Highest Paying Affiliate Programs – 100+ Top Programs 

Affiliate Programs

As an affiliate marketer you want to find the highest paying affiliate programs that best align with your audience.

Who has the best affiliate programs? You of course have Amazon, the 800 lb. gorilla with something for everyone and great conversion rates. Amazon Associates is free to join and converts very well. But with a 24 hour cookie life and an average commission rates of 3% per sale — not exactly the highest paying affiliate program. You will need to get quite a bit of traffic to do well.

Amazon is a rapidly evolving company that has, and will continue to, change policies on a dime.

This was certainly a timely warning in the initial version of this article. Amazon has lowered its commission rates across the board. Most products are now in the 3% commission category. Where there used to be many in the 6% – 8% category. That’s an over 50% cut in affiliate commissions.

The good news is that there is a huge world of much higher paying affiliate programs than Amazon. Let’s look at the best affiliate programs available for your niche.

For Amazon affiliate products you want to cover many price points. Almost every niche will some very expensive high-end products. Here is our list …

Best Affiliate Marketing Programs and Networks

There are many great affiliate programs to choose from that are perfect for beginners and experts alike. There are so many high-paying offers for you to represent as an affiliate marketer beyond Amazon. These include direct programs and networks or affiliate platforms and we further group them as:

  • High Paying & High Ticket programs
  • Affiliate Networks like ShareASale and ClickBank
  • Direct programs like Target and eBay
  • Recurring commission programs
All niches will have additional affiliate programs. You are doing a service to your audience and increasing your authority by seeking out and reviewing these niche-specific products. We have looked at hundreds of affiliate programs in many niches and created collections by niche to make it easy to find your audience’s best affiliate programs.

  Here are our favorites affiliate programs and affiliate marketplaces for diversifying your income now.

See our article on most profitable niches!

direct affiliate programs

1 — DIRECT AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

Rather than use an affiliate network like ShareASale or ClickBank, many companies run their own in-house affiliate programs. These can be some of the best affiliate programs … and the highest paying. Having an in-house affiliate team shows a commitment to the affiliate channel. When a company creates a technology platform and has affiliate management staff they are making a substantial investment in affiliate marketing.

The list below is our collection of the best affiliate programs run directly by the product companies. They cover a number of niches … this is a good place to look for the highest paying affiliate programs for your visitors.

digital affiliate programs

2 — DIGITAL PRODUCT AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

Digital products are a unique market and have some of the best affiliate programs. These are downloadable offerings like, plugins & themes, Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, training and memberships, etc. They are particular popular in the Health & Nutrition, Internet Marketing and Make Money Online (MMO) niches. But most niches will have digital products that are appropriate. For instance one of the best selling products on ClickBank is Ted’s Woodworking, a woodworking plans and resource product.

These are some of the highest paying affiliate programs from a percentage standpoint. Typically 30% – 50% of the selling price. You want to do an extra good job of vetting these products. Many are low-quality or not appropriate for your niche.

Here are the three big affiliate marketing companies in this space …

ClickBank Affiliate Network

ClickBank is known by most affiliate marketers and digital product creators. Like JVZoo, Warrior Plus, and 2Checkout they specialize in digital products. You do need to be careful with ClickBank as many of the offers are of lower quality.

ClickBank specializes in affiliate programs for info products with health, dating and self-improvement being popular offers. Many affiliates use email, solo ads and similar marketing methods to promote these products.

Though ClickBank is free for affiliates there is a $75 charge to list products on the network

  • Millions of products
  • Free for affiliates and &75 for content owners to join
  • Many products are 40%+ commissions per sale
  • Over 200 million customers
  • Join ClickBank

JVZoo Marketplace

JVZoo is very similar to ClickBank. They offer primarily digital products including, software, info-products, and ebooks. They have been largely passed by ClickBank but still have many strong products and fewer junk products than JVZoo.

Unlike ClickBank each program approves you individually. A great feature is instant payouts from vendors that approve you. Unlike ClickBank JV Zoo is free for both affiliates and product creators. This makes it a great place to launch your first digital product.

  • Info and other digital products
  • Free to join for both affiliates and creators
  • High paying 40% commissions
  • Instant payments for successful affiliates
  • Signup for JVZoo

Warrior+Plus Marketplace

Warrior+Plus is a specialized network that focuses on digital products and almost all in the Make Money Online (MMO) space. They make it very easy to join and very easy to launch a new product if you want to try your hand as a product creator.

A downside to the ease of product launch though is that many of the products are not the highest quality. To help find better products many affiliates focus the program search tool on the refund rate first; then sales, conversion rate and commission amount.

  • MMO products
  • Free for both affiliates and content owners
  • Great for newbies
  • Good for solo ads and email marketers
  • Warrior+Plus signup

Digistore24 Affiliate Network

Digistore24 is the newest kid on the block for downloadable digital products for affiliates. They have fewer products than ClickBank and JV-Zoo but the quality is higher.

affiliate networks and marketplaces

3 — TOP AFFILIATE NETWORKS

In addition to the digital product affiliate networks in the previous section, there are many affiliate platforms for other product types. Rather than creating free-standing affiliate programs, many product owners will join an affiliate marketing network.  Affiliate marketing companies like ShareASale, CJ (Commission Junction) etc. manage affiliate programs on their systems for many companies. They will typically take a percentage of each sale as their payment from the merchants. Some merchants will join multiple affiliate networks.

For marketers you can find some of the highest paying affiliate programs all in one platform. Rather than 10 accounts from individual affiliate programs, an affiliate network or marketplace gives you one dashboard to manage all 10 affiliate programs. You also can find new listings in your niche for fresh product offers.

Here are the best affiliate networks for 2020 …

2Checkout

2Checkout specializes in digital products much like ClickBank and JVZoo, They work as a payment processing system for your digital product and have an associated affiliate community to help sell your downloadable product. Most products sold are software or SaaS (software as a Service)

  • 87 currencies and 15 languages
  • Mobile responsive checkout
  • Advanced fraud detection

Join 2Checkout

Affiliaxe

Affiliaxe is an interesting example of specialization. In this case they target “super affiliates” and experienced marketers.

They have over 700 offers in some of the most profitable niches. Their offers are clustered in niches such as: Dieting, Health & Wellness, and Entertainment.

This network is particularly good for those with huge email lists and a history of successful affiliate sales. You won’t be just another affiliate as you might be at a network like ShareASale for instance. On the other hand some smaller affiliates have commented that it is difficult to get approved.

  • Nice Dashboard
  • PayPal, Payoneer, Check payments
  • Best for larger affiliates

Affiliaxe Sign-up

AvantLink

Robust and mature affiliate network with over 10 year track record. They have a nice concentration of outdoor and sporting products to offer visitors. Based on Park City Utah they provide a cool  automatic link encoder  to create a link when you mention a certain website, or  a certain keyword. So if you want to link to the affiliate merchant website whenever you mention the company name in any article, just add the company name as a keyword — nice.

  • Automatic linking
  • Sell ads to affiliate merchants
  • View program details before joining
  • App market and affiliate API

AvantLink signup form

Awin

Awin was formerly known as Affiliate Window. The Awin affiliate program surprisingly has a small fee to join. The $5 fee is a bit unusual but you get it credited to your new account when approved. They have over 100,000 programs in niches from fashion and travel to beauty and business. They are very helpful for newer affiliates with easy approval and lots of tutorials and other helpful marketing materials

  • Great Dashboard
  • Newbie Friendly
  • Not Free, $5 fee credited to your account.

Awin affiliate programs include some major players and household names.

  • Alibaba
  • Allbeauty.com
  • BetMGM Casino
  • Booking.com
  • Etsy
  • Hot Diamonds
  • HP
  • NakedWines.com
  • Swagbucks
  • The Futon Shop

Awin signup

CJ Affiliate 

CJ affiliate was formerly known as Commission Junction. They are similar to  Rakuten, and ShareASale. It is really a matter of who has the best products for you and which advertisers will accept you. CJ is one of the larger programs so there are many offers to choose from. They provide many types of performance marketing programs including : CPA, CPL, CPS, CPC. They have some great merchants including: Booking.com, Cheapoair, As Seen on TV.

