All too often, people and businesses overlook the potential of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of the top ways to make a living online. Affiliate programs let you sell other companies’ products on your own site and earn a commission.
These are usually set up as pay-per-sale or pay-per-click programs, in which you give the company an affiliate ID, place their ads on your site and get paid a commission each time someone you referred makes a purchase through your links.
There’s hundreds of affiliate marketing programs out there offering commissions, regardless the niche you’re in. When it comes to choosing an affiliate program that meets your requirements, you need to be careful.
Disclaimer: Note that some links and banners in this article are affiliate links, which provide us with a small commission if you complete purchases via those links. These are merely good business tools you can use together with these small business ideas. You can read the affiliate disclosure of our privacy policy in the footer.
What is an Affiliate Marketing Program?
An affiliate program is an agreement in which a business pays another business or influencer (‘the affiliate’) a commission for sending traffic and/or sales their way.
This is one of the ways companies expand their reach in digital marketing to audiences they would otherwise not have. A good number of companies manage their own affiliate programs but some especially the larger businesses, use affiliate networks to manage their programs.
Imagine you own a blog about food recipes, and all the time you are teaching people how to cook you also include the pots you use. You can leverage that knowledge by finding the pot supplier’s affiliate program registering and earning a commission evert time some buys the pot through your link.
They may offer you 10% of all orders that come through links on your website.
If you have a lot of traffic coming your way, chances are you will make more passive income from affiliate marketing.
Affiliate programs are advantageous for businesses because they only pay when there’s an action taken (getting someone to click, or making a sale). Because of affiliate management software, It’s also easy for businesses to track who sent customers their way and pay them.
How Affiliates Make Money
To make money as an affiliate, you first have to sign up with a company that has an affiliate program. Then the company will give you a unique link (an “affiliate link”) that you can use to refer people to their site.
So when someone clicks on your unique link, the company will know that it came from you—and if the person goes on to make a purchase, then you will earn commission from the sale.
The way this works is through cookies. When a user clicks on your affiliate link, a cookie is placed in their browser so that if they go on to make any purchases during the next 30 days (this is just an example timeframe—it could be longer or shorter), then the company knows where the referral came from and can pay you accordingly.
Affiliate Programs That Pay the Highest Commission.
The best affiliate programs that pay the highest commission have a few characteristics in common. When it comes to selecting the best affiliate program, you need to be aware of what these are.
There’s no point in joining an affiliate program that only pays a small commission when there are hundreds of other affiliate programs that pay much higher commissions.
Most affiliates want to get paid as much money as possible for every product they sell and this makes sense.
Every dollar counts! When you’re ready to start making money online with the best high paying affiliate programs, check out our list of the top 50 highest paying affiliate programs today!
High Paying Affiliate Programs
- Bluehost
- Shopify
- Cloudways
- Hostinger
- Linode
- Hubspot
- Liquid Web
- Elementor
- Zoho
- Aweber
- GetResponse
- Fiverr
- Pabbly
1. Bluehost
Commission payout: $65
Cookie lifetime: 60 days
Bluehost is one of the most popular web hosting services in the world. It offers a great affiliate program you can join straight from their website. The fact that BlueHost is popular makes it easy to close sales even as an affiliate.
Payout are made through PayPal. The affiliate marketing program is free to join, has no cap in commission earnings, and has a range of promotional resources and a very responsive team.
The downside may be that there is an approval process into the program. And, payment processing is 45 – 60 days after the sale is made.
The Bluehost affiliate program pays out an average of $65 per sale.
2. Cloudways
Commission payout: $125 one time or $30 one time plus 7% lifetime
Cookie duration: 90 days
Cloudways helps users to launch a WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or any other eCommerce site without much technical skills.
They have an amazing affiliate program that’s helped countless people earn great commissions. In fact, some affiliates make six-figures a year with their program alone!
If you’re not already familiar with the program, it’s definitely worth looking into. There are no limits on how much you can earn, and they offer a generous $100-$200 commission per customer (depending on the plan).
You can chose between a slab reward system for a once off commission or Hybrid for $30 once off commission and 7% lifetime commission.
Cloudways provides tons of attractive features including 24/7 live customer support, multiple cloud hosting servers and tons of other features to help users get the best results.
