17 Little-Known Affiliate Programs That Pay up to $8000 Per Sale (2018)

When I first started blogging as a total newbie in the world of marketing, business and entrepreneurship, I spent months pouring my heart and soul into my content hoping things would take off.

But I failed. Miserably.

Why?

Because I was promoting products that I couldn’t relate to at all.

I’d judge a product solely on how much commission I would make per sale.

This made it extremely difficult to create compelling content — If I didn’t value the stuff I was writing about, how on earth would anyone else?!

People fail at affiliate marketing for many reasons — from entitlement issues and promoting terrible products to a lack of consistency and focus.

But one thing separates the super affiliates of this world from the rest.

No, they don’t have a magical secret formula for success! But what they do have is a proven affiliate marketing strategy that works.

That’s what you’ll learn in this blog post.

By studying the super successful affiliates of the world we can determine what works and reverse-engineer their strategies.

Here’s what else you’ll learn in this article:

Plenty of juicy material to plough through so let’s begin! ????

Why Super Affiliates are So Successful

Successful affiliate marketers don’t waste time constantly dabbling and dipping their toe’s into things. They maintain deep focus and remain consistent over a long period.

When it comes to marketing strategy for the best of the best, finding the right affiliate program that has an outstanding commission structure is the name of the game.

Elite level marketers don’t waste time promoting products that produce one-off $20 commissions.

Instead, they align themselves with high paying affiliate programs.

These affiliate marketing programs offer products/services that net huge commissions. And they’re the bread and butter for the super affiliates of today.

Of course, the affiliate programs alone don’t create wealth for these titans of affiliate marketing.

They create and share content that provides a ton of value, making a difference in people’s lives. They establish powerful brands that communicate their message to the world. And in most cases, they’re truly remarkable people!

People that succeed, fully understand the power of self-education, they’re always learning, growing and challenging themselves in some way.

Sucess with affiliate marketing is as much about your psychology as it is about marketing strategy and know-how.

Affiliate Commission Fundamentals

Let’s take a deep dive into the commission structures that make for the best affiliate programs. If you want to become a champion in the affiliate space and build a sustainable long-term business, you need to remember this one word…

Diversification.

And you’re in luck because affiliate marketing has plenty of opportunities to diversify your income.

There’s really only two types of commissions you should be aiming for as an affiliate, these are:

High-ticket product commissions

These products are typically sold on the back-end of a sales funnel (more on that in the next section) and cost upwards of $1000.

It doesn’t matter how good you are at marketing, if you’re spending your time promoting $20 products with no future upsells, you’ll struggle to build a profitable business.

For example:

Let’s say you’re going for a million dollars in a year.

To achieve this nice round number that contains many zeros, you’ll need to sell 50,000 copies of a product that costs $20.

Fifty thousand!

Good marketing can’t overcome bad maths.

On the flip side, if you’re promoting a product that costs $1000, you’ll only need to sell 1000 to make one million dollars.

If the product costs $4000 the number goes down to just 250.

Pretty powerful stuff right?!

Recurring commissions

These types of commissions are extremely powerful. Imagine referring someone once to a subscription service and getting paid healthy commissions every month for the lifetime of the customers’ subscription.

This is how you can build real wealth with affiliate marketing.

For example:

Every month I pay for an email marketing service called Convertkit. These guys are the bee’s knee’s when it comes to email marketing for bloggers.

My plan costs me $49 a month.

You can sign up as an affiliate to promote Convertkit to other bloggers and earn a healthy 30% lifetime commission.

This means if you referred just 100 people at $49 a month, you’d be earning $1500 a month.

While this isn’t a huge amount of money, it compounds over time.

You’ll keep earning that $1500 every month as long as your referrals stay signed up.

And check this out — if you referred just 20 people a month, within a year you could be looking at a passive income stream of $3600!

Totally passive. If you didn’t touch your PC for months, you’d STILL earn the same commissions.

That’s pretty incredible if you ask me!

