The prospect of earning an online income can be quite exciting and affiliate marketing is one of the ways to do this. There are plenty of niches that you can get involved with and promote over thousands of products. But, where do you look for these opportunities? In this article, I have gathered 5 ways on how to find for affiliate programs easily online.
(1) Affiliate Network
A straightforward method to involve yourself in affiliate programs is to look for them on affiliate networks. Large affiliate networks such as LinkShare, ShareASale and ClickBank connect affiliate marketers (that’s you, the publisher) to companies (the merchant) who have products or services to sell.
In order to qualify, most networks require you to have a website that’s generating some online traffic. After your application is being reviewed and approved, you’ll receive affiliate links in the form of text links, banners or text ads to start promoting on your website.
The links contain unique tracking codes and cookie data that point to you as the specific affiliate marketer. Whenever someone clicks on these links and make a purchase, you earned a commission.
It’s important to mention that you should always write good quality content whenever applying the affiliate links because it will improve on your website SEO and the user experience.
(2) Google Search
A friend of mine, who was thinking of starting an online business was ecstatic when she found 34 million affiliate programs relating to her niche in a simple Google Search. I showed her (much to her disappointment) that most of the results are generic, ranging from word definitions to the software used in affiliate programs. None of these fit what she was looking for, at least on the first few pages of the search results anyway.
Google is a great place to search for affiliate programs, only if you use it the right way. For example, if your niche is about food blogging, your search queries should be written as “cooking tools” + “affiliate programs”. That way, it will come up with results pertaining to affiliate programs that promote cooking utensils.
(3) Merchant Website
Similarly, if you have been recommended or have used a certain product that’s really good and want to promote it, you could type in the “company’s name + affiliate program” on Google Search. This will often lead you to a specific page on the company’s website, offering details on their affiliate programs.
Even if you landed on the homepage, try looking at the footer area and look for a link that says ‘affiliate program’, ‘referral program’ or ‘affiliate partnership’. They all mean the same thing. If you still can’t find them there, read the FAQs to find out if an affiliate program is being offered or has been discontinued.
(4) Niche Blogs
Reading blogs related to your niche is a good way to expand your knowledge on the affiliate opportunities that are available out there. You probably won’t get to use every single cooking tool out there, but other people might have used a good product that you don’t know and have written a positive review about it.
Some bloggers promote products in the form of educational material such as an eBook or a YouTube video. You should check on those too to leverage on the affiliate opportunities. If the reviews are encouraging, they could be good affiliate programs to join.
(5) Jaaxy Keyword Tool
Another tool that you can use is called Jaaxy. It is primarily a keyword research software that generates long-tail-keywords to help you with good content creation as an affiliate marketer. It also has a feature to dig into a few affiliate networks (refer to point 1).
For example, by typing in ‘cooking tools’ in the search, it comes up with a list of affiliate programs in a particular network. The advantage of using this feature is that you don’t have to sign into every single network separately to perform a search. You can find the same information on Jaaxy with just a single click and that really saves a lot of time. Jaaxy currently provides results for Conversant, Linkshare, ClickBank and Digital Rivers affiliate networks.
Affiliate Program Opportunities Are Everywhere
Regardless of what niche you are in, there are tonnes of affiliate programs out there. By applying any of these 5 methods, you should be able to find one that is suitable for your website.
If you are interested to get more tools and resources for improving your affiliate marketing business, check out my recommended training platform here for more information.
Do you have any thoughts or questions about finding affiliate programs online? Please leave them in the comment area below and I’ll get back to you.
Hi there, great post on finding affiliate programs. I have used all of these at one stage or another to find the right affiliate program for whatever I was working on at the time. One thing that I did discover some time ago was that doing a bit of digging can be very rewarding. Finding affiliate programs on merchant websites as you mentioned is a good way to often find an affiliate program with less competition. There tends to be high competition for the likes of Clickbank products but if you find an unadvertised affiliate program it can be like finding gold.
