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The best affiliate marketing programs are the ones that offer high-earning potential and the support, materials, and motivation to succeed at promoting their products.
They’re also the ones that are best suited to your niche, your audience’s needs and preferences, and your position within the landscape of competing affiliates.
So, with millions of programs available, how do you find the best high-commission affiliate programs to participate in?
What do you need to consider when choosing the right ones? And should you choose a program or an affiliate network? Do you need to work with an affiliate marketing agency?
This review covers exactly that and more.
Let’s dive in!
Choosing the right affiliate programs to partner with makes a big difference to how successful your promotional efforts will be and how much you can earn as an affiliate.
Here are the key factors to consider when you’re choosing an affiliate program:
Consider the following when you’re evaluating affiliate commission structure and earning potential:
Look for good quality products that are relevant to your niche and will provide real satisfaction to your audience. Evaluate the demand for the product or service in your audience’s demographic to ensure consistent interest.
Check out product reviews as those with good ratings and good brand reputation are easier to promote successfully, and you will have some assurance that you’re giving your audience good advice.
Selecting evergreen products that are not trend-dependent increases the lifespan of your affiliate marketing efforts and helps you earn a sustained income over time.
Cookies are small text files stored on a user’s device by a web browser when they visit a website. Cookies capture data related to user activity on the site, such as preferences, session information, or tracking identifiers.
In affiliate marketing, cookies are essential because they enable merchants to track and credit sales or actions (such as form submissions or sales) to the appropriate affiliate who referred the user.
The cookie duration determines how long the tracking cookie remains active. It affects whether the affiliate gets credited if the user delays their purchase.
Check out this video by Craig Campbell SEO for a detailed breakdown of cookies and how they affect earning potential for affiliates:
Programs with longer cookie durations (e.g., 30-90 days) give you more time to earn commissions from referred customers. Shorter durations (e.g., 24 hours) may lead to lost commissions if the user takes longer to decide.
Look for a program that offers cross-device tracking. Cookies are often device-specific, meaning they don’t follow users across devices and lose affiliates’ revenue when the same user takes the desired action from a different device.
Advanced tracking methods, such as server-side tracking, can bridge this gap.
Research the program’s average conversion rates and earnings per click (EPC). High conversion rates typically mean higher earnings.
Check that the merchant’s website or landing pages are well-designed and optimized for conversions, which will improve the likelihood of your referrals converting.
Look at how the program handles attribution, for example, if multiple affiliates have referred the same customer, many programs use a last-click attribution model, crediting the sale to the most recent affiliate link clicked.
Look for programs with a low minimum payout threshold so that you can start earning as soon as possible and not have to wait until you meet a higher amount for the payout to be made.
Ensure the program supports payment methods that are accessible to you (e.g., PayPal, bank transfer).
Check the payment schedule to understand how often payouts occur (e.g., weekly or monthly) and choose programs that suit your needs.
Access to support from dedicated affiliate managers can help you optimize your performance.
Programs that provide detailed product information, high-quality product images, banners, email templates, and other tools can save you a lot of time and effort and improve the quality of the information your audience gets from you.
Highly popular programs may lead to more competition, reducing your ability to stand out.
Programs offering exclusive offers, unique products or features can help you differentiate yourself from competing affiliates and offer unique value to your audience.
Choose programs that provide robust affiliate tracking tools and detailed reports for analyzing your performance and optimizing your strategy.
Choose programs that serve customers in the same geographic location/s as your audience.
This reduces barriers to conversion, such as exceptionally high shipping or delivery delays that might make your audience choose not to purchase.
If your audience is international, ensure the program can serve customers in multiple countries with appropriate shipping, pricing, and support.
By evaluating these factors, you can select affiliate programs that align with your niche, maximize your earning potential, and ensure a smooth partnership experience.
Semrush’s affiliate program is a great choice for anyone in the digital marketing space, including bloggers, website owners, marketing enthusiasts, and agencies.
