Weight problems have long been an issue with modern society, especially in the United States. More than ⅔ of our population struggles to get back into shape and are actively searching for solutions online. If you are passionate about helping people with this problem, then the Weight Watchers affiliate program is something that might interest you.
In today’s article, I’ll be going through the company’s profile and show how one can run an online business within this niche. Are you excited? Let’s get into the details.
The Company at a Glance
Founded by Jean Evelyn Nidetch some 50 years ago, Weight Watchers has been around for a long time and currently have offices around the world. The brand specializes in products and services that use holistic approaches to assist people in their weight loss programs.
The benefits of becoming a member include the following;
- Using online tools to track food intake, body weight and fitness activities,
- Syncing a variety of fitness trackers to the online tool.
- Meal programs/recipes that are personalized, easy to follow and enjoyable to eat.
- Getting one-to-one personal coaching and peer support online and offline.
The Products
The core product of Weight Watchers is their membership plans that come in 3 different forms.
Online Plus – A DIY program that uses apps to guide people in during the weight loss program. Good for beginners and busy people who want some flexibility with their schedule. The standard monthly fee cost $19.95
Personal coaching (and Online Plus) – A personal coach will design a plan to fit the member’s lifestyle and schedule. This is a good option for people who wants a personalized approach for losing weight. The standard monthly fee cost $54.95.
Meeting (and Online Plus) – Members get to attend weekly group meetings within their area to meet up with leaders and other individuals who are also going through the program.Great for people who seek for motivational support. The standard monthly fee cost $44.95.
The duration of commitment for each plan varies between 1, 3 to 6 months and there’s usually a starter fee of $20 when a person signs up. This fee, however, can be waived and discounts are applicable for longer commitment plans. Other miscellaneous products by Weight Watchers include recipe books, kitchen tools, and fitness kits.
Who Should Sign Up for The Program
Obviously, if you’ve used Weight Watchers and saw a tremendous body change in yourself, promoting this brand should come very naturally to you. Other individuals who may be interested are fitness trainers, lifestylist and health foodies.
Regardless of the level of experience, you need to have a strong sense of helping people become healthier through this program, much more than the monetary reward.
The Program Overview
Weight Watchers partners with Conversant, an affiliate network to promote their brand in the online space. The participating countries are the United States, Canada, France and Germany.
In order to know which program performs the best, we need to look at the network earnings scale (the higher, the better) and the EPCs (average earnings/100 clicks). In the program overview below, the network earnings for the US stands at 5 and their EPCs are between $65 to $108, which is fairly good.
In terms of commission, you earn $10 per sale by referring new customers to any of the membership plans (not merchandise purchase). Earnings are automatically sent out every month via check to affiliates who have accumulated at least $25 in their accounts.
To promote Weight Watchers online, you will need to have a website in place first and this is what I’ll be covering next.
How to Get Started With a Website
The idea of setting up a website is so that you can have a virtual space to share information about weight loss and its relevant products with the audience. It’s also a place where you can turn affiliate marketing into a long term online business.
The first component is to decide on the domain and you want to choose a name that makes sense in the weight loss niche. You can either go for keyword rich domain, such as loseweightkeepfit.com or a brandable name like exercisewithdave.com. Either one will be suitable to promote Weight Watchers.
The second component is to choose a publishing platform as a website and as someone who has been blogging since 2014, I would recommend using WordPress. It’s versatile and search engine-friendly so it’s way more efficient to disseminate information through this software as compared to the others.
A typical domain service should be affordable and includes privacy protection, email, and support. At SiteRubix, you can buy a .com for $13.99 and if you choose their hosting (priced at $30/month), the domain can be easily connected to a WordPress website with just a few simple clicks.
After logging into your WordPress account, you just need to learn how to set up the All in One SEO plugin and start blogging.
How to Promote Through Blogging
Earlier, I mentioned about people searching for weight loss solutions online. This is evident through Google Suggest, an autocomplete function that rolls out commonly searched phrases similar to the original query.
For example, when searching for the term ‘how to lose weight without…’, Google tries to predict what the user intends to type by suggesting the following phrases.
This little experiment can actually expose a variety of phrases that one would never have thought of. Knowing what type of queries exists out there is important for a few reasons;
- It tells you what type of topics that are trending online in your niche.
- It tells you what type of keywords to target as blog titles when promoting the Weight Watchers memberships.
- Most importantly, it helps to rank an article content higher on the search engines. This means more traffic to your blog and more commission earnings.
When it comes to search visibility, you want to leverage from keywords that aren’t only trending but are also descriptive and not so competitive. In order to find out what those phrases are, you’ll need to use a keyword tool like Jaaxy.
Taking some examples from Google Suggest, let’s see which is a good keyword to use. In this case, we’ll be focusing on the metric AVG (average number of searches the keywords receive per month) and QSR (number of competing websites ranked on Google for the exact keywords). When starting a new blog, the aim is to target AVG more than 50 and QSR less than 100.
So, if we see from the screenshot above, the phrase “how to lose weight without gaining muscle” is a keyword that fits these criteria and it’s also very relevant. The following step now is to elaborate on the topic in a way that is engaging to read and promote Weight Watchers naturally.
Over the course of the next few months, you’ll be researching for specific keywords, write helpful articles based on those topics and share on social media to grow the traffic to your website. Before long, you’ll be ranked in the top positions on Google and seeing a lot more sales conversion.
