As a website owner, writer, blogger or social media influencer you work hard creating quality content. Chances are you dream of finding the best ways to make money from your efforts — and that includes the best affiliate programs.
Savvy content creators look for the highest earning opportunities that are relevant to their audience. That way they can earn cash at the same time as they serve their readers, by highlighting products and services they’ve taken the time to investigate and carefully select.
The great news is that even people with small social followings or the owners of small blogs can make money from their content. With affiliate marketing you can literally earn while you sleep — waking up to see a nice juicy commission in your dashboard. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
The only problem is, there are thousands of affiliate earning opportunities. How do you find the top affiliate programs? That’s where this article can be your guide. We help you focus on choosing the best programs and networks for your needs.
What is an Affiliate Program?
An affiliate program is a program set up by a merchant to pay other parties for each new lead or sale they bring in. The party bringing in the lead or sale is usually a website publisher, content creator or blogger, called an “affiliate.” From the merchant’s standpoint, the model is attractive because the merchant only pays if a defined action occurs leading to increased sales.
Marketing affiliates like this business model because they make money by serving their readers with great suggestions for products and services. And they don’t have to create their own products to sell — they simply insert affiliate links in their content. Creators can focus on content and maintaining good relations with their audience — while the merchant handles sales, invoicing, delivery and customer support process.
Finding the Best Affiliate Programs
With so many programs to choose from, it’s daunting to select a handful to promote. So we’ve curated a list of what we consider the best affiliate programs for entrepreneurs, small business owners, creators and bloggers. We further broke down the list by popular categories that may be attractive to you.
Not every category will be relevant to your audience. Focus on finding the best programs covering offerings your audience cares about. Likewise, you should have a passion for the offerings you are going to promote. If you are not interested in them, then skip over them — because your lack of interest will be obvious.
Last but certainly not least, choose from among the affiliate programs that will pay you more. After all, you’re going to work hard on your content to serve your audience. So you should be paid well.
Best Recurring Commission Affiliate Program
Recurring commission affiliate programs are where you earn repeat commissions from the same sale, over time. For example, let’s say a reader uses your affiliate ID to sign up for a monthly software service at $20.00 per month. You earn a 30% commission initially — or $6.00 (20 x .30 = 6). But in this case, you would also earn 30% or $6.00 every month thereafter as a recurring commission, as long as the reader continues to use that service. In a year, you would make $72.00.
That’s just from one affiliate sale. Imagine over time that you make 100 sales. That would bring you up to $7,200 a year (72 x 100 = 7,200). See the potential? Here are the best recurring revenue affiliate programs:
SEMRush
SEMush’s affiliate program Berush, offers up to 40% in lifetime commission from SEMRUSH subscription sales. This follows a revenue-sharing model where the affiliate promotes SEMrush and gets a commission on every sale made in return. The process takes three simple steps: join BeRush; advertise and start earning commissions. BeRush comes with pre-designed banners, landing pages, links to SEMrush with affiliate’s unique reference ID and SEMrush widgets. Commissions are paid twice a month on the 10th and 25th of each month.
LeadPages
The Leadpages Affiliate Partner Program offers a suite of lead generation tools. With this affiliate program you get 30% monthly commissions for the lifetime of the customer. It also provides a 50% recurring commission on all sales generated, for as long as the referrals remain customers. This also expands to renewals and upgrades of their Leadpages plan. Leadpages comes with free hosting on a Leadpages domain, more than 200 mobile responsive landing pages templates, text-to-Opt-in comes/ SMS campaigns and much more.
AWeber
Aweber’s affiliate program is an email opt-in marketing tool. Its templates simplify the process for creating visually attractive email marketing campaigns and the reporting dashboard provides insights on visitors and sales statistics. It comes with newsletters emailing, auto responding, and RSS-to-email converting features as well. This affiliate program give a commission rate of 30% for recurring referral payments.
Ezoic
Wwith Ezoic, an affiliate can earn 3% of a publisher’s total revenue on all traffic they send through Ezoic for the lifetime they use the Ezoic platform. Referrers also receive direct help from Ezoic to support their introduction to new website owners and publishers. The minimum threshold for payment however is $20 and you must have at least one conversion. Conversion takes place when a publisher starts generating revenue through Ezoic’s platform.
GetResponse
GetResponse affiliate program provides marketing automation, landing pages, opt-in forms, webinars, customer relationship management and more. GetResponse offers two programs. An affiliate bounty program offering $100 for every sale referred and affiliate recurring program which pays 33% for every sale referred. The programs also offer free promotional materials including banners, videos and sales copy.
