Every guide on how to find influencers starts with a database and a set of filters: niche, follower range, engagement rate, country. You end up with a long list of people who might fit and no evidence that any of them takes brand deals, let alone that their audience buys.
There is a shorter route. Somewhere on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, a few hundred creators are already promoting your competitors, with a code, a link or a disclosed partnership. Those creators have proved two things a filter never can: they take deals in your category, and their audience converts well enough that the competitor keeps paying. They are the warmest possible list, and this guide is about building it.
Key Takeaways
A creator who already promotes a competitor is worth more than ten lookalike profiles: the deal and the audience are both proven.
Each platform has a search that surfaces them: YouTube descriptions, TikTok captions and Instagram bios all carry codes and links.
Judge reach by median views on recent posts, not by followers; the gap is often five to one.
Pitch a switch or an add, never an introduction. The creator already knows the category.
The manual method works for one competitor. Past that, a brand-first tool does the scan in minutes and adds the websites.
Step 1: Pick the competitors your ideal creator already promotes
Name two or three products your buyers compare you to. Not the market leader (their creators are expensive and often exclusive) and not the tiny newcomer (nobody promotes them yet). The right competitor is the one a year or two ahead of you that is clearly paying creators: you have seen the codes.
If you are not sure who that is, the free competitor finder returns your closest rivals from your own website.
Step 2: Search each platform for the receipts
Creators promoting a product leave the same three fingerprints everywhere: a discount or referral code, a tracked link, and a disclosure.
YouTube. Search the competitor name plus "code", "discount", "sponsored" or "review". Open the description, not just the video: the affiliate link and the code live there. Sort by upload date to find creators who promoted them recently rather than in 2022.
TikTok. Search the competitor name and scan captions for "code", "link in bio" and the #ad or #sponsored tags. The Discover and hashtag pages for the brand name show the tagged posts; the untagged ones need the caption search.
Instagram. Search the brand's tagged posts, then check bios and link-in-bio pages for codes. Reels captions carry codes more often than feed posts.
The web, which everyone skips. Search "best [category] apps" and "[competitor] review" and "[competitor] alternative". The blogs, review sites and best-of roundups on the first page are promoters too, often on affiliate links, and for apps and software they usually drive more installs than any single creator.
Keep a sheet with the creator, the platform, the link to the exact post, the code if there is one, and the date.
Step 3: Read the proof before you believe it
Not every mention is a promotion. Sort what you found into three buckets:
- Proven partner. A code, an affiliate link or a disclosed paid partnership. This is the list.
- Organic fan. A genuine mention with no code or link. Still worth approaching, with a different pitch.
- Noise. A complaint, a comparison that recommends something else, a news mention.
Then check recency. A creator who ran a code eighteen months ago may have moved category. Prefer receipts from the last six months.
Step 4: Size the audience the honest way
Followers overstate reach for almost everyone. Look at the last twenty or thirty posts and take the median view count. A creator with 400,000 followers and a median of 8,000 views reaches fewer buyers than one with 60,000 followers and a median of 40,000. Note the median next to the follower count in your sheet, and note whether the audience skews toward the country you sell in.
Two more signals that predict whether the audience buys: comment quality (questions about price and features beat emoji), and whether the creator's other partners are in adjacent categories (a fitness creator promoting a nutrition app and a wearable is used to selling).
Step 5: Find the contact
In order: the business email in the bio or the YouTube About tab, the link-in-bio page (many list a partnerships address), the creator's own website, then a DM. Agency-represented creators list the agency; email the agency and name the creator. Keep the contact next to the receipt in the sheet.
Step 6: Pitch the switch, not the introduction
The creator already knows the category and already works with brands in it, so skip the "let me introduce our product" opening. Lead with the receipt: you saw their video on the competitor, you liked a specific thing about it, and you think their audience would take to yours for a specific reason. Then the offer: a code with a better rate than the competitor's, a recurring commission if you are software, or a flat fee for a first post. Ask for a reply, not a signature.
Follow up at three, seven and twelve days. Most replies to cold creator outreach arrive on the second or third message.
Step 7: Track it like a pipeline
Contacted, replied, negotiating, agreed, live, paid. A sheet works for one competitor and twenty creators. It stops working at the second competitor, which is where most people give up on the method rather than on the idea.
Where the manual method stops
The manual method costs about a day per competitor for a first pass on three platforms, and it never covers the web. It also produces a list that goes stale within weeks, because creators post new codes every day.
That is the part we built AffiliateSpy to do. Paste a competitor's App Store, Google Play or website URL and the scan returns the creators promoting it on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram and the blogs, review sites and roundups ranking for its keywords, each with the receipt, a fit grade built from the signals above (median views, audience band, purchase intent, partner history), and a verified email one click away. Outreach sequences send from your own inbox and follow up on the cadence above, replies land in a pipeline, and Autopilot finds the new promoters overnight. The free influencer finder runs the first scan without a signup, and the full product starts at $99 a month.
If you use an AI agent, the same workflow is packaged as an installable skill: find creators promoting a competitor app. The agent runs the scan, shortlists by the criteria above and drafts the outreach for your approval.
Frequently asked questions
How many influencers should I approach first? Twenty to thirty proven partners of one competitor is a good first campaign. Reply rates on that list run well above cold outreach to lookalike profiles, so you do not need hundreds.
What if my competitors do not use influencers yet? Then the web is your list: the review sites and best-of roundups that rank for your category keywords already send buyers to somebody. The scan covers those too.
Is it acceptable to recruit a competitor's creators? Yes. Creators are independent businesses and most work with several brands in a category. Exclusivity is rare and, where it exists, the creator will tell you.