The Best Affiliate Programs For Beginners 2024
Everyone starts with something. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so if you think that successful affiliates were born this way, you’re luckily wrong. With our best of the best affiliate programs for beginners you will have a a fantastic opportunity to earn money and gain valuable marketing experience.
Affiliate marketing is all about testing waters, being flexible and dynamic. A bundle didn’t work immediately? Maybe you need a bit more time, or you should try another one.
This is what successful affiliates do: they hunt. For great offers, for big promos, for insights and trends. What you see as overnight success is months in work.
So, if you are looking for a sign to start your affiliate marketing journey, here it is! Start it now!
We’ve prepared a selection of some of the best beginner-friendly affiliate programs, and our expert tips on where to start.
What to keep in mind when diving in the affiliate marketing ocean?
- Big brands and big names are almost always a good strategy. People know these companies, they trust them and will most probably be more willing to click and buy.
- Offers targeting worldwide or at least many countries, are a better choice unless you know for sure that your audience is based in some particular country. If your content is in English, don’t limit your options – you never know where your visitor will come from.
- Offers from reliable advertisers with smaller commissions will do better than the offers from unknown or bad reputation companies with bigger payouts. Don’t sell out your own reputation and your audience’s trust for big commissions – in the long term not worth it.
- Promoting super cheap products will take you forever to earn anything substantial. For example, $10 earpods with 7% commission can be sold well, but how many you should sell to earn at least the first $500? Similarly, don’t choose super expensive products or services to promote: the more expensive the price is, the more time it will take for a user to press a “buy now” button.
- Don’t hesitate to spread a word among your closer circle: so many big-name affiliates started with sharing their affiliate links with friends and family. It will also help you with building a trust relationship with your first users – you won’t recommend the people you care about some crap products or services right? That’s the very basis of the whole affiliate marketing business – making money by bringing your audience useful and relevant content.
- Some niches convert better than others. Not quite right. All niches can bring you money, however, when we speak about beginners, it’s worth mentioning that some niches can take longer to become profitable. For example, travel related services have a high percentage of cancellations: people cancel their flights, tours, etc., so the hold period is usually longer to make sure that a user stays. That means you should be prepared for this and not expect high income right away. That’s why we do not recommend starting with travel offers, unless your content is focused on travel.
- Watch out for metrics: yes, we know the temptation to filter offers by payouts, but there are other important metrics, such as cookie lifetime and hold period. Cookie duration determines for how long you may receive a commission for a targeted action performed by your user. Hold period defines how long you will wait till the conversion is approved. These two are quite important to keep in mind when choosing an affiliate program and planning your marketing budget and earnings. If there are other metrics available in the affiliate program description – analyze them carefully and make the right choice.
Best affiliate programs for beginners
E-commerce vertical
1. AliExpress Affiliate Program
AliExpress is a legendary Chinese marketplace connecting Chinese manufacturers with millions of consumers worldwide and offering thousands and thousands of products from clothing and shoes to electronics, homeware, products for pets and all other stuff you didn’t know you needed until you saw them. You got it right? It’s hard to resist shopping here because of prices, free shipping options and just a mind blowing variety of products.
This offer converts crazily, because there’s hardly any online shopper who hasn’t heard about AlieExpress. So just grab it and make money! Also, big-name marketplaces are always a good choice, so we made sure to include such marketplaces into this list of the best affiliate programs for beginners.
Type: CPS
Payout: up to 8%
Cookie lifetime: 3 days
Hold: 30 days
GEO: Worldwide
2. DHGate Affiliate Program
DHGate is an ecommerce platform that connects buyers from around the world to Chinese manufacturers and suppliers. The company was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Beijing, China. DHGate’s platform allows businesses and individuals to purchase a wide range of products, including consumer electronics, apparel, home and garden goods, and more, directly from Chinese manufacturers at wholesale prices.
Here one can purchase products wholesale and retail. It’s an ultimate destination for millions of small to medium businesses worldwide, and this is why so many visitors will be interested in this offer on your website.
Type: CPS
Payout: up to 15%
Cookie lifetime: 30 days
GEO: Worldwide (exceptions apply)
3. LightInTheBox Affiliate Program
LightInTheBox is an online retail company based in China that sells a wide range of products including clothing, accessories, electronics, home and garden items, and more. The company was founded in 2007 and has grown to become a global retailer with customers in over 200 countries.
One of the unique aspects of LightInTheBox is their focus on offering products at low prices through direct sourcing from manufacturers. They also offer free shipping on many items and have a robust customer service team to help with any questions or issues.
The range of products here is enormous, there are free shipping options and compared to a lot of small unknown Chinese online retailers, it’s a well established ecommerce platform which has been operating for years and has a very good reputation.
Type: CPS
Payout: up to 15%
Cookie lifetime: 30 days
Hold: 75 days
GEO: Worldwide
4. Shopee Affiliate Program
Shopee is an e-commerce platform headquartered in Singapore and operated by Sea Group. Shopee offers a diverse array of products across various categories, including electronics, fashion, health and beauty, home and living, baby and toys, and groceries.