Pabbly
Pabbly offers a commission rate of 30% for recurring sales. Pabbly subscription plans start at $19.00 a month and there is a free version as well. The program gives you two functional dashboards to manage both traders and developers’ campaigns. The merchant dashboard offers affiliate settings, commissions, and click results. While the affiliate dashboard provides information related to subscription, invoice, transaction, profile and affiliate information.
Kajabi
Kajabi affiliate partners can earn a 30% lifetime commission for any new member they sign up that stays active past two years. This comes with special rewards package as you bring in more revenues. Kajabi’s partner dashboard allows users to track your rewards, trailing referrals, earnings and total campaigns.
Unbounce
Unbounce’s Affiliate program provides the opportunity to earn 20% of the recurring revenue for every customer they refer to Unbounce. This landing page platform helps users design converting landing pages for SaaS businesses, e-commerce sites, and agencies. Furthermore, site visitors or social media followers get 20% off their first three months using Unbounce. All these come with support tools that include a Partner coach, a dashboard to track progress, and training and promotional materials.
Teachable
Teachable is an online course platform that allows bloggers and website owners to build their classes to sell to their students. They offer a 30% commission for every signup done within 90 days. Its platform program gives you access to A/B tested funnels containing information about Teachable’s target audience.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit comes with a visual automation builder and can create triggers based on website actions and actions inside of emails. They offer a 30% commission per month. The company does not cut-off the revenue of an affiliate as long as they are active and paying.
Kinsta
Kinsta’s affiliate program starts by paying an initial commission, followed by a recurring 10% monthly payment. They can earn up to $500 initially, depending on the type of plan the referral has purchased. Plans include Starter ($30); Pro ($100), Business ($150) and Enterprise ($500). Support also comes by way of a custom-made affiliate dashboard that allows real-time tracking of subscriptions, analytics and payments.
Best Loan Affiliate Marketing Programs
These are programs that help you become an affiliate marketer for a lending platform and start generating a secondary stream of income. The following is a brief list of the top loan programs in the market that you could consider joining.
BlueVine
BlueVine is an online lender that provides multiple financing products for small-business owners. BlueVine offers invoice factoring, where the company purchases your unpaid invoices at a discount. It allows partners to refer their unqualified or declined deal-flow to BlueVine for invoice financing up to $5 million and lines of credit up to $250,000. For referrals, it provides support and residual commissions.
Credibly Business Loans
Credibly’s Referral Partners send leads to Credibly and receive a commission on the deals that fund. The sales process is handled internally by Credibly’s Customer Success Team and provides reports on which leads have been successfully funded. Businesses are generally funded in fewer than 48 hours from approval. Credibly works with referral partners in various industries and has incentives ranging from straight commissions to bonus miles and others.
SmartBiz
SmartBiz’s marketing partner program is ideal for alternative lenders, financial consultants, accounting firms and small business aggregators. Its dedicated online portal helps an affiliate refer loans as well as track the status of the sale.
Kabbage
As a Kabbage affiliate, you can get $250 for every referred customer who qualifies for the loan, and they get an additional $50 when the referral gets approved. Each small business referred to Kabbage will also receive one $50 gift card once they’re approved by Kabbage. There is no limit to the number of referrals one can make or the amount they can receive. Kabbage’s program is supported by APIs to put the power of growth directly into the hands of small business owners
OnDeck
OnDeck is an online small business lender and offers two types of business loans: short term loans and revolving lines of credit. Payouts are set at 2% for advertising performance campaigns to your audience on your blog, website, newsletter, search landing page.
Fundbox
Fundbox helps each affiliate to integrate its solutions into their platform to send over referrals to them. Affiliate partners can have their customers join Fundbox’s B2B credit and payments network by either integrating it into your workflow or through a referral link. Its partner portal dashboard provides easy status updates on your referrals, commission structure and renewals.
Funding Circle
FundingCircle is a business that allows anybody to lend small amounts of money to businesses in return for interest. It offers partnership opportunities through the landing page where you leverage FundingCircle’s brand API integration.
Fora Financial
As a Fora Financial affiliate partner, you can earn money online through commissions on all new deals and renewals. Additionally, Fora Financial’s account management team will be part of your support team.
Fundera
Fundera is a business funding matchmaker who will match businesses with funders. Any time you refer a small business using their unique affiliate link they get $1,000. However, you have to sign up for the referral program.
