Approaching Designers about my product

Step 1 : Create an offer that converts.

Essentially you need to start by creating a sales funnel that takes people who are interested in what you offer, turns them into leads (collecting email addresses) and then nurtures those leads turning some into sales.

Step 2 : Setup an affiliate program (that you could call a partner program)

This will allow you to track who referred visitors who turned into customers. So in your example about giving the designer some brochures... These brochures have a special URL on them, whether is is yourwebsitename.com/designername or if you create a unique url designersrecommendations.com that redirects to their affiliate url. Every time a visitor enters your site through the special link, your affiliate program 'tags' that visitor with the person who referred them and if/when that customer buys, your system will keep track of the commissions due to the referrer.

Make sense?

Now, the reason step 1 is putting together a converting offer FIRST is because you have to test things and make sure that you can effectively turn visitors into buyers before getting other people to promote you.

If you jump straight to getting others to promote you and you can't convert the visitors they send into customers, they will feel like they wasted their time and that can destroy what may be a strong life-long relationship.

Essentially... Prove the concept then scale with the help of influential/strategic partners.

Regarding commissions, there is no set number here and often times on physical products, you will see commissions of 8% or so... Varying from 4% to 15%, so 20% seems quite good.

But really, if you can tell a potential partner that you generally convert 1 in every 50 visitors into a sale, then you can calculate the approximate value of every visitor that person could refer to you. (Average order value x commission %)/Number of visitors to make a sale = Average earnings per visitor they send.