Affiliate Marketing: What It Is and How It Works

Affiliate marketing is changing the way creators and brands work together. What used to be a side hustle has become one of the most popular passive income ideas for online creators. Brands get access to the motivated audiences of bloggers, podcasters, and social media influencers. In return, creators make a commission on sales or referrals, providing a stable way to monetize their content.

It’s now a cornerstone of online business strategy for entrepreneurs, creators, and anyone with an online presence. And it’s continuing to grow. Research indicates brands will spend more than $13 billion on affiliate partnerships in 2026, 10.1% more than 2025. 

Want to start an affiliate program of your own? This guide explains how to become an affiliate marketer and earn money by promoting products to your audience. Here’s how to recruit and manage affiliates for your business.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance marketing strategy where affiliates earn commissions for promoting products or services. When someone purchases through an affiliate’s unique tracking link, affiliates earn a reward from the brand they’re promoting. While most programs pay for sales, some reward free-trial signups, app downloads, or other valuable actions.

How affiliate marketing works

Affiliate programs work by allowing individuals or businesses to promote and sell the products or services of another company in exchange for a commission on each sale. Most affiliate programs are free to join. 

The affiliate earns a commission each time someone makes a purchase through the unique affiliate link associated with their recommendation.

Here’s how affiliate marketing works at a high level:

1. An affiliate promotes an affiliate link to their site visitors, blog readers, or social network.
2. An audience member clicks the link. 
3. The audience member makes a purchase.
4. The affiliate network records the transaction.
5. The affiliate gets paid commission.

Commission rates for affiliate sales vary depending on the product and industry, and the agreement negotiated between the affiliate and brand.

Low-price, high-volume products in niches such as pet food or skin care might earn an affiliate 5% of each sale. High-ticket affiliate programs in sectors such as finance and software can offer affiliates more than 20%.

Successful affiliates may negotiate custom deals with strategic partners for even higher percentages. Some affiliate marketing programs provide a flat rate per sale or action instead of a percentage.

Social commerce and affiliate marketing

Social commerce has transformed how affiliates promote products. Most platforms offer integrated shopping features that allow creators to seamlessly incorporate affiliate links into their content:

• Pinterest affiliates can tag products in their pins and earn commission on sales.
• Instagram affiliates can tag products from a partner’s Instagram shop and track sales through integrated analytics tools. 
• TikTok lets creators whose accounts are in good standing partner with brands to promote products they sell on TikTok Shop.
• YouTube’s product tagging functionality allows creators with more than 10,000 subscribers to tag affiliated products in their videos. 

These integrations create a shorter path to purchase, with users able to discover products and complete transactions without leaving their preferred social platform. For affiliates, this means higher conversion rates and more commission opportunities.

Many brands now prioritize social commerce in their affiliate marketing strategies offering special incentives for creators who drive sales through these integrated channels.

📚Read more: Affiliate Marketing Without a Website: 8 Strategies for 2025

Cross-platform affiliate marketing integration

To make money with affiliate marketing, you need an audience of people who trust your recommendations. Most creators do this by incorporating several channels in their affiliate marketing strategy, such as a blog, YouTube channel, and social media profile. 

What’s great about a cross-platform affiliate strategy is it reflects modern customer journeys. Imagine someone first discovers your content through a TikTok video. This leads them to visit your YouTube channel, and then read your blog for a detailed review of the affiliate product you mentioned. Each of these channels supports them throughout their entire shopping journey.

That said, consistency is key to audience building. Regular posts help build your reputation as a trusted creator. Be careful not to spread yourself too thin as you expand your affiliate marketing channels. If you’re short on time, consider AI content creation tools to speed up the workflow.

3 types of affiliate marketing

There are three categories of affiliate marketing: unattached, related, and involved.

1. Unattached affiliate marketing

Unattached affiliate marketing is when the affiliate is a general advertiser or promoter. They are not associated with the affiliated brand, product, industry, or niche, and may promote a wide range of affiliate products to multiple audiences.

Unattached affiliate marketers often use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns to reach customers on social media and search engine results pages.

2. Related affiliate marketing

Related affiliate marketing is the practice of promoting products or services relevant to your existing audience. An affiliate in this category has invested resources to build a following through blogging, YouTube, TikTok, or other types of content marketing.