LendingClub
LendingClub offers each affiliate the opportunity to drive traffic to LendingClub and get commissions. It will provide commissions from referrals for its loans, investment accounts and auto refinance loans through banners and links.
Best Gaming Affiliate Marketing Programs
For content creators who stream or review games on their site or through YouTube, the following gaming affiliate programs are the best:
Alienware
Alienware is a subsidiary of Dell. The PC gaming company provides sales commissions ranging from 1-6%. The affiliate program provides banners as well as a 90-day cookies. It also helps you earn $71.86 through Earnings Per Click (EPC).
HP
HP is offering influencers to partner with who have audiences that are passionate about gaming, imaging, entertainment, or business technology. Through this program each time a visitor from your site clicks through to the HP online Store and makes a qualifying purchase, you earn a sales commission. Orders are tracked and sales credited to your site through the use of cookie technology.
Microsoft
Microsoft 365 for business Affiliate Program allows an affiliate to start earning money online through commissions on Microsoft 365 referrals. There are no limits on the amount of commission you can earn and comes with a referral window of 30 days.
Playstation
PlayStation Store offers affiliate marketing to earn commissions by referring new customers to PlayStation Store. Through online marketing, an affiliate can earn a commission rate of 5% on all sales generated by their links.
Best Buy
Best Buy offers the opportunity to start earning money by directing visitors to BestBuy.com. Every time your visitors click on Best Buy’s content and make a qualifying purchase, you earn a commission. The program includes all your necessary online marketing offerings like banners, text links, and copy aimed to improve conversion rates.
Gamestop
GameStop is a retailer providing video games, consoles, digital goods, and electronics. Its affiliate program pays a commission rate of 5% on all goods with a 1% commission on select goods. For gaming fanatics, this offers opportunities to earn a commission for click-throughs and purchases on GameStop.
Gamefly
each time a visitor signs up for a free trial and becomes a paying member on Gamefly you can earn commissions. On average commissions are $15 with a $20 commission for those able to refer 500+ sign ups a month. A 5% commission rate is earned for new game consoles as well as further improving affiliate earnings.
Newegg
Newegg helps you earn money when your website or blog refers a customer to them. In addition, when your audience makes a purchase, you earn a commission. Support comes by way of text and banner links, support team, product catalog, RSS feeds and more.
Tiger Direct
Tiger Direct is an online retailer dealing in electronics. It offers up to a 3% commission rate for sales of its products. You can add links to your site and access reports online so you can see how well you’re doing as an affiliate.
Best Web Hosting Affiliate Marketing Programs
Web hosting affiliate programs are one of the most popular categories. Is your audience interested in places to host a blog or website? Do you cater to do-it-yourselfers or developers who need to find hosting? Then web hosting affiliates are worth exploring as they one of the highest commissions.
Bluehost
Bluehost’s affiliate program includes banner ads on your site to drive interested readers to Bluehost’s products. This comes with easy-to-use instructions and widgets, by simply embedding an HTML code you can add banners to your website. Plans start at $2.95 per month with one-time payouts starting at $65 for each qualified web hosting plan purchase. Considered among the highest paying affiliate programs, payments are processed between 45 and 60 days after the sales are made.
Hostgator
Using HostGator’s new signup custom coupon codes and tracking links you can start getting commissions per signup. Hostgator is also another affiliate program with one of the highest payouts. It offers up to $100 per signup, a flexible commission structure, co-branded landing pages and others offers. Payouts are tiered starting from $65 and can go up to $125 for more than 21 sign-ups.
GreenGeeks
GreekGeeks is a web hosting service that has support for WordPress websites, offering reseller and VPS hosting for your websites or applications. Through its partner program, it offers a reward of $50 per sale, placing it among the highest paying affiliate programs. It has a cookie 30 days and the platform will immediately track the sale back to you and generate the equivalent commission.
Flywheel
Through Flywheel’s referral program you can earn 300% of the first month’s payment on any plan up to $500 for every referral. By using Flywheel’s custom referral links to promote Flywheel on your blog, your social media channels or sites get paid per referral. However, if your customers use a promotional code or coupon, payouts will be adjusted accordingly.
Namecheap
By placing a Namecheap affiliate link on your site you can start generating commissions. Namecheap will provide you banners and text links for your referral offers. You can earn revenues for every new customer along with real-time reporting on their earnings.
DreamHost
Dreamhost offers a $120 commission per signup for customers looking for a web hosting service. Referrals can reach up to $200. It offers a variety of ready-to-use banners and tracks URLS to ensure that every person that signs up through your affiliate link is tracked. Its dashboard also helps you track of the high commissions the company pays out.
