14 Best Affiliate Programs for Bloggers: Earn More From Your Blog

To excel in affiliate marketing, you need to be selective about who you promote. To help you choose, here are the 14 best affiliate programs for bloggers.

Making Money From Blogging Is Hard

It’s easy to find tons of websites that will tell you how much money they make from their blogs, and how you can do it too. Maybe that’s true. Maybe you can make $10k a month from your blog. But making money from blogging is hard; that is just the truth. You’re going to have to work for it, and I can help you figure out the best way to make it work for you. Affiliate marketing is a great place to start earning some cash from your blog.

Shelby and I have been working full-time on Little Coffee Fox for over three years, and for most of that time, affiliate marketing was our primary source of income. But it took us a while to figure out that you can’t just drop links in your posts and hope to make money. There are thousands of programs out there, but they are not all a good fit for every blogger. That’s why if you want to make affiliate income from your blog, you need to be selective when it comes to what you promote. So I decided to put together this list of the best affiliate programs for bloggers to help you find the perfect fit for you.

Factors Considered

Trying to find the best affiliate programs for bloggers isn’t easy. And truthfully there is no perfect formula for determining which are best. Here are the factors I considered when building this list:

• Earning Potential: Earning potential factors in the amount that the commissions offer as well as how desirable the products are to widespread audiences.
• Cookie Duration: In this context, cookie duration refers to tracking cookies and how long they are active after someone clicks an affiliate link. A tracking cookie is attached to your link and is what tells the company that your click led to the sale. However, every affiliate has a different amount of time that the cookie remains active. A longer tracking cookie duration is always better, as it allows you more time to earn a commission.
• Ease of Promotion: How easy is it to join the program and start earning?
• Brand Trust: The better respected a brand is, the easier it is to convince one of your readers to purchase from that brand.
• Personal Experiences: Though what has worked for us is not guaranteed to work for you, our experiences can help you determine what programs are best for you.

The 14 Best Affiliate Programs for Bloggers

2. Etsy

If you are a creative blogger or you are hoping to start a blog in a creative niche, then Esty is going to have one of the best affiliate programs for you. Their program allows you to link to any store or product on their site, allowing you to share with a wide range of unique and handmade items with your audience.

Sign Up For The Etsy Affiliate Program

3. SkillShare

If you’ve ever watched a Youtube video, then you’ve probably heard an ad for Skillshare. But Skillshare is not only good for Youtubers; it also has one of the best affiliate programs for bloggers. Their platform is quite generous offering $10 per referral that signs up for one of their fantastic welcome offers (usually two free months for new users). The best part? You earn a commission when the person signs up for the free trial, not when they become a paying customer.

Additionally, their affiliate program is a great way to see if your audience has an appetite for online courses, which can be a huge moneymaker for your blog if you ever decide to create one yourself.

Skillshare courses also offer a wide array of courses cover subjects such as photography, blogging, finance, productivity, and so much more, easily making it one of the best affiliate programs for bloggers in any niche.

Sign Up For The SkillShare Affiliate Program

4. Ultimate Bundles

This program is a bit different than the rest on this list. Ultimate Bundles is a company that bundles together products from various bloggers and sells them in a bundle for a very short time and at a massive discount. For instance, last year’s Genius Blogger’s Toolkit cost $97 but contained over $5,000 worth of products. This huge discrepancy between the cost and value make their bundles an easy sell! That’s not even the best part, though. Ultimate Bundles offers a base commission rate of 40% per sale, and 70% per sale if you have a product in the bundle. With commission rates this high, it’s easy to see why Ultimate Bundles is by far one of the best affiliate programs for bloggers.

Promoting their last bundle, we were able to earn over $2,800 in only six days!

Sign Up For The Ultimate Bundles Affiliate Program

5. Awin

Awin is actually an affiliate network rather than an individual company’s affiliate program. Affiliate networks are a great way to be able to find a large number of programs to promote without having to spend time searching for each and every company individually.

Awin has over 15,000 brands on its platform, including HP, Stubhub, and Etsy, making it a great affiliate network for any blogger.

Sign Up For Awin

6. Impact Radius

Impact Radius is another network that we have been using for years! This network boasts some major programs such as Target, Blue Apron, HelloFresh, and so many more. It is a must join network for pretty much anyone.

Sign Up For Impact Radius

7. ShareASale

ShareASale is the last affiliate network on this list, but it is certainly not least. We’ve been a part of ShareASale for years and have no complaints. ShareASale boasts such programs as WarbyParker, Grammarly, and Cricut.

Sign Up For ShareASale

8. Web Hosting Services and Blogging Tools

Having a good web host is a vital part of blogging, and that’s why web hosting services have some of the best affiliate programs for bloggers! The truth is the best people to convince people to start blogging are other bloggers. This post is a perfect example of that. That’s why oftentimes the most lucrative affiliate programs for bloggers to promote are web hosts and blogging tools.

Here are a few of the best blogging affiliate programs for bloggers:

• Convertkit: Our email marketing platform provides excellent service and a generous affiliate commission of 30% of every reoccurring payment. One single person we referred over two years ago has earned us over $1,100 to date from this program.
• Teachable: Our go-to platform for all online product hosting. Teachable is another company that offers a reoccurring affiliate commission, paying 35% of all lifetime payments.
• Tailwind: A must-have for all bloggers. Tailwind is the best tool for Pinterest, and they know it. Tailwind pays 15% of all reoccurring payments
• BigScoots: Our current host may not pay as much as some other hosting providers, but they provide fantastic service, so you don’t have to hesitate when recommending them to your readers.
• DreamHost: Our host before BigScoots, Dreamhost is an excellent hosting service for anyone on a budget with hosting starting as low as $2.59 a month. Despite the low price tag, they pay up to $200 per referral!

9. SkimLinks

If all of this has been a bit overwhelming, then Skimlinks may be perfect for you. Skimlinks handles everything for you. No need to apply for affiliate programs. No manually adding links. You just write and Skimlinks handles the rest. After adding Skimlinks to your site, it automatically links your text to their nearly 50k merchants without any work for you. It is a quick and straightforward way to earn affiliate income from blogging.

So what’s the catch? It’s simple; they take 25% of every sale. Personally, I don’t mind taking the time to run down affiliate programs and links, but if you’re looking for a way to save time or you’ve been blogging for a long time and have too much content to go back and update, than Skimlinks may be the perfect solution for you.

Sign Up For SkimLinks

Find The Right Affiliate Program For You

When exploring what affiliate programs are best for your site, be sure to keep your audience in mind. It’s important only to promote products and services that you can stand by. It’s incredibly easy to convince yourself to promote a product just for the money, but doing so is a mistake. Pushing products that you do not believe in is a quick way to lose the trust of your audience. When you don’t truly enjoy a product or service, it will show in your content. So be sure to not only search for the best affiliate programs for bloggers in general but the best affiliate program for you and your readers.