If you have been following the Green Rush movement, you probably know that Cannabidiol is making headlines everywhere in the US and in Canada. The laws have become more open allowing online sales to soar across the country. With millions of people who can potentially benefit from the usage, now is a good time to learn how to make money from CBD oil.
This guide is intended to help CBD enthusiasts start an online business through affiliate marketing. If this is not the type of niche you want to pursue, don’t worry. There are many other products to leverage from and this step-by-step training can help you through the process.
Why Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a business model that allows you to earn from sales commissions without having to own any inventory. This is ideal for the CBD niche because;
- Setting up the business itself is labor-intensive and time-consuming. You need to adhere to good quality farming, processing, and laboratory testing before the product can be certified for sales. So unless you are experienced in this area and have a team to help out, it’s challenging to manufacture and distribute at a large scale.
- Currently, there are many established companies selling CBD online and most have affiliate programs that are free to join. Commissions usually range between 15% to 25% and you can promote any products in their stores, not just CBD oil.
- Due to the low-risk nature of the investment, you just need to focus on the marketing aspect and make more sales. When done right, affiliates can generate profits a lot faster than the primary business owners.
- Online stores have limitations when it comes to product experience and this is something you can offer as an affiliate marketer. Nowadays, personal recommendation especially when it comes to the benefits of CBD, always seems to attract more buyers rather than just promoting the brand itself.
- With these four advantages, affiliates can place themselves in very strategic positions within the booming billion-dollar industry. Those who are committed can even turn this side passion into a full-time online business. If this sounds like the path you want to pursue, let’s see what is the first thing you need to do.
How to Get Started
One of the best routes for affiliates to promote is through blogging because product reviews are always best shared in the form of content. Some people do without, but I don’t personally recommend this since you need a lot of budgets to drive traffic. Not very feasible from a beginner’s perspective, if you think about it.
1 – Creating a Blog
With current technology, creating a blog is easy and you definitely want to use WordPress over other platforms as it has the ability to scale over a long term period. Start by selecting a domain name that best represents the purpose of your blog in which the usage of CBD is relevant. Go with popular domain extension like .com, .org or .net so that it’s easier for people to remember.
A domain fee usually costs about $15 and it’s renewable every year. You can purchase through various registrars online, but my preference is called SiteDomains. That’s because it includes everything – email, privacy, and support – all in one price.
It also allows a one-click installation for WordPress which means, your brand new blog can go live within minutes. This is a lot easier to launch a site compared to using other platforms. Once you are inside, simply select a blog theme from the free templates and everything is pretty much good to go.
2 – Researching Keywords for Content
The meat of a blog is essentially the content. It’s what we use to communicate with the online audience and most importantly, it’s a tool to generate free traffic to one’s site. By writing more content relating to the benefits and usage of CBD, we can attract more people wanting to learn and buy the products, to your site.
The foundation for relevant content is finding the right keyword as the main topic. These keywords must be current, popular and easy to rank on the search engines. I’ve explained in great length about ways to search for highly targeted niche keywords in this article here so do go through them.
Meanwhile, I’ve done some research here and there to gather a list of good keywords you can use immediately for your blog. For each of the following topics, write about 1500 words (or more) based on what you know and what may interest the audience. Along the way, I encourage you to add YouTube videos and images to keep the articles as engaging as possible.
- Targeted Keywords in The CBD Niche;
- How to select the right CBD oil
- What is a full spectrum hemp CBD oil
- Best CBD oil for anxiety and depression
- Joy Organics CBD oil review
- Pure CBD tincture review
- How to use CBD oil for arthritis
- Is CBD oil safe for pets
- How to tell if CBD oil is pure
- Hemp seed oil vs CBD oil
- Best CBD oil to buy on Amazon
3 – CBD Oil Affiliate Programs
Most CBD affiliate programs can be found and applied through online. The easiest way is to Google the brand name such as “Company X affiliate program” and sees if it would direct you to a specific page. If you often shop from a particular store, check their homepage footer area for any clickable text links that say “Affiliates” or “Affiliate Program”.
Alternatively, you can also Google using general keyphrases like “CBD affiliate programs” and go through each of the companies on the result page. For your convenience, I have compiled a list of 8 brands that are known to be of good quality and generally have satisfactory customer reviews.