Understanding the power of sales funnels

Understanding how sales funnels work can mean the difference between making $1000 or making $10,000 a month.

Seriously.

Most businesses have a sales funnel that they use to sell their products and services to consumers. These funnels usually offer a low-priced or free offering at the top and gradually introduce higher-priced, higher-value products to the leads that come through the funnel.

This back to basics diagram explains how sales funnels work…

Sales funnels work like magic because they help build relationships with customers and offer a taste of your products/services without large upfront investments.

Introducing your high-end products when your prospect barely knows you is like proposing to someone on your first date — it’s just weird!

The best affiliate programs provide lifetime customer commissions. So this means you’ll continue to earn commissions everytime your referral invests in a product from the business you referred them to.

This is how you earn the majority of high-ticket commissions in affiliate marketing.

Finding The Best Affiliate Products to Promote

How do you measure the value of an affiliate program?

Here’s some things to look out for before you start promoting:

How popular is the product?

You can’t judge the quality of a product solely based on the commissions you’ll receive.

You’ll find plenty of high paying affiliate programs out there with products that aren’t great.

Research the quality of the product before you start thinking about promoting it. Check out the website. Read online reviews. Google search their brand name.

If no-one is buying the product in the first place, you’re wasting your time.

Commission structure

What’s the percentage of commissions they’re paying? Do they offer high-ticket products? What about recurring monthly payments?

Is it going to be financially viable for you to spend time promoting the product or is there something similar that pays higher commissions?

Cookie duration

The best cookies are the ones that last a lifetime. I’m being serious!

Noo, not the chunky chocolate chip cookies you’re craving — I’m talking about affiliate cookies!

Lifetime and “sticky” cookies mean you’ll be paid every time a customer you referred makes a purchase. In many cases, this still applies if someone cancels their membership and rejoins after a few months.

How cool is that?!

On the flip side, other cookies aren’t so tasty. Some only last for a few days and cover first purchases only.

Backend/upsell products

This is huge for anyone that wants to be a super affiliate.

Affiliate programs that have backend/upsell products (as mentioned in sales funnel section) can multiply your earnings many times over for doing the same amount of work.

The backend is where businesses make the most money. Let’s say you purchase an e-book on how to overcome anxiety.

After the purchase, the product owner builds a relationship with you through helpful emails that provide tonnes of value. After a week or so, he introduces you to his $2000 training program.

A percentage of people that bought the e-book will invest in the coaching program.

This is a very rough example but it demonstrates the sheer power of upsell products.

Second-tier commissions

These commissions are special. ????

They pay you a percentage of sales from other affiliates that you’ve referred to the business.

So not only can you make money by promoting products and services, you can also earn a percentage of profits other affiliates make through second-tier commissions!

Which Affiliate Programs Rock?

Time to slice into the meat and potatoes of this blog post, the list of top affiliate programs! I’ve performed some detailed research and turned over a fair few rocks to bring you this tantalizing list!

I’ve broken things down into sections based on industry and created a handy contents guide (below) where you can jump through to your desired part of the article.

For the most part, you won’t find physical goods affiliate programs such as Amazon Associates in this article.

Why? Because commissions for these products are way too low.

I’ve also written a separate article on travel affiliate programs so you won’t find them on this list either!

This list represents a tiny, minuscule percentage of affiliate programs available.

I highly recommend doing your own research into niches that you find interesting so you can align yourself with an affiliate program you love.

Alternatively, you may find something on this list that fits you perfectly, read on!

Business, Entrepreneurship and Marketing

Kicking things off with a bang — affiliate programs in the online business and entrepreneurship space!

Some of these programs provide an incredible education for anyone looking to get their start online through a unique “earn while you learn” opportunity.

Affiliate programs in this space pay extremely well. Why? Because many products are high-ticket AND information-based so businesses can afford to be very generous with their commissions.

Great news for affiliates!

The Six Figure Mentors

Strictly speaking, this isn’t an affiliate program as such. I would describe it as more of a digital business system, and one that I openly promote myself because of the sheer life-changing value it provides.

