In an article I wrote about finding keywords for the health niche, many readers asked me about how to apply the technique for their affiliate business. As an extension of that topic, I thought it would be a good idea to show you some popular health food affiliate programs follow by the trends and keywords that you can use for your blog.
5 Profitable Health Food Affiliate Programs
#1 Thrive Market
Thrive Market is an online retailer that offers natural and organic food product at an affordable price. Their mission is to create a sustainable community and helping the underprivileged to get access to healthy food. By becoming a member, you get to buy products at the average discounts of 35% compared to the normal retailers. Most importantly, for every paid membership, Thrive will sponsor a free annual membership for a low-income family.
There’s certainly an ongoing trend for organic food and by using Thrive, it comes with a good cause too.
- Product Promotion – Annual membership for discounted online shopping
- Commission – $25 for each referred membership (plus a free membership for a family in need)
- Program Application – Direct application on merchant’s site
Potential low competition keywords (researched using Jaaxy Keyword Tool) for this niche;
- where to buy organic apple cider vinegar
- natural food that gives you energy
- can green tea help you lose weight
- what are the benefits of eating coconut oil
#2 Paleo Plan
If you have never heard of this health food before, that’s because it only starts to gain online popularity in 2011.
A fairly new concept, the Paleo diet is all about mimicking our ancestors – the early humans – eating behavior, which consist of meat, fish, vegetables and fruits minus dairy, grain and processed food. I’ve been doing some reading on this and it’s quite interesting.
The Paleo Plan is a group of experts that help people to transit into this diet through their step-by-step guides. You’ll get a list on what to (and not) eat, meal plans as well as exercise regimes to achieve better results.
- Product Promotion – eBooks, meal plans, workout plans
- Commission – 40% per sale and $5 per lead.
- Program Application – via ShareASale
Potential low competition keywords for this niche;
- paleo breakfast recipes without eggs
- paleo diet and weight loss success stories
- can you drink coffee on paleo
- how to get started with paleo
#3 My Vega
Vegetarian diet doesn’t need a lot of introduction here because we all know that consuming them is good for the body. In fact, the trend has been on-going for more than 10 years now.
However, how often are we including vegetables in our diet? Probably not as much as we should. That’s where My Vega comes in. This company is an online retailer that sells plant-based nutrition such as protein shakes, snack bars and sports drinks, thus allowing us to add vegetarian meal without too much hassle.
- Products Promotion – Online store
- Commission – Earn between 8% to 15% commission per sale
- Program Application – Commission Junction
Potential low competition keywords for this niche;
- vegan breakfast for weight loss
- gluten free vegan breakfast ideas
- fruits and vegetables that lower blood pressure
- healthy fruit pizza recipes
#4 The Minimalist Baker
First of all, I love this site! 🙂 It is a blog that promotes simple eating lifestyle that teaches you how to prepare meals in a short duration of time using non complicated ingredients and very minimal utensils. As an avid veggie lover, Dana (the owner) writes mostly plant-based cooking and baking that’s appropriate for lactose intolerant and gluten allergy people.
She also offers online recipes to help people create delicious food and also photography tips on how to take better looking food photos. So if you are interested to promote gluten free diet, I am pretty sure you would be very happy to see this trend.
- Product Promotion – Digital Cookbook, Printed Cookbook, Online Photography Course,
- Commission – 30%
- Program Application – via ShareASale
Potential low competition keywords for this niche;
- gluten free recipes in 30 minutes
- how to bake a chicken without drying out
- healthy chocolate chip muffin recipe
- simple dinner recipes for a family
#5 General Nutrition Centers (GNC)
Health food will not be complete without dietary supplements. So to add to the list, I discovered that GNC also offers an affiliate program. To those of you who don’t know, GNC is a leading retailer that offers premium health and wellness supplements and you can often find them in shopping centers.
To date, they have more than 6,000 retail locations in the US and operate franchises in over 50 countries. Just like vegetarian diet, this food category has an ongoing trend so there are a lot of traffic opportunities that you can leverage from.
- Products Promotion – Online store
- Commission – Up to 12%
- Program Application – Pepperjam Network
Potential low competition keywords for this niche;
- why take calcium with vitamin d
- what is evening primrose oil good for
- when is the best time to take glucosamine
- protein powder does it work
Trend + Keywords = Traffic
The entire point of writing this article is to show you that once you understand the trend pattern of your niche/sub niche, you’ll be able to brainstorm for keywords to get targeted traffic leading to better conversion.
These health food affiliate programs clearly have an upward, if not, an ongoing trend, and if these are part of your niche, I encourage you to use those keywords and run with it.
