cookies. That’s why we set up the different programs.
Konstantin, Co-founder at Brandl Nutrition
Hence, Brandl runs seven programs inside UpPromote instead of forcing everyone into a shared commission rate. The setup also includes a tier structure, and Konstantin confirmed that tier one is reserved for influencers.
The structure is not complexity for its own sake. It is what lets Brandl say yes to a partner on unusual terms without renegotiating the whole program.
How can a supplement brand pay 40% commission and still make money?
One of those seven programs pays 40% commission and contains exactly one affiliate. That affiliate has driven more than 700 referrals.
Forty percent looks reckless on a supplement margin. Konstantin’s reasoning is that the alternative was worse. The partner’s platform normally charges a high monthly fee, so Brandl negotiated a deal that traded fixed cost for performance-based commission instead.
Then there is the lifetime value math.
Supplement companies usually earn their money with a second buy, so with existing customers… it’s worth to invest into new customers. And he’s bringing in like 95% new customers.
Konstantin, Co-founder at Brandl Nutrition
The affiliate is not paid to protect margin on order one. He is paid to fill the top of an email funnel that Brandl monetizes on order two and beyond.
Framed as a customer acquisition cost rather than a discount, 40% starts to look like a price worth paying.
How does Brandl keep 33 affiliates at a high quality bar?
Screening out the “black sheep”
Konstantin has worked with plenty of affiliates who added nothing. He is blunt about the affiliate landscape in his category.
Often they try to do Google ads, they do coupon releasing, stuff like that. So in this field, there is a lot of black sheep.
Konstantin, Co-founder at Brandl Nutrition
His filter is relationship depth, not volume. He knows every current affiliate personally, meets them in person, and holds a monthly call with each one.
The top performer is someone he had already worked with for years before founding Brandl and brought with him when the brand launched.
Seeding products by partner type
Product seeding follows the same logic. Affiliates receive products when they join. Influencers receive products plus promotion codes to hand to their audience.
Thirty-three partners is a small roster by affiliate marketing standards. It is also, deliberately, a roster with no dead weight in it.
How is Brandl scaling the influencer side without adding admin?
Sourcing creators with AI instead of a discovery tool
The influencer program is where Brandl is putting its growth effort. Four to five new influencer partners are joining this month, and Konstantin is working down the follower curve toward smaller creators rather than chasing big names.
To source them, he uses AI rather than a dedicated discovery platform. Storyclash is well known in the German market, but he confirmed the team is not using it at the moment.
Removing the admin that comes after the signup
The bottleneck is not finding creators. It is everything that comes after.
It’s sometimes very hard to manage them… have all the payment tracking, giving them material, sending them packages. And that’s why we’re using UpPromote for now, to classify and to simplify the process.
Konstantin, Co-founder at Brandl Nutrition
Brandl uses UpPromote to keep each partner in the right program, track referrals against the right commission rate, and manage payouts as the roster grows. That administrative floor is what makes adding five creators a month feasible for a small team.
What has the quality-first approach delivered so far?
Konstantin is careful not to oversell the channel. Paid ads and returning customers still drive the bulk of revenue, and affiliate marketing is a smaller slice today.
What it is, is efficient. 33 affiliates, one of whom accounts for 700+ referrals on a single program, with around 95% new customers coming through that partner.
Affiliates is like a nice existing revenue stream, but we are now wanting to scale exactly the influencer game.
Konstantin, Co-founder at Brandl Nutrition
The channel is a foundation rather than a headline. The next chapter is deliberate expansion, and Brandl has the structure in place to absorb it.
What comes next for Brandl Nutrition?
Brandl is setting up a corporate voucher partnership. The company is listed on an employee benefits platform where staff redeem vouchers, and to prevent fraud, Brandl generated thousands of single-use codes instead of one shared discount.
Every coupon is only once available.
Konstantin, Co-founder at Brandl Nutrition
He plans to run the partnership through UpPromote by creating a dedicated program and a single affiliate account for the partner company, then assigning the full batch of codes to it, so every redemption is tracked and commissioned automatically.
He also expressed interest in UpPromote’s gift feature for automating the product packages he currently sends by hand, and volunteered to test UpPromote’s upcoming influencer discovery tool when it enters beta.
For a brand that built its program on personal relationships, the goal now is to keep that quality bar while removing the manual work behind it.
