Affiliate programs are one of the fastest growing marketing trends in business today. They allow a brand to promote a product or service by making people like you and me do the legwork, similar to influencer marketing. An affiliate program is essentially when you advertise another company’s product or service, you get paid some sort of commission on that any sales created as a direct result of a discovery through you.
In order to be an affiliate, all you have to do is sign up, and they’re typically free. You’ll be given an account and a custom link or badge to place on your site. If anyone makes a purchase to that brand after they clicked on that link, that sales is then attributed to your account and cha-ching! Money in your pocket.
How Can I Use an Affiliate Program?
There are a couple ways people use these programs. The first is as supplemental income, that is, income on top of their primary business objective. If you’re a marketing company, a good practice would be to partner with companies you already use that offer affiliate programs. For instance if you have a Wix site, you may want to enroll into the Wix affiliate program since you’re so versed in the product, you can also vouch for the product as well.
The second way is as primary income. This is the case with people who run a business model as a serial blogger or content writer, where your sole purpose is to gather a large reading audience to help other companies sell their products you put in your content. This strategy works exceptionally well for niche blog topics, like if were a well known figure in finance, you may want to start a financial advise blog or YouTube channel and enroll in an accounting software affiliate program. This is how you’d earn some serious dough just from writing blog posts like this.
What Should I Be an Affiliate In?
Well the important thing is to not overdo it. Think of being an affiliate as product placement in a movie, you don’t want to overdo it or come off as a complete sellout. You’ll also really only want to partner with the companies that are relevant to you. I build WordPress websites in my free time and have my own blog on my site that I advertise my marketing services on, so I wouldn’t want to be an affiliate for Wix or Google AdSense.
I also get my hosting through HostGator, so it wouldn’t make any sense for me to enroll into the BlueHost affiliate program. That’s called pandering, and that’s what politicians and country singers do.
With that being said, here are 20 affiliate programs for business owners. If you’re interested on one and want to learn more or even signup, just click the header it’s under. They’re all linked. You’re welcome.
1) Marketing Solved
What? Did you think I was going to rattle off 20 affiliate programs and not mentioned we have one? Of course, I shouldn’t have to go too much into what we offer since you’re already here, but let’s say you’ve been on our Monthly Marketing Solved program for sometime and just absolutely love it.
If you love it, you’re probably recommending it. So why not get paid to recommend something you love? Our affiliate program is an easy 40% commission on not just our Monthly Marketing Solved program, but any monthly program or training we offer for the entire lifetime of that customer.
2) Lead Forensics
I recently just had the privilege of signing on with LeadForensics and I have to say it’s pretty sweet. The software allows you to place a code on your site that tracks static IP address contact information and description. What that means in English is any business that lands on the site, it will tell me how they got there, who they are, what they were looking at, and a multitude of other things, which gives me a qualified lead without them having to fill out a form. Considering 98% of web traffic doesn’t fill out a form, it’s an excellent tool to have in the B2B space.
It can come with a pretty hefty price tag that can start at $600.00/mo. But if you’re in the B2B space, it only takes a couple sales to make that up. Okay, so maybe this one isn’t as much of an “affiliate” type program, but if you’re a marketer for B2B business, it’s definitely a good company to partner up with.
3) Visual Visitor
One of LeadForensics’ competitors is a company called Visual Visitor, they essentially do the same thing without all the bells and whistles, sleek user interface, and capital that LF has. The difference is their affordability. Their price really makes it so anyone can afford to know what businesses are on their site. At a low cost of $59/mo, their affiliate program gets you $14.75/month per sale Visual Visitor gets after coming off of your link.
Not a bad deal, especially if you get a lot of traffic.
4) Wix
I have a pretty good idea you know what Wix is. But if you don’t, it’s a website building and hosting service. Little may you know, Wix has an affiliate program where you can get paid to push people to hop on Wix.