3. Hostinger
Commission payout: up to $150 per sale or minimum 60% commission on sales
Cookie lifetime:
Hostinger is often referred to as the best cheap web hosting because of its exceptionally low price point, and 99.9% uptime guarantee.
It is another popular web hosting company that can offer affiliates up to $150 per sale on a tiered pricing structure. Their affiliate marketing program can count as one of the best high paying affiliate programs in the webhosting inductry. Hostinger has a super intuitive control panel for those starting out, and you will receive good support from the company’s 24/7 live chat and ticketing system.
In addition to this, it also offers a 30 day money back guarantee if you are not happy with your purchase (hosting starts at $1.45 per month).
4. Linode
Commission payout: $10 per paying customer
Cookie lifetime:
Linode is the largest independent cloud for developers with over a million customers. It came 3years before AWS. Linode hosting is a great choice for virtually any project.
A large part of the reason for that is its affordability – Linode offers one of the best prices in the industry.
Linode’s affiliate program is free to join and has no limit to the number of customers you can refer. You get $10 for every paying client who remains a client for at least 90 days.
Other than that, it also has a very strong customer service and consistent uptime record. As a result, if you need to host your website or app with an affordable provider, Linode is one of the best options available.
The main reason to choose Linode is their rate plan. It’s hard to beat their pricing model, which starts at $5 per month and provides loads of features and flexibility.
5. Liquidweb
Commission payout: $150
Cookie Lifetime: 90days
Liquidweb offers fully managed cloud and web hosting service is VPS and dedicate, cloud servers and digital commerce cloud.
The affiliate program for Liquidweb is run by Impact. They will pay you a flat fee of $150 per deal or a 150% commission each sale’s monthly cost, whichever is higher.
With Liquid web you will get notices of promotions, and new products and also a professional selection of banners and link to use for promotions. (All programs listed here provide you with banners and links to promote).
Disclaimer: Note that some links and banners in this article are affiliate links, which provide us with a small commission if you complete purchases via those links. These are merely good business tools you can use together with these small business ideas. You can read the affiliate disclosure of our privacy policy in the footer.
Business and Marketing Affiliate Programs
6. HubSpot
Commission payout: 15% recurring or 100% of the first month
Cookie lifetime: 90days
While there are thousands of affiliate programs to choose from, HubSpot is among the best.
HubSpot is a software company that serves more than 74,000 customers in over 120 countries. Their software solutions include everything from marketing and sales to customer service and operations.
Why should you join them as an affiliate? They offer one of the highest paying affiliate programs out there: 15% recurring or 100% of the first month’s revenue for every new client you bring on board.
If you love their brand and products as much as we do and want to become an affiliate partner, you’ll be happy to know that signing up takes just seconds.
7. Elementor
Commission payout: 50% per sale of Elementor plugin $70 for a cloud website subscribers
Cookie duration: not specified
Elementor is a dynamic drag-and-drop website builder used to create more than 8% of all the world’s websites. Elementor affiliates earn 50% per sale. The software has five pricing packages, ranging from $49 to $999 per year.
Elementor is a fast growing product, has complete library of assets and they have great support.
Joining the program is free and you can do it on Partnerstack.
8. Zoho
Commission payout: 15% of recurring revenue for 12 months
Cookie duration: 90days
Zoho’s affiliate program gives you access to all their products to promote. You can promote the Zoho CRM, projects, finance, forms, invoice, commerce and more. You can even create you own unique link to enable deep linking to your choice of landing pages.
As soon as your application has been approved, you’ll gain access to a large inventory of creative assets — banners, video tutorials, and copy examples — that are designed to help you earn the most commission possible.
9. AWeber
Commission payout: Starts from $10 up to $300 per paying customer
Cookie duration: 45days
Email marketing is one of the best ways to grow your business. AWeber, which is the world’s leading email marketing platform, takes care of all the complicated stuff so you can focus on growing your audience and delivering great content.
Their in-house program offers a lifetime of up to 50% commission. Plans typically range from around $19.99 to $149.90 per month, so the payout can add up.
Alternatively, you can earn up to $300 per account through CJ Affiliate. However, the cookie life with this option is only 45 days, rather than one year.