Related affiliate marketers may be influencers, making them a trusted source for recommending products.

3. Involved affiliate marketing

Involved affiliate marketing refers to the creation of content that includes an affiliated product or service. This could be a product review, a walkthrough, or other content demonstrating the product’s benefits.

Many involved affiliate marketers gain a reputation for providing trustworthy and impartial product recommendations. Earning an audience’s trust is a sustainable way for beginners to establish a successful affiliate marketing business.

How affiliate marketers make money (and how much)

As you explore high-paying affiliate programs in 2025, you’ll encounter various compensation models. Understanding these payment structures helps you choose programs aligned with your content strategy and target audience.

Affiliate payment models

Affiliate programs use different triggers to determine when and how much to pay their partners:

• Revenue sharing (commission per sale): The most common model, where you earn a percentage of each completed purchase. Commissions typically range from 5% to 50%, depending on the industry.
• Cost per action/lead (CPA/L): You receive payment when users complete specific actions like signing up for a newsletter, filling out a form, or requesting a quote. This model works well for lead generation in service industries.
• Cost per install (CPI): Popular with app developers and software companies, this model pays for each successful application installation through your referral link.
• Cost per click (CPC): More common amongst publishers, a CPC program pays for clicks to their website from your domain.
• Subscription commissions: An increasingly popular model where you earn recurring payments for as long as referred customers maintain their subscriptions. This is ideal for software-as-a-service (SaaS) and membership sites.
• Hybrid models: Many programs now combine multiple payment types, such as a flat fee per lead plus a percentage of sales. This often provides more stable income for affiliates.
• Tiered commissions: Programs that reward high-performing affiliates by increasing commission rates as you reach certain performance thresholds.

Most affiliate programs still use last-click attribution, meaning the affiliate who drove the final click before purchase receives full credit. However, multitouch attribution models are gaining popularity, as they recognize the various affiliates that influenced a purchase decision.

📚Read more: Affiliate Marketing Statistics You Can’t Ignore in 2025

How much can affiliate marketers make in 2025?

While beginners’ monthly earnings might be a few hundred dollars with the right strategy, established affiliates report much higher earnings:

• Entry-level (0–1 year): $500–$2,000 per month
• Intermediate (1–3 years): $2,000–$10,000 per month
• Experienced (3+ years): $10,000–$50,000 or more per month

According to compensation software company Payscale, the average annual salary of an affiliate marketer is approximately $56,000 as of early 2025, based on more than 8,016 salary profiles. However, this figure doesn’t account for top earners who significantly exceed this average. The highest earners make around $77,000 per year. 

Your own affiliate earning potential depends on several factors:

• Audience size and engagement: While larger audiences generally lead to more conversions, even smaller, highly engaged audiences can generate substantial income.
• Niche selection: High-commission industries like finance and software typically offer better earning potential than retail or fashion.
• Content quality: Detailed reviews, tutorials, and comparison content typically convert better than basic promotions.
• Promotion strategy: Multichannel marketing approaches (combining a website, email list, and social media) generally outperform single-channel strategies.

The most successful affiliate marketers focus on building trust with their audience rather than maximizing short-term commissions. This approach leads to higher conversion rates and more sustainable income over time. Credibility is a key asset.

Diversifying affiliate income streams

Despite the advantages of starting an affiliate marketing business, the downsides can make it a risky business model. You’re at the mercy of an affiliate network’s rules. 

When Amazon’s affiliate marketing program slashed commissions for certain product categories by up to 60%, for example, creators saw dramatic cuts to their revenue with little warning.

Balance risk by diversifying your affiliate revenue with other income streams. Popular revenue streams suited to affiliate marketers include:

• Selling products: Dropshipping and print on demand (POD) are popular business models for creators because you don’t need to store or source inventory. Open an online store, connect your dropshipping or POD partner, and start promoting products to your audience. 
• Selling digital products: Online courses, workshops, and ebooks are great passive income streams for affiliates. Lean into your skills and knowledge, then package it into a digital product you can build once and sell forever. 
• Sponsored content: This looks similar to organic content on your blog or social media account, but is a type of paid advertising where the brand pays publishers to talk about their products. 
• User-generated content (UGC): If you don’t have a huge following but you do have a knack for creating great content, sell your content creation services. Brands pay for UGC—including short-form videos and product photography—that looks like a customer made it, so they can repost on their own profiles. 