  • Publisher toolbox full of tools to help your track your earnings
  • Deep Link generation
  • Customizable merchant widgets

CJ Signup Link

FlexOffers

FlexOffers represents is the affiliate program of choice for many national retailers including: Travelocity, Macy’s, IHG, Nike and more. .  They have mainly Cost per Sale programs where you earn a commission when your referred visitor purchase. They also have some Cost per Action programs where you are paid for free trials or email signups. They are a bit fussier with the approval process. You will need to verify both your website and a mobile number. FlexOffers has some powerful brands for you to consider for your affiliate marketing portfolio.

  • 12,000+ advertisers
  • Strong Brands
  • Good support and dashboard

Join FlexOffers

Impact 

Impact has a strong affiliate program. They were founded in 2008 by former Commission Junction employees. They place a strong emphasis on campaign testing and optimization. They have a great dashboard and many high profile merchants. they are not the fastest at approving you and do have a phone verification step.

  • Both marketplace and direct merchants
  • Many exclusive brands

Impact new account setup

MarketHealth

MarketHealth specializes in affiliate programs for health and beauty products, including over 200 that they manufacture themselves. They support over 100 countries and many of the promotions are available in local languages. Many of these affiliate programs offer recurring commission

If you are selling in health and beauty this is a must have network in your portfolio.

  • Third party and original products
  • Great dashboard and managers
  • Custom offers

These programs are also typical high-paying so you can look at more aggressive traffic strategies.

  • Bella Labs Teeth Whitening
  • Dermology
  • HGH Energizer
  • Idol Lash
  • Melotrol
  • Orevital
  • Pet Vitamins
  • Revitol

MarketHealth Enrollment

MaxBounty

MaxBounty is CPA network —  advertisers pay for a specific action.

They offer CPA, CPL and mobile. Their niche strengths include market research, diet, dating, and real estate. Commission may be paid from a sale, form submission, download, or any other action performed by the referral.

  • Weekly Payments
  • Over 2000 active campaigns
  • Performance Bonuses

MaxBounty Signup

MoreNiche

MoreNiche is not the biggest program and don’t have as many products to choose from as other programs. This is not a bad thing. Their products are really strong and they typically pay 30%-40%.

The advantage of a smaller network like MoreNiche is that they give their affiliates personal attention. Helping with everything from SEO advice to website audits, and help with conversions. They even hold mastermind events.

  • Close team relationship
  • 30%-40% commissions
  • Strong Products

Join MoreNiche

PepperJam

PepperJam wants to do things differently. Publishers and advertisers can directly communicate with affiliates being potentially offered personalized incentives. They have strong brands like Nordstrom, Retailmenot and Shutterfly. You can create a deep link for any advertiser using the Pepperjam Link Generator,. The Link Generator is attached to your bookmark bar on your web browser.

  • Deep Linking
  • Strong products
  • Great dashboard and support

PepperJam signup

Rakuten Marketing

Rakuten used to be known as LinkShare. They have been around since the late 90’s. Not as big as others with approximately 1900 advertisers. The offers are grouped by category for easy discovery.

They have a good mix of products with both large brands like Dior and trending companies in tech like TextNow.

Their affiliate dashboard and support are well regarded. Many programs require individual sire reviews by advertisers.

They have a good mix of products including …

  • Dior
  • TextNow
  • GoodYear
  • Kohls

Join Rakuten

ShareASale

ShareASale represents a number of brands. many of the programs have auto-sign up. Many do require a review by the individual company affiliate manager.

ShareASale has a good mix of physical product companies and services. They have many household names in their merchant portfolio including Wayfair, Eastern Mountain Sport, NFL Shop, and WP Engine.

  • Many easy approval products
  • Great Products
  • Perfect Amazon replacement fro physical products

ShareASale has a good mix of physical product companies and services. They have many household names in their merchant portfolio including  …

  • Checks Unlimited
  • Deluxe
  • Eastern Mountain Sports
  • Mailhost
  • NFL Shop
  • Grammarly
  • Reebok
  • Spanx
  • Weebly
  • Winkbeds
  • WP Engine

 

Join ShareASale

Trade Doubler

TradeDoubler has over 2,000 publishers and over 180,000 publishers. They are a very strong affiliate network with a large concentration of European based products. They support many types of affiliates including coupon and comparison sites.

  • Strong European presence
  • Coupon sites ok
  • 15 European offices

TradeDoubler signup

Best High ticket affiliate programs

4 — Highest Paying High Ticket

Imagine getting a $200, $500, $1,000 affiliate commission for a single transaction!

There are high ticket affiliate programs out there with huge commissions per transaction.

Many successful affiliates are grinding out a living with large amounts of traffic generating a few dollars in commission per sale.

JUMP TO TOP PROGRAMS

The Amazon affiliate program is the classic example of a low commission affiliate program. They pay affiliate marketers on average 3% – 4% per transaction and the average order size is $100-$250. Do the math, that’s $3 -$10 per sale. And those are the good sales! But there is a lot more to the affiliate marketing game than Amazon.

Being a successful affiliate marketer these days is all about having multiple income streams. Super Affiliates understand this. Their affiliate marketing business has many revenue streams beyond traditional affiliate income .

The income opportunities for an online marketing business often includes:

  • Multiple traditional affiliate programs
  • Advertising income
  • Recurring commission affiliate programs
  • Coaching and Training
  • Product launches and Launch jacking
  • High ticket affiliate programs

We have dedicated articles with more details on a number of these potential revenue streams including:

Best Recurring Affiliate Programs

Launch Jacking for Affiliate Marketers

What defines a high ticket affiliate program?

Well of course a large commission is the first criteria of a high paying affiliate program. But after that you will find that the highest paying affiliate programs tend to be in certain niches.

The high ticket affiliate program vendor needs to be getting a large amount of income to pay a large commission of course.

So it is obvious that a $100 item can’t pay a $1000 commission. But even that has exceptions like in the case of hosting or other monthly recurring sales items where the vendor enjoys a large lifetime value for the initial contract.

Commission amounts

There is not a rigid definition of commission amount makes something a high ticket affiliate program.

For the purpose of this article we will use $200 as the minimum commission amount to be considered a high ticket affiliate program.

I also exclude programs that may very occasionally be high paying affiliate programs but the the typical commission is much less.

The Fiverr affiliate program in theory can have a big payout. Sure it is possible to get a $200+ commission from them but it would require a huge contract.

This is not the typical Fiverr deal (they are called Fiverr for a reason). The same could be said for Studiopress theme sales and other popular affiliate programs.

Spending valuable marketing time and budget chasing $100k Fiverr contracts is not going to be productive.

You also want to consider how the affiliate program is structured and managed. Is it a recurring affiliate program? What are the cookie rules for attribution?

Affiliate Program Structure & Cookie Policy

The buyers of the products that pay high commissions are typically not making an impulse purchase. This so why you want to use a multi-touch sales funnel. So you want the affiliate program to align with this. This would ideally include:

Deep linking — your info pages may want to use specific information from the vendor. A deep link means that whatever page on the merchant site you send them to will get your affiliate link credited and “cookied”.

Cookie Policy — The cookie policy determines how long after your visitor arrives to the merchant site do you have to make the sale.

Small ticket affiliate programs typically have a very short cookie. You want a longer cookie period given the longer time buyers take to make large purchases.

Ideally you also want a first-touch cookie. If you are spending ad dollars and copywriting expenses it would be frustrating to lose the sale at the last minute if your prospect does some final research and ends up going to the vendor site from another affiliate page.

A High ticket affiliate program works best in certain niches. These include

  • Web Site Hosting
  • SaaS tools
  • Luxury Products
  • Financial Services
  • Training

You will want to focus on high ticket affiliate products programs that you have an audience for. You are unlikely to get random affiliate sales in unrelated niches with high ticket products.

People are not buying from your sidebar ad. Or one you want to create.

As discussed in the marketing section you need to gain trust. These are expensive products.

Your audience is going to buy from you because you are the expert in the field and have provided a lot of valuable information of proof of value.

