Affiliate programs have dramatically reshaped how organizations can make money via partnerships. An affiliate marketing business is a win-win proposition for all parties involved and if you’re a blogger or publisher trying to monetize your articles without selling any services or products, affiliation is considered the ideal way to do so.
But how does joining an affiliate program give you access to additional resources and special offers for your visitors while earning you extra money? Affiliate marketing programs can vary greatly based on their purpose, products/services involved, and place of application. This post will explore the best affiliate marketing programs that offer the highest commissions.
But first, let’s understand what is affiliate marketing and how it helps advertisers.
What is Affiliate Program?
Affiliate program in a nutshell, involves an agreement between two or more businesses, where one of them pays the other (the affiliate) in exchange for sending leads or traffic their way. So basically, if your website’s content, social media (in the case of influencers), or product integration helps generate traffic/sales for my business, you are my affiliate partner.
Source: Bigcommerce
Affiliate marketing works when brands come together to promote each other’s offerings. Additionally, when a brand you know well starts promoting a product/service, they automatically gain more credibility. This is why brands choose their affiliate marketers carefully.
How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing Program?
Let us now learn how the affiliate marketing industry functions and how organizations profit from it. Typically, the companies willing to advertise on your website/social channels provide you with an ‘affiliate link,’ from which user clicks can be tracked through cookies. The cookies also track users to see if they are making a purchase/availing of a subscription within a given period; in case they do, the affiliate receives a commission.
Source: Onlinemediamasters
Each cookie associated with an affiliate link has a length (or cookie life) that defines how long it tracks a user’s online activities. For instance, if the lifespan of a cookie is 15 days, it means that the referrals from the link need to make a subscription/purchase within 15 days of clicking the affiliate link to get their affiliate income(commission) paid.
There are numerous ways in which you can start affiliate marketing programs to make money for your business. In addition, there are many affiliate types to choose from (depending on your business Idea and its goals) some of which are described below.
5 Types of Affiliate Programs
There are multiple types of affiliate programs that can be used to promote your products or services. However, before choosing, you should consider the platforms or portals your prospective customers are likely to spend their time on. For instance, if you are an affiliate marketer selling fitness equipment, you are likelier to find your audience on Facebook, Instagram, and health & fitness blogs/channels. Understanding the buyer persona you are targeting and their habits go a long way in helping you choose the appropriate affiliate partnerships. For example, FMCG purchasers look for quality, and apparel buyers typically look for discounts on their favorite brands. You can also hire an affiliate manager to manage your revenues/payouts generated from different sources.
While affiliate marketing avenues may differ based on your requirements, let us glance through a few popular affiliate marketing types that are used by the majority of businesses today:
1. Search Affiliates
Businesses and entrepreneurs using such programs pay money to promote your ads/offers on search results and other online platforms. In such cases, you must ensure that your affiliate partner follows the proper search and advertising guidelines. It would be a definite plus if the affiliate marketers are from an SEO background and want to A/B test to determine which affiliate ads result in the most referral for your business and generate the most ROI for themselves.
2. Bloggers/Influencers
Social media influencers and bloggers who cover your industry and regularly engage with your prospective buyer personas could also work well as affiliate partners. For example, if your product is a PC game, you might want to pursue gaming influencers and individuals who have a high following in the gaming community to feature your product. This type of involved affiliate marketing would allow your target audiences to look into your product via your website or social media pages. If this results in a purchase, you could pay additional revenue to the blogger.
3. Review Websites
Review websites are ideal for products and services that are pricier or required by a niche audience. In such cases, buyers want to do extensive research and analysis before making a purchasing decision. Therefore, researching the leading review websites related to your product or service would be a good idea before starting affiliate marketing. For instance, if your product is a software, you might want to consider software review websites like Softwaresuggest to list your product/provide an affiliate link for your services on their site.
4. Coupon Sites
If you are offering a new service or product that isn’t already popular in the marketplace, coupon sites might be the ideal affiliate partner for you, at least for the initial months. While discounts could hurt your business, shelling out offers in the first few days through unattached affiliate marketing could be an effective strategy to attract first-time buyers, who later become your brand’s advocates.
5. Email Marketing
Email affiliate marketing is one of the most effective advertising tools. However, it is best to do it in moderation. To make your email marketing affiliate partnership successful, ensure that your partner does not send out bulk emails to customers who are not keen on availing of your products or services. Try to avoid spamming at all costs and make sure they contact individuals who have shown interest in your offerings.
27 Most Profitable Affiliate Marketing Programs in 2023
Let us now discover some of the best affiliate programs offering the highest commissions.