• Display ads: Networks like Google AdSense display dynamic advertisements on your website. How much you earn for every 1,000 views depends on your industry and the location of the majority of your website visitors.

Pros and cons of affiliate marketing

Experts expect affiliate marketing spending to reach $35 billion globally by 2033. For creators, it’s a low-cost way to start a business almost anyone can try.

Before diving in, consider these pros and cons of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing pros

Easy to execute

In affiliate marketing, the main goal is straightforward: refer customers to your partner retailer. Affiliates can focus their efforts on marketing and leave other difficult tasks, such as product development and order fulfillment, to the retailer.

“When my company used affiliate marketing for its primary source of income, the process to find partners was so easy,” says Michael Keenan, cofounder of Peak Freelance. “We signed up for a service, discovered vetted brands that matched our audience, and added their affiliate links across our blog property and email campaigns. Aside from selecting the right brands, there was very little manual work on our part.” 

Low investment and risk

Joining an affiliate program typically doesn’t cost anything. Once they’ve established a niche audience, affiliates can start earning money by promoting a product without additional investment. This can lead to (relatively) passive income with affiliate marketing.

“This was a big draw for us at Peak Freelance,” adds Michael. “Before we committed to affiliate marketing, we created a variety of digital products like handbooks and template packs. There was an upfront investment in design and development that cost a few thousand dollars with no guarantee of a sale. 

With affiliate marketing, the only investment you’re making is the time to write or record a review of the product. A single piece of content can start earning revenue within a week, regardless of your audience size.”

Ability to scale

When successful, affiliate marketing can increase sales without the need for additional employees or resources. Affiliates can introduce new products to their audience, negotiate higher commissions, or reinvest earnings to expand their reach. Business Insider reports that in 2024, creators and affiliates drove 20% of US Cyber Monday ecommerce revenue, up 7% year over year. 

Affiliate marketing cons

Takes time

Contrary to some online commentary, affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme. Growing an audience and gaining influence requires time and dedication. It may take several years of consistent content creation before you earn a regular affiliate marketing income.

Limited control

Affiliates have to follow the rules set by an affiliate program. This may include limitations on how you can promote a product.

Another limitation of affiliate marketing is the commission-based marketing and revenue model, which means affiliates earn only a fraction of each sale.

If you are successful at referring customers to a particular company, you could negotiate with them for better commissions, bonuses, and access to more impactful marketing content (such as promotions) for your audience.

Navigating privacy regulations

Affiliate marketing relies on cookies to attribute sales to a particular publisher. When a user clicks on a link, a cookie is stored on their device. Any sales they make within the program’s cookie period (e.g., 30 days) is credited to the affiliate. 

The issue, however, as noted by industry reports, is that data privacy regulations like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California are a major restraint on the market. These laws, combined with browsers blocking third-party cookies, can complicate tracking and result in lost commissions.

In response, the industry is shifting toward first-party and zero-party data, which is information collected directly and willingly from customers, to build more personalized and privacy-compliant campaigns.

Who should become an affiliate marketer?

For new businesses, affiliate marketing is a way to earn money with low overhead costs. For established creators, it’s a chance to generate additional income from an existing audience or content portfolio.

Here are four signs affiliate marketing could be a good fit for you:

1. You have access to an audience

If you’ve built an engaged following, you could be in a prime position to leverage affiliate marketing. This could be a large general audience or a smaller community of dedicated hobbyists and enthusiasts.

For example, a wellness podcast could partner with products aligned with its audience’s interests, like a vitamin supplement, meditation app, or a luxury mattress. 

Fortunately, today, you don’t need a massive following to start as an affiliate. Micro-influencers with small but highly engaged communities often achieve better conversion rates because their audience trusts them deeply. A 2025 analysis found that brands are also collaborating with 33% more micro-influencers year over year. 

2. You’re a content wizard

If you have a knack for content marketing, pleasing platform algorithms, and reaching a large number of users, affiliate marketing could be a relevant business model.

Many affiliate marketers generate referrals by optimizing a website to rank highly in search engine results. Others are pros at creating viral content for Instagram Reels or YouTube.

