A channel partner is when you offer an extended free trial, discounted offer or some other incentive to a partner.

I employed this tactic by partnering with GrowthHackerTV , MOZ, CrazyEgg, Knowledge.ly and Stride. I did this without a large following, email list or any intro's just by researching who ran business development for these companies and shared my value proposition (i.e. I'll share your extended free trial/coupon code with readers of this guide) and they agreed because the people reading this guide are obviously interested in growing their business, which is exactly what those tools and resources are meant to do.

These types of partnerships do not cost anything when you're dealing with digital products, and if you're dealing with physical products, you can work on securing discounts.

It's a low risk to take for a company and they're usually very receptive to this as long as you have a relevant audience that would benefit from the partnership as well as potentially convert.