1. HubSpot
HubSpot’s core mission is to help thousands of partnering organizations grow faster. This award-winning CRM and marketing platform is also known for being a sales and service hub and has assisted thousands of organizations with its array of valuable tools. Apart from teaching the world about.
Affiliate marketers of HubSpot can choose between a 15% recurring rate for up to a year or a flat rate that corresponds to 100% of the revenue generated in the first month. HubSpot has a cookie life of 90 days, and its plans range between $50 and $3000+ a month. These payouts quickly add up in most cases as several customers buy/subscribe to more than a single product.
HubSpot’s affiliate marketing program gives you access to an exhaustive creative inventory that includes demo banners, videos, and copy examples that help you boost your commission. You also get assistance from HubSpot’s own affiliate marketing team, which enables you to design your road to success. The platform is ideal for you if you aim to monetize your content or cater to a massive business audience.
2. Sendinblue
This all-in-one online affiliate marketing platform helps organizations connect with their prospects and customers via multiple channels like SMS, email marketing, chat, CRM, etc. Being agile and user-friendly has earned Sendinblue over 1,75,000 users around the world, who are growing by the day.
The platform offers affiliate programs for two different streams – one for bloggers and another for agencies. Its affordable pricing presents an attractive revenue opportunity for publishers and bloggers, and you get 100 Euros each time you refer a paying customer. This also allows you to join a global network offering top affiliate programs for multiple industries. Such affiliate networks offer high payouts and involve much fewer risks.
3. AWeber
AWeber has been the top autoresponder choice for over a million entrepreneurs and businesses since 1998. The affiliate marketer allows users to create stunning newsletters and drip email campaigns and has a cookie life of a year.
Aweber‘s affiliates can earn decent affiliate income through the following two channels:
- AWeber’s in-house affiliate marketing program offers a lifetime commission of 30%. The plans can range from $20 to $150 a month, allowing the payout to increase.
- You can also earn $300 per account via CJ affiliate. However, the cookie life of this option is 45 days only.
4. Elementor
This dynamic website creator allows users to drag-and-drop key elements effortlessly and is responsible for creating 7% of the planet’s websites. In addition, Elementor offers hundreds of useful design tools, widgets, templates, and integrations to help businesses customize and scale their websites on WordPress without any coding.
The newly-added cloud hosting feature has shot up the popularity of this affiliate marketing platform, which now has over 100k members within its online community. The affiliate partners of Elementor earn 50% commission on each sale, and the software offers five pricing plans ranging between $49 and $999 yearly. This broad pricing range makes it easier for its affiliate partners to promote various plans strategically for specific audience groups.
5. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a new entrant in the realm of email marketing that helps businesses widen their customer base through landing pages, drip email campaigns, and survey forms. Its affiliate marketers are usually chosen from its existing users who feel their audiences might benefit from email marketing products.
ConvertKit offers a lifelong commission of 30% for each referred webinar subscriber or paying customer. It has plans ranging from $29 to $2000+ per month, providing huge earning potential, and users can join their affiliate programs for free. However, the program doesn’t offer any special discount or offer any product that its affiliates promote.
6. GetResponse
Apart from email marketing, GetResponse provides webinar hosting, landing pages, opt-in forms, CRMs, and a bunch of automated marketing tools. GetResponse has a cookie length of 120 days and offers two affiliate programs, which users can avail of simultaneously.
GetResponse’s affiliate networks and self-hosted program offer a recurring commission of 33%, and its plans range between $15 and $1200, which translates to a pretty substantial payout. Users can also earn $135 for every sale that is referred through CJ Affiliate, in which case the cookie life shrinks to 30 days.
7. Fiverr
Although Fiverr is popularly known as a freelance marketplace for digital services, it also offers a few products that you can promote on your website. This includes Fiverr Pro, which gives you access to talent certified by major brands, and Fiverr Learn, which offers courses for freelancers and corporations looking to expand their skill sets.
Fiverr currently has over 5.5 million users, and offers a dedicated dashboard to their affiliate marketing partners for managing and monitoring campaigns effectively. The Fiverr affiliate program also offers multiple creative assets that help you promote its offerings better. Fiverr has a cookie life of 30 days, and its commissions vary depending on the services that you choose to promote.
8. Pabbly
This online platform offers numerous business management and marketing tools that help in email verifications, app integrations, workflow automation, SaaS subscription management, and marketing.
Though it does not provide you with an affiliate manager, the platform offers one of the best affiliate marketing programs on this list and provides some unique advantages such as:
- You can advertise any or all of their products to receive a 30% commission within 40 days of the transaction.
- Pabbly tracks the affiliate sales of each of its products using a cookie. Hence, whatever service/product you promote, your commission would be calculated based on the sale of all products purchased through your affiliate marketing link.
