Ask ChatGPT for the best affiliate management software, and you'll get a tidy list in seconds. But where does that list come from? If your brand isn't on it, you're invisible to a growing chunk of buyers who never reach a traditional search results page.
That question is exactly why I brought Farzad, CEO of Respona, back into the Nerditorium for a Publisher Highlight edition of Affiliate Nerd Out. Respona isn't a traditional publisher, but it works with millions of them, and it has built a very clear system for getting brands into the listicles, comparison guides, and product reviews that AI models pull from when they answer questions.
If you're building an AI ranking strategy for your brand or your clients, this breakdown covers how Respona's system works, what it costs, how agencies can resell it, and why affiliates and content publishers should be paying attention too.
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The Foundation of Any AI Ranking Strategy: How AI Models Pick Brands
Here's the part most brands miss. When you ask an AI model a question like “what's the best affiliate management tool,” it doesn't just pull the answer from memory. As Farzad explained, “because their training data is outdated, they usually go and conduct a web search.”
The model scans a handful of articles on the topic, then writes a condensed summary of what those sources say. So if your brand shows up across many of those articles, you end up in the answer. If you don't, you don't.
So a winning AI ranking strategy comes down to one practical goal: get mentioned in the pages the model reads. Farzad calls Respona's answer a “surround sound strategy.” Wherever the model looks, your brand is already there.
What Respona Actually Does (and What It Gives Away)
I know what some of you are thinking. Great, another AI visibility tracking tool. Farzad beat me to it.
“Yes, we do track visibility, but that's the part that we give away for free,” he said. “That's not even the way we monetize our application.”
The real product is placement. Respona works with publications that AI models cite and helps them create listicles, comparison guides, and product reviews that feature Respona's clients. It's fully done for you: Respona handles outreach, gets the publisher's yes, helps create the content, and delivers a guaranteed live placement, with a monthly report of everything that goes live.
Meet Farzad Rashidi
Farzad is the CEO of Respona, a platform that helps brands and agencies increase their visibility in AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Claude. Under his leadership, Respona has grown a network of high-authority publisher relationships and an outreach “assembly line” that produced roughly 2,500 editorial placements in a single month. This was his second appearance on Affiliate Nerd Out.
Inside Respona's AI Ranking Strategy Workflow
Farzad walked me through the platform live on the show, and the setup is about as simple as it gets.
Step 1: Enter your website.
That's it. Respona suggests prompts you'll want to optimize for, and you pick the AI models you care about, whether that's ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, or Claude. In his demo, Farzad used keyword.com and a prompt like “What platform to track Google rankings?”
Step 2: See where you stand.
Respona shows your current visibility score, how many AI responses mention you, and how you stack up against competitors. It also gathers every citation the models used to build their answers. This entire step is free.
Step 3: Filter for editorial content.
Lots of cited pages are homepages and landing pages you can't get onto. Respona weeds those out and keeps only the editorial pieces, like “best SEO reporting tools for agencies,” and builds an action plan around them.
Step 4: Find lookalike publishers.
This is what Farzad calls Respona's secret sauce. Beyond pitching the sites already in the citation pool, Respona finds new publications with a matching semantic profile: similar traffic, similar SEO metrics, and rankings for similar keywords. It then helps those publishers create fresh articles with the client featured at the top.
Why does that work? “These LLMs are always on the lookout for new, fresh pieces of content,” Farzad explained. Once the new articles get indexed, they can replace the older citations. And because those articles link back to your site, you're also helping your traditional SEO. Two birds, one stone.
Quality at Scale: Humans in the Loop
When Farzad told me Respona built about 2,500 of these articles last month, my first reaction was “holy cow.” My second was the question every brand will ask: how do you keep quality up at that volume?
His answer was that Respona keeps humans in the loop at every step. AI handles plenty of the heavy lifting, like outline creation and deep research on the brands being featured. But Farzad was clear that relying on automation for the whole process doesn't work.
“We found it's imperative for humans to give it a sniff test, especially when it comes to content writing,” he said. “We don't want the content to be just AI slop.”
His recommendation for anyone on the fence? Place a small test order. “We have a 95% reorder rate, so almost anybody who comes in places one order, they come back.”
Respona Pricing: Pay Per Article, No Contracts
| Pricing model | Pay per published article |
| Cost per placement | $100 to $500, based on the publisher's domain rating |
| Suggested agency resale price | $150 to $750 per placement |
| Contracts or retainers | None |
| Volume discounts | Up to 60% off at higher spend levels (e.g., $80K) |
| Visibility tracking | Free |
| API access | Free |
| Reporting | Monthly report of all live placements |
Why Agencies Can Build a Real Margin on This
Respona's rates are set below market specifically so agencies can resell them. At the suggested resale prices, you've got markup from day one. It gets more interesting with volume.
Respona negotiates bulk rates with publishers and passes those savings to agencies, which lets it offer deep discounts without cutting into quality. Farzad's example: at $80,000 of spend, an agency gets a 60% discount, which translates into deliverables worth roughly $300,000 at resale. You pay Respona $80K to do all the work, sell to clients for $300K, and keep about $220K as spread.
It's also a strong option for in-house teams that want this done without paying full-service agency rates.
Affiliates and Publishers: Get Paid to Publish
I asked Farzad whether affiliates were using Respona to arbitrage content costs. His answer surprised me. Respona mainly works with affiliates as publishers.
If you run a site with real topical authority, Respona may invite you into its invite-only publisher network. When a client wants to rank for something like “best affiliate management tools,” Respona writes the article and pays you to publish it on your site.
“You have full say in terms of yes or no,” Farzad said. If you pass, Respona moves on to another publisher. If you say yes, you get free, quality content and get paid for it.
For the record, I'm signing up. I like great content and I like getting paid.
What's Next: The Respona API
Respona just released a free API that lets you place orders programmatically and pull back every live placement for analysis. It's built for agencies with their own internal systems, AI visibility and SEO software companies that want to add brand mentions and raise average contract value, and teams plugging marketing agents straight into Respona.
The Bottom Line
The core of any AI ranking strategy is simple: if you want to be recommended in AI answers, you need to be in the articles AI models are reading. Respona turns that into a pay-per-result service with free tracking, done-for-you placements, and pricing that leaves agencies real margin. The best way to judge it is Farzad's way: place a small test order and let the results speak.
Dustin Howes
AFFILIATE MARKETING CONSULTANT
Dustin Howes is an Affiliate Marketing Concierge who equips brands to build high-performing affiliate programs with a personal touch. He is a connector and specializes in network marketing, partner recruitment, program strategy, and simplifying the complexities of affiliate growth. Through his services and resources, Dustin empowers companies to create meaningful, long-term partnerships that drive real results.
FAQ: AI Ranking Strategy and Respona
What is an AI ranking strategy? An AI ranking strategy is a plan to get your brand recommended in AI-generated answers. Because models like ChatGPT search the web and summarize what they find, the strategy centers on getting your brand mentioned in the listicles, reviews, and comparison guides those models cite.
What does Respona do? Respona helps brands get mentioned in AI-generated answers by securing placements in the listicles, comparison guides, and product reviews that AI models cite when responding to questions.
How much does Respona cost? Placements cost $100 to $500 per article, depending on the publisher's domain rating. There are no retainers or contracts, and visibility tracking and API access are free.
Can agencies resell Respona placements? Yes. Respona's rates are designed for resale, with a suggested resale price of $150 to $750 per placement and volume discounts for higher spend.
Can publishers make money with Respona? Publishers with strong topical authority can join Respona's invite-only publisher network, receive pre-written articles, and get paid to publish the ones they approve.