It also doesn’t hurt if they like you and you have a big personalities, especially with video information is a definite plus.

So let’s jump in and look at some of the high ticket affiliate programs that can bring you big paychecks.

Web Hosting High Ticket Affiliate Programs

With hosting services the vendor is looking at the lifetime value of the customer. If the monthly hosting cost is $100/mo and the average consumer stays with them for 10 months, that is a $1000 sale to them.

Some of the highest paying affiliate programs are with web hosting or drag and drop site builders like Wix.

Depending on their margins they may have a few hundred dollars to allocate per deal for customer acquisition. For enterprise servers the commissions can easily exceed $1000.

There is often a choice of affiliate offers, you may get a large up front bounty with commissions for future purchases built in or recurring commissions.

In addition to hosting services there are website building tools, CDN and VPN/Proxy high ticket affiliate products in this category.

So many affiliates promote website owners and hosting. It pays so well that it is hugely competitive. Also the initial purchase is not a high ticket one so it is a relatively easy close.

You will need a healthy advertising budget or a website with lots of authority. It is a good market to be creative with and not just try to use the SEO , product review model.

Take a look at our Affiliate Marketing without a Website article for some ideas.

There are lots of great high paying affiliate programs in this space if you can run with the big dogs, including:

Kinsta

kinsta affiliate program

Affiliate registration: Kinsta affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $500 + recurring monthly commission — 60 day cookie duration

Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress hosting company. They are not the cheapest but do boast the best combination of high performance and superb support.

Unlike say WPX they are a good fit for more demanding WordPress sites that use WooCommerce or are otherwise resource demanding.

The commission plan is a bit lower than other web hosting companies for initial payouts …

  • Starter Plan … $50 commission
  • Business Plan … $100 commission
  • Pro Plan … $150 commission
  • Enterprise Plan … $500 commission

A good strategy would be to do comparison articles of Kinsta vs. WP Engine, Kinsta vs. WPX Hosting etc. You may need to be even narrower with the keywords than this to rank well. Much depends on your sites hosting relevance. Web hosting pays so well it is a tough niche to break into. You will need plenty of content and strong backlinks.

We have an in-depth review of the Kinsta affiliate program

Shopify

shopify affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Shopify affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: 200% of monthly billing — 30 day cookie duration

Shopify is a great option for eCommerce sites. Unlike an affiliate site, e-commerce sites require robust hosting, software development, and ongoing tech support to keep running smoothly.

The economics of a robust eCommerce site make outsourcing to a dedicated web application and hosting platform like Shopify a smart choice.

Shopify pays a bounty for new customer acquisition. The commission is 2x the first months billing. This can be significant with the larger plan being just under $300/mo. So that’s a $600 commission!.

The basic product is inexpensive so there will be no big affiliate commissions. The commission rate is 200% of the monthly base billing rate for the standard packages. So the basic plan at $29/mo has a payout of $58 – that beats most Amazon sales by a bunch. Shopify Plus pays you a flat $2,000!

  • Basic … $58 commission
  • Shopify … $158 commission
  • Advanced … $598 commission
  • Shopify Plus … $2,000 commission

The big money is in the Shopify Plus program. This is their product for high volume and larger retailers.

The cookie period is 30 days but all you need to do is get them into a free trial and you have locked in the customer. As long as they convert within the trial period you will get paid.

A good strategy with Shopify is to focus on smaller existing e-commerce sites that are growing. These clients understand the complexities and cost of running an e-commerce site and already have sales, so likely need one of the larger plans.

Checkout our Shopify Affiliate Program review.

WP Engine

wpengine affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: WP Engine affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $200 bounty  — 180 day cookie duration

WP Engine is one of the early WordPress web hosting companies. They offer an easy to use backend for non-technical users who don’t want to dig around in CPanel.

One of the best features of WP Engine is the staging server setup. You can at anytime push your production site to the staging server or your staging server to the production one. This let’s you easily work on your staging server and quickly update to your live one.

Another great feature of the affiliate marketing program is that it incentives high volume affiliates. You will get a $1500 bonus if you refer 60 new accounts in a month.

But the WP Engine affiliate program also pays a bonus of up to $1,500 if you can refer 60+ new accounts each month.

The real money though is in the dedicated server offering. This is typically used by small and mid-sized companies looking to consolidate a number of WordPress sites. It is very common to do an audit of a companies hosting and find that many groups in different departments have each set up their own WordPress site for their stakeholders. This is both costly and inefficient.

Rather than having 20 groups pay separately for their hosting and have multiple support touch-points, They will consolidate them onto one server with a single support group. IT will be thrilled with the security and automatic updating. These packages can easily cost a few thousand per month (but still cheaper than 20 separate scattered accounts ). They a commission rate of 100% of first months billing. If the dedicated server configuration is $1500/mo – you get a $1,500 commission — per sale!

Visit our WP Engine affiliate program review.

Liquid Web

liquid web affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: LiquidWeb affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $7,000 bounty — 90 day cookie duration

Liquid Web is the hosting services company of choice for many business users. That’s not to say they aren’t used by bloggers and affiliates who are looking for solid hosting and VPS servers.

They are generally more of a traditional hosting services company with C-Panel, WHM, etc. vs. a dedicated WordPress Hosting company like Kinsta or WP Engine.

The Liquid Web program is the best program for affiliates marketers to medium and large businesses. It is one of the highest paying affiliate programs.

The Liquid Web affiliate program pays up to $7,000 in referral payments for new web hosting server referrals. You would be surprised how often companies need a new departmental server.

It may sound like a lot to have a monthly web hosting cost in the thousands but if you have a focus on medium and large business you will see that this is not an unusual purchase at all.

Most hosting companies have good affiliate programs. And I am happy to get the base $200 from someone like WP Engine for simply selling a $35/mo product. But hosting affiliate programs are very competitive – they just pay too well. Liquid Web will pay 150% of the monthly billing. So a $2000/mo enterprise server will pay you  $3000 !

I like to focus on high end servers like high availability server clusters from Liquid Web. There are fewer affiliates writing and ranking content in these narrower niches.

Visit our LiquidWeb Affiliate Program review for more details. 

Cloudways

Cloudways Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: Cloudways affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $200 per sale — 90 day cookie duration

Cloudways specializes in cloud-based, managed web hosting, that gives you a choice of cloud-based infrastructure. You choose which of the giants in the cloud server business you want to use including:

  • Digital Ocean
  • Amazon AWS
  • Google Cloud
  • Vultr
  • Linode

You choose the server size as well and you can easily just scale up to a larger server as your needs grow. Traditionally if you wanted to have this kind of flexibility you also needed a network engineer to get setup and manage your web hosting.

Cloudways combines the best of both worlds. Website owners can have flexible cloud-based web hosting that are completely managed with outstanding technical support.

They have a great affiliate program that is also very flexible and gives you options of large single payment bounties or hybrid plan with a combination of an upfront closing bonus and monthly residual commissions.

BigCommerce

big commerce affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: BigCommerce affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $1500 per sale — 90 day cookie duration

BigCommerce is a competitor to Shopify. They provide all of the infrastructure for online stores to get up and running without the need for custom web site development and maintenance. It is like having business insurance for your infrastructure.

They are very scalable using cloud based infrastructure and are used by some major retailers.

The commission rate is 200% of the first months billing. The plans at BigCommerce range from $79 all the way up to $750 per month. That means at a $1500 commission making Big Commerce one of the best paying high ticket affiliate programs.

One strategy might be to create content around servers for shopping online sites. Compare Shopify vs. Big Commerce or Moving your e-Commerce from Shopify to BigCommerce. This will give you the opportunity to convert some existing retailers who are likely on the larger plans.

Volusion

volusion affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Volusion affiliate sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $1000 per sale —  45 day cookie duration

Volusion is a competitor to BigCommerce and Shopify with web services targeting primarily e-commerce sites.

They use Impact Radius for the affiliate program management but you can register directly on the Volusion web site.

The commission setup is very similar to Shopify and BigCommerce and the big referral payments come from larger storefronts so focus on converting existing sites from WooCommerce and similar if you are after the big payouts.