- The sale of a single Pabbly product offers a commission amount of $183, making it one of the best affiliate programs in terms of returns.
Apart from the above features, Pabbly offers a single dashboard to affiliate marketing companies that lets them know all about commission-related information (including affiliate sales, payouts, referrals, etc.) on a single screen.
9. Unbounce
Unbounce is a popular landing page platform that helps users create high-converting landing pages for ecommerce websites, SaaS businesses, and agencies. In addition, Unbounce‘s affiliate programs are considered to be quite profitable, allowing you to earn 20% of the recurring revenues for each customer referred.
In addition to the above, your website’s visitors and social media followers get a 20% discount during their first three months of using Unbounce. Furthermore, the platform offers you a robust set of tools to help you successfully use the affiliate program, including a Partner Coach, a customized real-time dashboard to monitor progress, and training and advertising equipment to help you effectively promote your business.
Thus, if you are an advertiser hoping to assist clients in boosting their landing page conversion rates, this partnership would be the best affiliate program for your needs.
10. Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers a range of robust email marketing tools for bloggers, entrepreneurs, and SMEs. The platform allows you to create Facebook and Instagram affiliate marketing ads, automate email marketing campaigns, send follow-up emails and target new ecommerce customers to help boost the revenue of your virtual store.
The organization’s affiliate program helps you earn $5 for each lead qualified and provides an additional $105 when a referral becomes a paying customer of Constant Contact. Moreover, they also get promotional materials, an affiliate dashboard, and personalized support from their team. Today, many major brands, including Shopify, WordPress, and Facebook, use Constant Contact to benefit through their email marketing tools.
11. Systeme.io
This fast-paced and simple marketing tool offers everything that you need to kickstart, grow and scale your business online. Systeme.io currently has a user-base of 2,00,00 who use their platform to create sales funnels, send emails, manage online blogs and courses, develop websites, run affiliate marketing programs and automate multiple aspects of branding.
Systeme.io offers 6 pricing packages ranging between $27 monthly to $828 yearly. Apart from such extensive pricing slots, it also offers multiple lead magnets and online courses that help their affiliates maximize leads in their affiliate sales funnels. In addition, their marketing affiliate program allows you to make use of all six of its pricing plans and employee onboarding tools to convert users.
Systeme.io’s affiliates can earn 40% of lifetime commissions on all its subscriptions and course sales. Additionally, they earn 5 percent tier-2 commissions if their referrals can promote the platform themselves successfully. Systeme.io is considered to have the best affiliate program with an average monthly payout of over $1,00,000 and has over $2000000 in total affiliate commissions earned henceforth.
12. Typeform
Typeform offers conversational surveys and forms for the purpose of lead capturing, employee satisfaction surveys, and contact questionnaires. In addition, it provides 20% recurring commissions per referral, helping you earn up to a fifth of the referred customers’ subscription to Typeform for as long as the subscription is active.
Typeform’s services are pretty cheap, making it easy for your referrals to make purchases, which adds to your cut. In addition, if you refer 100 customers who subscribe to its monthly basic plan, you would get $580 every month.
13. Outgrow Affiliate Program
This interactive content builder helps advertisers create personalized content, including viral quizzes, ecommerce recommendations, forms, chatbots, surveys, polls, and assessments. Highly customized interactive content helps boost user engagement, improve conversions and generate leads simultaneously, assisting organizations in growing exponentially.
Outgrow has a cookie life of 30 days and offers a 20% upfront commission in addition to 20% on recurring payments. Additionally, its affiliate partners receive 24×7 support via chat and have a chance to get featured on its podcasts and webinars.
14. Thinkific
This versatile and feature-rich platform makes sharing knowledge easy, growing your user base, and scaling your business fast. In addition, Thinkific enables you to create, advertise, and sell online membership and courses under your brand.
Thinkific’s affiliate program is ideal for the following user roles/business models:
- Business leaders wanting to create courses for customers
- Content creators with skills and knowledge to be shared
- Entrepreneurs wishing to add more revenue streams
As a Thinkific affiliate partner, you get a 30% lifetime recurring commission with a 90-day cookie window and access to curated promotional and creative content. In addition, many of Thinkific’s partners earn up to $1700 per referral annually.
15. Kajabi
Kajabi is an online learning and course-creation platform that helps firms launch stunning marketing campaigns, create attractive landing pages, and easily design websites.
Kajabi’s partner program is open to its user base only and offers a 30% lifetime commission for any new member you bring that stays past the trial period. In addition, you would be treated with special rewards for your progress, and each reward level unlocks exciting perks for Kajabi’s partners.