It is a highly unique platform that has by far the highest paying commissions I have ever come across.

The Six Figure Mentors is an online business incubator for everyday people like you and me. They teach people how to build profitable online businesses so you can escape the rate race, enjoy more time freedom and never have to worry about money ever again.

Their training modules are heavily focused on cultivating the mindset required for success. When I first got started with these guys, I was feeling giddy about learning all the marketing techniques that would help me succeed.

But I quickly realised that gaining the marketing skills was only a small part of the equation. Almost anyone can learn how to build an email list, run paid ads and provide value.

What most people struggle with, is having the right frame of mind for success.

Do you know why business is so hard?

Becuase it ‘s the ultimate test of your character. It tests your will — your ability to solve problems and follow-through. To stay the course with no certainty of success.

And it’s these tests of character that make it so difficult for the majority of people.

Why? Because we’re all messed up in our own little ways.

We struggle with self-sabotage, we have limiting beliefs. We set false expectations for what we can expect when getting started online.

So this is why the SFM focus so heavily on helping you figure out your sticking points, because they know it’s the number one thing stopping you from succeeding and living a rich life.

This is perfect for the budding entrepreneur looking to build a profitable online business while leveraging powerful tools that’ll help them reach their goals faster.

Points worth noting:

• Cutting-edge marketing and business skill set training modules.
• Lifetime customers. Recurring monthly as well as yearly affiliate commissions.
• Up to $8000 commissions per sale! (Yes really)
• Your own digital business coach to take you by the hand throughout your marketing education.
• Access to a digital skills platform. Lead capture page creator. Web hosting. Blogging platforms.

You can test the waters yourself with a no obligation, 30-day free trial account.

Shopify

At its peak on Black Friday this year, over $555,716 in transactions occurred in a single minute through Shopify stores.

Shopify now powers over 500,000 business in 175 countries and generates over $23.7 million in monthly recurring revenue.

They’re the clear market leader in the drop shipping space.

You can promote the Shopify suite of tools to people looking to start their own online store. And earn a healthy income doing it too.

These guys provide everything you could possibly need to run a successful e-commerce business — from website builders to shopping carts, web hosting, analytics, store management, SEO and more.

The Shopify commission structure runs far and wide thanks to a variety of products you can promote. If you own a web design company or agency, development stores are an awesome way to build your recurring commissions.

You can set up stores for clients through Shopify and earn a 20% monthly revenue share on their subscription.

Through standard affiliate link promotion, you can earn 200% of the monthly subscription per referral.

Points worth noting:

• Earn 200% of a customers monthly subscription through standard affiliate promotion (up to $2400 per sale).
• Recurring commissions for development stores and Shopify Plus referrals.

PROOF

This is most definitely one affiliate program you haven’t come across!

PROOF is the brainchild of Dave Rogenmoser, someone I came to know of through a popular consulting training course.

It’s a subscription software that helps business owners increase their conversions and sales through the awesome power of social proof.

Since this product was launched, I’ve noticed it on dropshipping stores, price comparison websites and digital course sales pages.

PROOF is everywhere!

It uses a simple but powerful pop-up that lets people know who else has signed up/purchased a product recently. This simple concept has resulted in HUGE conversion increases for businesses!

This is what it looks like in action…

Looks pretty sweet, right?!

Points worth noting:

• A 14-day free trial period before anyone signs up or a paid account.
• Basic marketing materials available to help promote software.

Kinsta

This business falls under the web hosting umbrella and is one that I came across very recently.

Web hosting is a great way for bloggers to generate a healthy affiliate income. This particular example is one of many web hosting companies that pay handsomely for affiliate referrals.

Kinsta offers powerful managed WordPress hosting for — you guessed it, WordPress websites!

They also do things like daily backups, free website migrations and claim to be secure like fort Knox! ????

I selected this business because they’re the first web hosting company I’ve ever seen that offers recurring affiliate commissions on top of the initial referral payments you receive.