StackPath (MaxCDN)

stackpath affiliate program

Affiliate Registration:  StackPath affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $600 —  180 day cookie duration

StackPath was formerly known as MaxCDN. They are one of the dominant CDN providers and have a high paying affiliate program.

A CDN or Content Delivery Network caches the server content and puts it on their network. This allow articles to be delivered from fast, purpose-built servers that are closer to the user who is requesting the content.

You can join the affiliate program either directly on their website or from FlexOffers.

SaaS High Ticket Affiliate Programs

Software as a Service (SaaS) tools are among the best affiliate programs for high ticket affiliate marketing. These are products like email marketing services, CRM products, SEO tools, etc. They are online software products that you pay monthly for.

They generate a monthly revenue stream for the vendors and this means their affiliate programs can generate recurring commissions.

Sometimes the vendor may chose to pay an upfront larger bounty that even exceeds the cost of the service. They are banking on the future purchases and pay you upfront for this revenue stream.

You will want to have a well planned out marketing campaign that typically combines email marketing, SEO content marketing, video reviews, and a sales funnel. The prospect of a recurring commission can also support the use of paid ads to prime the top of your sales funnel.

The SaaS market is competitive for the popular products but there is room to make some large commissions. The fact that many are recurring affiliate programs is a huge bonus. If you focus on one or two and find less mainstream or new products that aren’t already saturated with affiliates that may have a larger budget than you.

Here are some of the best high ticket affiliate programs in the SaaS space:

Smart Proxy Affiliate Marketing Program

smartproxy affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: SmartProxy affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $400 per sale —   30 day cookie duration

Proxies make your browser appear to be in a different location than you physically are. There are a couple of reasons you may want to do this:

  • Privacy and anonymity
  • By-pass Geo restricted content
  • By-pass country firewalls

There are times you don’t want your normal ip address to be available to the server you are working with. Marketers may need to scrape content from other sites for any number of reasons for instance. You may want to check out a competitor and not want to expose your ip.

Also a lot of content is GeoGraphically restricted. You may have a paid Netflix account but when you go to Europe on a business trip find you can not unwind after that big meeting die to you being blocked based on your location.

Many countries have firewalls to block certain countries or services. China block almost all Google services and things like Yahoo mail. Vietnam block the BBC for some reason.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: ConvertKit affiliate sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $750 per sale —   60 day cookie duration

ConvertKit is an email marketing service that is used by many marketers who make money online. It offers much more than just email delivery and provides marketing automation and WordPress email marketing software. If your audience is into digital marketing there is a good fit with ConvertKit.

The program pays 30% of the sale and the highest tier is for large marketing groups that have up to 500,000 subscribers. That product level costs $2,500 per month generating a $750. And it’s one of the best recurring affiliate programs so you will get that payment monthly!

We have an in-depth ConvertKit affiliate program review for more detail.

HubSpot

hubspot affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: HubSpot affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $1000 per sale —   90 day cookie duration

HubSpot is one of the industry thought leaders when it comes to inbound marketing. And one of the top paying affiliate programs you can find anywhere.

Most professional in the digital marketing world know them. They are prolific writers with tons of content and a huge amount of authority. Don’t even think about trying to outrank them in the SERPS.

They have carved out the top of the pyramid as a brand and their products have pricing to match. They are big but not because of the sheer number of customers but by the high margin high price services they offer.

This is great if you have an audience that wants them as they have plenty of room for large customer acquisition costs including affiliate commissions.

They have three levels of service and the lowest one pays $250 in commissions:

  • Starter: $250 commission
  • Professional: $500 commission
  • Enterprise: $1,000 commission

We have an in-depth Hubspot affiliate program review

Improvely

improvely affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Improvely affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $1400 per sale —   30 day cookie duration

Improvely is all about tracking conversions and monitoring click fraud. This is an interesting niche that they have carved out. It tracks the source of your signup or sale and vigilantly watches for suspicious clicks to manage your advertising budget.

For people with an online business that uses paid advertising they are an invaluable product.

There is a free trial though there does not appear to be any CPL payments but the 30 day cookie alongside a 14 day trial should give you time to convert the trials. Free trials are the easiest of closes so it makes sense to target traffic to that program.

The affiliate program pays a very nice 50% on the first order with 10% residual commissions and is managed at ShareASale.

Kartra

Kartra affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Kartra affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $200 per sale —   30 day cookie duration

Kartra is a competitor of ClickFunnels with tools to build funnels, landing pages and more. Their product like ClickFunnels aims to be an all-in-one platform that integrates the entire sales process from email and landing pages to checkout and membership services.

They have a strong affiliate program with 40% recurring commissions. It would be nice if the cookie period was longer than 30 days though.

Click Funnels Affiliate Program

Click Funnels Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: ClickFunnels Boot Camp sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $2000 per sale —   lifetime cookie duration

ClickFunnels is king of funnel building. They are proponents of digital marketing without a website and have tons of integrated tools that revolve around the core product.

There is a certain cult-like (in a good way) feeling to the ClickFunnel affiliate program. And the company leader, Russell Brunson is very charismatic world-class marketer.

The commission rates are 40% and the products can get expensive so there is money to be made. They have sub-affiliates and a real team like feeling to the community. They even have sales awards like a car lease that you can win for certain sales levels!

They want you to succeed and find the best affiliates are the ones that follow their model to a tee. For this reason they offer tons of training and a Bootcamp.

Even better, when you sign as an affiliate they give you an insane amount of free training. They have training from 30 6-figure affiliate marketers and give you all the training for free.

This is a great program for high-energy marketers.

Luxury Product High Ticket Affiliate Programs

These are very high margin products that are very expensive and are often marketed on the basis of exclusivity — high end jewelry, luxury travel, etc.

These affiliate programs will be harder to convert for most affiliate marketers. They are certainly not impulse buys and have a very elite audience that may be difficult to reach.

Some of the best high ticket affiliate programs for luxury goods are:

Villiers Jets

villiers affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Villiers Jet affiliate program sign up link 

Commission Structure: Up to $600 per sale —   1 year cookie duration

Travel affiliate programs generally pay pennies. The money is made in volume. Well private jets are just the opposite.

A private jet costs approach $10,000 … per hour! These are high ticket items. With 30% commissions a New York to LA flight is going to be a very nice commission.

There is another angle though that might work better than trying to book a customer for a premium flight. When a Jet based in NY goes to California they often do not have a return charter and must fly back alone.

There are big discounts offered on empty leg flights so organizing these may allow you to book charters for regular people that are not such a high ticket purchase.

With a 1-year cookie you can take some time to book the perfect corporate sales outing.

Oceanscape Yachts

Oceanscape Yachts affiliate program.jpg

Affiliate Registration: Oceanscape Yachts affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $1500 per sale —   lifetime cookie duration

Yacht charters are an interesting travel affiliate program. Quite a bit different from lower paying programs like at Cruise.com.

As someone who has owned a few small boats I can tell you that they are holes in the water you toss money into. Take that to the highest level; a yacht with a captain and crew and they are the ultimate money pits. Sure billionaires can afford them but regular old millionaires not so much.

It just makes no sense to own these when you can charter them. They are certainly a high ticket purchase at the absurd prices they demand for a week in the Caribbean or similar. But the economics of spending tens of thousands of dollars being a great deal works in your favor if you can reach wealthy individuals or corporate clients.

Puffy Mattress Affiliate Program

puffy mattress affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Puffy at ShareASale sign up link

Commission Structure: $300 – $350 per sale —   180 day cookie duration

Puffy makes great mattresses for a great nights sleep. They actually have a 101-night sleep trial with a money back guarantee. Mattresses should be a relatively easy conversion. Everyone realizes how much of their life is spent with their mattress.

The Puffy mattress is an all foam bed. I sleep on one of these latex beds (though not a Puffy one) and they are the best. Much better for large framed people  (that sounds better than heavy) like myself. They cost $1,495 after discount which is very competitive with premium box-spring/coil mattresses. Buying a mattress can be a hassle but Puffy makes it easy with free 2-5 day Fedex delivery.

