How do I best set up an affiliate program through an Apple App?

There is a lot of points in your question which unless someone has the exact same setup as you - I don't think you will get the answers you are looking for. I believe you should limit it by asking yourself: What is the ONE thing the MLM plugin I am looking for can do so that it achieves the maximum amount of result to my business by using it? IMHO - it would be the ability to set commissions for the products you sell and award commissions to those affiliates that actually earn you sales. All other features, while nice, are ancillary features that from the perspective of the affiliate - don't really need in order to be successful. In that regard - I would suggest https://affiliatewp.com/. When it comes to running affiliate programs on WP sites, it wins out as the best in my experience. Hope this helps! Glad to assist any further if you need help.

I think if you're going to pursue a studio approach, you should assume that you will not be able to raise much in the way of outside equity funding. Most investors do not want to invest in a team that is pursuing multiple projects at the same time for a variety of reasons. To the extent that any of your apps have demonstrated any kind of initial traction, there is a reasonable chance that you can recruit competent growth professionals who could be compelled to take a big portion of upside, but I'd caution that true experts (as defined by people who have done it more than once at 100,000 plus users) would rather do this for their own app or be a cofounder in the overall venture so be careful about professionals who present themselves as experts who are all too willing to venture for a largely performance-driven deal. With regards to proof points for funding, assuming you want to abandon all others in favor of the one that gets the most traction, I've written several related answers here on Clarity about the benchmarks for angel and seed funding so I encourage you to review my profile and look at previous answers. If you'd like to talk by phone, I'm happy to help.

Yes if you have a site that has traffic these can be great streams of revenue. If you google my name and check or Adsense check you will see me holding a check and what can be possible :)

Mitigate risk. You're asking a store manager to dedicate space that costs money (and must generate revenue) to an experimental (unproven) product. I've seen some cottage industry food sellers here in Detroit work out deals to set up and sell their products at local stores. They get a day or two to show the stores what they can do. If customers respond and buy a lot of the product, it opens the door for more shelf space. If not, the store lost nothing in giving it a try. How do you set this up? Free stuff. Give the decision-maker free samples of your product. If he or she likes it, you're on to the next step. Enjoy making your good luck for yourself! I'm happy to discuss further by phone.

Some of those same influencers who turned you down might have written about your service if you hadn't offered to pay them. You should have instead sent them a bag of dicks. If they're a celebrity, you can get their agent's address from http://contactanycelebrity.com/ (it sounds fake, but it's actually totally legit, agents actually send them info). If they don't have an agent, try to look for a 'fan mail' address that they might have posted on a video or something. If you can't get any relevant address, then look up their friends on social media instead, and offer to pay them $xxx cash to send a back of dicks to their friend, and a cut of whatever orders end up being generated by that (if the influencer ends up writing about it). There are more techniques you can use to get influencers to post for free about it. Send me a message if you want to discuss it more, or just to say thanks if any of these ideas work (I'd actually like to know). all the best, Lee