What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing involves brands distributing revenue to publishers and content creators in exchange for generating leads and making sales, essentially operating like a commission-based payment system for successful sales, much like a salesperson would receive.
As you increase sales, your earnings also increase. Commissions for affiliates can vary from a few cents to several hundred dollars for every referral. Proper execution of affiliate marketing enables you to earn more than your current job or expand the income stream of your existing content business.
This is a brief explanation of the functioning of affiliate marketing:
- You share an affiliate link on your website, blog, or in a social media post
- A customer clicks your affiliate link
- Customer is redirected to the advertiser website
- Customer is tracked as being referred by you through a cookie
- Customer makes a purchase
- An affiliate network attributes the purchase to you and issues a commission
- Commissions appear in your affiliate dashboard
- You get paid (!) by the affiliate network
Successful affiliate marketers come from diverse backgrounds, including independent individuals and teams working for reputable news outlets and online publications.
Being that you’re not accountable for the delivery of a product or service, affiliate marketing poses minimal risk. You don’t require a marketing degree or any particular accreditations to thrive as an affiliate marketer. With proper resources, practically anyone can produce affiliate earnings.
The key factor that determines the victory of an affiliate today is their competence in engaging an audience and drawing in the appropriate traffic. In order to accomplish this, you must produce high-quality content and optimize it to yield conversions.
The foundation is laid by comprehending and forging affiliate links.
What is an affiliate link?
Affiliate marketing primarily functions by means of the utilization of affiliate links which are furnished with a distinct URL designated to a particular affiliate. The purpose of these links is to enable the advertisers to identify which customer was referred by the affiliate, thereby making it possible for them to compensate the affiliate with a percentage of the sale if the customer purchases a product.
A typical affiliate link structure is exemplified below.
How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing
A basic outline of the steps to commence with affiliate marketing is as follows.
- Build an audience. You need websites with traffic, email lists with subscribers, or social media accounts with followers to promote a product – or ideally, a combination of all three.
- Find products and services you can passionately promote to the audience you have built. The more you love something and believe in its efficacy, the easier it will be to convince someone else to buy it.
- Sign up for affiliate and referral programs. These will be offered directly through the company selling the product or service, or a third-party affiliate platform .
- Fill out your application and affiliate profile completely. Include your niche, monthly website traffic, number of email subscribers, and social media audience size. Companies will use that information to approve or reject your application.
- Get your custom affiliate or referral link and share it with your audience , or the segment of your audience that would benefit most from the product you are promoting.
- Look for opportunities to recommend products to new people . You can be helpful, make a new acquaintance, and earn a commission.
- Monitor your affiliate dashboard and website analytics for insights into your clicks and commissions.
- Adjust your affiliate marketing tactics based on the promotions that generate the most revenue.
You can explore further the top high-ticket affiliate programs available for registration in 2023, which provide either a considerable single payment, recurring commissions, or both.
As a beginner, the crucial aspect to understand is that your unique affiliate link must be used by the customer who converts for you to receive a commission.
There are two main models to earn affiliate revenue when it comes to the way you earn your commissions.
- CPA (Cost Per Action): You earn every time someone from your audience completes an action. Depending on the program, the action could be making a purchase, starting a free trial, or filling out a form with contact information.
- CPC (Cost Per Click): You get paid for clicks the advertiser considers to be quality visitors, even if they don’t complete a specific action.
Various payment models are utilized by various affiliate programs, with some compensating for both leads and conversions. Later in this guide, we’ll discuss the methods for selecting desirable affiliate programs.
While you’re present, there are a few additional crucial phrases associated with affiliate marketing that you should become familiar with. Also, using these terms will aid you in identifying affiliate programs that have the potential to earn a significant profit.
- Cookies: Cookies are small files that are stored on a customer’s device when they click an affiliate link. They help businesses and affiliate networks remember that you referred the customer to them, so they can give you a commission later on.
- Cookie duration: Cookies typically have expiration dates. Affiliate links tend to have expiration dates between 15 to 30 days, but they can run for as little as 24 hours up to a year or more. Cookie duration matters to affiliate marketers because customers may come back to a purchase days or weeks after a customer first clicks on an affiliate link.
- Affiliate networks: Brands typically set up their affiliate programs on third party platforms called Affiliate Networks. These platforms bring brands and affiliate marketers together. There are dozens of affiliate networks, with the most popular including Impact, Flexoffers, Clickbank, PartnerStack and Rakuten.