The affiliate program is easy to understand. They pay $300 or $350 depending on the mattress. They have some nice bonus offers as well. For instance, sell 10 mattresses in your first 30 days and get a $1000 bonus! They have lots of creatives available like banners and ads. Their top performing affiliates are earning over $10k per month.

Training High Ticket Affiliate Programs

Training programs are huge margin items that often have a monthly billing cycle or a single large upfront fee to enter. They are often in the Marketing and business development area and people pay a premium to beat the competition and avoid making costly learning mistakes that will exceed the cost of training.

There are certainly lots of high ticket programs particularly in the online marketing niche. Just be sure you know that a particular training product provides good value to your audience.

Time to market are also often drivers of these purchases. Some of the highest paying affiliate programs in the training niche include:

Authority Hacker

Authority Hacker Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: Authority Hacker affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $1000 per sale —   180 day cookie duration

Authority hacker is a solid company and has a strong training program. They are well know by most in the affiliate marketing industry and I respected brand.

It is always tricky to communicate the value proposition for these types of training programs. For some the payback comes from not making costly mistakes, others will be a time to market benefit.

And still others get the most value from the mastermind type contacts that are made in the private groups.

Six Figures Mentors

Authority Hacker Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: Six Figures Mentors affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: $200 per sale $20/mo recurring–   30 day cookie duration

Six Figure Mentors is a well known, high-end, mentorship and training program. They are mainly focused on affiliate marketing but also revenue stream training modules.

Training is always a hit or miss proposition when it comes to return on investment for the purchaser. It is important to set your prospects exceptions properly.

It is a good place to under-commit and over deliver. But it only takes a couple of good ideas or avoiding a number of unproductive expenses to get a good payback.

The Six Figure Mentors affiliate program pays well and many people are very satisfied with the program.

Legendary Marketer

legendary marketer affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Legendary Marketer affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $4000 per sale —   90 day cookie duration

Legendary Marketer is a set of training programs designed to help people start or grow an online business. They have a range of products at low, medium and high price points. Most of their training is focused on how to become an affiliate marketer.

Legendary Marketer has a clever set of techniques to onboard new clients. You always will start with a very low cost and high value entry point. By charging a small $7 amount they weed out the tire kickers but also bring in people who want to look under the covers for a small fee.

Then they get you started with a 15-day challenge to keep you motivated and engaged. At the end of the challenge there will be up-sells to the more expensive products. Quality classic marketing that benefits you as an affiliate marketer.

Unlike other affiliate programs you can not just join. There is an application and you must complete the 15 day challenge or purchase one of the more expensive products. Even then the affiliate program is tiered and you must have the pro plan to get the full 40% commission rate.

Genius Webinars 

genius webinar affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Genius Webinars affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $600 per sale

Genius Webinars is a high ticket affiliate program that helps you create online webinars to increase sales. The program teaches you how to manage large groups and convert them to sales using webinars.

The course costs $1500 and pays the affiliate marketer a 40% commission. It doesn’t take too many sales per month to really pay off.

ClickMeeting

clickmeeting affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Clickmeeting affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $515 per sale —   120 day cookie duration

ClickMeeting is webinar software to run both live and automated webinars. Large scale marketers use this as part of their sales campaign Or perhaps product developers looking to host prospective buyers.

The product is priced based on the number of participants in a meeting so you will want to target marketing departments that have a large audience to reach the higher commission payouts.

The program is managed by CJ Affiliate and they have a 30-day free trial but there does not appear to be a CPL payment for the trials.

 Amazing Selling Machine

Amazing Selling Machine Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: Amazing Selling machine affiliate sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $2500 per sale —   60 day cookie duration

Amazing selling machine is a training system to help you build an Amazon FBA business. It pays a whopping 50% commission.

It is easy to make missteps when building an FBA business. Finding foreign manufacturers, getting Amazon approval, knowing how many products to manufacture etc.

You can easily make more than $5,000 worth of mistakes and you will likely have operating costs for this type of business, so time to market matters.

This program is best for those that can reach people with capital to start a new business and want expert advice and coaching. The kind of person that might buy a franchise, not someone looking to bootstrap their venture.

Finance High Ticket Affiliate Programs

In this niche you will find training programs as well as investment products like FOREX, Crypto etc. Most of these are going to fall under Google’s YMYL Your Money Your Life category.

So if you want organic vs. paid traffic you will need to have quantifiable expertise in the topics. These programs include investment affiliate programs, financial software programs, Forex, Credit Card and similar. Some of the best high end affiliate programs in the financial area include:

Plus500

plus 500 affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Plus500 affiliate sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $400 per sale —   undisclosed cookie duration

Plus500 is a site for trading many financial products including:

  • Forex (Foreign Exchange)
  • Crypto currencies
  • Commodities
  • Indices
  • CFD (Contract for differences)

They are mainly used by active traders.

The affiliate programs pays you when a new client deposits money into an account at Plus500. The nationality of the trader has an effect on the commission you receive.

FXPRIMUS

FxPrimus Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: FXPRIMUS Affiliate sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $600 per sale —   45 day cookie duration

FXPRIMUS specializes in Forex trading. Foreign exchange traders are hoping to profit from the daily changes in currency prices. Typically one currency vs. another.

The affiliate program gives you the opportunity to leverage over 100 tools.

Creating info content about these tools can bring traffic to your site but remember this is a YMYL niche so you will need some EAT type authority to rank well.

Etoro

EToro Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: Etoro affiliate sign up link

Commission: Up to $400 per sale duration

Etoro is a cryptocurrency trading platform. Likely you have seen their ads.

They are an international crypto trading platform and support almost 20 different currencies. They ear a small commission on each trade on the platform.

This high ticket affiliate program pays you when you send traders and brokers to them.

You will need to have some high volume traders and brokers to get the large payouts. The affiliate offers vary but most pay 25% of the fees that eToro collects.

Goldco

goldco affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Goldco affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $200 per sale —  30 day cookie duration

Goldco is an investment site that specializes in precious metals. They have a particular emphasis on using precious metals as part of IRA and retirement accounts.

The way to make large commission from their affiliate program is to get conversion accounts. People who are moving an entire IRA from another broker or financial service to Goldco.

 Luxury Card

luxury card affiliate program

Affiliate Registration: Luxury CardFlexoffers Luxury Card sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $400 per sale —   30 day cookie duration

Luxury card is a high net worth credit card. They specialize in being an exclusive niche credit card with lots of luxury perks. You can even get a 24-karat credit card.

They offer lots of travel perks for cardholders including airport lounge access, airline miles, 24×7 concierge service and more.

Most credit card affiliate offers would not qualify as hight ticket affiliate offers, but this program pays a $400 referral fee for each approved sign up.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks Affiliate Program

Affiliate Registration: FreshBooks affiliate program sign up link

Commission Structure: Up to $200 per sale —  120 day cookie duration

Freshbooks is one of the leading small business accounting software products. They are used by millions. Every business needs accounting making it an evergreen market.

This affiliate program is a bit different from other hight ticket items. Their affiliate program offers a $200 bounty on new signups and a very generous $10 per lead payment for anyone taking the free trial.

The $10 CPL payment is great because it can completely offset your advertising budget.

A good strategy is to create an advertising campaign where the cost of the campaign breaks even with your conversion rate on free trials. Then you can have lots of very qualified traffic created for the $200 bonus at no cost to you.

More High Ticket Affiliate Programs

There are many other high ticket programs that offer very high payouts. Here is a list of 10 additional programs that may interest you:

Lucidpress

Affiliate Registration: Lucidpress affiliate program sign up link

Commission Plan : Up to $300 affiliate program commission

Six Figures Mentor

Affiliate Registration: Six Figures Mentor Affiliate Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $200 — 25% commission, 14 day cookie duration

Entrepreneurship Institute

Affiliate Registration: Entrepreneurship Affiliate Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $4800 — 10-80% commission

Entre Institute

Affiliate Registration: Entre Institute Affiliate Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $16,000 — 20+% affiliate program commission

Bookkeepers

Affiliate Registration: Bookkeepers Affilaite Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $750 — 25% commission, 60 day cookie duration

WeWork

Affiliate Registration: WeWork Affiliate Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $600 — affiliate program commission

Perpetual Income

Affiliate Registration: Perpetual Income Affiliate Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $550 — 60 day cookie duration

Brian Tracy

Affiliate Registration: Brian Tracy Affiliate Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $400 — 40% commission, 120 day cookie duration

Dropified

Affiliate Registration: Dropified Affiliate Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $450 — 30% recurring commission, 60 day cookie duration

Everwebinar

Affiliate Registration:  Ever Webinar Affiliate Program sign up link

Commission Plan: Up to $320 — 40% recurring affiliate program commission

 

Bonus High Ticket Affiliate Programs

Amazon Associates — yes Amazon’s affiliate program!

