Choosing the best and highest paying affiliate programs is one of the most crucial steps of establishing your successful affiliate business. Amazon Associates, ClickBank or ShareASale. The list of affiliate programs is nearly endless.
But don’t worry!
To help you in this process, this post will cover an entire guide on the most important aspects of choosing the best affiliate programs.
The concept of affiliate marketing is promising as it does not require you to have an own product thus not being responsible for the fulfilment process. This is the case since affiliate marketing is a business model that refers to promoting products you do not own and getting payed for this in return.
Yet, as simple as this might sound like, building a successful affiliate marking business is not just about slapping you affiliate links into your website. Therefore, try to implement my advice unveiled in this post!
Apart from Affiliate Marketing there are other ways to make money from the comfort of your sofa! Just click here to know more.
Table of Contents
Highest Paying Affiliate Programs
Beyond the Dollar Signs: Factors to Consider for Long-Term Success
Before we dive into the affiliate network universe, it is quite essential to understand the criteria that separates the stellar programs from the mediocre ones. When choosing an affiliate program it is not just about the highest payout but rather about the best overall performance. Thus, it is equally important to pick programs that align with your audience, offer quality products and ensure long-term success.
1. Audience
Promoting products that suits your audience is key to establish a successful affiliate business. Only if you can convince your audience to buy the products you can become an successful affiliate.
Therefore, keep in mind that you have to choose products that align with our audience interests.
Example: Affiliate Tom has a blog that revolves around technology. In Tom’s case, affiliating with an electronics store would likely resonate more with his audience than promoting fashion items.
I personally, only choose programs with which I can promote products that help you to build a successful online business. It would be nonsense if I promote a food delivery service to you, right?
2. Quality Products
Equally important is the fact that you should only promote quality products. At the end of the day you (hopefully) want to help your audience with your promoted product making it crucial to choose products that offer great quality.
To ensure this, it is my advice to always test out the products yourself before offering it to your audience.
That’s at least what I try to implement for my promoted product for you. I highly recommend you to do so as well as it leads to a satisfied audience that of course increases the trust in you as an affiliate. So that’s definitely a win-win situation.
Example: Tom always tests out products himself to make sure it will help his audience. Doing so, he promotes just a small but valuable amount of products to his audience. At the end of the day, his audience is satisfied and remain buying from his links.
Lisa on the other hand, promotes everything without making sure that the products are of good quality. As a result her audience looses trust in herself and stop buying via her links.
As you recognize quality goes clearly over quantity when striving to build an successful and sustainable affiliate business.
3. Reputable Programs
Choosing reputable programs goes kind of hand in hand with the previous criteria. Your audience will more likely buy products from well-known and trustworthy shops than from weird and suspicious-looking landing pages.
Example: Products offered by Amazon usually generate more trust as Amazon is well-known. It is very likely that an individual of your audience was already in touch with Amazon. This makes it enormously easier for you as an affiliate to sell a specific product.
4. Commission Structure
Definition: Commission structure describes how companies compensate their sales associates.
Especially concerning long-term success it is essential to find affiliate programs that offer you a reliable and fair commission structure.
There are, for instance, programs that pay you monthly or yearly for each sale you have generated, whereas others pay you a single commission for each sale you have initiated, like Amazon Associate does.
Usually you get paid a specific percentage of a customer’s order.
Which model is best for you depends on your personal needs and your niche. There are some niches such as the finance and health niche where it is easier to sell subscription-based products hence you being payed monthly than it is the case in the fashion niche for example.
5. Cookie Duration
Definition: If someone clicks on your unique affiliate link your browser will “remember” this for a certain amount of time. This is the so-called cookie duration.
To show you why cookie duration is so important to pay attention to, I made an example for you.
Example: Imagine there are three friends called Ben, John and Emma. All of them are clicking on your unique affiliate link. Ben decides to buy the product right away, John makes a purchase after 7 days and Emma waits 30 days to finally buy the product.
With a cookie duration of 10 days you would only get paid a commission from Ben’s and John’s purchase, but not from Emma’s one.
In this example Emma took too long to make the purchase.
As you hopefully see, the cookie duration directly affects your earnings making it beneficial to look for programs with high cookie durations.