Semrush is an SEO tool that provides a full range of marketing-related features, including keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, and site auditing.
Semrush offers a 120-day cookie duration and affiliates are paid a flat $200 commission for every new paid subscription they refer and earn $10 for every referral that signs up for a free trial.
There is no referral limit, and you can choose between a fixed rate or revenue share commission structure.
Niche: Marketing, SEO, content marketing
Commission rate: $200 for every sale you make and $10 for every free trial your referrals sign up (note that commission is only paid on first-time buyers using your link)
Cookie duration: 120 days
Website: Semrush Affiliate Program
The Shopify Affiliate Program is one of the most popular e-commerce affiliate programs, ideal for entrepreneurs, bloggers, content creators, and review sites.
Shopify has more than a million retailers using its platform globally, and it is one of the programs with stricter requirements for its affiliates.
To join the program, you need to be experienced with e-commerce platforms, have an up-to-date website and an established audience, and create good content.
Affiliate earnings through Shopify vary depending on where the merchants you’re promoting are located. The specific commission structures varies too but there are no referral limits.
Niche: eCommerce
Commission rate: Up to $150 for all full-price plan merchant referrals.
Cookie duration: 30 days
Website: Shopify Affiliate Program
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform that also offers customer relationship management automation and SMS marketing.
It is a great choice for beginner affiliates in a relevant niche and offers support materials and tips for affiliates.
ActiveCampaign has different price plans and offers recurring affiliate commissions between 20% and 30%, which can translate into some significant earnings!
However, you do need to be an ActiveCampaign user to gain access to all the benefits of the program and payouts are only via PayPal.
Niche: Email marketing platform
Commission rate: 20 – 30% recurring
Cookie duration: 90 days
Website: ActiveCampaign Partner Program
HubSpot is an all-in-one solution for customer relationship management (CRM), sales, customer support and content marketing.
The affiliate program is ideal for business educators, bloggers, software reviewers, content creators, and entrepreneurs.
With a 30% recurring commission on every net new customer you refer, the earning potential with HubSpot is significant and the program offers different tiers, so you can scale your affiliate activities and earnings as you grow.
Affiliates on higher tiers, who have earned their place with more referrals, get increasingly good rewards and benefits, from marketing assets and 30% commission at the bottom to link-building opportunities, co-branding opportunities and a dedicated affiliate manager as they move up.
Niche: Digital marketing; CRM
Commission rate: 30% recurring commission (for up to 12 months)
Cookie duration: 180 days
Website: HubSpot Affiliate Program
Teachable is a hugely successful online course creation platform for businesses and entrepreneurs to create courses and coaching programs.
It has over 100K users, including the likes of the New York Times, and everyone else from corporates to individuals.
Teachable’s Affiliate Program pays up to 30% recurring commission for 12 months for successful referral.
A perk of Teachable is that you can offer its free courses to your network so they can try it out and see what they will get, and then they can use your referral link to make a purchase.
Teachable also offers coaching on how to market their platform and regular updates to keep you informed and motivated.
Niche: Course creation platform
Commission rate: Up to 30% recurring commissions
Cookie duration: 30 days
Website: Teachable Affiliate Partner Program
Kinsta is a successful managed WordPress hosting provider.
It offers one of the best high-paying affiliate programs, with one-time flat fee commissions of $50 to $500 per client you successfully sign up.
You can also earn a recurring 10% commission on WordPress packages, and a 5% commission resource-based services like app or database hosting through Kinsta.
The earning potential is great, but you do have to be knowledgeable and possess some level of authority to promote premium hosting services successfully.
As such, the program is best suited for developers, publishers, agencies and SaaS businesses.
Niche: Website hosting
Commission rate: Up to $500 plus 5-10% lifetime commissions
Cookie duration: 60 days
Website: Kinsta Affiliates
Smartproxy is a residential proxy network which acts as a middleman between users’ devices and the internet, allowing them to bypass things like geo-restrictions and IP blocks.