Amazon is a special affiliate program it certainly has its pros and cons. Many affiliate marketers use Amazon and it certainly not like the other high ticket affiliate programs discussed above.

The benefits are the deep trust and high conversion rates. The downside is the very low commission rates. But there is one place you can get paid like a high ticket affiliate program. That’s with expensive niche products.

These hight ticket products are also the one area where you may want to look at using a plugin that will let you get credit for carting a product.

When a buyer puts a product in the Amazon shopping cart you get a much longer attribution period. These items will pay you if the customer checks out the Amazon cart up to XXXX days.

We have an in-depth article on High Paying Amazon Niche Products to give you more ideas.

Health Affiliate Programs

And finally if you are in the lucrative health and supplement niches there are two affiliate networks you should consider that have a number of high paying affiliate program:

SellHealth

Affiliate Registration: SellHealth affiliate network registration

Commission Plan: Up to $350 per sale —   60 day cookie

Affiliate offers vary in this affiliate network but most pay 30-50%. There are a number of high paying affiliate programs in the health and diet niches including anti-aging, male health and nutrition.

MoreNiche

Affiliate Registration: MoreNiche affiliate network registration

Commission Plan: Up to $250 per sale —   60 day cookie

MoreNiche specializes in health & beauty as well as supplements  and fitness affiliate programs. They are easy to qualify for and have many great affiliate offers for new marketers in the health and nutrition niches. These are evergreen products that are high paying and can be real money makers for affiliate marketers.

We have an in-depth MoreNiche Review you can check out for more details:

Wrap up

High ticket affiliate marketing is certainly not something you would put in the passive income category. Really not much in the internet marketing world is.

But top affiliate marketers know high ticket products should be part of your revenue mix.

You will need to approach it differently than Amazon and similar affiliate programs. They are among the top paying affiliate programs and many have recurring commission opportunities.

Always nice to sell something once and get a monthly income.

Marketing High Ticket Affiliate Programs

You can not just use the same strategies that you use as an Amazon affiliate. With Amazon your job is to get as much traffic to Amazon.com as possible.

Amazon affiliates can convert cold traffic that is coming from a basic review. Sure, the traffic coming from buying intent keyword content will convert better. But it is a good idea to have a mix of keyword intent articles.

Having too many buying and transactional intent keywords is a red flag to Google search and can negatively effect your sites ranking.

But Amazon is a sales machine, they pay you on any sale in the 24 hours after the prospect arrives via your affiliate link. They have a huge trust factor. Likely more than you can ever gain on a large scale.

Affiliate marketing with Amazon is a numbers game and you create lot’s of content, get free organic SEO traffic (you can’t afford paid ads with the low commissions), create great CTA links, and just get them to Amazon. Let Amazon do the selling.

With high ticket affiliate marketing it is your job to do the selling.

This is the most important thing to understand. with high paying affiliate programs is that people are buying based on your recommendation. They are buying from you. You must be the trusted party.

These are mostly going to be multi-touch transactions. You will want to have robust marketing campaigns.

Internet marketing is rarely a passive income business.

The best approach is to marketing high ticket affiliate products is to use sales funnels that has the last step be going to the merchant and purchase. It is also important to have a very specific target audience that you have authority in.

Sales Funnel Affiliate

The top of the funnel is getting people to your information. This can be a combination of SEO and paid ads. With large commission payouts you can afford to spend a bit on ads.

There is no better way to generate traffic for affiliate marketing than paid ads. You can turn traffic on and off and split test content and affiliate offers.

Just watch your ad budget and be sure the traffic you are getting is qualified and has niche interest.

The next step is where the meat of your sales funnel work is. This is all of the education that you do. It will of course be niche specific but your job here is to provide information supported by facts and experience.

This is where your credibility is made. This is where you, the affiliate marketer, build interest and excitement about the product.

Finally, you get them to your landing page or other closing page. This is all about getting the prospect over the finish line.

Don’t distract the prospect with new information or any content that is not about buying. But also don’t send your cold ad traffic to this page.

You haven’t earned the right to ask for the order from those people who have not been through the info phase.

The one exception would be very focused retargeting ads for people who have been on the info pages.

FAQ

What is a high ticket program?

These are affiliate programs that pay large commission per transaction.

Which are the best high ticket affiliate niches?

Hosting, Online courses, digital services, SEO services, currency trading platform, and luxury products are some of the best niches.

Are high ticket affiliate programs passive income?

Just the opposite. Rather than being passive income they require multi-touch campaigns where you have many visits from the same prospect.

Do high ticket programs offer recurring commissions?

Some in the SaaS and hosting categories offer recurring monthly commissions.

How do you market high ticket programs?

Usually you will not just have banner ads and a review article. You will use email, paid ads, landing pages etc. A complete sales funnel.

How much money can you make with high ticket programs?

The sky is the limit. But you should expect a small number of large sales in the beginning.

 

affiliate niche collections

5 — AFFILIATE PROGRAM NICHE COLLECTIONS

High paying isn’t the only factor. You want the best and most relevant products for your audience. To easily find the best affiliate programs for YOUR blog or affiliate site we have created reviews of affiliate programs organized by niche …

Dating Affiliate Programs  — Ever-popular & evergreen. We all need love. Top dating programs include …

  • Cupid.com
  • eHarmony
  • Ashley Madison
  • OurTime
  • Match
  • Christian Mingle
  • more ...

Fashion Affiliate Programs -- Fashion changes with the season. Top programs include ...

  • Saks
  • Neiman Marcus
  • Zaful
  • Gap
  • Nordstrum
  • Nike
  • more …

Affiliate Programs for Bloggers -- Earn Don't Churn

Bloggers have to be particularly careful of matching their affiliate offers to their audience. You have gained their trust through lots of hard work -- one bad offer can have them leave the fold.

  • Amazon
  • ShareASale
  • ClickBank (be careful)
  • more …

Travel Affiliate Programs -- Always evergreen and lots of sub-niches ...

  • Expedia
  • Kayak
  • WorldNomads
  • Anantara
  • TripAdvisor
  • Viator
  • more …

SEO Affiliate Programs -- Competitive but a good earner. There are lots of recurring affiliate programs in this group ...

  • Long Tail Pro
  • Mangools
  • MOZ
  • SEMrush
  • SEO Powersuite
  • SpyFu
  • more …

Gaming Affiliate Programs -- If gaming is your passion then there are lots of opportunities ...

  • Twitch
  • CD Keys
  • Epic
  • Nvidia
  • Zygor Guides
  • Modded Zone
  • more …

Email Marketing Affiliate Programs — Recurring commissions and big bounties. There are many email affiliate programs to consider …

  • Aweber
  • BenchMark
  • Constant Contact
  • GetResponse
  • MailChimp
  • SendinBlue
  • more …

Hosting Affiliate Programs  -- Big money, a bit competitive, but worth staking your ground. Everyone needs hosting and every hosting company has an affiliate program ...

  • HostGator
  • Bluehost
  • A2 Hosting
  • SiteGround
  • WPX Hosting
  • DreamHost
  • more …

Makeup Affiliate Programs -- Makeup rules. Makeup is evergreen if you know your audience you can easily find a makeup program ...

  • Afterglow
  • Sephora
  • Ulta
  • 100% Pure
  • BH Cosmetics
  • Black Opal
  • more …

VPN Affiliate Programs -- Browse safely. VPN programs pay very well and there is one for everyone ...

