Top High Paying Affiliate Programs to Maximize Your Commissions

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Last Updated on January 25, 2021 by Content Team

I looked at a few trending health affiliate programs in a previous post, now we want to examine some high paying affiliate programs.

High paying affiliate programs will either have a high price of the product/service (‘high ticket’) or the programs will  have a high commission rate.  There will also be programs where you can ‘potentially’ earn a high commission, like with some of the travel affiliate programs. For example, Expedia pays 2-6% commission rate but you could get someone spending $10,000+ on a holiday.  In this instance, you would want to look the EPC (see below).

Understanding EPC to Find High Paying Affiliate Programs

If you are looking at a few affiliate programs on a platform like Awin, you need to drill down and look at the Earnings per click (EPC) of each program.

EPC is the average earnings per 100 visitors sent to the website 

 EPC takes into consideration the conversion rate of a website, there is no point sending huge amounts of traffic to a site if the traffic does not convert – one reason why people love creating Amazon affiliate websites, their conversion rate is really high. I have some sites where the traffic converts at 15-20% when they land on Amazon, this is huge for eCommerce.

Like the example below, you don’t have to cross your fingers and hope you get a big commission, you can calculate your earnings depending on how many visitors you are sending to the program.  A search on Awin for ‘Travel’ in USA and sort by EPC gives you these programs.

travel top EPC affiliate programs on Awin

You will see the program with the highest paying EPC also has the highest conversion rate of 2.72% – you will get paid $2.69 (on average) for every 100 visitors you send to Compass Holidays.  Send a 10,000 visitors per month and on average you should get around $269.00 commission (which is terrible for the amount of traffic you are sending them) – you would earn at least $1000 by sending 10K people to Amazon.

Cookie Length and High Ticket Item Buyer Behaviour

When consumers are looking to buy high ticket items, the decision making process is going to be a lot longer.  They are likely to research all the alternatives before they make a final purchase decision – this takes time. As an affiliate, you need to ensure the affiliate program you are promoting has a long cookie time.   Many of the programs below have a cookie time of 120 days – the average cookie time is 30 days.

cookie length for high ticket items

Using Amazon’s affiliate program, with a 24hr cookie is fine for low-medium priced ticket items. I have a niche site that promotes products in the $300-$500 range that convert fine (5.43%) with a 24 hr cookie.

Conversion rate for ticket items $300+

Amazon’s Commission Structure

The Amazon affiliate program is not really considered high paying by affiliates, but the conversion rate is really high. The highest paying commission rate in their structure is 10% on Beauty products, if you dig around you can probably find decent selling products for $300+

Affiliate Bounties

Aggressive affiliate programs will also have bounties and prizes for their top affiliates, some will even offer cars like Builderall.

MLM and 2nd Tier Earnings

These are programs that pay you commission on the earnings of people you sign up to the program e.g Clickfunnels.  Affiliates built Clickfunnel’s revenues buy spamming shit out of the internet with the products, which are piss-poor.

 

High Paying Affiliate Programs 2019

The main verticals to find the highest paying affiliate programs are Web hosting, Credit cards and Casino, but you can also find some decent paying SAAS options covered in the recurring commissions section.

WP Engine Web Hosting

WP engine pays a huge $200, this is the highest in the web hosting industry.  They also have a 180 day affiliate cookie time which is insane, Amazon’s is 24 hrs.  This means if you send someone to WP Engine through your affiliate link, you will still get commission if they purchase 5 months later.  Check out the 30 day EPC on Sharesale below:

WP Engine affiliate program has a high EPC

Bluehost Web Hosting

Web hosting is a great product to promote as an affiliate, though it is competitive. The barrier to exit is high, meaning once someone has built a website on a hosts servers, they are unlikely to move as it is so much hassle.

Bluehost is renowned in the affiliate world for paying high commissions. Anyone who used to look at Pat Flynn’s income reports will know most of his income came from the Bluehost affiliate program.  Bluehost pay a minimum of $65 per sign up.

Alidropship Affiliate Program

Alidropship sells a really good dropshipping plugin which integrates Aliexpress with websites. They also offer dropshipping website builds which are ready to go.  They offer 50% plugin for their plugin which sells for $89.  They offer 30% commission on their store builds which sell for $299-$899 – that’s $269.70 commission for their ultimate package.

If you are in the dropshipping business or have done it before, it would be a good program to promote if you can produce the content.