3. You’re a trusted expert

If you’re an expert on a range of niche products, you can use your knowledge to succeed in affiliate marketing. Creating educational content is a powerful way to persuade customers to click through to affiliate marketing partner websites. Plus, in a world with increasing AI-generated slop, audiences value authentic, first-hand experiences. 

4. You run a newsletter or podcast

Newsletter creators and podcasters have unique opportunities in affiliate marketing. With direct access to engaged subscribers, these creators can integrate relevant product recommendations that feel like natural extensions of their content.

The intimate nature of these formats helps build stronger trust with audiences, often resulting in higher conversion rates than traditional social media platforms.

How to start affiliate marketing in 4 steps

Affiliate marketing is a brilliant business opportunity, as you can get started with no money. 

Here’s an ecommerce business blueprint to follow for launching your affiliate marketing business:

1. Pick a channel and format

The first step to becoming an affiliate is selecting a marketing channel for reaching your audience—and a type of content to create for that channel.

Common affiliate marketing channels include:

• Web and blog
• Mobile apps
• Social media (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok)
• Podcasts

Popular content formats include:

• Product reviews
• “Best of” product lists
• Curated product recommendations
• Product comparisons
• Lifestyle content

When choosing a channel and format, consider the platforms you use most and the formats you understand best. Starting with a familiar marketing channel can set you up for producing high-quality content, leading to a more engaged audience.

No matter which route you take, authenticity is key in affiliate marketing. Without a genuine connection with the audience, converting them into affiliate sales may prove challenging.

2. Determine your niche

When selecting a niche, affiliate marketers usually follow one of two paths:

1. They choose a niche they’re passionate about.
2. They select a niche based on audience analysis.

Choosing a niche in which you’re already knowledgeable helps you appear authentic and trustworthy to potential customers. It also aids in evaluating which products and brands to promote.

Say you adopted a dog and started a blog to document your journey as a new pet owner. In this situation, it would be sensible to select an affiliate niche within the pet care industry. This allows you to promote products relevant to your content and audience.

On the other hand, selecting an affiliate marketing niche based on audience analysis can uncover less competitive and potentially profitable areas. This approach may help you establish a presence in untapped segments before others identify the opportunity.

However, this method means you’ll compete with content created by people who likely know more about the topic than you. To succeed, you’ll need to use affiliate marketing tools like social listening, website analytics, and social media insights to understand your audience’s preferences.

3. Find an affiliate program

To earn revenue as an affiliate marketer, the items you promote need to be relevant to your audience. Getting this right improves your credibility and chance of success. 

If you’re unsure where to find products or brands to partner with, browse affiliate marketing networks, which host hundreds of programs. 

Popular affiliate networks include:

• Impact
• CJ
• ClickBank
• FlexOffers
• LinkConnector
• Awin

Another option is to visit the websites of businesses to see if they work with affiliates. Many businesses offer affiliate programs, such as the Shopify Affiliate Program.

A more direct approach is to reach out to the owner of a product you find appealing and inquire if they have an affiliate marketing program. If they don’t, they might be open to setting up an arrangement, such as providing a special coupon code for you to share with your followers.

Remember, affiliate marketing programs have terms of service you need to follow, so always read the fine print. For instance, your affiliate link will usually have a cookie with a specified timeframe, and some programs don’t allow pay-per-click ads using the product or company’s name.

4. Choose your first product

As you brainstorm products or browse through affiliate platforms, the most important criteria is the products you promote should align with your audience or the audience you hope to build.

Ask yourself:

• Is this product something my target audience would find valuable? 
• Does it fit with my area of expertise? My brand?

Also, ensure the product or service you’re promoting is suitable for the platform you’re using. For instance, home décor and clothing might perform well on image-heavy platforms like Instagram. However, for more complex purchases, like software, your conversion rates might be higher on platforms that allow for more in-depth content, like a blog or YouTube.

How to join Shopify’s affiliate program

The Shopify Affiliate Program is open to educators, influencers, and content creators from across the globe. Shopify affiliates inspire people to begin their entrepreneurship journey with Shopify—or show existing merchants the benefits of moving their business to Shopify.

It’s free to become a Shopify affiliate. Once accepted to the program, you’ll earn a commission each time a Shopify merchant completes a free trial and commits to a full-price plan or makes a referral for Shopify POS Pro.