  • SaferVPN
  • NordVPN
  • TunnelBear
  • Hide.me
  • CyberGhost
  • Express VPN
  • more …

Fitness Affiliate Programs -- Competitive but always a strong earner. ...

  • Fitbit
  • Hidrate Spark
  • Ace Fitness
  • Weight Watchers
  • Organifi
  • more …
For Amazon affiliate products you want to cover many price points. Almost every niche will some very expensive high-end products. Here is our list ...

Recurring Commission Affiliate Programs

6 -- BEST RECURRING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

Who doesn't like closing one deal and getting paid forever. That's the opportunity with recurring commissions. Not only are they usually high paying affiliate programs but you get paid every month that your referred client stays with them.

These types of programs tend to be in hosting, Software as a Service (SaaS), and membership sites. They pay so well because it is not a single transaction. The product owners enjoy a very high lifetime customer value. Here are some of the best recurring commission offerings.

Here are some of the highest paying recurring programs ...

Web Hosting

Hosting always pays well for affiliates. The ones that don't offer a recurring commissions usually have big initial payouts. Some typical programs ...

CloudWays  -- A web hosting affiliate program where you can choose between two payout types 1) get paid flat commission ( $50 – $125 per sale) or 2) $30 per sale + 7% residual commissions per month for the lifetime of the customer.

Kinsta  -- One of the best managed WordPress hosts,  $50 – $500. recurring commissions are 10% commission.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS products have monthly fees so they can generate monthly commissions. Some examples are ...

SEMRush  -- One of the leading SEO companies. 40% recurring commission.

SpyFu -- Checkout your competitors keywords. 40% recurring payouts

LeadPages -- One of the best landing page platforms.  30% recurring commission, Must be a member!

ClickFunnels  -- The king of recurring commissions where you can win a car! 40% recurring payment

Aweber -- Everyone needs email marketing. 30% monthly recurring. Free 30-day trial

Additional Recurring Programs

There are many more recurring commission programs. See our ultimate list ...

recurring affiliate programs
affiliate program search engines

7 -- AFFILIATE SEARCH ENGINES

There are so many offers available for affiliates that there are a few sites that are essentially search engines for offers. Companies looking for affiliates to promote there offers will get listed in the search engine and perhaps pay for featured positions or other advertising. When you sign up at these sites you are simply getting access to the search capability.

Unlike an affiliate network you do not actually join the affiliate programs on the site, it is purely a way to find the best affiliate programs for your website and niche. These sites will have some lesser known, but still high paying affiliate programs. They also may not be as competitive as other programs.

Some of them also offer free training and other information for affiliates. Reviews by other affiliates of the individual programs are also often a part of the value proposition.

These sites tend to have Cost per Action (CPA) offers. CPA offers can include actions where the customer purchases an item but also offers where the customers completes a form or other registration or request for information. The one downside to these sites is that there are many just so-so offers and just a few really good ones. Think of it as ClickBank for CPA offers.

Offervault 

Offervault is the best known and largest of the affiliate search engines. They have a nice site with lots of free training. One of the nice things about these offers is it is easy to get started and generally they don't require a website.

  • Free to Join
  • International affiliates welcome
  • Good dashboard
  • Free to post offers if you have a product

Affpaying 

Affpaying is a close second to Offervault. They have a strong focus on affiliate program reviews ... by affiliates. This can be helpful in weeding out the many poor offers. Much like ClickBank for digital CPS offers you must do some digging to find good money makers.

  • Lots of affiliate program reviews by fellow marketers
  • Payment proofs to confirm legitimacy
  • Tracking software information on offers

Odigger 

Odigger rounds out the affiliate program search engines. They are not as big as the other two with a few hundred offers usually available.

  • Good search and dashboard
  • Display networks and offers by niche
  • Display offers by type: Mobile, Pay per Call etc.

HOW TO CHOOSE AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM

There are so many programs to choose from. There is no one best affiliate program or network, it depends on your niche and audience. It is tempting to join lots of programs, place some sidebar ads, make an occasional reference to a product, etc. This generally does not work well. It has a very, very low conversion rate. A better approach is to really get behind a product. Have landing pages, product reviews (money pages), informational articles, email campaigns, bonus offers, etc.

You are much more likely to be successful with an affiliate program that you focus on and make a commitment too.

Another thing to consider, particularly if you are a successful Amazon affiliate is that Amazon is special.

Amazon has enormous trust, conversion capabilities, and familiarity in the marketplace. You can send them hot, warm or cold traffic and they will perform better than you can. This is not the case with other affiliate programs. Rather than just send traffic to other programs you will have better success with warming them up with information articles and success stories.

In addition to the raw numbers there are other factors to consider ...

Target Audience

This is the most important and first thing test to pass. Consider ...

  • Is the offer closely aligned with your target audience
  • Will they benefit from the product or service
  • Have you written about the details & advantages

Once you have decided that the product or service is a great fit for your visitors there are a number of program details to consider.

Who are your Neighbors?

One of the best ways to evaluate an affiliate network is to see what kind of companies promote them. If you look at ClickBank for instance many of the offers are by low quality, get-rich-quick types of marketers. This is not always a bad thing. If you find a great offer that is a perfect fit for your site/audience it may be a good thing that most of the players are weaker sites. Just like with SERPs and ranking your keywords it will be easier to outperform a lower quality offer.

Commission Rate

Well of course this is the biggest factor for many. But always consider how well an offer converts. A product paying 30% commissions that converts at 3% generates less than one that pays 20% and converts at 7%.

Earnings per Click

Earnings per click (EPC)is similar to the conversion rate. It tells you how much is earned per click to the advertiser's website.

Cookie Duration

Most affiliate programs use cookies to track your sales. This is a bit of information stored on the user's computer to track you as the affiliate of record. These cookies last a certain amount of time.This is the cookie lifetime or cookie duration and ranges from 24 hours like Amazon to long periods like 10-years or lifetime.

Average Order Value

The Average Order Value (AOV)  will tell you how much a customer spends on average when they complete an order. This is particularly important in sales funnels with up-sells like many digital products.

Is there an affiliate manager?

One of the advantages of a smaller program is that you will have an affiliate manager to work with.  Find a good paying product from a smaller team very closely aligned with your niche. Create some great content and funnels. Spend a little on ads. Before you know it you will be able to ask for a higher commission rate, special coupon codes that align with your content strategy, etc.

What companies does the affiliate program represent?

A big benefit to an affiliate network is having many programs under one umbrella. Best to deal with an affiliate network that has a good overlap with your niche. Look for both products that overlap and price points.

Payout method

Most affiliate networks will pay with PayPal or ACH/Wire. If you are from a country with no PayPal the payout method is particularly important. You can usually use Transferwise to receive the ACH/Wire and forward it to your local bank account. A bigger issue is the delay in payments. this can be essentially immediate or as long as 60 days after the month-end of the transaction. If you are running paid ads this is particularly important.

What marketing support do they provide?

Do they provide custom discount codes, ad copy, videos, images and other parts you can use in content or ad campaign. Do they provide deep linking so that you can send your visitor to any content and get affiliate credit?

Is there a Quality Affiliate Dashboard?

It can be extremely frustrating to use some of the networks’ dashboards. Some of them feel like they were made in the 1990s pioneering Internet era. A good dashboard lets you …

  • Quickly find products to promote
  • Review in detail the program terms
  • Find media kits and swipes
  • Track your traffic to each offer
  • Analyze you performance
  • Review your earnings and chargebacks
  • Manage your profile and websites you want to make offers

Types of Programs, Commissions, and Actions

Affiliate programs are not just the Amazon CPS style “pay when something sells”. For instance in the insurance niche, most programs pay you when a quote form or application is completed. There are also more advertising type programs paying on a CPM or CPC basis. The types of commission structures you will find on an affiliate network include …

  • CPS — cost per sale. These are the most familiar programs. You refer a customer, the customer makes a purchase, you get paid.
  • CPA — cost per action. With CPA you get paid when your referred visitor performs an action. This could be makes a purchase but also includes things like registering for a trial, completing a form, enrolling in a newsletter, etc.
  • CPL — cost per lead. The affiliates in these programs are paid on a per lead basis. This is designed to let the merchant control the entire sales funnel. The is filling the top of the funnel.
  • CPC — cost per click. This is much like advertising payment structure. You put the merchants banners and other promotional material on your site and the merchant pays for each click on the ad.
  • CPM — cost per 1k impressions. Cost per Mile or more clearly Cost per Mille (Mille is French for 1,000). This is like cost per click, an ad-based program that pays based on the number of visitors that see the ad.
  • CPV — Cost per view. This is typically used with video promotions. The affiliate is paid for each person they refer that views a video.
See our Affiliate Marketer’s Glossary for more terms and definitions.