Granted, the recurring commissions are only 10% but that’s 10% more than any other web hosting company offers right now.

This affiliate program is hot off the press as it was only released in November of 2017!

Points worth noting:

• Exclusive sign-up bonus + recurring affiliate commissions offer.
• Sleek affiliate dashboard that’s easy to navigate and simple to use.
• Healthy range of promo materials available.
• High lifetime value of referrals due to low customer churn rate of 5%.

SEMrush

SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals. They offer a wide range of features from technical SEO audits to rank tracking and competitor intelligence.

It’s also a great tool to use for spying on competitor keywords and discovering what’s working for them!

Many similar tools exist. My personal favourite that I use is called Ahrefs — unfortunately, they don’t have an affiliate program at the moment so we’ll have to settle for SEMrush!

Points worth noting:

• SEMrush uses a first cookie attribution model which means you’ll still receive commissions if a referral cancels then joins up again in the future.
• High pricing plans give you the opportunity to make up to $160 a month for each referral!
• Lack of satisfactory promotional material — not too much of an issue as most people refer through their email list or direct links on their site.

Ninja Outreach

Ninja outreach is a prospecting tool that helps marketers create and manage outbound email campaigns for their businesses.

Specifically speaking, they help marketers reach out and build relationships with industry influencers. Not a tool that I’ve used myself but I know people that use it and they seem to like it. ????

I’ve hand-picked their affiliate program because of the whopping 50% recurring commissions they offer!

This is HUGE for a recurring software product — most businesses offer between 20-30%.

Points to consider:

• An additional product you can promote is an inbound marketing training course they offer, also 50% commissions.
• Great suite of advanced tracking tools for affiliates.
• Extensive reporting features.

The 67 Steps

Everyone knows about Tai Lopez these days — the social media mastermind guru guy that teaches other people how to start various types of businesses.

He seems to have acquired TONS of haters and it all started after he first cropped up on Youtube through his infamous “here in my garage” video.

Check out the video for yourself here, it’s pretty funny (this was the highest quality one I could find ????)…

KNOWLEDGEEEEE hahaha!

Love him or hate him, Tai puts some pretty good content out there. One of his most popular products is something called “The 67 Steps”. It’s a personal mentoring program that teaches you how to cultivate the mindset required for success.

Over 204,546 people have joined the program to date. And you guessed it, you can promote it as an affiliate and bank some pretty chunky commissions!

He also has a Social Media Marketing program that teaches people how to start consulting through helping small businesses with their social media.

You can earn up to $350 per referral for this particular training program.

One thing I don’t like about Tai is that he emails too much about the products he sells. I happen to be on his email list and almost every single day he’s trying to sell another program. ????

Points to consider:

• Affiliate dashboard is clunky and confusing to access.
• Support team have pretty terrible response times (I tested this out myself).
• Rock-bottom refund rates for their products

Instapage

Instapage is powerful landing page platform that helps businesses increase their conversion rate. I’ve not used the platform myself but I must say, they’ve got a gorgeous website!

Their target market is marketing teams and agencies. This is partly why I’ve included them on this list.

While they only offer a 30% recurring commission, their product price point is pretty high, even at the lower end so you can expect some healthy returns from promoting their software.

Pricing starts at $79 and goes all the way up to $229.

Points to consider:

• 50% revenue share on the first payment and 30% recurring afterwards.
• Highly accurate and reliable tracking software ensures you don’t miss out on any commissions.
• Super high customer lifetime value and free to join.

Baffled by the barrage of options for squeeze page software for your business? Check out this epic Clickfunnels VS Leadpages case study review.

Personal Finance and Investing Affiliate Programs

The personal finance space is huge on the internet. We’ve all come across blogs on frugal living, budgeting and real estate investing. People all over the world are sharing their tips, tricks and hacks for us to make the most out of our money.

One thing that gets to me about the personal finance space is too many people pander around frugal living.

Fuck frugal living.

We want to build wealth and live abundant lives, not waste our time pinching pennies and saving scraps.

Now that my rant is over, I can talk about the affiliate programs ????