Of course following my rule at the top, it’s best to only become a Wix affiliate if you run your blog or website off of the Wix platform, otherwise you look like a sellout. If you’re not using Wix, then become an affiliate for the CMS you are using… If they have one.
5) Click Funnels
You’ve probably heard of Click Funnels a lot before. If you haven’t it’s probably the number one lead system on the market right now, especially for people who don’t have much of a website. Create landing pages, grow your email list, create automated marketing rules, run webinars, and so much more. It can come with a pretty big price tag for the small business on a month-to-month basis, which can be difficult at first to become a customer, but it makes the affiliate paycheck nice.
The good news is you don’t have to have an actual ClickFunnels account in order to become an affiliate.
Just click the ClickFunnels header above and create your own affiliate account.
6) Leadpages
Some consider Leadpages to be a competitor of ClickFunnels, but it really isn’t, they’re two completely different platforms that have different purposes. ClickFunnels is an all inclusive platform that helps you build complete sales funnels from start to finish. Leadpages is simply a landing page creation application that helps you grow your email list. The rest is up to you.
This is the biggest reason for the price difference between the two. As an affiliate, you have two options to consider:
- Bigger commission checks on more expensive programs
- Smaller, yet more, commission checks on less expensive programs
Leadpages is going to be a more affordable software than ClickFunnels simply because of the capabilities, but that means more people can afford it, which could mean more conversions to Leadpages.
7) OptimizePress
OptimizePress is one of my favorite lead/conversion page building platforms. Why? Because it’s a one time fee and it installs directly onto your WordPress site! I’m telling you, get on WordPress if you’re not.
You’re going to have to become a member, i.e. buy the product before you’re allowed to become an affiliate. But if you run a WordPress site and could benefit off of compelling lead pages without wanting to pay monthly fees for Click Funnels and Leadpages, then I highly recommend getting OptimizePress and touting how awesome it is while getting paid!
8) MailChimp (MonkeyRewards)
If you handle your own email campaigns, there’s a good chance you use MailChimp, it definitely has the large market share in emailing software considering it’s free for the first 2,000 subscribers. And if you have that many subscribers and but can’t afford the $10 to upgrade, then you’re probably doing something wrong…
However, if you’re on the Pay as You Go Plan, then the MonkeyRewards program would be perfect for you. Get $30 for each person that signs up for MailChimp paid account. Which means 5 referrals and you got yourself 5,000 credits which could kick off a killer email campaign.
9) WP Engine
If you have a WordPress site and are serious about the performance and WordPress expertise of customer service, then WP engine is a good company to become an affiliate for. And if you can’t tell by the name, it’s a dedicated WordPress hosting service. The main difference is it’s a little more expensive than other hosting services starting out at $35/month.
Plus, WP Engine has some pretty hefty payouts. You get 100% of the first month’s payment or $200, whichever is more. It’s also one of the few affiliate programs where you can earn $50 for referring other affiliates as well as affiliates of your affiliates.
10) HostGator
As mentioned at the beginning of this post, at the time of writing this article, I run my website on HostGator. They have excellent customer service at an affordable price and have a record for maximum up time on their servers which is what I care about when I host client websites as well.
This is an affiliate program that really compounds. Depending on the amount of people you get to signup with HostGator, your commission per sign-up increases. Start at $50/signup for 1-5 people a month. Get 21 people to sign up a month and get paid $125/signup.
11) BlueHost
Without repeating everything I just said for HostGator, BlueHost is essentially their competitor. I spent weeks going back and forth trying to figure out which one I liked better. BlueHost’s initial sign up commission is a little more at $65, but they don’t go into how much you can earn with compounded commission.
If you use BlueHost as a hosting service for your website, I highly recommend you become and affiliate.
12) Shopify
Shopify pays on average $58 for each user that signs up through you. If you use the shopping platform giant, then this would be a good affiliate program for you to join. It would be good if you are a marketing or web design agency that specializes in teaching people how to sell their products online.