Best Website Tool Affiliate Marketing Programs
These are affiliate programs that allow you to join programs under categories like web hosting, website builders, VPNs and technology.
Fiverr
Fiverr is great if you are into promotion. It has over 250 categories to promote and include logo design, writing, programming, WordPress and business services. Its Cost Per Action goes of up to $150 and this comes with no referral limit along with lifetime attribution. Another benefit of the Fiverr program is its user-friendly dashboard, as well as the portfolio of creative resources that you can use to promote Fiverr.
Wix
Wix offers unlimited payouts with minimum effort. This site builder has over 100 million users and offers $100 per premium referral. Wix’s support includes links, banners and multi-language landing pages. However, there is a minimum sales target of $ 300 per month.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers unlimited commissions through its email marketing platforms. Partners earn $5 for each referral that signs up to free trial and get an additional $105 when referrals pay for a full account.
Squarespace
Affiliate partners can earn payouts for every website or commerce subscription that you drive from a first-time Squarespace customer. They are also eligible to receive commissions as long as their audience is converting.
WordPress.com
WordPress affiliate programs allow partners to promote WordPress.com, Jetpack, and WooCommerce to earn referral rewards. The program was created for WordPress professionals including site and plugin developers, designers, theme creators, and others who are part of the WordPress ecosystem and its associated products. Because the program is only open to a select number of partners, specifically those who can deliver demonstrated new traffic and sign-ups to WordPress.com, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. Partners who have less than $100 in accrued rewards on a consistent basis will be removed from the program.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy offers a 40% commission in addition visitors who click through to GoDaddy from ads are considered referrals as well. If they make a qualified purchase, you can automatically earn a commission. Its cookies last for 45 days and average commissions range from 10-15% per sale. GoDaddy offers over 1,000 affiliate links including banners.
Best eCommerce Affiliate Marketing Programs
Ecommerce platforms have become very popular, and some offer excellent affiliate programs. With many working towards working with affiliates. Here are some examples:
BigCommerce
BigCommerce lets you earn 200% of the customer’s first monthly payment or $1,500 per enterprise customer. Promotions can be made through referral links, pre-made banners, emails and other marketing tools. BigCommerce’s dashboard allows users insights on clicks, trials, sales and commissions. As an affiliate, you can also use it to track earnings, performance and also receive support from a dedicated account manager.
Shopify
The world’s most popular e-commerce website builder boasts of having over 500,000 merchants and a substantial 200% commission on paid stores. When referrals sign up for a Shopify Plus account, they get paid a flat $2,000 bounty payment. Once you are an affiliate, you can get support for your own Shopify store, as well as free Shopify content to use for promotion.
3dcart
3dcart is another eCommerce platform that hosts its own program and offers a 300% commission for paid conversions. It focuses on SEO and provides tools to build, promote, and grow the online store of an affiliate. The affiliate program runs on both the Commission Junction and ShareASale networks, and both offer the same commission and 120-days cookie life.
Volusion
Volusion’s e-commerce solution helps small businesses to create, manage, and expand their online stores. It provides customers with support for domain purchase, web design, cart integration, SEO, and security. It offers commission for clients that you refer to Volusion with back end marketing support. With it, you can earn a 200% one-time commission payment of your client’s monthly hosting plan. visitors who arrive at Volusion through your referral link are yours.
Weebly
Weebly is a website builder with over 45 million users. Its drag and drop interface make it easy to build a quick site. In its affiliate program, it offers a 30% recurring commission for as long as the customer is active, and features a 120-day cookie window. Through its third-party affiliate, ShareASale provides an affiliate with third-party tracking, real-time reporting, and monthly commission checks.
Flippa
Flippa’s makes it possible to make 15% on all and any successful site, store, app or digital property sale referrals. They also have the option to further earn another 15% on all and any site, store, app or digital property listing referrals.
Best Big Box Store Affiliate Programs
Well known big retail websites can be very lucrative because of the value of each sale. Think big screen TVs, electronics, home improvement products and more. One of the biggest challenges with the companies in this category is going to through the product list. We’ve combined them all here under the banner “big box stores.”