The top affiliate programs in this space relate to investment products and services. Ironically, there aren’t many high paying affiliate programs for frugal bloggers to promote.

Let’s begin!

Etoro

Etoro is the worlds leading social investment network. You can trade and invest in stocks, currencies and commodities.

They’ve created a proprietary technology that allows you to copy the trading strategies of successful investors.

My knowledge of investing leaves a hell of a lot to be desired so I’ll stick with the affiliate program stats!!

This affiliate program pays you once a customer completes a deposit through the Etoro platform.

Points worth noting:

• Etoro has paid out over $50,257,285.47 in commissions to their affiliates so far.
• Detailed reporting that’s fast and easy to use.
• Unique banners, widgets and landing pages ready for promotion.

Personal Capital

Dubbed as “wealth management for the internet age”.

Personal Capital helps you manage and grow your investment income through data-driven portfolio management. They offer a sleek, intuitive dashboard interface that combines all your accounts for a complete picture of your finances.

They currently manage over $5.5 billion in assets for clients with various financial needs.

What makes this affiliate program different from the rest is that they per qualified LEAD.

Why? Because Personal Capital works on a commission fee structure. So it’s not like a SAAS company that charges you for a monthly subscription fee.

You can learn more about the affiliate program through this post from the Financial Samurai (he used to work for Personal Capital)

He’s used this affiliate program as the main source of income on his blog. A blog that has enabled him to purchase a $1m+ house in SF back in 2014.

Points worth noting:

• Pay per lead affiliate program structure.
• Get paid more based on the quality of leads you put through.

Credible

Credible specialise in helping students find the best loans for their studies. They also help students refinance their loans for better deals.

These guys bring more transparency and simplicity to the loan to the process of borrowing and refinancing debt.

Not the most exciting thing in the world so let’s jump straight to points to consider!

Points to consider:

• Commissions are paid out when a loan offer is accepted.
• The best commissions are paid out for student loan refinances.

Colmex

If you’re in the financial space then Colmex affiliates could be a great option for you to earn an affiliate income online.

In plain English, Colmex provides a trading platform that allows people to trade in capital markets. So things like Forex, the stock market, CFD’s and Futures.

Points worth noting:

• 40% commissions for every client you convert from your website.
• Tiered payment structure, the more sales you generate the higher your commissions.
• Earn up to $1000 commissions on the CPA model
• Choose from three payment plans. CPA, CPL and Revenue Share.

Health, Fitness and Beauty Affiliate Programs

To be honest, I struggled a little at the start looking for high paying affiliate programs in these niches. Finding awesome affiliate marketing programs is tough when you’re not familiar with the industry.

The problem is, many of the high-ticket products are sold by industry influencers and don’t necessarily appear in any of the major affiliate networks.

That said, I’m thrilled to report I came across some sweet ones that I think you’ll love!

Organifi

This is a weird one because it’s a physical product.

Physical products (usually) have totally terrible commissions but this happens to be an exception to the rule.

Organifi is a food supplement company that offers a subscription-based model for their products. They’ve created a whole range of whole-food plant-based supplements, from their flagship “GREEN JUICE” powder to complete protein and probiotic supplements.

I love that all their products come with a concrete 120-day money back guarantee (even if you ship them an empty bottle).

This shows confidence in the quality of their goods.

Their Green Juice product alone has sold over $30 million worth of units. They’ve totally sold out over seven times — people love the green stuff!!

The commission structure kinda blew me away a little bit as you can earn recurring commissions from their product subscriptions. This is rare to see for a physical product!

Points worth noting:

• Lifetime commissions paid out on subscriptions.
• Free to join but you need to apply to be accepted.

PHEN 375

Another physical product that’s made it into this article!!

I’m not a huge fan of weight loss pill products but this is another exception.

Why? Because I’ve known about PHEN 375 for a very long time and see that they’re still going strong in the market.

A few years ago I was (unsuccessfully) promoting products in the supplement space and PHEN 375 was consistently one of the top selling products in the affiliate network I was part of.

