How To Find Great Affiliate Programs

As a blogger, you want to find the best affiliate programs to help monetize your blog. This blog post will help you find the best affiliate programs for your blog.

I would recommend being very picky about which affiliate programs you promote.

Here's how to find the best ones for your blog.

Think About Your Customers Potential Problems

Take some time and really think about the problems your ideal blog visitor might have. Sometimes, this will generate some interesting ideas and outside-the-box ideas that you would not think of otherwise.

Really try to get in the head of your blog visitor.

Head to a Magazine Shop

If there is a magazine in your industry, take the time to buy a couple of magazines at a large magazine shop. Often you'll want to go to a specialty magazine shop as there are some very niched-out periodicals you wouldn't believe there is a magazine audience for.

Flipping through the magazine, check out what kind of ads are scattered throughout – and think about how each business makes money. What customers are they trying to attract? What is their marketing message? Be sure to read the classified ads if there is a classified ad section.

You will get ideas even if you think you know the industry well.

You might find some ads for websites or courses that might have affiliate products.

Once you've done that (and I'm gonna assume you're taking notes) you can move onto the next step.

Start a Google Doc for your project.

This is ideal because it is accessible across device and platform – and when and if you hire a virtual assistant (VA) – you can easily share information with them.

Have a section in your Google Doc for potential affiliate programs. This is a good way to keep track of your ideas for your project.

How to Track Your Affiliate Logins

I use Lastpass to track all of my logins for all of my sites.

Believe me, I *HATE* trying to log into a site because I forgot my password. It just feels like a massive waste of time. So I use Lastpass. Lastpass is free and works across platforms and devices.

You can even log into sites on your phone easily.

Not having to remember your password is also much safer as you can use a randomly generated password (which Lastpass can provide) for each site – so you're much better protected in your digital life.

Sold on the free version of Lastpass?

Create your FREE Lastpass account here.

After creating your account, you will be shown where you can find the browser extention that will end up saving you hours of time buy not having to fiddle with your passwords anymore.

Good, now we can move on to the next step.

Search in Google and Bing (you will get different results) for:

keyword affiliate program
keyword associate program
keywords referral

That should give you some good places to start.

Check out the Affiliate Networks

Affiliate Networks are large congregations of many different affiliate programs.

The two I use most frequently are Commission Junction (CJ) and Sharesale.

Both have hundreds of affiliate programs, most of which will not be relevant, but a few might be. It's always good to look at the new merchants (these are what they call the owners of the affiliate programs) recently.

How much can you earn?

Earning will range with the affiliate programs.

I promote some that don't pay, but give me perks (like WealthSimple which manages an extra $10,000 for free) for every referral.

Most digital products will give you 35-50% commission. This is standard for digital products.

Physical products typically have much lower profit margins and pay less. But I don't usually decide based on the payout. I like to decide based on quality.

Don't Forget Amazon

Amazon is the online behemoth. Since Amazon sells virtually everything, you can always find something that would fit in the Amazon associates program.

Two things to note about the Amazon Associates program:

First, it is geolocated. So you only earn when you promote the link for the correct country. So the default one to use is probably the main, US, .com site. Since we are in Canada, we are also signed up for the Canadian Amazon Associates program, and sometimes have links to both.

(Typically, we have some Amazon products we recommend in our default YouTube description at the bottom and we say something like:

If you are in the US: Bit.ly link
If you are in Canada: Bitly link

It's weird, but since they have the power, Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants. (which apparently extends to paying zero taxes.) But enough of that rabbit hole.

The cool thing about Amazon is that if somebody clicks your link and buys something else – completely unrelated – you still get a commission. The commission on Amazon is small, but I recommend it anyway because you will make sales. You will notice this in your reports. It's strange, but cool. You might as well buy through somebody link so they make a little extra money.

By the way, if you feel inspired to shop on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca feel free to use the respective link!

There is a $10 payment threshold on Amazon payments, and you can choose to get paid or get an Amazon coupon code in place of your commissions. Guess which one Amazon would prefer to pay you in?

Checking in and Checking Out

Lastly, I think it's important to keep an organized list on your Google Docs for the programs you promote and this will help you check on them periodically, as you can see the clicks and sales you have delivered to their program.

And if you know somebody who has a product but no affiliate program, let us know and we can help them set one up. We will pay you a finders fee for making the connection if we close a deal with them.