What is an Affiliate Programme?
A partnership between you and a business/influencer (the “Affiliate”), an affiliate programme is the easiest way to boost traffic to your company’s platform.
By partnering with an affiliate, you are able to advertise your products on optimised platforms, increasing the outreach and online presence of your brand. The partnership helps to enhance the online traffic to your brand’s website and online platforms and for every purchase of your product from a user originating from the affiliate’s platform, a commission fee is given to the affiliate.
Once the partnership agreement is officially signed, the affiliate will be given a unique affiliate link that tracks the number of clicks from their online platforms to your company. This tracking is most commonly done through cookies that will track the activity of the user for a period of time. If the user makes a purchase within this period of time, the affiliate will earn a commission fee.
Such affiliate programmes serve as a win-win situation for your company and the affiliate. Your company benefits from the increase in customer base, online presence and positive branding image, while the affiliate is able to earn a passive income and promote your products.
Determine the Type of Affiliate Programme Best Suited for You
There are a number of classic affiliate programmes. This list will help you have a better understanding on the type of affiliate programmes out there and the ones you should be looking at in order to maximise your company’s product outreach and online presence
Prior to this, you should engage in customer research and market evaluation in order to best understand the types of buyer personas and consumer behaviours. This enables your company to optimise the type of affiliate programme you choose and partner with the right groups of affiliates to maximally boost sales.
1. Bloggers/Influencers
This targets affiliates that engage with a target audience that best matches your buyer personas and consumer behaviours. Such platforms would usually have a wide influence on their viewers, therefore, it is important for your company to research on the different types of bloggers and influencers in order to maximise the business partnership.
2. Coupon Sites
Meant for products that have promotion codes or promotional pricing bundles, this will incentivise potential consumers that are considering your product and having affiliate links from coupon sites can greatly increase the conversion of potential consumers to actual consumers. This form of programme is best for companies with promotional pricing strategies or new product releases, enticing new customers to purchase.
3. Email Marketing
This method can help to increase brand awareness by partnering with subscription companies that have a strong email subscription base.
4. Review Sites
Such partnership is the best for companies that sell products that have similar key competitors in the market. Potential buyers tend to scour the internet to find reviews on the different brands of the same or similar products. Therefore, this is the best way for your company to optimise online traffic from review sites. However, do take note that this form of affiliate programme should not reduce the credibility of the reviews for the sake of increasing profits.
5. Search Affiliates
Targeting freelancers and entrepreneurs, these groups of affiliates tend to pay their own money in order to promote your products and services on search engine platforms or advertising platforms. This form of partnership is ideal when the affiliates understand the inner workings of SEO (search engine optimisation) and test out different forms of advertisements.
Top 8 Affiliate Programmes
Commission: 30% commission for every person who signs up to ConvertKit through your affiliate link
Cookie Life: 30 days
Perks: VIP access to helpful resources to help you boost your landing platforms as well
ConvertKit is a company that is interested in ensuring creators get the most optimised ideas and strategies to boost their publicity. By sharing ideas and designs with like-minded creators, as well as connect and build an audience base.
Commission: USD$15-50 for Fiverr CPA, $10 CPA + 10% RevShare for Fiverr Hybrid. There are more affiliate plans that can be found here.
Cookie Life: 30 days
Perks: Gain access to professional support, tutorials and a dedicated Affiliate manager.
Fiverr is a freelancing platform that connects freelance talents with businesses. It boosts quality freelancers for every budget price point with no hourly rates, focusing on a project-based pricing. Additionally, there is a protected payment channel that allows businesses to pay upfront and freelancers are only paid when the work is done and completed.
There are different tiers of Fiverr ranging from Fiverr, to Fiverr Business, Fiverr Pro and Fiverr Learn.
Commission: 30% recurring commission on every sale
Cookie Life: 30 days
Perks: Lifetime recurring payments with brisk online payouts and transparent analytics. Track your commissions with a single cookie, reducing the need for separate cookies, reducing the hassle!
Pabbly is a unique and powerful suite of software to run your entire business, brought to you by a company with the long term vision to transform the way you work. Create, manage and promote your entire business with just one login. One username and password connects you to all the apps like form builder, email marketing, subscription billing & much more.
Commission: $5 for each referral that signs up for a free trial, $105 for referrals that pay for a new account
Cookie Life: 120 days
Perks: unlimited commission, there is no cap on the commission. Constant Contact provides a wide selection of market-tested creative assets to use on your website
Whether you’re launching an email marketing campaign to engage customers, building an awesome website in minutes, uploading products to your online store, generating awareness on social media, or boosting sales with Google Ads, Constant Contact have all the tools and guidance you need to achieve the results you want, all in one place.
Commission: 10% off your typeform subscription from traffic generated from your affiliate link and unlimited referral discounts
Perks: Your affiliate link and discount will never expire, therefore, as long as there is at least one subscriber from your affiliate link, your discount is applicable.
Typeform helps you to turn collection into an experience, by engaging your audience through conversational forms and surveys. Through customisation and personalisation, create the best suited forms and surveys made just for you.
Commission: 20% to 45% through the promotion of selected courses from their available 4,000 and more courses
Cookie Life: 30 days
Perks: Get your hands on clean, professionally-designed Coursera banners and text links to add to your site and access to their monthly affiliate newsletter, including curated content recommendations and fresh advertising creative.
Coursera helps you to build skills with courses, certificates, and degrees online from world-class universities and companies, completely remotely and online. With affordable and flexible pricing strategies, Coursera caters to the aspiring student to the employees in top organisations.
Commission: 200%
Cookie Life: 30 days
Perks: one of the highest commission offerings, affiliates are able to earn up to $2,400 per customer converted from their affiliate link. Additionally, your own Shopify account will get priority support and free Shopify content to promote to your audience.
A key presence in the drop shipping industry, Shopify is trusted worldwide with over 500,000 stores and proves itself as an all-in platform that lets you easily set up and start your company. A trusted and well-established name in the e-commerce industry, especially for startups.
Commission: $5 USD per free trial signup and an additional $55 USD per paid subscriber.
Cookie Life: 120 Days
Perks: Increasing affiliate linked traffic will unlock VIP bonus commissions
Zegal’s vision is a world where the business of law works for everyone. Companies that are connected to knowledge, their advisors, and use workflows to run their organisation are smarter and more profitable. Zegal aims to make this the new normal for millions of businesses across the globe.
Zegal accepts leads from USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Spain and Switzerland.
Start your own Affiliate Programme
The perks and benefits of having an affiliate programme are considerable. By creating relationships and ties with related industries, and having a stronger online presence in the online community, this ultimately puts the word even further out there about your company.
Zegal is the fastest growing LegalTech company operating across Asia Pacific and Europe. Today, business users and lawyers across the globe trust Zegal’s software to solve legal problems in an affordable and efficient way. Zegal’s vision is a world where the business of law works for everyone.
