How To Find Affiliate Programs?

You wonder how to find affiliate programs to run an affiliate marketing business, right? If yes, you’ve come to the right place.

In this post, I will walk you through the process step by step and show you the most-used ways to find the best affiliate programs that suit you.

Before we dive into the topics, I am sure you understand affiliate marketing and how to make money through affiliate marketing. If not, you may check this post and come back to this post later. Enjoy! ๐Ÿ™‚

Disclaimer: As the owner of Smileaffiliatesuccess.com, I have tracked down special deals for products, tools, and services mentioned herein. When you click my affiliate links on this page to make a purchase, I may get a small commission, and you will definitely get a great bargain. This is a win-win advantage for both of us.

How To Find Affiliate Programs?

1. Search For It

Searching for affiliate programs on Google is the easiest and fastest way to find the perfect affiliate programs in your niche.

For example, you want to lose weight and keep fit. So you type “weight loss” + “affiliate programs” or “a specific product name” + “affiliate programs” on Google, and you’ll get lots of results.

You can also search for specific merchants + “affiliate programs” to find an affiliate program you are interested in. Different companies use different wordings for their affiliate programs, such as an affiliate program, an associate program, or a partner program.

If you are in a niche that promotes physical products makes sense, you may find many physical products to promote. For example, weight loss gadgets or machines!

Physical Products V.S Digital Products

There are some differences between physical and digital products. Here is the comparison:

Physical Products:

  • Lower Commission Rate
  • Shorter Cookie Duration
  • More Sense of Value
  • Less Thought Time Buying

Digital Products:

  • Higher Commission Rate
  • Longer Cookie Duration
  • Less Sense of Value
  • More Thought Time Buying

2. Check The Companies You Love

I am sure you have preferences when you go shopping. So when finding your affiliate program in your niche, you can start from those companies you love.

For example, you are in the beauty & cosmetics niche and have specific brands you love using every day. You could go to their websites to check whether they have affiliate programs. If yes, you are lucky!

Or, you are in the finance & wealth niche and use apps that manage your savings and track your expenses. You check their websites to know whether you can join their affiliate program to promote their services.

Promoting things you love to make affiliate commissions is wonderful because it feels like sharing your hobbies & interests instead of work.

3. Competing Products

Another way to find affiliate programs is to compare competing products to those you already promote.

If you have in-depth reviews on specific products, you may find their top-competing products and go to those products’ websites to see if they have affiliate programs.

If they have, you may start creating another in-depth comparison article about the differences between A & B products. This will bring you more traffic since you provide value to people and help them make better purchasing decisions.

After this comparison article, you spread the same strategy to all product reviews on your website. Rinse & Repeat!

4. Affiliate Networks

An affiliate network acts as a middleman between affiliates(you) and groups of companies(product or service providers.)

It’s like an all-in-one platform with thousands of affiliate programs. The best part is that you can search for products or services you like to promote in one place.

Here is the list of the most popular affiliate networks:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Clickbank
  • Shareasale
  • Commission Junction
  • JVZoo
  • Awin

Things To Watch Out for When Choosing Affiliate Programs

1. Commission Structure

Once you find affiliate programs in your niche, the next thing to do is to know how much you’ll earn from their commissions. Therefore, you need to check the commission structure.

Some companies only pay you a one-time commission if you refer people to purchase a product or service, while some offer recurring commissions.

Recurring commission means you get repeated commissions from every customer you bring to the company, which is the most beneficial for your promotions on your blog, website, or social media platforms.

Imagine making recurring commissions for things you only promote once. How lucrative it is! I love making recurring commissions, so this is a must-check on my list.

? Recommend: How To Start A Blog and How To Make Money On Pinterest Thorough Affiliate Marketing

2. Low-Ticket Or High-Ticket?

A low-ticket or high-ticket affiliate program represents the value of the products you sell, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a physical or digital product.

For example, high-ticket products are expensive products sold at higher prices. If you provide consulting services, your high-ticket product may be a face-to-face consulting session that costs $2,000 per hour, while a low-ticket product would be a short phone call worth $100.