Here’s what you need to know about becoming a Shopify affiliate.

Affiliate criteria

To be considered for Shopify’s affiliate program, you must:

• Own and run a website
• Have an established audience
• Create original content, such as online courses, articles, or videos
• Have experience with Shopify or other ecommerce platforms

As an affiliate, you’ll also need to follow Shopify’s brand guidelines to use branded assets correctly.

Application process

To become a Shopify affiliate, fill out this application form. It takes around five minutes to complete.

As part of the application process, you’ll need to accept Shopify’s contract terms, which include payout amounts for referrals by location. The terms also explain how you’ll be paid.

Tell Shopify how you plan to refer merchants—for example, by creating review content, offering courses, or talking to your existing audience. After that, you can connect your promotional channels to your application. Add your website, social accounts, podcast, newsletter, or other methods of reaching potential customers.

Unless you already use Impact (Shopify’s third-party affiliate management platform), you’ll also need to sign up for an account. You can do this within the application form.

Impact

Shopify uses Impact, a third-party affiliate marketing software, to manage its affiliate program. Affiliates can generate and manage referral links through Impact.

Inside Impact, you’ll find thousands of pre-made referral URLs and creative assets uploaded by the Shopify design team. They’ve tested each asset to ensure it drives conversions.

You can also attach affiliate links to your assets and add affiliate tracking codes to see which links perform well. Shopify’s tracking cookie window for affiliate links is 30 days.

Once you’ve applied

Shopify will review your application and let you know the outcome, usually within three to five days.

If your application is approved, you’ll get an email confirming acceptance, along with links to some tools to help you get started.

Check out this help documentation for more information about the Shopify Affiliate Program, including how affiliates get paid and tips for building your affiliate strategy.

Success strategies for Shopify affiliates

Here’s how to maximize your earning potential as a Shopify affiliate: 

• Create your own Shopify store: What better way to show your audience Shopify’s capabilities than to build a store using the ecommerce platform? For example, if you’re supplementing your affiliate income with digital products that teach people how to start an online store, you can use Shopify to sell your online course. 
• Personalize your recommendation: Shopify has a range of products for almost every entrepreneur. Get to know your audience and use AI to mention features they’re most likely to use. For example, enterprise brands might be interested in POS software, whereas new entrepreneurs might need a beginner-friendly website builder. 
• Create tutorial videos: Sometimes the best way to make an affiliate sale is by showing, not telling. Walk your audience through how to use Shopify features, using your affiliate links to earn commission whenever someone signs up. 

Affiliate marketing trends for 2025

The referral marketing landscape continues to rapidly evolve. Here are the key affiliate marketing trends shaping the industry.

AI and automation in affiliate marketing

Artificial intelligence is transforming how affiliate marketers create content, analyze performance, and optimize campaigns. 

Here are some popular use cases of AI in affiliate marketing:

• Content creation: Generative AI tools like Shopify Magic, Jasper, and ChatGPT help you create written text at scale. This includes product descriptions, blog content, and social media captions to promote affiliate products. 
• Content repurposing: Instead of creating new content for each platform, use AI tools to repurpose what you’ve already got. For example, use AI video generators like Descript to convert YouTube videos into blog posts or TikTok Shorts. 
• Audience analysis: AI can analyze large data sets to understand your audience. Use the insights to personalize the customer experience, like recommendations based on website pages they’ve viewed. 
• Conversion optimization: AI is capable of analyzing vast amounts of performance data for patterns and behaviors humans overlook. Use these opportunities to optimize affiliate strategies and increase conversions.

Mobile-first affiliate strategies

Because mobile commerce continues to dominate, successful affiliates focus on mobile-optimized content and experiences. This includes fast loading times, easy checkout processes, and content formats designed for mobile consumption.

Affiliates who neglect mobile optimization are seeing declining conversion rates as consumers increasingly complete purchases on smartphones and tablets rather than desktop devices. According to Statista 2025 numbers, smartphones accounted for approximately 80% of retail website visits worldwide. This traffic generated between 66% and 68% of all online shopping orders. 

Video and short-form content

Video content has become a crucial component for affiliate marketers. Popular short-form video platforms include TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. These formats deliver higher engagement rates and allow for more authentic product demonstrations.