I certainly agree with you on that Andrew. Private affiliate programs tend to keep themselves low (and sometimes out of the radar) so not many people actually know about them. I think it helps to save on the affiliate management fee, attract more serious marketers to work with them and also allocate higher commission rate. Wealthy Affiliate University is such an affiliate program and their offer, I would say, is quite attractive.
Thanks for sharing your tips on finding affiliate programs. My favorites tends to be Google searches or looking at what others are promoting in my niche.
But regardless of how you find an affiliate program, I really think it’s important to promote things that you have researched or tried. Too often, people just promote the things that pay them the most and that can end up working against you if the company ends up being garbage. So that’s a big thing to keep in mind regardless of how anyone finds a program to promote.
Good advice you have there for us Eddy,
It’s impossible and not feasible to try every single product out there. So doing an extensive research is another way of reviewing a product in your niche.
As for the merchants, I do agree that not all high-paying commissions come from good companies. In my article on how to find good affiliate programs, I mentioned the importance of doing background checks on merchants before signing up as there are many scam sites that mask themselves as legitimate businesses.
Personally, I have always gone with affiliate networks. I have sold things on ClickBank, for example. I have also sold things via Amazon, which is a great affiliate network because many people already love buying from Amazon.
However, I can definitely see that with some specialist niches, it could be better to find an independent affiliate program to join. You might be able to negotiate a higher commission rate, for a start, don’t you think?
Hi there Marcus,
Private affiliate programs usually offer incentives, under certain terms and conditions. Once you achieve a certain number of sales and recurring, I think that gives you a better position to negotiate with the advertisers for higher comission rate.
I really like this post as I have been wondering if there are things I am missing as far as affiliate programs. It was also a good reminder that I need to try again on a program that rejected me early on. I have a lot more content now so I hope I am more appealing. Thank you for your post.
Hi there IIyssa,
It’s very common for beginners to get rejected in the early stage. But what’s more important than the quantity of content, is the quality of content in your niche. Finding long tail keywords, doing niche research, create readers engagement – these are all attributes that will help get more traffic to your site.
If you are interested, you can learn more on how to create good quality content for your niche here.
Hi Cathy,
Thanks for pointing out all these ways to search for affiliate programs related to your niche. In my experience, I prefer to only promote specific products that I have experience with then I’d go to Google and type in “product name” + affiliate program. Most products nowadays have their own affiliate program so it should be one of the first results.
This very useful information for affiliate marketers just getting started. I just recently started a video game blog and searching for affiliate programs + my niche, helped me discover that Gamefly has an affiliate program. Thanks for sharing this awesome post!
I am glad you found this article useful, Diana. It’s worth trying out this method on Google Search sometimes and you would be surprised that some of this merchants pay higher commission than those found in affiliate networks.
Hello, Cathy.
I’ve learned a lot here on finding affiliate programs, so thanks. When I first started out, I became a member of Amazon and eBay affiliate programs which rewarded me pretty well.
But now I know how to search for many more and especially using the Jaaxy keyword tool you recommended, I’m now able to do so.
You have been a big help here and it will help a lot of other affiliates who too searching for more affiliate programs.
Hey Neil, thanks for your feedback.
When I first started my online business in affiliate marketing, I’d only known about Amazon. After some research, I realized that there are other ways too. My favorite tool so far is Jaaxy because it’s very simple to use. I also recently discovered Viglink, which is something like an affiliate link aggregator site and there seems to be some income potential there. You might want to check that out too 🙂
I’m fairly particular about who’s materials I wish to promote. You’ve given me some additional tools for finding good affiliate programs. If anyone owns a website, this is definitely the type of information needed to be profitable. Thanks so much for this invaluable information!
Hi Margot,
The techniques that I have just shared point readers to where to look for affiliate programs. It doesn’t really cover in depth on merchant and program evaluation. You might want to head over to this article for tips on how to find a good affiliate program for your niche 🙂