Amazon
Through its affiliate program, Amazon provides commissions between 1% and 10%, depending on the category of the product purchased. The most lucrative items to promote are clothes and luxury beauty products, both of which can earn a 10% cut on the price. If visitors end up on Amazon through your link and buys something other than what your content links you get a commission on the shopper’s entire cart. To be a member of Amazon Associates, you must have an active site, blog, app, or YouTube channel
Bloggers, publishers and creators with a qualifying site or mobile app can participate in the Amazon Associates Program. Amazon also has a separate influencer program.
Walmart
Walmart’s Affiliate Program allows participants to earn commission by placing banner ads or text links on their site and referring customers. They can earn money each time a visitor follows a link and then completes a qualifying purchase. Commissions are between 1-4% of the item’s sale amount or $10.00 per item. One of the biggest challenges with the likes of Walmart and the others in this category is going to through the product list.
eBay
Enjoying over one billion listings from a wide range of product categories, eBay’s affiliate program offers high conversion rates and a diverse selection of products.
Through its partner network, it pays out commissions of 50% to 70% of auction fees. This means that for each item sold, eBay gets a cut by charging the seller an auction fee. An affiliate can then earn a percentage of the revenue eBay earns from that purchase, based on the product category. Items such as parts, accessories and fashion often generate good commissions.
Target
Target’s affiliate program allows users to place links via banners, widgets, text links and other tools on websites. In return, visitors are tracked within a 7-day cookie window until they place orders. There are no charges to join the Target affiliate program. The program has four categories for earning commission for affiliates. These include apparel & accessories; home & outdoor living; baby gear & furniture; and health & Beauty. These commissions range from 1% to 8%, depending on the category the sales affiliates
Best Buy
Advertise Best Buy products on your social media, your blog or site, and get a commission from every product sold via your link. Best Buy offers free tools, content, and weekly banner ads to add to your site.
Home Depot
Affiliates who join Home Depot’s affiliate program can start earning revenues on every qualified sale they refer to homedepot.com. They will receive support by way of text links, display banners, project and buyer guides. Commissions include 1% on products, mobile, and buy online pick up in-store orders, 1% on appliances, and 8% on select home decor merchandise.
Lowes
Lowe’s affiliate program is managed by Commission Junction (CJ). To be eligible as an affiliate you have to have a website and be focused on home improvement, construction, design and similar areas. Lowe’s pays 2% in commissions and cookies last for one day.
Costco
You can earn commissions as an affiliate marketer by referring new customers to Costco through Skimlinks and Commission Junky.
Sam’s Club
Sam’s Club offers commissions on sale when visitors click on a SamsClub.com ad from your site and complete a qualifying sale through SamsClub.com. Just like the other big box stores this is a company with a lot of products in its inventory. So there is a great opportunity to earn commissions.
Best Office Supply Affiliate Marketing Programs
Office supply chains in the digital and physical world are highly competitive. One of the ways they stay on top is by using affiliates and their digital presence. Here are the top office supply affiliate programs.
Office Depot
Through the Office Depot affiliate program, you can earn income by placing text links, product links, and graphic banners from OfficeDepot.com directly to your site. Each transaction made through these links from your site earns you a percentage from the transaction of the item. For example, office accessories such as binders commissions are set at 6% while a 4% commission is available for paper, inkjet cartridges and toners.
Staples
With the Staples affiliate program you have a choice thousands of office supplies. By referring your visitors to Staples and having them purchase items you can receive commissions between 1-5% in sales commission.
Quill
Quill’s affiliate program allows influencers to promote Quill products by using links to divert traffic to its site and earn a commission per sale. Through VigLink technology, it automatically monetizes terms by transforming them into revenue generating hyperlinks whose destinations are determined in real-time auctions. Quill’s solutions work across sites, apps, and social networks.
Best Furniture Affiliate Marketing Programs
These are paying affiliate programs that feature furniture retailers. They come in handy if you as an influencer or website owner have a strong following in interior design, home furnishing and related topics.
Wayfair
Wayfair affiliates program allows websites and blog owners to promote Wayfair through affiliate links and earn commission on orders from those links. Wayfair offers thousands of items across all major home categories, giving affiliates more choices and opportunities. Affiliates in return get dedicated in-house management, 7% commissions, and a 7-day referral period.
Overstock
Overstock is an online retailer offering commissions with deals on designer brands and home goods. Affiliates can earn 6% on commissions on all items, a 14-day referral period and paid media opportunities. Overstock partners with CJ affiliate for tracking, reporting, and payment for its affiliate partner program.
West Elm
West Elm is a retailer for modern furniture and home decor featuring inspiring designs and colors. Affiliate marketers can earn 3% commissions of sales through the VigiLink platform.