The Weight Loss Niche, Moving Forward
The weight loss industry is worth $66 billion dollars and out of that, $990 million is happening in the online space. So that’s a lot of market opportunity, as well as competitions, to consider when starting a business in this niche.
Weight Watchers stand out in a way due to its mature reputation, program flexibility and most importantly, personalized weight loss, according to the individual needs rather than trendy diets which has been proven as key in many evidence-based research.
More people are now moving away from calorie counting to a more sustainable and healthier lifestyle. Through the Weight Watchers affiliate program, you will be able to help people achieve this goal much more effectively and make them accountable for their own success.
Well, I hope that this article has given you a thorough overview of what this company has to offer and the basic foundation you need to launch a weight loss blog. If you like to learn more about building a long term online business with affiliate marketing, please visit my recommended training platform for more information.
Question – What experience do you have with starting a weight loss business online? Please share with us in the comment space below.
Great review here. I am sure that this niche is a very good one to help people make a tidy profit while keeping themselves healthy. Weight loss process and running an online business have a lot of similarity because they both require serious commitment and discipline. If a person can achieve a good fitness goal, they shouldn’t be too far off from making success with their online business.
I came to this article because I was interested to learn how to become an affiliate marketer, but as I read through, I realized that this would also be an opportunity for me to re-evaluate my lifestyle as well.
I am now thinking to join the program and see how I can add more value to my fitness level and business approach. The keywords that you’ve presented will give me a good start. Really appreciate all the tips, thanks!
Hi Cathy, I am starting a new website in the fitness niche and was really attracted to the Weight Watchers affiliate program. But I am disappointed to know that it wouldn’t work in my country. I will have to look for something else. Nevertheless, I learned a few important key points from this post so thank you for sharing.
Hi there Julienne. I don’t know which country you are from, but you could try searching on affiliate networks like Commission Junction or AWIN. Alternatively, search with your smartphone because the results are usually location related. For more ideas, please read this blog on how to get paid for losing weight.
Hope this helps.
Hi Cathy,
I’m curious about this affiliate program. So if I am not from the US, does it mean that I won’t be eligible to promote their products? Are there other similar programs for people who are outside of the US. As a newbie, I look forward to your answer.
Hi Glenda, if you aren’t based in the US, I am afraid you can’t join the program for now. Which country are you from? Perhaps I could help to dig out for some fitness services around your region.
Hi Cathy,
Weight Watchers is not available in my country, but I am aware that it is a very well established brand. I heard that they have helped a lot of people lose weight. So it is good that they have an affiliate program.
Healthy living is an evergreen niche because people will always want to lose weight and get into shape. Therefore, promoting such products and services will certainly help a lot of people achieve their fitness goal.
In order to reach these people, it is imperative to use the correct keywords and SEO technique so your tips is truly helpful. Can this method be used for other niches as well?
Hi Marios, of course it can be used for other niches, especially the part on generating keywords blogging.
I can imagine that Weight Watchers as an affiliate product is a pretty awesome route to go. Their success rate for weight loss is through the roof and they are well known in most countries. In fact, my mother is participating in one of their programs now.
It’s also worth pointing out that they do not stick to the old fashioned calorie counting routine. Instead, they promote a healthy lifestyle change that will last with keeping the weight off.
Weight Watchers has been around for quite some time and I like that they provide different options so that people can go with what they can afford. Never realized they have an affiliate program. I wonder if it would become available in Australia someday? It would be a great option to add to one’s fitness blog.
You never know Sharon. Keep following with their brand progress and see where that would lead you.
Hi Cathy,
I’ve got a lot of people asking me to try writing about the losing weight niche and Weight Watchers is actually on top of my to-do list.
Is the affiliate registration available for Asian countries too? Would be really awesome to start a blog and share about my weight progress. Plus it’s more fun too!
I haven’t been to your blog for a while so I’m quite attracted to your posts, You never lost touch! Wish I could be as motivated as you 😀
Great to hear from you again Riaz. Unfortunately, Weight Watchers is only available for US-based affiliates at the moment.
Hi Cathy,
With the name Weight Watchers, you definitely have brand recognition. I am quite surprised at the statistic – $66 billion industry with less than $1 billion online. This tells me that the online opportunities in this area are wide open!
I think it is a positive trend that Weight Watchers is moving away from the calorie-counting model and towards a sustainable and healthy-lifestyle approach. I’ll definitely check out their affiliate program to learn more.
I am an affiliate marketer who would like to lose weight and I found this post to be very informative and inspiring. There’s much money to be made in this niche and Weight Watchers is a mature and reputable program.
I recently listened to a doctor on a radio show who says none of these weight loss programs work. Because they go against our bodies norms – bodies do not like to diet!
He says we should continue eating whatever we like, but reduce the caloric intake so we are eating small amounts several times a day and not a large meal in the evening. Of course, exercising also helps.
By the way, do you know of any other reputable weight loss affiliate programs? Thanks!
Yeah, there are a few apps that pay for losing weight. Some reward through points and some, with cash prizes. You should check them out.
Hi, I enjoyed reading your post on the Weight Watchers affiliate program. Can I ask if you have had success in attaining many referral commissions from them?
I’ve just started a blog and would be interested at possibly promoting this product as it fits in with my niche.
Hi Vaughn, I don’t promote Weight Watchers products. This is just an article to show you its potential in the online market. If you can start to generate good traffic to your site with targeted niche keywords, you can certainly incorporate them into your reviews. Granted, you should also at least try out some of their products to see if you like it or not.