Click on GEOs to apply for the offer of your choice.
Type: CPS
Payout: up to 16%
Cookie lifetime: 7 days
Hold: up to 90 days depending on the GEO
5. TEMU Affiliate Program
TEMU is a relatively new e-commerce platform, known for offering a wide range of products at competitive prices. It is a subsidiary of Pinduoduo, a prominent Chinese e-commerce company known for its social commerce model. TEMU offers a variety of products across categories such as electronics, fashion, home goods, beauty, and more. The platform is designed to cater to a broad audience with diverse needs.
Type: CPS
Payout: up to 15%
Cookie lifetime: 1 day
Hold: 120 days
GEO: AU, AT, BE, CA, FR, DE, IT, MX, NL, NZ, PL, PT, ES, SE, CH, GB, US
6. TikTok Shop Affiliate Program
TikTok Shop is an e-commerce feature integrated within the TikTok platform, allowing users to discover and purchase products directly through the app. Launched to leverage TikTok’s massive user base and the influence of its content creators, TikTok Shop combines social media and e-commerce, providing a seamless shopping experience.
Users can browse and purchase products without leaving the TikTok app, creating a convenient shopping experience that keeps them engaged within the platform.
Type: CPS
Payout: 2%
Cookie lifetime: 1 day
Hold: 60 days
GEO: ID
B2B vertical
7. Fiverr Affiliate Program
Fiverr is a crazily popular online marketplace where individuals or businesses can buy and sell digital services. Services offered on Fiverr include writing, graphic design, digital marketing, video production, programming, and more. The name “Fiverr” comes from the fact that services on the platform initially started at a base price of $5, but now many services are offered at higher prices as well.
Why is it booming? It’s a great place to find a side-hustle and to get a task done by professionals at affordable prices. So it’s basically a win-win solution. Considering the level of digitization these days and the fact that all professional designers, copywriters and programmers use this platform, no wonder people are interested in getting their projects done by Fiverr’s freelancers.
Type: CPA
Payout: up to $60
Cookie lifetime: 30 days
Hold: 30 days
GEO: worldwide
8. Freshdesk Affiliate Program
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software that helps businesses manage customer inquiries and support tickets through various channels such as email, phone, social media, and live chat. It offers a wide range of features to streamline and automate customer service workflows, including ticket management, knowledge base creation, and reporting and analytics.
With Freshdesk, businesses can easily organize and prioritize customer inquiries, assign tickets to agents, and track their progress in real-time. The software also allows for customization of ticket forms, automated responses, and canned responses to common queries. Additionally, Freshdesk integrates with various third-party tools, such as CRM software, social media platforms, and eCommerce platforms, to provide a complete customer service solution.
Freshdesk is considered a must-have by so many businesses, that’s why its affiliate program is one of the hottest!
Type: CPS
Payout: 20% every sale made, for the first year of life of a customer
Cookie lifetime: 90 days
Hold: 45 days
GEO: Worldwide
Software vertical
9. Wondershare Affiliate Program
Wondershare is a software company that produces a wide range of multimedia and productivity software tools for both Windows and Mac operating systems. The company’s products include video editing software, PDF editing software, data recovery software, mobile utilities, and much more.
Wondershare software is designed to be user-friendly and to provide users with powerful tools to accomplish their tasks quickly and easily. Some of their popular software products include Filmora, PDFelement, Dr.Fone, and UniConverter. Wondershare also offers various online services, such as a video converter and a screen recorder, which can be accessed directly from their website.
Wondershare’s products are getting more and more popular with a massive spread of social media. Its Filmora made a huge difference in the lives of so many content creators.
Type: CPS
Payout: 36%
Cookie lifetime: 30 days
Hold: 60 days
GEO: worldwide
10. PureVPN Affiliate Program
PureVPN is a VPN service provider that offers secure and anonymous internet access to its users. PureVPN operates a global network of servers in over 140 countries, allowing users to connect to the internet from different locations and hide their IP address.
With PureVPN, users can bypass geo-restrictions and access blocked websites and content from anywhere in the world. The service also offers features like split tunneling, which allows users to choose which apps and websites they want to use with the VPN connection, and kill switch, which automatically stops all internet traffic if the VPN connection is lost.
VPN services are on fire. With all local Internet restrictions in certain countries, people are looking for solutions to browse Internet safely and boundlessly, that’s why promoting VPNs is a great idea.
Type: CPS
Payout: up to $30.21
Cookie lifetime: 90 days
Hold: 31 days
GEO: worldwide
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Your next step with the affiliate programs for beginners
It’s always scary to make a first step, but you should remember that every affiliate has made it, so you can too!
Your approach towards affiliate programs should be balanced: look through all the information you’ve got, don’t jump into the first one with big payouts! Also, you can always ask for advice from your personal manager. Their recommendations are on point (that’s what our affiliates say!).
We have 3000+ affiliate programs from 180+ countries, so you will definitely find the best ones for your traffic!
Ready for the ride?
The article was updated on June 16th, 2024