Do you have experience with home repair and would like to transform your skills into a profitable online business? Then, this is the right article for you. In this week’s niche tips, I’ll explore the potential of this industry and show how you can make money with Home Depot Affiliate Program using three effective techniques.
First Of All, Why Affiliate Programs?
The affiliate program is a business model that allows you to earn sales commissions whenever you refer a customer to the merchant’s site. Unlike a traditional business set-up, affiliate marketing requires very low capital investment (no licensing, no insurance fee, etc.), yet it offers more opportunities to acquire new clients.
Due to the nature of the program, you can always start on a part-time basis and gradually grow into a full-time online business. With their range of products, you can target different audiences and maximize profit even when the season changes.
Most importantly, when you can no longer work as a handyman (or woman), you can still use your passion and skills to generate income through an online business.
The Home Depot Affiliate Program – Quick Facts
- The program can be applied via the Commission Junction affiliate network. You do need to sign in as a member first.
- It’s free to become an affiliate, but you should have a website set up before approval can be granted.
- The commission payout is 4% and it comes with 60 days tracking cookie.
Now, let’s see how you can leverage this provision in your marketing strategy.
3 Ways to Profit From The Home Depot Affiliate Program
(1) Higher Price Range Products
It’s pretty obvious that the higher-priced products you promote, the more commission you’ll make. So, if you want to earn at least $1.50 per sale, you need to start with something worth $50 and above.
Of course, you shouldn’t be promoting for the sake of commission alone. No matter the price, it still has to be relevant to the needs of your audience.
For example, if your niche is about house lighting, you can search under ‘Lighting and Ceiling Fans’ and select the price range on the left sidebar.
There are more than 1000 items within this price range, so that’s a lot of opportunities for product reviews. What’s even better is that Home Depot will suggest other frequently bought items and accessories that when summed up together, can potentially increase the commission of your overall sales.
(2) Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are invaluable when it comes to eCommerce shopping because they are usually non-biased. Many savvy shoppers will refer to this information before deciding on their purchases. When promoting a certain product, it’s always better to choose one that has more good quality reviews (not just quantity), to back up your recommendation.
For example, this outdoor chair cushion has about 66 reviews and more than half of the customers rated it between 4 to 5 stars. Here’s a snippet of a positive review.
There is so much practical information here and I am sure if you research thoroughly, you’ll be able to come up with a comprehensive list of the pros and the cons that will benefit your readers.
But what about negative reviews? Are they helpful in any way? Well, I would use them for product comparison so that it will clearly distinguish which product is worth buying.
Remember the 24-hour cookie duration? If you can speed up the researching process for your readers, then they can decide on their purchase sooner and you can earn a lot faster.
(3) Project Ideas
Home Depot isn’t just an ordinary eCommerce site. It’s full of resources on how to build a smarter home and one of the features which I think is indispensable to you as an affiliate marketer is a DIY section. Home improvement projects are a wonderful way to convert readers into customers because without tools, you can’t create anything basically.
Your blog will help people discover the tools they need and in the DIY section, you’ll find invaluable keywords that you can use to create content for that purpose. Each how-to guide, video tutorials, and the blog comes with topics that you can research and rank to target a specific audience to your site.
These are just some random topics that I’ve picked and found them to have high searches yet low in competitions by using the Jaaxy Keyword Tool.
- how to make a garden sink (searches = 144, competition = 2)
- tools needed to change kitchen faucet (searches = 52, competition = 5)
- outdoor patio cabinets storage (searches = 80, competition = 19)
- build a deck on a sloped roof (searches = 56, competition = 6)
- how to install a lawn sprinkler system (searches = 192, competition = 29)
Each of these topics will need a tool, if not, a set of tools. So, if you merge good quality products with good customer reviews into your guides, imagine how much you can potentially earn.
Let’s Get Started
Now that you know how to go about marketing with the Home Depot Affiliate Program, it’s time to build your website. You’ll need a domain name and a publishing platform. The domain should reflect what your niche is all about and for best search engine ranking and visibility, I highly recommend that you use WordPress.
For more information on how to register a domain and connect to WordPress easily, please read my full review on Siterubix hosting solution here.
Is Home Depot Affiliate Program Worthy of Your Time
At current, there are 17 types of product categories (and many more subcategories within) on Home Depot, each of which is potentially a lucrative niche of its own. There will always be a stream of people looking to fix and refurbish their homes, whether they live in a tiny home or a mansion.
Hence, this industry will never run out of trend so the more information you can provide, the more audience you’ll attract and eventually convert on your website. I hope you’ve found these tips to be helpful and exciting.
If you have any thoughts or questions on how to start an affiliate business, check out my recommended training platform here OR leave your comment below and I’ll get back to you.
Is it possible to use homedepot affiliate program with amazon affiliate program in a single website?