13) SpyFu
Now we’re getting into my favorite tools. SpyFu is a pretty neat SEO/SEM tool that lets you spy on competitors’ keywords as well as roughly how much they’re spending and what they’re bidding on in Google and Bing Ads. A free version is only going to let you see the first 5 results of the keywords, but it’s still enough information to get buy with.
With SpyFu, you get 40% monthly recurring commission. The plans start out at $39/month, so get four people on the basic plan and you’ve already paid for the software yourself.
14) SEMRush
SEMRush is the bigger player in the keyword and competitor spying game. They’ve been around long and offer a bit more features that are more inclusive of a complete SEO software like site auditing reports for your clients. Think of SpyFu and SEMRush kind of like how Leadpages is to ClickFunnels.
With that being said, SEMRush still offers 40% just like SpyFu, but now we’re looking at an entry price of $99.95. Which means you could be making $40 per signup. So instead of breaking even at 4 people like SpyFu, you’re actually making money at only 3 people.
15) CJ Affiliate
So far I’ve rattled off 14 affiliates out there. But there are tens of thousands out there. That’s why there are websites like CJ affiliate that link you up with other affiliates that fit your goals, industry, and niche. If you aren’t sure what you can be an affiliate for, this company can definitely help.
16) ThemeForest
This is a program I need to signup for. With the amount of ThemeForest WordPress themes and plugins I’ve installed, I could probably make my money back with advertising how much I love everything they offer.
The best thing about a ThemeForest affiliation, is every purchase you get around 30%. So if you’re marketing to people who like to do work on their site, you could earn more money from transactions rather than earning it on a monthly commission.
17) Service Autopilot
There are other software programs out there that are not marketing related. A really good one for the contractor industry is Servie Autopilot. A lot of my landscaping clients love this as it really helps them free up more time to get more accounts without having to hire more people by stream lining their processes. Which is helpful to me because before you can justify marketing expenditures, you have to first justify that you can handle the increased workload.
With that said, I already promote Service Autopilot on a word-of-mouth basis, but it may serve me well to sign on as an affiliate, or a “Certified Advisor” as they put it, and earn some revenue with my referrals.
18) Google AdSense
Okay, Google AdSense is really not considered an affiliate program, but if one of the sole purposes of your business is to write blogs on your site, then I highly recommend getting your site set up with Google AdSense. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s just letting Google serve display banners on your site around your content. Stuff you might already see on news sites.
Then Google simply pays you based on the amount of traffic or the number of clicks you get from your site.
19) Grammarly
This is one of those software programs that I tell myself I need to get but then I never do. Not because I can’t afford it, but because it just kind of sits in the back of my mind. Often times whatever program you’re using to type something out doesn’t have spell check… or maybe it does but it can’t discern between your and you’re or there, their, and they’re (my biggest pet peeves).
Grammarly magically picks up on all this no matter what you’re using which is super helpful for emails, business social media posts, and even blog posts. My brother just recently got this during his pastoral studies because God knew he needed it. Pun intended.
If it got him through the writing portion of school, then it obviously does wonders. I just hope he doesn’t hit me after reading this.
20) Sumo
Sumo is an excellent tool to gain email leads. Like Leadpages, it’s primary purpose is for your business to collect email addresses. Sumo’s easy website integration and cool tools make it easy to collect user information as well as allow users to share content on your site to social media simply by highlighting text, for example.
Sumo pays out 30% commission on recurring revenue with the lowest package (sans Free) at $24/month.
Why Not Become an Affiliate?
If you’re already using a software or product and recommend it, why not sign up as an affiliate and get paid for your recommendation? Okay, so knowing that at the time of writing this that I’m not an affiliate of any program out there, despite using some of the ones listed above, I just made myself feel really dumb.
So what are you waiting for? Go out there and earn some cash referring great products!
Other than becoming an affiliate, you know what else is free? Stuff from us. Click the link below to get some free marketing goodies from us!