Successful affiliates are creating “shoppable” video content. With shoppable content, viewers tap on products featured in the video and purchase them directly within the app, streamlining the purchasing process.

Voice search optimization for affiliates

As voice-activated devices become more prevalent, forward-thinking affiliates are optimizing their content for voice search. 

Voice search optimization requires understanding how people speak differently from how they type, with longer, more natural language queries becoming increasingly important for discovery. This means:

• Use conversational question-based keywords in your content, such as “What are the best running sneakers for rough terrain?” in a listicle on the best running sneakers
• Structure website content to capture feature snippets using schema markup 
• Optimize for local voice search queries, such as “best place to buy hiking gear in Denver” 
• Add an FAQ section at the bottom of your article to address “People also ask” questions

Privacy-first marketing approaches

Consumers are more actively protecting their privacy than ever before. According to Cisco’s 2024 consumer privacy survey, two-thirds of respondents reviewed their privacy settings and enabled multifactor authentication (MFA) in the past 12 months. Some (36%) have exercised their data access rights, and 75% say they won’t buy from companies they don’t trust with their data. 

As an affiliate, you need to cater to these concerns—not just to strengthen relationships with your audience, but also to remain compliant with data protection laws. 

Here’s what a privacy-first approach might look like:

• Collecting first-party data: With many website visitors opting out of cookie tracking, first-party data sources are the best way to shed light on your audience. Use quizzes, on-site search queries, and surveys to understand who your audience is. Analyze the data to promote affiliate products they’re likely to buy. 
• Be transparent with affiliate disclosure: Online shoppers are becoming increasingly wary of endorsements where the creator has a financial investment. This relates to the points about trust and credibility earlier. Cater to these concerns by explaining how you analyze which products to promote. For example, “I test every product I recommend, and I only promote it if my audience would find it genuinely useful.” You could even share anecdotes of how you’ve turned down sponsored posts or affiliate deals that didn’t suit your audience. 
• Ensure data compliance: Most countries now have privacy laws. From GDPR in Europe to CCPA in the US, your affiliate website must comply with these regulations.

Advanced attribution models

Read a blog post, click an affiliate link, and purchase a product—if only the customer journey could always be that simple.

The reality is, online shoppers typically jump between several channels in a single purchase decision. They might discover a product on your blog, then compare prices on a marketplace, visit a retailer’s store, and finally complete their transaction on the brand’s website. This makes attribution tricky: How does the affiliate get credited for the sale? 

Most affiliate programs have shifted from last-click attribution models (where the final touchpoint gets the credit for the sale) toward a multitouch marketing attribution model. If you introduce somebody to a product but don’t close the sale immediately, you’ll still get some commission with a multitouch attribution model. 

Sophisticated affiliate tracking tools have advanced attribution models that let creators monetize long-lasting influence over their audience, instead of just optimizing for last-click conversions. Impact (used to power Shopify’s affiliate program), for example, tracks a customer’s purchase across desktop and mobile, including different channels, to attribute sales to affiliated creators. 

As an affiliate, that means more credit for your influence and, ultimately, more money-making potential. Plus, knowing how your content fits into the customer life cycle gives you more freedom to negotiate better terms based on full-funnel impact.

Affiliate program examples

Take a look at the best affiliate programs in 2025 to understand the different payout models, products, and services you can promote.

Shopify

Shopify’s Affiliate Program is a community of entrepreneurs, educators, influencers, and creators who refer customers to Shopify. Joining the affiliate program is free—all you need to do is apply.

Once approved, affiliates receive a unique link to share with their audience. Each time someone signs up using this link, the affiliate earns income.

On average, Shopify Affiliates earn $58 for each user who signs up for a paid Shopify plan. Earning potential is unlimited and depends entirely on the success of your marketing strategy.

Smart Marketer’s Ezra Firestone considers the Shopify affiliate program one the most accessible he’s encountered in more than a decade of digital marketing. “Shopify made it easy for me to promote their product, make money, and provide value to my community,” he says.

Many Shopify affiliates use social media to promote their affiliate links, creating engaging YouTube videos about how to use Shopify, or shorts for TikTok showing successes achieved by Shopify merchants. Others make long-form educational content, such as online courses taking entrepreneurs from an initial business idea to their first sale and beyond.