Getting Accepted to a High Paying Affiliate Program

Just like selecting keywords to target, you don't want to focus on affiliate programs that don't meet your site's metrics. No matter how high paying the program is if it doesn't convert it is not useful. Many programs also have traffic minimums, Alexa Rank, DA/DR rank, etc. There are so many programs to choose from it is best to focus on affiliate programs that want you. So how do you present your site as desirable ...

  • Focus on programs squarely in your niche
  • Make sure your website has a clean design
  • Have a solid body of related content
  • Create a review of the vendor’s product in advance
  • Don’t have multiple ads on every page
  • Avoid controversial topics, nudity, drug use etc. on the site
Finally, take your time with the application. Pay particular attention to the marketing plan description. Talk about the success you have had with other affiliate programs. Let the reviewer know that you use and are a supporter of their product or service.

If for some reason you get a denial for a program that is an especially good fit or desirable for your niche - ask for a review or reconsideration of the decision. Usually, affiliate managers have a lot of discretion. You simply need to convince them that you are going to send high-quality traffic and that you have an audience that wants their product.

HOW TO MARKET AFFILIATE PRODUCTS

There are a few options for marketing these affiliate programs. Email marketing, SEO and content marketing, funnels.  You could also consider a combination using low-cost long-tail ad keywords to test the appeal of certain offers. When you find an offer that converts well you can build a content marketing plan around it.

You need to have a different mindset than an Amazon affiliate.

You want to warm-up the lead as much as possible.  You need to give them personal attention (or at least the appearance of it). You are asking for a big order from someone, you need to earn that right. These are not impulse buys as you might get at Amazon.

Consider bonuses, support, free installs, templates, bundled software, etc.. Just be sure to stay within the program's terms of service.

Content Marketing

The best approach for me has been very specific topic targeting.

I like to concentrate on very specific keywords that are a perfect match for the offer. These long-tail keywords will likely be low competition lower volume keywords. Build out content clusters or silos for creating authority in Google's eyes. So an in-depth post that covers the entire topic and individual posts with more details on specific items.

Hint: this article is the top of a content cluster.

Create lots of content, be the authority on a topic, be patient, be persistent.

Social Media

Social media is where your fans are. It is also a way to amplify new content and build buzz about an offer. FaceBook is of course the top social channel for most niches but any visual niche should also be leveraging Pinterest and Instagram.

Email Marketing

This is tried and true. It works best when you can have an ongoing "dialog" with the recipient. Just sending a single email with an offer is not much more effective than a cold ad.

You want to create a series of emails that have lots of information and value. Even some free giveaways related to the offer. Then you have trust and will get better conversion on the emails at the end of the autoresponder series that actually have the offer. Lead magnets are typically used to get the initial subscriber.

Tutorials

Tutorials work well because they are an interested audience. They are already warm based on the fact they want an in-depth long series of content with details about the offer.
Few people will read a tutorial that are not interested in the product. You want to make the free tutorials intro type pieces. Advanced tutorials will attract existing users. But advanced tutorials make great bonus offers.

Case Studies

Like tutorials these attract a warm audience. People interested in the product or service. They provide a form of social proof that can be very effective. These can make good lead magnets for your email opt-in campaigns.

Bonus Offers

Bonus offers are deal sweeteners. Many people will check multiple sites for the best offer after they make a buying decision. Even at the same price, if you have a free advanced tutorial with templates for a product and I have no extras ... guess whose link they will use?

Leverage your Infrastructure

Every affiliate marketer is running a business. You use lots of tools like ...

  • Hosting
  • eMail Marketing
  • SEO Tools
  • WordPress Themes & Plugins
Promote these tools. These products often have affiliate programs and are typically some of the better payers. You must like them, you use them. Create content around these tools and services and how you use them. You have credibility as a customer. This can be very effective. many in your audience are interested in how your business operators.

 

Paid Ads for Affiliate Sites

Buying ads to generate traffic can be a very effective strategy. There are a few good use cases for paid ads ...

  • New sites —  A low cost ad campaign can be used to start generating traffic while Google is deciding how much search traffic to send you. You should think of this kind of ad buying as marketing and don’t expect a large direct sales ROI.
  • High Ticket Items — Given the large payouts of some products advertising can be part of your profit strategy. There is an entire group of very successful affiliates whose business model revolves around paid ads. They may not even have a website but drive traffic to funnels and other landing pages. Once they find a combination of traffic cost (paid ads), conversions and commissions that is profitable they scale it with more ads.
  • Authority Sites — SEO driven sites with multiple revenue streams can use paid traffic to feed the entire site’s business model.

For affiliate sites that have matured into authorities in their niche there is typically a set of income streams ...

  • Ad Revenue — past 10k monthly visitors per month ads will start to be worth the effort. Adsense or Ezoic are the best choices for starting out with ad revenue.
  • Affiliate Revenue — Commissions from referring visitors to 3rd party products
  • Info Products — eBooks, templates, training, guides. Many marketers with authority will create downloadable and membership products to sell.
Once your website has significant authority you can spend more on ads knowing the total earnings value of a visitor. The key is to know how much you earn from each visitor when factoring in all of your revenue sources.

If your ad spend is less than the earnings per visitor you can then scale up the advertising. This drives more traffic, creates more revenue, creates more authority which gets you better search results. There is a reason you see large successful players in your industry advertising -- it works.

It is always best to start by retargeting your visitors.

Retargeting is a process where you place a cookie on a visitors browser from FaceBook, Adwords or another advertising network. Then when the visitor is searching in Google or using Facebook you can target the with an ad. It is always easier to convert a warm prospect, someone who has been to your site, than a cold unknown one.

 

CONCLUSIONS

There are so many high paying affiliate programs to choose from. Sure, Amazon is great. But diversification is just good business. There are affiliate marketing programs for every niche.

In addition to traditional retail products, try to find a few high ticket affiliate programs. Another great market is recurring affiliate programs. Any product that has a monthly fee is a good candidate for being a recurring program.

Don’t overlook custom affiliate programs. If there is a product that is a great overlap for your niche and you have a good audience with traffic this can be a game changer. You can approach the merchant and negotiate a custom affiliate program. If the merchant doesn’t have an affiliate program infrastructure there are a number of WordPress plugins like Affiliate WP that can be easily deployed. Or they can use a SaaS-based tool like  Firstpromoter or Tapfiliate at only $69/mo and have nothing to manage on their server. If they don’t want to deal with any new software you can negotiated a Pay Per Click (PPC) deal but be sure to track your clicks with ClickMagick or similar software.

Keep an eye on this page, we will update it regularly.

FAQ

What is the best affiliate program? The highest paying affiliate program?

It completely depends on your niche, audience, traffic acquisition plans, and other factors. There is no universal best or highest paying program.

Do people make money with affiliate programs?

Sure they do. It’s a huge industry. People build sites and incrementally grow revenue as their content matures. Others build the sites until they have a revenue track record and flip it for a profit — then do another.

Is affiliate marketing dead or saturated?

Hardly. It is growing quickly. Now is the time to stake out authority in a niche.

Is affiliate marketing expensive to start?

No. This is one of the key differentiators vs, e-commerce, FBA, or even dropshipping. The only significant expense is content creation. If you can do this your-self you have a very very low cost to launch your business.

Can I be an affiliate without a website?

Sure you can. Amazon specifically requires either a website, video channel or app. Other affiliate channels will let you market with just email, paid ads, social traffic, etc.