16. Teachable
Teachable helps you create, promote and sell aesthetic courses online and has over 18 million students with 186000 active courses. This reputed learning platform can be used for various niche subjects and offers a recurring commission of 30% on the referral’s subscription charges. Teachable plans range between $29 to $499 a month, meaning you can earn up to $150 a month on each sale.
17. iSpring
iSpring is an international software development platform that produces tools for e-learning, content authoring, and virtual training. Its flagship product helps create interactive virtual courses, video tutorials, quizzes, ebooks, etc.
iSpring offers an intuitive interface and offers solutions for multiple learning needs. Its affiliate marketing programs can cost between $770 and $970, which allows you to earn from $77 to $97 from a single purchase. You can also get around $1000 monthly if you can provide 10+ customers each month.
18. Shopify
Shopify has over 2 million ecommerce merchants around the globe using its services. This market leader in the drop-shipping industry offers the best affiliate programs and provides all the features needed to create, manage and monetize websites. It offers website builders, web hosting, and store management features along with tools for analytics, payment processing, a dedicated account manager, and much more.
If your audience centers primarily around ecommerce and you need to create and optimize your web store, Shopify‘s affiliate marketing program would be useful for you. With Shopify, affiliates get a chance to earn a handsome commission of 200% on the price of a monthly subscription. In addition, when your referral signs up for a Shopify Plus account, you get paid $2000 as a bounty payment.
19. Leadpages
This online platform allows you to create and customize your landing pages to boost conversion rates and collect necessary information with visitors. Their affiliate marketing program is open only to their customers, whose referral results in a lifetime commission of 30 percent. Leadpages has a cookie life of 30 days, and its membership prices are between $25 and $200 a month.
20. Wix
Wix can be the best affiliate marketing program for you if you prefer unlimited payout through minimal effort (yes, you read that right). This web development and hosting platform offers $100 per premium referral with no caps on the number of people you can refer to!
Wix has a cookie life of 30 days and is ideal for blogs/websites/social channels that are visited regularly by individuals interested in creating their own hosting platform or website. However, one drawback of the program is that you must meet the minimum sales target of $300/month to get paid.
21. Crowdbotics
Crowdbotics specializes in creating robust and scalable business apps for businesses. It helps coding professionals turn their ideas into code/programs using a matched library of components and offers assistance through its on-call experts.
Crowdbotics offers production-worthy software packages to map out the best workflows and components for a given project. In addition, once your referral partners start affiliate marketing by creating their app on Crowdbotics, you can claim various rewards and prizes from the platform.
22. WP Engine
Over 40% of the world’s websites are created on WordPress. WP Engine offers fast and secure web hosting for thousands of websites globally. Its affiliate program can earn you as much as $200 per signup or 100% of the customer’s maiden monthly payment — whichever is higher. You can also advertise StudioPress themes which earn you 35% of the revenue.
23. Kinsta
Early WordPress developers have created Kinsta as a platform providing fast, reliable, and secure hosting at affordable rates. Its affiliate program offers an initial commission, followed by a recurring payment of 10%. Depending on your affiliate marketing referral’s plan, you can initially earn up to $500.
24. Bluehost
This web hosting platform currently supports over 2 million websites worldwide and offers high returns on its affiliate programs. For hosting Bluehost‘s products and services on your platform, you can earn $65-$130 per sale generated through your website. They also offer a dedicated account manager who can provide assistance and personalized advice.
25. Hostgator
Hostgator offers affordable web hosting and website building tools, making it ideal for startups and small ecommerce stores. Though you do not get the facilities that you would expect from an eBay partner network, becoming a Hostgator affiliate is free, and the platform offers tiered payouts that are as below:
- 1-5 signups a month = $65 per signup
- Over 21 signups a month= $125 per signup
Hostgator lets you choose between embedding tracking links on your site or creating a custom coupon code.
26. GreenGeeks
This eco-friendly web hosting platform lets you earn up to $100 per sale. Their tiered affiliate marketing program helps you receive $50 for a single sale and provides $100 for six sales or more. In addition, GreenGeeks offers a plethora of creative assets, banners, and content to help you advertise effectively and drive the right traffic.
27. Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates affiliate programs offer commissions between 1 to 10% depending on the product category. In addition, it has a cookie life of one day and is one of the most trusted platforms worldwide for online shopping.
In addition to the Amazon Associates affiliate program, the platform has recently launched the Amazon Influencer program that offers you a unique URL to showcase your preferred products to your followers.
Conclusion
A variety of organizations and individuals today are trying their hands on affiliate marketing to achieve their goals and get good returns. However, before choosing your affiliate marketing partner, you must know what your audience prefers and whether your partner can attract them with their products or services. An affiliate association can succeed only when the right affiliate partner, audience, and organization converge.
Updated : January 2, 2023
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