Its affiliate program is one of the best in this niche, offering a 60 day cookie duration and commissions of up to 50%, which translates into amounts of up to $2500 per successful referral!
Smartproxy also provides valuable marketing materials to help you promote their products.
However, one downside is the minimum payout threshold of $100 and that you do not earn commission on any purchases made with cryptocurrency.
Niche: Residential proxy network
Commission rate: Up to 50%
Cookie duration: 60 days
Website: Smartproxy Affiliate Program
The Sephora Beauty Affiliate Program is a great choice for any beauty, skincare or makeup enthusiast.
Commissions are not exceptionally high (between 5% and 30%) but the earning potential is significant due to the number of brands and products offered, and the retailers solid reputation in the market.
Sephora also offers dedicated affiliate support, and provides marketing materials, including banners, product images, and promotional links to aid your promotional efforts.
Niche: Beauty, cosmetics, skincare, makeup
Commission Rate: 5%-10%
Cookie Duration: 24hrs-30 days (dependent on network)
Website: Sephora Beauty Affiliate Program
Amazon’s massive range of products makes it ideal for affiliate publishers, content creators, influencers, review sites, and bloggers in just about every niche.
It offers standard commission rates of up to 10% but still provides a high-earning opportunity for affiliates due to the sheer number of options to promote.
No matter how specific your niche, there is something your audience will appreciate on Amazon.
It also allows affiliates to link to deals and promotions, which is a plus for affiliates competing in a fairly saturated market.
Amazon’s Creator University is another plus, where you can find a myriad of helpful resources, tips and advice from other participants.
Niche: E-commerce
Commission rate: Up to 10%
Cookie duration: 24 hours
Website: Amazon Associates
The difference between an affiliate program and an affiliate network lies in their scope, functionality, and role in the affiliate marketing ecosystem:
An affiliate program is a system run by a single company or merchant that wants to promote its own products or services through affiliate marketers.
Pros:
Cons:
An affiliate network is a platform that connects multiple merchants with affiliates. It acts as an intermediary, offering a centralized system for affiliates to find and manage programs across various brands and industries.
Affiliate networks provide:
Pros:
Cons:
The right choice depends on your niche, goals, and marketing strategy!
Finding and selecting the best affiliate programs for you to participate in can be challenging, especially if you want to maximize the earning potential from your promotional efforts.
High-commission rates and favourable terms make all the difference but you also need to consider how well-suited the product or service is your audience, and if you’re well-positioned to promote it.
In this review, we covered everything you need to know to make an informed (and lucrative!) decision.
Anyone can become an affiliate marketer promoting brands and products, but many affiliate programs have requirements that you must meet to be eligible. These include things like a certain number of followers on a social media platform or being an existing customer of the brand. Read the full guide to learn more about the requirements to join some of the best affiliate programs Payment schedules vary across affiliate programs, but the most common payout cycle is monthly. Some programs pay weekly or at other intervals, and some have a minimum payout threshold where you will only be paid once you reach that amount in commission earnings. Read the full review to learn more about how often affiliates get paid their commission and what to consider when choosing the best program to partner with. Amazon Affiliates earn between 1% to 20% commission, depending on the product category. Read the full review to learn more about becoming an Amazon affiliate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can anyone become an affiliate marketer?
How often do affiliates get paid?
How much does Amazon Affiliates pay?
Ahrefs: Here’s How Much You Can Really Make from Affiliate Marketing
Amazon Associates: Fixed Commission Income Rates
Cognitive Market Research: Affiliate Market Report 2024 (Global Edition)
Hostinger: 10 Best Niches for Affiliate Marketing to Make a Profit In 2024
The best affiliate marketing programs are the ones that offer high-earning potential and the support...
The best affiliate marketing programs are the ones that offer high-earning potential and the support...
The best affiliate marketing programs are the ones that offer high-earning potential and the support...
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