Healthish

Water bottle retailer Healthish used affiliate marketing to build a million-dollar brand. It partnered with Instagram affiliates to build awareness for the launch of its keystone product, the WB-1 bottle.

The Healthish affiliate program continues to work with influencer accounts with 100,000 followers or more. It partners with around 300 creators per month to scale content creation, marketing, and sales.

Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates is one of the world’s largest affiliate marketing programs, allowing third-party publishers to monetize Amazon’s vast catalog of goods. Commissions vary by product category, generally ranging from 1% to 10%.

Thanks to Amazon’s universal reach and strong brand reputation, Amazon affiliates often enjoy higher than average conversion rates for their promoted links.

Juice Beauty

Juice Beauty is a skin care brand based in California that offers an affiliate program via Rakuten. Commission rates start at 6% on all sales and affiliates are provided with special deals and discounts. Juice Beauty doesn’t charge any application or membership fees to its affiliates.

EcoFlow

EcoFlow is a brand of smart solar solutions. It makes products including portable air conditioners and generators. The company works with two different affiliate program partners and offers a 5% commission on each sale. Keep in mind the average order value is $1,000—meaning a $50 commission for your marketing efforts.

📚Read more: B2B Affiliate Marketing: How to Get Started

Manduka

Yoga brand Manduka offers a number of referral and affiliate programs for yoga teachers, influencers, and affiliate publishers. The diversity of this affiliate marketing strategy allows Manduka to connect the right partners with a program tailored to their channels or audiences.

Good To-Go

Camping food brand Good To-Go offers an affiliate program with a 10% commission rate and other perks. Due to its niche market, Good To-Go partners with social media influencers in the outdoor living space to run affiliate campaigns targeting its desired audience: campers and backpackers.

Affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid

Avoid these common mistakes that could stunt your affiliate marketing efforts. 

Selling more than helping

Regardless of your platform—be it blogging, a YouTube channel, or Instagram—your content should aim to assist rather than sell. 

For example, if promoting a meal kit subscription service, a blogger might write a detailed review discussing how it caters to specific dietary needs. Or, a YouTuber could partner with a chef to get an expert’s take on the recipes.

This approach provides genuine value and builds trust with your audience, making them more likely to consider the purchase.

Low-quality content

It’s crucial to align the quality, tone, topics, and delivery style of your content with what’s successful in your niche.

Observe top performers in your area: What formats do they use? What topics do they cover? How do they engage their audience? 

For instance, if top tech gadget reviewers on YouTube use high-energy, detailed unboxing videos, consider adopting similar elements to connect and resonate with that audience.

This strategy ensures your content meets the expectations and preferences of your target audience, which makes it easier for you to increase both credibility and engagement.

Poor SEO

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) involves more than just keywords—it requires an understanding of platform algorithms and content optimization.

Learn the specifics of each platform’s algorithm and tailor your SEO checklist to maximize reach and impact. For example:

• On YouTube, this might mean focusing on video engagement signals (like watch time, likes, and comments) alongside proper tagging and descriptions
• For bloggers, SEO involves keywords as well as a mobile-friendly and fast-loading site
• Instagram influencers should engage with followers through comments and stories to boost post visibility

A focus on desktop over mobile experience

It’s easy to get caught up in the money-making potential of affiliate marketing and slip into bad habits, such as promoting products you don’t genuinely care about and overloading your affiliate site with ads or calls to action (CTAs). 

You’ve probably landed on a page with so many ads or pop-ups it’s hard to find or read the content. A poor website experience drives visitors away and results in lost commissions. 

While you might design your affiliate website on a desktop computer, don’t overlook the increasing traffic from mobile devices. Confirm your site looks and performs just as great on a smartphone with a mobile SEO and mobile UX design audit:

• Website design should be responsive and automatically adjust to the user’s screen. 
• Pages should load quickly (ideally within three seconds).
• Text should be large and easy to read on smaller screens.
• CTA buttons should be large and finger-friendly.
• Pop-ups shouldn’t be disruptive and interfere with the user experience.

Noncompliance with privacy changes

Ignoring privacy regulations can significantly hinder your ability to make money with affiliate marketing. It risks your relationship with your audience (influencing how likely they are to buy through your affiliate links), and you could land in hot water with data regulators. Fines for not complying with GDPR regulations, for example, can run into the millions.