10. GetResponse
Commission payout: 33% per month or $100 onetime payment per sale
Cookie lifetime: a generous 120 days
GetResponse is another email marketing tool that many users swear by. It has several features that make it stand out, including:
With the GetResponse affiliate program you have a choice of how you want to be paid, upfront commissions or recurring commissions. Get response offers affiliates materials to use while selling. This includes infographics, banners, and affiliate links.
11. Fiverr
Commission payout: $15 – $150 or $10 upfront and 10% revenue share for 12 months.
Cookie lifetime:
Fiverr is a global online marketplace offering tasks and services, beginning at a cost of $5 per job performed, from which it gets its name.
The site is primarily used by freelancers who use Fiverr to offer a variety of different services, but there are options for buyers as well. For instance, consumers can browse Fiverr to find graphic designers, copywriters, voice-over artists and more at a low cost.
Fiverr has several categories available for buyers and sellers to choose from including: graphics & design; digital marketing; writing & translation; video & animation; music & audio; programming & tech; business; lifestyle and more.
Sellers have the option to offer features such as fast delivery or higher levels of expertise.
Fiverr makes money by charging the seller $1 plus 20 percent commission on each completed transaction.
There are three programs that make up the Fiverr affiliate program: Fiverr Pro (targeted towards professional service providers), Fiverr Business (a portal for businesses looking for teams of freelancers) and Fiverr Learning (a digital learning platform).
12. Pabbly
Commission payout: 30% recurring for the lifetime of the customer
Cookie lifetime: 30days
Pabbly is a very popular service and has been around since 2013. It provides an all in one solution to everything you would want from an online business. Pabbly also boasts some pretty advanced features, but you don’t need to be a technical expert to use it.
They have a range of 5 products so even if when a client uses you link to get to their website, but lands on a product and buys a different one you will get your commission.
Pappy’s affiliate program is easy to sign up to and get started. When you are approved you get access to their different products, to promote.
Their pricing is affordable, and they have some tiered options to fit the size of your business and budget. One thing I love about Pabbly is that they have a free trial available! The Pabbly team offers great customer support if you ever need help setting up your account.
13. Unbounce
Commission payout: 20% recurring revenue for each referred sale
Cookie lifetime: Not specified
Unbounce is a landing page builder that was developed by marketers for marketers. As a result, it’s intuitive and easy to use—making it a great solution for companies that don’t have dedicated web developers in-house.
With powerful drag-and-drop functionality and mobile responsiveness, you can create and launch new pages quickly with Unbounce. If you want to try out the software before recommending it to your clients, they also offer a free14-day trial.
Their affiliate program offers three payment tiers (in other words, the more customers you refer to them, the higher your commission percentage will be), plus they offer a full year of residual payments on every referral (committing to a landing page creation service is usually at least an annual commitment).
14. ActiveCampaign
Commission payouts: 30% commission on sales
Cookie lifetime
Active Campaign is an all-in-one marketing platform that includes email automation, marketing automation and sales CRM functionality.
It’s a popular tool with small-to medium sized businesses, as it offers extensive automation tools for a reasonable price.
You can earn up to 30% per referral for driving new business, and there’s no cap on the number of referrals you can make each month.
Plus, Active Campaign has great products, high quality training materials and an excellent affiliate program.
15. Typeform
Commission payout: 20% commission on sales for the life of the client
Cookie lifetime: Not specified
Typeform is a tool that businesses use to create online forms that collect information such as survey responses, event registrations and customer feedback.
You can sign up for an affiliate account with Typeform and promote its products on your website, blog or newsletter, which earns you money for every referral.
16. Outgrow
Commission payouts: 20% upfront and 20% recurring
Cookie lifetime: Not specified
Outgrow is an interactive marketing platform that helps marketers grow their business by creating engaging experiences for their users. Outgrow allows you to create quizzes, polls, calculators, chatbots and other tools to help you grow your business.
Using Outgrow’s suite of functionalities along with its integrations with a number of popular applications such as HubSpot and Marketo, marketers can close deals faster, improve conversions, increase sales qualified leads and much more.
The best part about Outgrow? Their affiliate program! They have a generous revenue share model where affiliates are paid 20% commission on every sale they make.