I hope you have found this article beneficial. For more tools and resources to grow your affiliate business, check out the Wealthy Affiliate online training here.
Do you have any thoughts or questions about this topic? Let me know in the comments below.
You may also be interested in;
5 Steps to Create a Fitness Blog
Thank you for this highly educative post. I am sure you did a lot of research on this, trying to put all the information together. Health niche is obviously one of the most sought after niche in the online world. I think more consumers will lean towards these trends especially with the rising demand of organic food.
Hi Cathy, this is a very informative post.
I like your section on the Paleo diet. It is fairly new to the internet as you say. I did this diet a few years ago as I had put on a lot of weight. It’s an easy diet to follow and I went from 212lb down to 174lb in 6 months by following the diet and exercise. It’s also a good diet for those with digestive issues as there is no grains or dairy in it. That might be another door into a low competition niche.
The other thing is it’s huge in the Crossfit community, so there is potential for these programs to flourish there too. The other potential health food niche is vegan. It’s growing at an incredible rate so the opportunity to expand into the plant-based or vegan niche might be a good trend nowadays.
I’m so happy to have found this website. I just started building out a website in the health niche (weight loss precisely) and wondering how to go about monetizing it. You even went above and beyond to provide competitive keywords for these affiliate programs. I love the commission structure of all the sites you recommended.
These are all hot niches you have lined up here. One question – are there specific requirements to be met before one is approved as an affiliate on these sites?
Hi Phranell. Most will require you to have some relevant content running on the site first. As for traffic volume, it pretty much depends on the individual program itself. Some are less strict than the other.
This is truly a golden advice. Understanding what’s trending and then searching for keywords will lead to traffic. It’s a logical way for finding a profitable online business to start. I’ll certainly try one of the programs that you recommended. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Cathy – this is a super helpful information. I am thinking about going into the health food niche so the tips here are extremely useful. Using Google Trends to pick up product trends and identifying profitable affiliate programs – these are some things that I’ve never considered before. Thank you for sharing this.
A great overview about health food affiliate programs. I am familiar with Thrive Market and personally promote their products as well. My experience with this company is nothing, but positive. Free shipping for orders over $50 is a big plus. Also, I found that they have branded products at prices less than what I pay in local stores. A big win for participating members!
Cathy,
This is a terrific article. You outlined all of the best affiliate programs for specific health food niches. This will save a lot of time for people who are working in those niches. I was particularly impressed by the Google graphs showing the trends in those areas. Very valuable information indeed.
An old article by some three years, many links and businesses are not relevant today, but many remain as relevant as they were.The principles here are sound though and reading more current articles confirms the benefits of affiliate marketing.
For example, gluten free is very current and the detail here will be super relevant to anyone interested in promoting gluten free products.
Hi Cathy,
Absolutely outstanding. Organic food trend on Google is, by the looks of the chart, incredible. It is very rare to see a trend so high (above 75) and doing so continuously for a 12-year dip with the exception of minor dip in the middle.
The indication there is that it is a trend to jump on as it won’t really dip anytime soon. There are new organic food lovers and vegetarians born every day and people converting and changing their diets to vegetarian and organic produce also.
Hi Cathy, this is a great read! I haven’t seen a whole lot of articles like this one, and I think it’s fantastic that you provide all of this research for us. It shows that a whole lot of work went into it, and the result is an extremely helpful and informative piece.
I think it’s really cool to see the search trends regarding health foods. I think there’s always a new food trend like kale and the French diet, so capitalizing on their affiliate programs is a great idea.
Hi, I am interested in cooking and I do it every day. But recently, because a close relative of mine became vegan, I started experimenting with food and creating different vegetarian and vegan dishes for my family.
The food affiliate programs you presented are very interesting, I think I know with which one I would start. I would like to research it and to know more to decide whether or not it would be suitable for me and my site.
Health niche is considered one of the 3 biggest money making niches and is one of the widest out there. Affiliate programs for health niches are just endless, but newbies still get confuse considering the variety.
It’s really great that you made it easy for them by laying out 5 of the best programs that they can implement in their health blogs. Very informative and straight to the point. Great article indeed.
Hi Cathy, thanks for providing such a good information on these companies. The keywords are an excellent bonus to the products. Interesting to see the Paleo diet gradually falling out of favour as more vegetarian and vegan diets and lifestyles become more prominent.
I like the Minimalist Baker as well. I think gluten free will become more important in the next couple of years as people begin to understand more about why their bodies don’t work efficiently.