1 – JoyOrganics
Affiliate Offers – 25% commission + bonus program, 60-day cookie, sign up via Impact Radius, pay twice a month, have retargeting ads and conversion optimization.
Product Offers – broad-spectrum hemp oil tinctures, topical and pet products with attractive customer discounts and free shipping.
2 – Koi CBD
Affiliate Offers – 15% commission + more if sales volume per month increases, private program, pay monthly via check, wire transfer and PayPal with a minimum threshold of $100. Requires affiliate to generate a minimum of $1,000 per month in sales within 90 days of approval to prevent deactivation.
Product Offer – eLiquids, pet treats, lotion, and gummies.
3 – CBD Pure
Affiliate Offers – 40% commission, 90 days cookie, monthly payout, private program, has retargeting ads, banner ads, and conversion optimization, low entry requirement for affiliates.
Products Offer – Pure CBD extracts in the form of tinctures and capsules.
4 – CBD FX
Affiliate Offers – 20% commission, 90 days cookie, pay via PayPal (minimum $100), check (minimum $200) and bank transfer (minimum $1000), private program,
Products Offer – Full spectrum CBD oil in the form of gummies, capsules, juice, tincture oil, drinks, pets, topical and traveling pen.
5 – Canna Trading
Affiliate Offers – 25% commissions, 60 days cookie, via ShareASale affiliate network, requires affiliate websites to be at least 6 months old, have more than 5K targeted visitors per month, no excessive sponsor ads and display good user experience.
Products Offer – Full spectrum CBD in the form of tinctures, vapes, pens and capsules and pets products.
6 – Hemp Bombs
Affiliate Offers – 10% to 20% commissions, 30 days cookies, private program, has conversion optimization, same affiliate requirements as Canna Trading.
Product Offers – Gummies, eLiquid, oil, capsules, syrup, vape and pet products.
7 – Hemp My Pet
Affiliate Offers – 30% commissions, 90 days cookie, private program, pay monthly.
Product Offers – Solely pet products in the form of oils and treats.
8 – Verified CBD
Affiliate Offers – 20% commissions, 30-day cookie, private program, only pays via PayPal.
Product Offers – Oil, spray, capsules, and pet treats with free shipping worldwide.
What Is Not an Affiliate Program
With more companies joining the scene, there’s one thing to watch out for. Not everything that offers commissions is true affiliate programs. Sales commissions are the most common monetary rewards here. Sometimes, you get to earn from tiered commissions and at other times, you get to trade the commissions for the products.
It gets complicated, however, when the program lets you earn from a multi-level system like this one. That means you make money from direct sales as well as from other people’s sales. This type of model tends to steer towards recruiting vs selling the actual products and that can rub on people the wrong way.
The main goal of affiliate marketing is all about creating a positive relationship between the brand and the consumers. When that objective is twisted to benefit more people within the program, it no longer holds the ground of affiliate marketing.
Therefore, make sure you research and read the fine prints of a company’s affiliate offer before signing up.
Two Vital Tips for Becoming a Successful CBD Marketer
By 2020 (that’s next year), the size of the CBD industry is projected to reach $2.1 billion dollars so there’s a lot of opportunities to seize in the coming years.
As more players enter the niche, it will inevitably become more competitive and to make sure you stay afloat with the business, here are two things to keep in mind.
- Know what you are talking about – Fuel yourself with knowledge about different CBD products before writing product reviews, differentiate the facts from the fad within the industry and always seek to educate people on how to choose the best products for themselves.
- Master affiliate marketing – This skill will teach you a lot about how the search engines work and how you can effectively reach out to your targeted audience to build an evergreen online business. In fact, once you’ve mastered this, mostly any niche can be profitable. That’s why I always recommend starting with a good foundation at this all-in-one affiliate training platform.
From building a site, finding targeted keywords and discovering awesome brands to partner with, I hope this quick tutorial has given you more confidence in how to make money from CBD oil. If you have any questions or thoughts, please leave them in the comment space down below.
Being an affiliate is a very fine means of making money in online business and but being an affiliate for a product that is fast selling in the market would give you so much joy. CBD products are outstanding for their health benefits and getting products that give you up to 40% commission is quite great to try. With the knowledge of CBD being a good idea for an affiliate, I see that creating a blog for this niche is a wise step forward.
