The choice between open and targeted affiliate collaboration comes down to one question: is your constraint creative volume or creative quality? Open collaboration buys volume. Targeted collaboration buys control. Most Malaysian shops need both running at once, and an affiliate programme that uses only one of them is leaving something on the table.
Open collaboration
You publish the product with a commission rate and any creator can take it. No approval, no negotiation, no individual relationship.
It suits volume. If you need a large creative pool quickly and your product is low-risk to describe – no regulated claims, no complicated usage – open collaboration generates content at a scale targeted outreach cannot match.
The cost is control. You do not choose who promotes the product, how they describe it, or what they say about it. In regulated categories that is a genuine liability, because claims a creator makes about your product become your problem.
Set the commission rate to be competitive in your category. Open collaboration is a marketplace and creators compare.
Targeted collaboration
You approach specific creators with a specific arrangement. Slower, higher effort, and the only sensible route in three situations.
Regulated or high-consideration products. Anything where a wrong claim creates a compliance problem needs a briefed creator.
Higher-priced products. A more considered purchase needs a creator whose audience trusts them, and that relationship is built rather than published.
Livestreams. Funded live sessions require an agreed relationship, including exclusivity for the session, which cannot happen through an open listing.
Targeted work is where your recruitment effort should concentrate once you can see which creators actually sell.
Samples without a formal arrangement
Sending product to a creator who has expressed interest, with no obligation and no fee, is the lightest possible engagement. It is how most relationships in the Malaysian market start.
The economics are simple: your cost is the product and postage, and a proportion will produce nothing. That proportion is the price of finding the ones who do. How many to send and over what period is covered in sample strategy.
Paid engagements
Where you pay a fee for a post rather than relying on commission, you have left affiliate marketing and entered influencer marketing. Different economics, different expectations, different rates.
Worth being clear which you are doing. Brands that drift between the two without deciding end up paying fees for work that commission would have covered, or expecting fee-level output from an exchange arrangement.
How to combine them
The pattern that works for most shops:
Run open collaboration continuously as the volume engine, with a competitive rate, on products that are straightforward to describe.
Run targeted outreach alongside it, concentrating on creators your own data shows are converting, and on anyone you intend to build livestream work with.
Use samples as the entry point for both – it is how open-collab creators become targeted ones.
Review quarterly. Creators go quiet, categories shift, and a programme that is not being refreshed is shrinking.
The mistake to avoid
Running only targeted collaboration because it feels more professional. It produces a small number of high-quality videos and nowhere near the volume an advertising campaign needs to work with. Shops that do this have excellent content and campaigns that cannot spend.
The reverse mistake – only open collaboration – leaves you with volume, no livestream capability and no control over claims. In a regulated category that is a real risk rather than a theoretical one.
Common questions
What commission rate should I set for open collaboration?
Competitive for your category. Creators compare, and an uncompetitive rate means nobody takes the product.
Can I remove an affiliate whose content I do not like?
You can end the arrangement. Content already published is harder to deal with, which is the argument for targeted work in sensitive categories.
Should new shops start with open collaboration?
Yes, for volume, while building targeted relationships in parallel.
We run influencer and affiliate campaigns for Malaysian brands across both models. Tell us the brand and the goal.