Creme de la Creme: Highest Paying Affiliate Programs
Now that you are familiar with the basics, let us get to the point. Here are the best and highest paying affiliate programs for your business:
Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates is Amazon’s own affiliate network. Amazon Associates boasts an extensive product inventory, spanning categories from electronics to home goods, ensuring affiliates can find relevant products for their audiences regardless of the niche. So absolutely great for beginners!
With its trusted brand name and widespread popularity, promoting Amazon products often leads to high conversion rates.
Cost: Free
Commission rate: 3-4%
Cookie: 24h
Payment Methods: International Bank Transfer, Gift Card, Cheque
Pros:
- International brand recognition
- vast product range -> products for every niche
- trusted brand name
- easy and self-explanatory link-creation and dashboard
- good customer service
Cons:
- way too short cookie duration
- low commission rates -> making many sells necessary
ShareASale
Another recommendation of mine is ShareASale.The expansive network of ShareASale opens doors to thousands of merchants across various niches. Sounds good, right?
Whether you’re in fashion, software, or lifestyle blogging, SaleAShare’s diverse options make it suitable for a wide range of affiliates.
ShareASale is known for partnering with reputable merchants, offering you the assurance of promoting quality products.
As you learned previously, product quality is of great importance making this program worth signing up for.
Cost: Free
Commission rate: 5-50%
Cookie: 30 days
Payment Methods: check sent out via Mail or FedEx, direct deposit, international direct deposit, wire transfer, Payoneer
Pros:
- diverse merchant options
- reputable merchants
- flexible payout options
- easy navigation -> great for both beginners and experienced affiliates
Cons:
- relatively outdated interface
- sometimes long application process
Impact Radius
Impact Radius is an affiliate network that I also use for myself. Despite its relatively young age Impact Radius was created by the founders of CJ Commission, Impact Radius, making it on par with other networks.
Similarly than the others, Impact Radius stands out with a huge variety of well-known brands including Airbnb, Adidas StockX and HSBC.
At the date of writing this post, the network offers 2,530 brands – and there are new brands joining weekly!
Also, Impact Radius has a lot of brands that pay you monthly! So if you are looking for that, you know where to sign up for!
I joined Impact Radius to be able to promote valuable e-commerce software tools and quality products such as Shopify to you.
All in all, I see a huge potential in this relatively young network as it opens doors to many internationally recognised brands.
Cost: Free
Commission rate: depends on brands – but up to 50%
Payment Methods: Paypal, Check, Wire Transfer, Direct Deposit and ACH Transfer
Cookie: 60 days
Pros:
- offers reputable and well-known brands
- new brands every week
- advanced tracking features -> great for optimising your marketing strategies!!!
Cons:
- takes time to be able to make use of every feature provided
ClickBank
Looking for a program widely known and reputable? ClickBank might be the go for you! ClickBank is a digital marketplace, offering a plethora of products spanning numerous categories.
The platform’s affiliate-friendly structure ensures high commissions, recurring earnings, and a straightforward sign-up process, making it accessible for both beginners and seasoned marketers.
In contrast to Impact Radius, for example, ClickBank does not offer the same amount of tracking features. Which is better for you is a personal choice as it depends on your needs and goals.
So for those of you looking for a reputable program with reliable payments and a thriving affiliate marketing community, ClickBank might be the go-to platform for you!
Cost: Free
Commission rate: anywhere between 1-75% -> depends on product
Payment methods: Direct Deposit, Check, Wire Transfer, Payoneer
Cookie: 60 days
Pros:
- affiliate-friendly structure
- extensive product diversity -> regardless of your niche, you will find something suitable!!!
- straightforward sin up process
Cons:
- predominately digital products -> lack of physical products
- open marketplace structure = product quality can vary
CJ Affiliate
Formerly known as Commission Junction, CJ Affiliate is one of the oldest affiliate programs out there.
Being founded in 1998 CJ Affiliate, is the go-to platform for many bloggers, lifestyle influencer and other affiliates looking for a program with a long-standing reputation in the affiliate marketing industry.
Similarly to the other programs, CJ Affiliate is prominent for its vast global network spanning various industries and thus enabling you to target audiences worldwide.