Houzz
Houzz is a platform for home remodeling and design. Its affiliate program provides commissions of up to 5% per sales, a 30 day cookie duration and a catalogue of 9 million products available for purchase.
Anthropologie
Anthropologie needs affiliates to showcase its ads, banners and links on its site. In return, they receive a 6% commission on net sales, real-time reporting and sales tracking, a 30 day cookie window and other perks.
Best Educational Affiliate Marketing Programs
Help your audience increase their skills and education levels — and earn at the same time. Online courses and remote learning have become tremendously popular during the CVOID-19 pandemic, and are likely to continue long beyond that. Here are course or educational affiliates.
Kajabi
As a Kajabi affiliate marketer, you can receive a 30% recurring commission for any new member you sign up and stays active past their trial period. If you sign up one member who sticks around for two years that means you made around $1,000. Kajabi’s dashboard helps you track clicks, form submissions, conversions and conversion rates.
Coursera
Through its paying affiliate marketing program, this online learning platform offers between 20-45% in commissions with a cookie life of 30 days. Coursera has over 4,000 courses on offer and makes the generous commission worth exploring.
Teachable
Teachable is an online course platform that allows bloggers and website owners to build their classes to sell to their students. They offer a 30% commission for every signup done within 90 days. Its platform program gives you access to A/B tested funnels containing information about Teachable’s target audience.
Udemy
Udemy is probably the skill-learning platform that has the highest number of courses. It boasts of offering 150,000 courses and having 24 million students. It offers a baseline commission of 20% with a 7-day cookie.
Skillshare
Skillshare is another learning platform that provides 29,000 online and video classes. It offers a fixed commission of $7 for every new customer you refer to it with a 30-day cookie life. Each affiliate creates a custom account through Impact Radius that tracks their referrals in real-time.
DIY.org
DIY’s influencer program allows you to earn money by promoting memberships to it creative online community. It hosts courses targeting children, and commissions are given per converted sign-up or for each trial you refer to.
Best Cosmetic and Makeup Affiliate Programs
Do you run a site or blog in the beauty niche? Are you an influencer on social media who often shares makeup tips and product ideas? These cosmetic affiliate programs are for you. These programs are really good for those who have a makeup tutorial or beauty YouTube channel. The category often includes something called influencer programs.
As an influencer, you can tap into your social media following, blog or website to review products or help promote them. By joining an influencer program you use your creativity to create compelling content with advertisers to reach out to your audiences.
Murad
Murad the skincare products for acne, anti-aging, cellulite, age spot treatments has an affiliate program. Website owners can help promote special Murad deals and special promotions. It offers commission on sales of their products starting from 6%.
Jane
Jane is a boutique marketplace featuring women’s fashion, home decor, and children’s clothing. Through the ShareSale affiliate network it provides opportunities for bloggers working in baby products, home goods, clothing and other opportunities to earn revenue. With Jane commissions from new customers are 9% and for returning customers it is set at 8%.
Yves Rocher
Yves Rocher offers a selection of beauty products, including skin and body care. It offers a 15% commission with a 30-day cookie duration.
Scentbird
Scentbird has an n affiliate program for those interested in perfumes. The company helps affiliates earn $14 per sale or subscription generated through your link. This means for just 1 subscription sign up per day affiliates could earn $420 a month. Scentbird has a 45-day cookie and provides text links, product links and banners.
BH Cosmetics
Through BH Cosmetics affiliate program each time you direct a visitor to BHCosmetics.com and they make a purchase within 60 days of their visit, you earn an 8% commission rate on that order. Additional perks include bonuses, personalized creative content for your website and much more.
MAC
Mac is a cosmetics company globally recognized as one off the leading brands in the industry. It offers affiliate marketing opportunities through Skimlinks where websites or blogs owners can send traffic to them using tracked links. Sales that are generated from that link will earn the affiliate a commission rate.
ULTA Beauty
The Ulta affiliate program simply places links, promotional banners and available products on your website to start making commissions. Additional incentive offers include free shipping, exclusive free gifts with qualifying purchases, buy one and get one free promotion, affiliate special offers and more.
Sally Beauty
Sally Beauty’s program will help you earn a commission rate on every transaction referred from your site. As one of the biggest suppliers in the industry, the company has a lot of merchanidise. As a matter of fact, it has more than 6,000 hair, skin, and nail products for customers to choose from.