I am pretty sure it’s okay. I’ve seen sites that promote two of these merchants together, though on different product reviews. But don’t quote me on that. It’s best to go through the terms and conditions again, especially when applying for the Home Depot affiliate program.
Hope this helps.
Greetings Cathy,
Well, this was just perfect! I’ve been toying with the idea of applying to the Home Depot Affiliate Program, so I decided to take the plunge. Your article was extremely helpful, but I do have a few questions:
* I’m not sure I understand the 24-hour cookie duration. Does that refer to the time someone clicks a link, to the time they actually make a purchase?
* If I was accepted into the program, would I be able to copy any of the DIY videos, or would I only be able to make reference to it and share a link.
* Is it acceptable to share some of the comments of the products by copying to our post or is that not allowed.
This really is quite exciting. Thanks again for the information, Cathy.
Hi Veronica, in response to your questions;
1) Yes, that’s what the 24-hour cookie duration means.
2) The DIY/Home tip videos are all hosted on YouTube. The last I check, they can be shared and embed by the public, so there’s no reason why you can’t use those videos when sharing your blog.
3) In regards to sharing other people’s testimonials, I would use a screenshot image and provide a link for people to read more on the merchant site. Rewriting those reviews might put your blog at risk for duplicate content.
I am really glad you found this article to be helpful. It reinforces my belief that people are out there looking for solid affiliate programs to start an online business and Home Depot is just one of them.
Very informative post.
That’s the type of information that people need to know before signing up with an affiliate program.
Most people want to know the commission rate, but don’t seem to pay attention to the cookie length. I always try and find out the cookie duration so that I can adjust my email campaigns accordingly.
Thank you for such great information. I am new to affiliate marketing and building an online business. Didn’t realize that Home Depot was another avenue to be an affiliate. Were there any forms, or special information (tax EIN etc.) that you have to provide in order to become associated as an affiliate with Home Depot besides the need for a website?
Home Depot itself doesn’t require any special information, but the affiliate network, Conversant, might need them. When you set up your account with these networks, you’ll be prompted to key in these information. Depending on which country you are from, different situations would apply. Hope this helps.
Cathy,
I honestly would’ve never thought that you could make money through Home Depot as an affiliate. As you broke it down by showing me the price breakdown sheets, it really could be a profitable business for anyone, especially for people who regularly shop at these type of stores. Great niche idea.
That’s an interesting fact you mentioned. If someone is a regular customer at a retail store, it’s worth checking out if they have got an affiliate program because you would have so many opportunities to make money from product reviews and comparisons. Thanks for the idea, Alan.
This is a good example of how an interest or a need can be turned into a profitable business.
I am not particularly interested in working on my home but this is still something I am doing frequently. There is always something at home that need repairing. You buy new stuff, like wardrobes, hangers, things for the bathroom etc. You need to find these items and then you need to install or assemble them. I think this market has unlimited potential and there are soo many sub niches you can dig into.
Are there any other affiliate programs you can recommend in this market/niche?
That’s true. In fact, I got to know about Home Depot from a niche blogger who does plumbing work. Yup, plumber can blog too 🙂 It’s one of those ‘how to’ inquiries that lead me to his site as I was needing some help in my kitchen repair. I thought that was very clever of him to publish something so basic because everyone who has a leaky pipe needs to know how to fix it, right?
Everyone goes online to search for a solution. Wherever there’s a product that does the job, there’s a company selling it and most likely, they offer an affiliate program too.
The other alternative to Home Depot is Lowes and they seem to offer their program through Conversant, although I can’t find out what the exact commission is at this moment.
Thanks for the great share on this one Cathy. Sometimes, I think that people often forget that there are a ton of different affiliate programs out there besides Amazon and other large traditional networks.
Taking the time to check and compare prices for products that you are recommending as an affiliate can often net you a really nice difference when it comes to commission percentages.
I can remember when I first started out in marketing, I was selling coffee makers through Amazon for 4-8% commissions.
One day I stumbled across the affiliate program for my top recommended company and found out that they offered 35%!
This was after selling hundreds of these coffee makers through my links on Amazon. I switched things over, but I can still remember how ill I felt thinking about how much money I had shorted myself by not doing proper research earlier in the game.
Hey Tony,
Throughout my research so far, there are at least 10 other companies that offer higher commission payout for every product category on Amazon. That means, even if you don’t get to become an Amazon Associate for whatever reasons, you have 10 other affiliate programs to explore within the same niche. Not to mention others that you can find within respective affiliate networks.
There are so many opportunities out there for people to start an online business and like you said, the faster you learn how to use keywords to do research on Google, the more resources you can gather to increase your earnings.
By the way, which coffee maker company is this that is offering your 35%? I am curious to know.