They’ve amassed over 219,827 customers globally.

They create weight loss pills that suppress appetite and help people trim the fat!

Points to consider:

• Generous 60-day money back guarantees for customers.
• Their existing top affiliate convert 1 in 4 people!
• A respectable 45% commission rate.

Food Blogger Pro

Food Blogger Pro teaches people how to start profitable food blogs from scratch.They offer a roster of training videos for people to learn exactly what takes to create a thriving food blog.

The product runs on a subscription model so you can expect some sweet recurring monthly commissions!

This isn’t exactly what you’d call a high paying affiliate program but continuity products in the food blogging space are rare, hence the inclusion!

Here’s what the commissions’ structure looks like:

Points worth noting:

• Tiered commission structure that pays up to 40%.
• Creative banners and text links to help with promotion.
• Low monthly cost makes it hard to earn high monthly recurring commissions.

Forward

Forward combines the best doctors with the latest technology to bring you an ultra-personalised care experience.

Their doctors help you create custom plans for your health and well-being based on your unique preferences.

They call it “A new kind of health membership, augmented with technology”.

I must say, their health clinic looks pretty damn cool — like something out of the year 3000!

Points worth noting:

• They pay you $8 for basic email leads!
• $240 payout for each direct sign-up and $80 for “tour bookings”

Discovering your own affiliate programs

Knowing how to do your own research and find the best affiliate programs yourself is an important part of being an affiliate marketer.

Although I’ve curated some totally awesome programs, you may still want to do some digging yourself ????

An easy way to get started is to simply search for it on Google.

You’ll want to have a rough idea of the type of product you’d like to promote before you start searching.

Let’s say I’m looking to promote designer clothing on my blog.

Here’s what I’d start off searching:

“designer clothing affiliate program”

Here’s what I found:

All this from a simple Google search!

Use your imagination when searching for affiliate programs, you’ll be surprised what you can find through some basic search queries.

Another way to find them is to leverage popular affiliate networks, which bring me to my next point…

Leveraging Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks are middle-men between affiliates (you) and merchants.

On the merchant side, they usually do all the heavy lifting when it comes to tracking, payments and support.

It makes it easier for businesses to set up affiliate programs and allows them to reach more people looking to promote their products.

On the affiliate side, they provide all the information you need for each program in curated lists that can be customised to your preferences.

Affiliate networks can be a great way to find companies that you wouldn’t come across through Google searching.

Some popular affiliate networks include:

Rakuten Marketing

Rakuten has been voted the number 1 affiliate network for six consecutive years, they must be doing something right! They’re known for listing top quality affiliate programs and providing analytics for both publishers (affiliates) and merchants.

You’ll find a huge variety of global retail brands from Walmart to Lacoste and Best Buy.

Clickbank

Clickbank is an extremely well-known affiliate network that focuses heavily on information products. When I first started affiliate marketing, this was the very first network I came across!

But you know what?

Popularity doesn’t equal quality — the majority of products on there are total trash.

Sometimes you do find gems but these tend to be few and far between.

Sorry Clickbank, you suck!

Moreniche

Moreniche is an affiliate network that’s heavily focused on the health and nutrition niche.

These guys provide a fantastic range of merchants with ethical products that you can promote. MoreNiche pride themselves on being transparent, honest and ethical.

I came across them a few years ago and was impressed with the products and free affiliate training they offered.

If you’re in the health and nutrition niche, I highly recommend checking these guys out!

Rounding things off

So there you have it! Enough information on affiliate marketing to make your head explode.

Don’t worry if you feel overwhelmed, you’ve just had tons of information thrown at you.

This isn’t something that’ll be built overnight.

If I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be to decide on what you want and stick to that one thing.

The dabbling nature people tend to have is the single biggest reason for failure.

Affiliate marketing isn’t easy, and it won’t make you rich overnight. But if you align yourself with the right product, receive the right training and execute on what you’ve learnt, there’s no limit to what you can achieve.

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