Best Affiliate Networks
A merchant is the or advertiser and is often the creator of the product or services. While an affiliate network acts as an intermediary between the merchant and the affiliate marketer. They help merchants find affiliate marketers to help them make sales and conduct marketing campaigns. Their job as matchmakers is to help businesses select affiliate marketers which is a good fit or them.
For affiliate marketers they help provide you with a portfolio of companies and products that can meet your niche. Very often affiliate networks work around a specific industry thus offering specialized expertise for businesses. This includes identifying the best influencers, blogs or websites that can best leverage a product or products and services.
Impact Radius
Impact Radius manages a number of affiliate programs, and by joining their marketplace as a media partner you gain access to these advertisers. These include merchants such as Best Buy, Door Dash, Cabela’s, Kohl’s, McAfee, Walmart, Lenovo and Adidas.
Using multi-layered tracking methodologies, it claims to be able to combat cookie blocking and deliver close to 100% tracking accuracy thus yielding 17% in higher revenues on the same traffic.
Commission Junction CJ
Commission Junction (CJ) like other affiliate networks helps affiliates earn commissions by driving traffic and conversion to advertisers through websites or blogs. CJ affiliate offers a pay-per-call solution enabling the promotion of advertisers’ products or services through traceable distribution channels. CJ affiliate clients include Blue Apron, Acer, AT&T Samsung, Dell, Canon and others.
ClickBank
ClickBank is an affiliate network for merchants that affiliates can choose to promote based on the interest of their audience. It offers a product database that helps to navigate and find to promote. ClickBank is one of the biggest brands in this segment and the company has a lot of products. To date, ClickBank has paid more than $4.2 billion in commissions from the sale of its product line.
ShareASale
ShareASale is an affiliate network that houses affiliate programs for more than 4,500 merchants for affiliates to choose from. Some of their clients include Freshbooks, Reebok, Etsy, Weebly and Sally Beauty along with many other products and services to choose from. With the ShareASale dashboard you can sign up to all these merchants, generate links, view your statistics and earn commissions. However, you are required to individually apply to the merchants and get approved by each.
Commission Factory
Commission Factory works with affiliates that have ave a website, blog, mobile app or a social media presence. Affiliates can take advantage of the tools it offers to easily generate revenue through links, banners, click-less tracking, coupon codes and its API. It represents over 600 small and large brands and many items to choose from.
Rakuten
Rakuten is an online store stocking everything from high-end electronics to clothing. Here affiliates can apply to each individual brand they want to promote. The consumer insights it provides measures decisions based on impressions, clicks and other metrics.
Sovrn Commerce (Formerly VigLink)
Sovern’s affiliate program allows food bloggers to draw traffic to its clients’ sites. It works on Cost-Per-Thousand system where an affiliate gets paid for every thousand ads that are viewed. It has over 70,000 merchants and it can automatically route your links to the highest bidder who wants their product or service promoted.
Skimlinks
When signing up on Skimlinks you earn commissions through link referrals. When an affiliate signs up, they are required to simply copy and paste a short line of code into the footer of their site once. Links that you add from merchants that are signed up with the Skimlinks network will then earn you a commission rate when a reader clicks through the affiliate link and makes a purchase.
ShopHer
ShopHer is an affiliate program for women bloggers. This program helps female bloggers earn revenue through referrals to ShopHer’s network members. It provides affiliate links, sponsored posts and customized video female bloggers.
AWin (Affiliate Window)
Awin is another popular affiliate network that gives you access to over 13,000 different merchants. Some of the notable brands carried by AWin include Etsy, AliExpress, HP and Under Armour. They have a user-friendly system and offer twice-monthly payments with small minimum requirements in multiple currencies.
PeerFly.com
PeerFly is hailed as being the fastest-growing affiliate network program in the world. The program is a Cost-Per-Action (CPA) based affiliate ad network which means they are paid for their ads when those who view it complete the desired action. PeerFly has over 2,000 live offers and guarantees top pay-outs. In addition, it offers access to its rewards program and contests as an affiliate.
MaxBounty
MaxBounty is a performance marketing network which connects trusted affiliate marketers with high paying advertisers. For adverts placed on your site, this affiliate marketing program provides monetized rewards on a Cost-Per-Action basis.
Webgains
Webgains allows advertisers and publishing partners to generate additional revenue through its affiliate program. They offer support in terms of training to create content to drive clicks to brands, convert to sales and get paid. They cover industries that include technology, sports performance, lifestyle, travel and leisure, and more.
Pepperjam
Pepperjam allows an affiliate to help run promotions for its clients and earn revenues through commissions. Through its ascend platform it offers advanced tracking, robust reporting and payment flexibility.