So, which one is the best? Well, this is a controversial topic of all time.

Promoting low-ticket products brings you lower commissions but higher conversions, while high-ticket products bring higher commissions with lower conversions.

Online marketers argue this from time to time, but based on my findings and the advice from my mentors, they all focus on high-ticket products.

It doesn’t mean low-ticket products are worthless. Most people won’t buy expensive products from a blog but tend to purchase low-ticket products without feeling stressed.

You might leverage low-ticket products to bring more people to your blog and build trust with your readers until they are ready to purchase high-ticket offers from you.

3. Is The Company Well-Known And Legit?

To be honest, no one will purchase things from companies they’ve NEVER heard of. So, checking the companies’ reputation and credibility before joining their affiliate programs is essential.

Promoting products from a well-known company is highly possible to make commissions because people search for information on their products.

4. How Is Quality?

Nothing is worse than promoting low-quality products on your blog.

You can check what others say about it online before creating content to promote a seemingly good product. By doing that, you’ll get a whole picture of how good the product is.

If you already created content to promote products or services that you found low-quality in the later phases, don’t panic! Remember what I suggested to find competing products?

Since the competing products have similar functionalities in most cases, you may change the product name with new affiliate links in the article. This saves you tons of life from deleting all the articles and rewriting new ones.

5. The Refund Rate

Besides the product quality, you could check the refund rate listed for each affiliate product in affiliate networks. It’s a key indicator to ensure people love the products.

Typically, the refund rate is around 10% on affiliate networks. If you find a product with a 5% or less refund rate, congratulations, you may find an excellent product.

If affiliate products come with a 20% of refund rate or higher, you should avoid them.

6. How Many Affiliate Programs Should I Join?

When I first started, I only focused on one affiliate program. Since my site was new and did not rank yet, my target during the first few months was to write quality content consistently to help solve people’s problems.

As time passed, I got my articles ranked gradually and found other services that helped me build my blog. I now promote a few products that could help affiliate marketing newbies develop their online businesses.

7. Is It Free To Join Affiliate Programs?

Applying to become an affiliate marketer for the networks is FREE. So if you see some platforms asking you to pay first, please close the browser window. It might be an online scam.

Tips to Find The Best Affiliate Programs

1. Sell What You Love

Selling things you love can bring you more chances to succeed in affiliate marketing and increase your willingness to work on your blog.

If you don’t like the products, working on your blog through affiliate marketing is more like a job than having fun.

Your enthusiasm, passion, and good knowledge of the products could bring you more confidence, and your readers will see it through your words.

2. It Should Be Relevant To Your Niche

Will you purchase a new iPhone on a traveling blog? Or buy a meal replacement on a finance & wealth website? I guess nope, right

The promoting products should fit your niche, but you can go broader with creative brainstorming.

For example, you run a cat niche. Besides the articles on different breeds of cats, you can also share cat food & grass, cat stairs & beds, or even feline medical insurance. Make sense?

3. Solve People’s Problems

Last but not least is to promote something to solve people’s problems. The more you try to solve their problems, the easier it will be to make affiliate sales.

If you create content to promote affiliate products without help, your readers will leave you and find other posts that help.

No matter what you are promoting, it would be best to keep this in mind. Help solve people’s problems first and make sales later.

How I Find Affiliate Programs At Wealthy Affiliate

I want to show you how I found affiliate programs inside Wealthy Affiliate. Once you log into the platform, you will see a “Promote” on the top menu. Click it, and you’ll see the below.

It shows you the popular niches/categories, such as health & fitness, clothing & accessories, women, or weight loss. Those are the evergreen niches that could last for a long time.

If you have no ideas, you could also get popular keywords and trending opportunities to browse others’ searches. On the same page, the system will recommend high-commission, high-percentage, or top-rated affiliate programs.

So, you type in the products you like to promote in your niche. For me, my blog is all about making money through affiliate marketing. Let’s see what pops up after my research.