Disclaimer: Note that some links and banners in this article are affiliate links, which provide us with a small commission if you complete purchases via those links. These are merely good business tools you can use together with these small business ideas. You can read the affiliate disclosure of our privacy policy in the footer.
Online Courses Software Affiliate Programs
17. Thinkific
Commission: 30% lifetime commission on all monthly or annual plans
Cookie duration: 90days
Thinkific is the world’s easiest course creation platform. It gives you all the tools you need to share your knowledge online, without any technical headaches or limitations.
With Thinkific, you can create and sell online courses easily, including:
- Setup your brand and website in minutes
- Share content with text/video lectures and quizzes
- Sell directly on your own site, not through a 3rd party marketplace. Get access to members-only content when they enroll
- Save time with easy-to-use course creation tools that are designed for busy people like you!
Their affiliate program will work if your audience includes content creators, business leader and entrepreneurs. You can even offer your audience a free trial by your link created on your dashboard. The program is managed on Partnerstack.
18. Kajabi
Commission payout: 30% commission lifetime recurring commision
Cookie lifetime: Not specified
Kajabi is a software platform that allows you to create and sell online courses, membership sites, and coaching services. With Kajabi, you can also build landing pages, design emails, and set up webinars very easily. They have great marketing automation features as well.
Kajabi has some of the best marketing automation features with their “Pipelines” feature which allows you to create your own custom customer journeys by sending out emails based on the action taken on a particular page or email.
They also have great payment processing features with the ability to accept payments for subscriptions at different frequencies (e.g., weekly vs monthly vs yearly).
It makes it very easy to set up recurring payments for subscription plans and allows customers to upgrade/downgrade their plans within the Kajabi member portal.
Kajabi has one of the best affiliate programs that I’ve seen in this space. They pay an industry leading 30% commission on every sale made through your links for lifetime of the customer.
19. Teachable
Commission payout: 30% commission
Cookie duration: 90days
Teachable is an all-in-one e-learning platform that makes it easy for you to create and sell online courses. They offer a platform with a host of features that can help you set up, customize, and market your online course.
Their pricing plans include Starter ($39/month), Basic ($99/month), Professional ($299/month) and Business ($499/month). Each plan has its own set of features based on the size and needs of your business.
The Teachable affiliate program offers a 30% revenue share as long as the customer is paying for the service.
20. iSpring
Commission payout: 10% commission on each initial sale
Cookie lifetime: not specified
iSpring makes it easy to create online courses. Their free trial is a great way to test the platform and see how easy it is.
The iSpring affiliate program offers competitive commissions and they are a global company with a dedicated support team. They also have an easy-to-use affiliate dashboard, so you can easily access your stats and stay on top of your earnings.
They even have referral programs, which means if you refer another business to iSpring, they will give you 10% of the commission from that referred business for two years from the date of sign up!
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of partnering with a third party to sell their product or service on your website. It’s a very effective way to earn more money into your bank account because you’re not responsible for creating and selling a product.
You only have to promote someone else’s product. However, there are thousands of affiliate programs which get saturated by internet marketers and bloggers every day.
That’s why it can be super hard to find the best affiliate programs that pay the highest commission. But worry no more because I’ve made this list for you.
Why Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online. You don’t need a website or an email list, and you don’t need any special skills or experience to get started.
It’s easy to understand why affiliate marketing has become so popular in recent years — it’s an extremely effective way of earning money on autopilot.
There are literally thousands of affiliate programs and networks that let you promote just about every product or service under the sun, in just about every niche imaginable.
And thanks to all the various tools available today, it’s possible for someone with no coding knowledge whatsoever to create their own landing pages and lead magnets and still make decent commissions from the programs they promote.
Not only are there many great affiliate programs for marketing and businesses, but there is also a huge amount of marketers who would find these products useful.
Affiliate programs primarily help the business who owns it, but it also helps the marketers to make good money, and the consumers to get good products.
Affiliate programs are advantageous to businesses because it allows them to sell their product without having to do all the work of creating an ad campaign or hiring sale representatives.
It’s all done by the affiliate marketer and they even have to do very little work if you have a high converting sales page, as well as a great sales funnel that converts leads into customers.