GreenCultured Cannabis training Courses

With the explosion of the cannabis industry with legalization across many states, Greencultured created a well-timed courses for the industry. Think cannabis cultivation courses, dispensary courses etc.

Greencultured pay 60% commission for every learner you sign up, which equates to $350. You also get a 360 day cookie!!

888 Casino affiliate program

888 are one of the biggest players in the casino niche, operating in multiple geos with a big range of games to sign people up to. Here’s an example of some of the commissions for signing up poker players.

Top High Paying Affiliate Programs to Maximize Your Commissions 1

 

Bankrate Credit Cards

To find a high paying credit card affiliate program you are best signing up to Bankrate credit cards. They are one of the largestplatforms for affiliates looking for credit card programs and have big brands like American Express, Barclay Card and Capital One.  By joining a platform you can promote a few different credit cards or do a nice comparisons.

High Paying Recurring Affiliate Programs

making high income from recurring income affiliate programs

High paying affiliate programs with recurring commissions is where you can start making serious money. If you can find a service that people love using, they will be unlikely to cancel in the short term, you then know you are looking at commission rate x average churn rate.

I also like recurring affiliate programs with a high barrier to exit. For example, I use Freshbooks for my accounting who have recently hiked up all their prices. Moving to another platform would be way too much hassle, my accountant has all the Freshbook logins; all my clients are set up in contacts etc etc.

Most of the good recurring affiliate programs are likely to be SAAS businesses, but with the explosion of ‘subscription boxes’ its worth looking for some high ticket boxes in your niche.

Clickfunnels

Most marketers have heard of Clickfunnels, they do the best selling funnel software available.  Clickfunnels pays out 40% commission on its products that range from $97/mth to $297/mth.  OK lets do the math here.

You sign 5 clients up to unlimited funnels package $297/mth, that would pay you 40 % each month.

5 x $297.00 = 1485.00 x 40% = $594.00/mth  (you can also charge them for creating the sales funnels!).  If they also sign up to the affiliate program, you get 2nd tier earnings on their commissions.

The only problem with Clickfunnels is all the landing pages look really spammy. I would promote this only in the US, don’t think it would do well in Europe.

Leadpages

Leadpages are the leading landing page drag and drop software.  They offer 30% recurring commission for the life time of the customer you sign up. Leadpages’ pricing ranges from $25/mth to $199/yr.

Shopify Affiliate Program

Shopify is the leading ecommerce platform.  They pay $58 for every person that signs up to the affiliate program. The real commissions are with the Shopify Plus service, which is when the call to create a dedicated service.  This Shopify Plus program will pay $2000 per sign up.

shopify affiliate program

ConvertKit Affiliate Program

Convertkit do email marketing software, loved by affiliates as they don’t hate affiliate links like Mailchimp.  Convertkit also pay affiliates 30% recurring commission and there prices range from $29/mth to $79/mth.  They also offer custom packages for people with email lists larger than 5000 and looking to move email platforms, this is where the decent recurring commissions are at.

20K subscribers costs $179/mth – you would get $53.70 commission every month.

The barrier to exit is also high with this kind of software. Once you have set up all your email system with Convertkit, moving would be a right pain in the ass!

Get Response Email Marketing Software

Though Get Response’s primary service was email marketing, they have extended their features to include landing pages, A/B testing and a full CRM.

The prices start at $15/mth and go up to $1199/mth for the enterprise level. They pay 33% recurring commission with a 120 day cookie.

Live Chat Affiliate Program

Livechat pays 20% recurring commission with prices ranging from $16/mth- $149/mth.  They also have a long cookie time of 120 days and have a 2 tier affiliate program in place, so you can ear commissions from affiliates you bring into the program.

Semrush

SEMrush is an amazing tool,  I use every day for looking at competitor data.  SEMrush pay 40% recurring commission and their price structure ranges from $99/mth to $399.95/mth, giving you a potential recurring commission of $159.98 if you sign someone up to their enterprise package which offers API access.

Proof

I’m sure you have probably seen Proof on sites before, they do the annoying pop ups that tell you someone has just bought from the site an hour ago. I personally hate the software but the commissions are good!  You don’t have to like a product to sell it.

Proof’s pricing structure ranges from $24/mth to $299/mth for the Platinum service and they pay

If you are looking to take affiliate marketing seriously and leave the day job, check out some of the best affiliate marketing courses around. Some of these courses can fast forward you through 2 years of learning and painful mistakes.