The top three results show affiliate marketing with Roy, Wealthy Affiliate, and Awin. For each affiliate program, there is brief information such as commission rate/commissions, affiliate network, or payout options. You can click each one to learn more details.

Taking Wealthy Affiliate as an example, I click it and scroll down the page to find commission currency, minimum payout, and country availability. There are also reviews from other WA affiliates sharing their honest thoughts about this affiliate program.

I will read the whole paragraph if there are negative reviews because I might face the same problems after joining it.

Others’ feedback on the platform will help me find the perfect affiliate programs for my affiliate marketing business.

So, finding affiliate programs at Wealthy Affiliate is straightforward, saving me tons of time.

If you still don’t understand the whole process, you may watch the below video, Wealthy Affiliate live training coach walk you through finding an affiliate program inside WA.

Wrap It Up

Now, I am sure you know one thing or two about finding affiliate programs that fit your niche, and you cannot wait to start promoting affiliate products to make commissions.

Before promoting/selling products to your readers, I want to iterate that you must first provide value to solve their problems. The more they trust you, the easier it is to sell them products or services in the later phases.

I hope my post gives you enough information about finding affiliate programs that suit you the best.

If you have anything to mention or share your opinions, you’re more than welcome to leave a comment below. I’ll try my best to reply in 24 hours.

Enjoy this post? Don’t forget to bookmark this page or save it on Pinterest!

How To Find Affiliate Programs?How To Find Affiliate Programs?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt is a 30ish guy who has a corporate job and chases the dream to become a digital nomad with a laptop lifestyle. He is passionate about making money online and will keep creating quality content to find his online success.

12 thoughts on “How To Find Affiliate Programs?”

  1. Hi Matt,
    This is truly a one-stop post. All your experience is showing, it is thorough in all aspects!
    Being in a Lifestyle niche not promoting fashion or cosmetics makes it difficult to determine affiliate products. It has to be digital products.
    May I ask for recommendations or suggestions, please?
    I keep on postponing this step.
    Thank you for making it all clear and most of all how to find your affiliate products.

    Reply
    • Hi Estelle,

      Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I am glad you find this post helpful. As for a lifestyle blogger, you could teach people how to start a blog and share their thoughts about things they love, which is a lifestyle, right? If you love using some types of products within your niche, you may check whether they have affiliate programs to join. These two are easy to implement. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Matt

      Reply
  2. This is a really great blog post, Matt, thank you. I am an affiliate marketer myself, although I know quite a lot about it, you showed me another way on how to search for affiliate programs. I do promote just one affiliate network now, but thinking to go further. I found it quite challenging to find it though within my niche. My niche is MMO. I love your comparison of digital and physical products. As well that you suggested going for high-ticket instead of low-ticket. Question on you, what is the right time to start looking for more affiliate programs?

    Reply
    • Hi Julius,

      Yes, there are many ways to find affiliate products that suit your niche, and I hope my article helps you well. ๐Ÿ™‚

      MMO(Make money online) is one of the most competitive niches of all time, but I am sure you still can drive traffic to your site since you provide different insights about the products that you found helpful for people who want to make money online.

      I don’t have a specific time to look for more affiliate programs because I only promote things I personally purchased and loveโ€”for example, Wealthy Affiliate, GeneratePress Premium, Grammarly, or Pinterest ebook. I bought them and learned how to start a blog to run an affiliate marketing business & drive traffic by SEO and Pinterest. You can check my resource page to learn what I recommend. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Matt

      Reply
  3. This is a good way to search for affiliate programs; you give good examples of how to go about doing all this. We agree with you on one. Once you find an affiliate to promote, you can not wait to try it out and see if you can succeed at affiliate marketing.
    Matt gives good ideas on tackling the hard parts; listen, and you will learn as we did. WA has it all.