Avantlink
AvantLink works with affiliate marketers on CPA and lead marketing. It offers multi-channel analytics and referral tracking for its affiliate marketers. Payouts are made through commissions, bonuses, paid placement earnings and cost-per-click earnings.
Reward Style
With Reward Style your job as an affiliate marketer is to bring new clients from external traffic sources to Reward Style’s network of clients. There are 5,000 retail partners and a higher number of products to choose from. As an influencer, you are required to generate mobile-first content that’s immediately shoppable and even applies on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.
FlexOffers
Flexoffers provides programs from well-known brands and niche markets alike. As an affiliate marketer you have over 12,000 programs including JCPenney, Hulu, Microsoft, Lego, Gamefly, Lenovo, Nike, L.L. Bean, Xfinity. With its FlexRev-$hare program, you can refer as many publishers as possible and earn up to 50% of the FlexOffers.com profit.
10 Criteria to Select Affiliate Programs
When selecting an affiliate program to promote on your website or blog, the following factors matter the most:
- Relevance to your audience: who your audience is will help determine what products and services they will be more willing to purchase or use. For you to get started in affiliate marketing you will need to understand and segment your audience to leverage them for businesses that are looking for promotional partners. This will require an understanding of who your audience is, what products or services might be of interest to them. A large and engaged audience will raise your chances of generating higher revenue.
- Commission rate: Commissions for market affiliates are often paid on a monthly basis. Some commissions for electronics such as PCs and smartphones can go as low as 1. %. Others offer high commissions and can go up by 200% for specialized services such as loans, health care, or web hosting.
- Average order value: Average Order Value (AoV) calculates the average dollar amount a customer places on order on a website or mobile application. This helps determine the long term value a customer brings to the business rather than focus on individual purchases. Simply explained it is about the quality of customers you bring rather than the numbers. Customers with high AoV indicate you are driving high volume sales which means you earn more in commissions as well as bonuses and incentives from the advertisers.
- Cookie length: also known as cookie life it is the amount of time when all actions made by a user, directed by you from your site, are commissioned to you. This is all about referred customers not deciding to move into action quickly. Some businesses offer a week others offer a 90 day period. The longer the cookie length it increases the window where you receive commissions and rewards in the event the customer decides to make the purchase or take action.
- Recurring commissions: also called lifetime commission it is an offering that pays every month the customer is active with the companies product or service. This is often offered among software companies and membership programs.
- Dashboard, data, and support: are important for you to measure progress on your promotional efforts. Unless you measure it, it will be difficult to know where you excel and where you need to improve. It is also important to have good and responsive marketing collateral to bring more impact to your marketing efforts. Support also should come in terms of offering incentives and reward packages for good performers to recognize their work and encourage them to do more.
- Payout threshold: refers to the minimum amount of money you need to make for you to receive payment. Some merchants or networks require a minimum of $100. This is in a bid to encourage more sales as well as avoid transaction and processing costs for small payments.
- Fair merchants: As an affiliate in marketing you are a promotions partner for the merchant. For your services, you require compensation in terms of commissions and rewards. Some merchants look for ways to avoid paying commissions per sale after the fact and don’t treat their partners fairly. To avoid such conflicts it is important that you as an affiliate make sure to do your due diligence to see if the merchants have a fair paying affiliate program offers.
- Link generators – An affiliate referral link is used to promote a merchant’s website or products. It has the affiliate’s ID or username appended to the URL so a specific affiliate can be tracked when a visitor or customer visits your website. If the customer successfully completes an action a referral will be generated and the affiliate will be awarded a commission. They can also generate their own referral URL from the merchant by pasting the page URL.
- Restrictions – Some merchants do not allow an affiliate to use coupon sites or discount pages. This might be because they do not want to have a lot of bargain seekers. Others will not give you commissions if your referrals opt to use discount codes for their product.
- Discounts – Does the merchant offer discounts, free trials, or special offers to your affiliate? These will do a lot to help speed up conversions as people will automatically take on the impression their risk has been somewhat reduced as a consequence of the offer.
What is the best affiliate program to join?
It’s hard to pick just one “best affiliate program” because it depends on your audience and their interests, as well as your own interest in promoting an offering. Instead of looking for a single best program, make sure what is best for you and get started. The list herein broken down by categories should help you pick the best affiliate marketing solution for your situation.
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This article, “Best Affiliate Programs – And the Highest Paying” was first published on Small Business Trends