As old as this post is, it still comes in handy for me right now especially because I am able to learn new stuff from it about CBD. For a while now, I have been thinking of how to make use of the growing popularity of cannabidiol to my own advantage but didn’t know how to. I think affiliate marketing is the way to go here as there are so many brands to choose from.
This is a timely post for me in more ways than one. Just a few hours ago I returned from an appointment with my Cannabis doctor to renew my prescription. Here in Canada, I have to see him every three months to have it renewed. I use CBD oil for colitis and THC oil for sleep.
They are truly remarkable.
About two months ago I purchased a .com domain for CBD oil called CBDGroupie. However, after having a discussion with someone about potential problems crossing the border from Canada to the USA if I was selling Cannabis oil to USA citizens I decided not to go ahead with it. I didn’t want to be prevented for good from traveling to the USA.
I kind of doubt that they can do that, but I wanted to touch base with someone about it who would know because I want to get the website rolling. I already have an affiliate lined up. I have also kept the link to your site because the information will be valuable once I get my Cannabis site going.
The post is well done and should do well in inspiring people to become affiliates.
Loved your article in many ways, Cathy. Not only do you outline the benefits from (and of) a widely misunderstood product, that I feel the world needs to be educated on, you also effectively show how anyone can make money with almost zero investment by helping people choose the right products – just swap CBD with any product you are passionate about.
It is also incredible how the world has become one. People from Africa, Asia or any other places can profit from a North American phenomenon as websites are truly known to have no borders.
It’s clear that CBD oil companies are taking advantage of the proliferation of the Internet to market to a wider geographical area and reaching more buyers whereby retail can’t. This is clearly an informative list of CBD affiliate programs and I hope that the law will loosen up in the future for more countries to accept the shipping of the products.
This is a niche I would want to venture into once my country opens up the market.
Loved this beginner’s guide to using affiliate marketing to make money with the CBD oil phenomenon that is sweeping the nation. This article is eye-opening in many ways.
This is a great niche to be in from an ethical standpoint I think, as the oil has proven to be helpful in so many situations. You can get behind promoting something like this knowing that what you are pushing is going to help people.
I had no idea that there were so many companies with affiliate programs, so your list really opened my eyes to the possibilities. You are right that as the industry is growing so rapidly, there will be less than stellar companies that will pop up who do not have the interests of anyone except the owners in mind.
This same thing has happened within the make money online niche, and it has gotten to the point where you must screen each product carefully to make sure it is not a waste of time and money. This same process would be wise for the CBD oils.
As with any niche that you want to use affiliate marketing to build a business, you are right that getting an education is crucial. Becoming an authority with trust and influence will help you succeed. The other part is to provide professionalism through web appearance as well as knowledge in the field.
What a great resource to find CBD product offers. This is a good way to introduce the affiliate marketing concept to people who have an interest in CBD and online marketing at the same time. It’s compelling that affiliates have higher potential to make quicker profits than the business owners.
With the ease of setting up a website nowadays, getting started on affiliate marketing isn’t as intimidating as before. The fact that pets can also use CBD is particularly interesting to me as a pet owner and I think this can branch up to another business opportunity on its own.
CBD Oil is an ever growing niche, and it’s insane at how quickly it seems to have come on. This is an excellent opportunity for those that want to make money from affiliate marketing.
My wife is actually starting a blog about our two dogs, and she’s going to write an article about the benefits of CBD Oil at some point. If I read correctly, I think a few of them on this list actually have CBD pet treats so those will be good to include in her product reviews.
Not only did you write a well informed article, something I found really useful is that you pointed people in the right direction with listing some keywords they could use.
Is this niche already pretty competitive? Or since it’s so new, is it still easy enough to rank?
Hi Josh, I am glad you found the information useful.
No niche is ever too difficult or too easy to rank. Everything is based on your targeted keywords and marketing effort. With strong keywords, active online marketing and dishing topics that are relevant to the users, any type of niche can rank with time.
I think CBD for pets is still a fairly new concept and many pet owners may not be receptive to the idea of feeding their pets food laced with cannabis. But with education and research, the mentality will surely change and you want your information to be at the forefront when they are ready to purchase online.
I say go for it. People who benefit from CBD remedies are likely to do the same thing for their pets as well.