Last but not least, CJ Affiliate offers solid tracking and reporting tool allowing you to optimiser strategies for better results.
Cost: Free
Commission rate: 3-50%
Payment methods: direct deposit, check or Payoneer
Cookie: standard period is 45 days -> but up to 120 days possible!
Pros:
- experienced platform
- global reach
- comprehensive analytics
Cons:
- relatively long approval process
- learning curve
Fiverr
I’m sure some of you might know what Fiverr is. For those of you who don’t yet: Fiverr is a multinational online marketplace for freelance services connecting freelancers with people or businesses looking to hire.
On top of that, Fiverr offers a great in-house affiliate program. And even better: It is probably one of the highest paying affiliate programs out there. Why so?
Depending on the service you promote Fiverr pays up to $150 per successful referral!!!
What Fiverr makes different compared to the programs I presented you above, is the fact, that you can promote services with it.
In comparison with other programs, you have multiple ways of earning revenue with Fiverr, including its “Learn from Fiverr” course. If you, for example, successfully promote this course you are getting payed a 30% commission per sale!
There is still something more making this program great for beginners: Unlike other programs Fiverr’s sign-up process can’t get any easier – name, email address and password – that’s it!
If you signed up for CJ Affiliate beforehand, you can also join Fiverr’s affiliate program via CJ Affiliate’s marketplace.
Cost: Free
Commission rate: $15-$150
Payment methods: PayPal and Payoneer for up to $1000, Wire Transfer for more than $1000
Cookie: 30 days
Pros:
- easy to start
- high commissions
- accessible via CJ Affiliate
Cons:
- huge variety of services = harder to find valuable and high quality services
- tracking and analytical tools are not the best
Bonus Strategies for Success in High-Paying Affiliate Programs
As you can imagine, just joining the best and highest paying affiliate programs is not enough to build a successful affiliate business.
To give you more guidance, I decided to share the best-working strategies with you! Try to implement these as good as you can!
Content is King
Imagine this: You stumble upon a blog post dealing with a topic you are highly interested in. You start reading the first lines but notice that the content is not profound and weirdly-written. It just seems as if the blogger only sees a customer to make money with in you. You would probably stop reading the post, right?
Try to avoid this!
Offering your audience valuable content with which you can educate, entertain or solve your audience’s problems is key to position yourself as a trusted source.
For instance, if you’re promoting a food delivery service such as Blue Apron, consider creating engaging recipe tutorials, showcasing the convenience and quality of their meal kits.
Additionally, mastering SEO techniques ensures that your content is not only valuable but also easily discoverable by your target audience thus bringing a lot of traffic to your site.
Email Marketing Power
Every successful affiliate business has one ting in common: Getting a lot of traffic to their affiliate links!
To do so, an extremely powerful tool to use is email marketing. According to several studies, including Dot Digital’s report, email marketing has a higher ROI (Return of Investment) than any other digital marketing channel.
In particular, according to Dot Digital’s report email marketing has an average ROI of $39 for every dollar spent. Isn’t that crazy???
As you can see, building and leveraging an email list is a dominant strategy for you as an affiliate. A carefully curated list allows you to directly communicate with your audience, nurturing relationships and guiding them towards conversions.
Also, consider creating targeted email campaigns that emphazise the benefits of the products you’re promoting.
For example, if you’re part of the Amazon Associates program, send out emails featuring exclusive deals or product recommendations tailored to your subscribers’ interests.
Social Media
Today’s world is hardly imaginable without social media platforms. Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest are having millions of people using their platforms daily.
What does this mean for you?
Free traffic source!
Try to utilise social media to get more traffic to your affiliate links.
How?
For instance, if you’re promoting a marketing software, create visually appealing posts that showcase its features or share success stories from businesses that have benefited from the tool.
I, for example, have a Pinterest account which brings a good amount of traffic to my blog. A social media presence can be a game changer!
Final Thoughts
That’s it. My in-depth guide on the best and highest paying affiliate programs, plus some extra tips!
I hope that you can work with what I have presented to you.
And please do us both a favour, and start your affiliate business even today – because you can earn money tomorrow!
