The 8 Best Affiliate Programs for Bloggers
Looking to monetize your blog? Affiliate marketing can be
one of the easiest ways to make money online, but it’s also one of the most
competitive. Here are eight affiliate programs you should consider joining if
you’re serious about building your online business as an authority in your
niche and getting paid to do what you love – write!
1) What is an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is a place where bloggers, marketers,
or business owners can sign up to promote or sell products on behalf of a
company. When someone clicks through and buys a product, they’ll earn a
commission. The beauty of an affiliate program is that you don’t have to carry
inventory (as you would with a brick-and-mortar shop), write your own
marketing copy, or worry about shipping products to customers. But if you want
to make money through affiliate programs (and many bloggers do!), it takes hard
work and dedication to get your first sale!
2) How they work
When a visitor to your site clicks on one of these links and
completes an action such as buying a product or signing up for a service, you
get paid. The affiliate program is designed so that vendors, not affiliates,
shoulder all liability and legal issues. This takes some of your worries away
if you are worried about being sued if someone makes a purchase with their
credit card and it's declined—for example. You won't be held responsible in any
way since all liability rests with them. You'll usually be paid in two ways:
when someone makes a purchase and then again when they make another purchase
within some time frame (30 days, 60 days) of their first purchase.
3) Amazon Associates Program
When you sign up for Amazon’s affiliate program, you get a
unique referral link. Every time someone clicks your link and purchases a
product from Amazon, you earn a percentage of that sale—with no limits on how
much money you can make. For example, if someone visits Amazon using your link
and buys $75 worth of stuff, there’s no limit to how much money you can make
off that one person. Amazon will pay out monthly based on what they consider an
active affiliate page—meaning it has been clicked at least once in 30 days. So
while passive income is great in some ways (like not having to track every last
dollar), it’s important to remember that active income is required to grow a
business.
4) ShareASale
One of ShareASale’s greatest strengths is its payout
structure. They have one of, if not, THE highest CPA (cost per action) and CPL
(cost per lead) rates in our review. For example, when you refer a new customer
to ZipRecruiter through ShareASale, you earn $225! Their payouts are always on
time and super simple to track.
5) Commission Junction
If you want to monetize your site through affiliate
marketing, Commission Junction (CJ) is a good place to start. CJ was one of the
first affiliate networks out there and is now used by thousands of affiliates,
many of whom have multiple sites and create content across multiple topics. The
network has more than 20,000 active advertisers from all kinds of industries.
Although you can apply to any category under which your site falls, your best
bets are in health care, insurance, and personal finance -- these three niches
are among CJ's most popular ad categories.
6) Skimlinks
If you’re a blogger, Skimlinks are something you should try
out. As mentioned above, it works as an affiliate program with thousands of
merchants. These merchants offer products and services for which Skimlinks will
automatically create links within your content to send readers to their site.
The best part? You can select keywords that are related to your content so that
Skimlinks links only appear when appropriate and useful to your audience. If
you’re thinking of trying affiliate marketing, I highly recommend giving
Skimlinks a shot!
7) BrandBacker
BrandBacker is one of my favorite affiliate programs because
you can earn a commission just by linking to products you love. For example, if
you’re a food blogger writing about your best recipes, you can share them with
BrandBacker and get paid every time someone buys an item from that recipe link.
You also get paid for referrals on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
The amount of money that you earn from these networks varies from product to
product; check out their website to see which products are currently available
on which networks.
8) Rakuten LinkShare
Rakuten LinkShare is an affiliate network through which you
can earn commissions by referring users to online merchants. The network serves
a wide range of industries and lets you customize your links, called widgets,
to fit your needs. When users click your widgets and make a purchase on a
merchant's site, you'll get paid a commission, typically ranging from 6 percent
to 60 percent. The larger share you take, however, the less likely users are to
follow through on their purchase. It's important that your links reflect well
on both parties—that they're not spammy or too aggressive in their sales
tactics. Rakuten LinkShare also offers useful resources like comparison
shopping engines and customer reviews that can help boost conversion rates at
no extra cost.
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