    Cheers,
    Mathew & Deloris

    Reply
    • Hi Matthew and Deloris,

      I love to see you back to my site again, and I hope this article helps you well. ๐Ÿ™‚

      There are many ways to find affiliate programs online, but I prefer to find them inside Wealthy Affiliate, which is convenient. Besides the convenience, other Wealthy Affiliate members will also leave feedback on the programs they have tried. You’ll have references to decide whether you want to join them or not. Considering the time WA Affiliate programs can save you, the monthly subscription fee seems so little, not to mention you can try WA for free for 7days without credit card details!

      Matt

      Reply
  4. This is a well-written and informative introduction to affiliate programs. As a wealthy affiliate member, I’ve found it useful for finding programs in my niche. As my blog is in the cat niche Amazon and Commission Junction are the main companies I use. In addition, Clickbank also has a good selection of digital products. Although most products I promote are low-ticket, it is a numbers game. Many bloggers will find more targeted traffic equals more conversions, no matter what niche they’re in. You’re right about being mindful of quality. A good idea is to research products and read reviews to make sure you only promote those of high quality.

    Reply
    • Hi Kathy,

      I love to connect Wealthy Affiliate members on my website, and we are on the same boat. Yeah! ๐Ÿ™‚ It’s good to see you share your own experiences with affiliate networks such as Amazon, Commission Junction, and ClickBank. The key is still the product quality. If you promote a low-quality affiliate product, people may request their money back, making it hard to earn commissions.

      So before you promote any affiliate products, you may thoroughly research the product quality and the refund rate. Those will give you better ideas.

      Matt

      Reply
  5. Hi Matt.

    Thanks for the comprehensive information.
    I have to agree that, for my niche anyway, digital products are the way to go. They may be ‘low ticket’ items, and often not have reoccurring commissions, but they are quick and easy for the customers to receive and begin using.

    Looking at our competitor’s websites, the top-ranking ones are a great way to find new products to promote.
    The products must address the customer’s needs as you have said. They must be relevant to the information the customer is looking for. And they also must be of high quality. There is no point in selling low-quality products that will have a high return rate. This is a sure way for us to fail as affiliate marketers.

    To sell what we have used and love is great advice.
    Thanks for sharing. I look forward to reading some of your other posts to learn from your experience.

    Reply
    • Hi Andrew,

      Thanks for checking my post. I hope it gave you some insights into finding your affiliate programs. ๐Ÿ™‚

      To succeed in affiliate marketing, the key is to find something you really love and enjoy talking about again and again. It could be physical, digital, or online services. It’s good that you find digital product suits your blog the best, and I am sure it’ll work for your niche very well.

      Of course, other key factors influence people to purchase from your affiliate links, as you mentioned here, the relevance between your products and your post, product quality, and many more. People interested in affiliate marketing need to do thorough research and put all the information in one article, which will definitely help your articles rank higher on search engines.

      I learned everything from this particular educational platform, and I think you will be interested in checking it out. You are welcome.

      Matt

      Reply
  6. Matt,

    It’s true that you should only promote products you believe in. I’ve seen too many people promote garbage and in the end, it just gives the person a bad rap. At least, I think so anyway. I try to always promote things that I believe in, regardless of the high/low ticket value. Sure, if I wanted to make money, I could just blog about making money online and push for the high ticket items. But, I love dogs too much to not talk about them. ๐Ÿ™‚

    These are some great tips for affiliates! I actually will have to look into a few that I didn’t know about. Especially the Awin. Haven’t heard of them.

    Thanks for these tips! Love them!

    Katrina

    Reply
    • Hi Katrina,

      Thanks for stopping by and leaving your comment. I hope this post helps you well. ๐Ÿ™‚

      I do affiliate marketing with things that I truly love and personally purchased instead of high-ticket items with higher commissions. This helps me go through hard times because I have confidence in my affiliate products. Once I have confidence, I can create quality content to drive more organic and free traffic to my post.

      So, if people are interested in affiliate marketing, Wealthy Affiliate is the place to start a blog and run affiliate marketing today. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Cheers,
      Matt

      Reply

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