Is affiliate marketing worth it?
As an affiliate marketer, there is no limit to your earning potential, a privilege that few can claim.
Your earnings rely on your niche, your performance in optimizing your content and revenue streams. However, it’s not typical for affiliate marketers to become online millionaires.
PayScale reports that an Affiliate Marketer earns an average of $3,000 to $6,000 per month, which translates to an annual income of $36,000 to $72,000.
Those who make up the highest earning percentile bring in tens of thousands, and sometimes even hundreds of thousands, of dollars monthly. Typically, they are affiliate marketers who work full-time alongside committed teams and possess many years of expertise.
Creating a sustainable business does not necessarily require maximum effort. Affiliate marketing has the advantage of being able to provide additional income to your 9-5 job right from the beginning.
By being patient and dedicated, it is possible to completely substitute it.
The Best High-Ticket Affiliate Marketing Programs
The designation of these affiliate marketing programs as the “best” is subjective, nevertheless, my selection criterion comprises the payout amounts, number of customers, and average customer ratings. The customer ratings play a crucial role in the evaluation of whether a product is commendable. Moreover, you can utilize customer reviews to promote the products or services by emphasizing customers’ remarkable results and their favorite features.
1. Smartproxy
Through Smartproxy, customers can gain access to business data around the globe, which comes in handy for competitor analysis, scraping search engine results pages (SERP), gathering aggregated prices, and verifying ads.
It received a mean rating of 4.7 out of five stars from 836 reviewers.
By participating in Smartproxy’s affiliate program, you can earn a commission of up to $2,000 for every customer that you recommend.
2. Thinkific
Over 50,000 instructors have utilized Thinkific, an online course development platform, to create more than 100 million courses.
The product received an average rating of 4.6 out of five stars from 669 reviewers.
With the Thinkific affiliate program, it’s possible to make as much as $1,700 per referral annually.
3. BigCommerce
BigCommerce offers a range of solutions including open SaaS, headless integrations, omnichannel, B2B, and offline-to-online for ecommerce.
The product received an average rating of 8.1 out of ten stars from 648 reviewers.
By joining the BigCommerce affiliate program, one can receive a maximum of $1,500 for each new enterprise customer they bring in, or double the customer’s initial payment.
4. Teamwork
Teamwork is a project management software that aims to increase billable hours, and enhances the efficiency of every member in your company, ranging from the leader to the project managers.
It received an average rating of 4.4 out of five stars from 1,022 reviewers.
By participating in the Teamwork affiliate program, you can receive a commission of up to $1,000 for every new customer referral you make.
5. Flywheel
Flywheel offers managed WordPress hosting that specifically caters to agencies, ecommerce businesses, and websites that have high levels of traffic.
The average rating of 4.4 out of five stars was given by 36 reviewers.
The Flywheel affiliate program offers the opportunity to make up to $500 for each new referral.
6. Teachable
More than 100,000 entrepreneurs, creators, and businesses of all sizes have resorted to Teachable, an online course platform, to establish captivating online courses and coaching businesses.
The product received a rating of 4.4 out of five stars from 150 reviewers.
By enrolling in the Teachable affiliate program, it is possible to earn an average of $450 per month in partner earnings.
7. Shutterstock
Shutterstock is a worldwide platform that provides a variety of stock imagery, including photographs, vectors, illustrations, videos, and music.
An average score of 4.4 out of five stars was given by 507 reviewers.
You can earn as much as $300 by joining the Shutterstock affiliate program and bringing in new customers.
8. HubSpot
With HubSpot’s CRM platform, you can effectively oversee the marketing, sales, content management, and customer service aspects of your organization.
An average rating of 4.5 out of five stars was given by 3,616 reviewers.
By being a solutions partner with the HubSpot affiliate program, you can earn more than the $264 monthly average payout that affiliates currently receive.
9. Sucuri
The Sucuri security platform utilizes the cloud and skilled security analysts to provide services such as scanning for malware, protecting against attacks and hacks, and improving website performance.
An average rating of 4.6 out of five stars was given by 251 reviewers.
By enrolling in Sucuri’s referral programs for their platform, firewall, and agency products, you have the chance to earn as much as $210 per each new sale.
10. ADT
ADT specializes in providing security systems for both residential and commercial properties.
On average, it received a rating of 4.5 out of five stars from 588 reviewers.
By participating in the ADT rewards program, you can receive as much as $200 for each newly referred customer.