Hello there Sea Changers. Welcome back to my series of program lists to assist those of you looking to fund your sea change with affiliate marketing. Today I am going to step away from my usual MO of listing topic specific affiliate programs and have a look at 13 recurring commission affiliate programs to work passively with this year. Why? Because one reason that many of us head into the online business world for is to generate passive income. And what better way to increase our passive income levels than to promote affiliate programs that continue to pay out month after month.
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Now, the more I research I did into this area, I was pleasantly surprised as to the quantity of affiliate programs to choose from (they are mainly digital products and online services but still). So how have I picked my best 13? Well… I really just wanted to give you a good cross section of what is out there so I did some searching around and checked a few out and chose them by looking at:
- What they offer
- Commission rates
- Payment terms
- Cookie duration
- Application processes
- Affiliate/Marketing materials provided
Before we start however, let’s have a look at what I mean by the term ‘recurring’ and how it can be incorporated within an affiliate marketing website…
What do we mean by recurring?
Now, in general, affiliate marketing is all about passive income anyway as one post can continue to generate sales on an ongoing basis with little to no work being required once it is written (the post that is, not the actual site). A recurring commission affiliate program simply means that one sale will continue to earn commissions via the following means:
- Subscriptions
- Memberships
- Sales generated by others
The advantages here are obvious, if you make 10 sales on a general affiliate link, then you are paid commissions on those sales – i.e. a single commission for each of the 10 sales. If however you make a sale within a recurring commission affiliate program, then you earn income on every payment that your referral customer makes – i.e. a commission on every membership payment.
Note: Care is needed to here to ensure that the program you are looking into actually pays a recurring commission. There are a lot of subscription based programs out there that only pay a commission on the initial sign up fee – i.e. the first payment. You will need to make sure that commission payments are made on every subscription or membership payment that your customer makes and not just the initial one.
What can affiliate marketers promote?
The only real barriers to what affiliate marketers can promote when it comes to a recurring affiliate program is ensuring, as mentioned above, that the program does pay out each month. There are however some things to be aware of as you run your eye over recurring affiliate program possibilities that may suit your site. These are:
- Know your audience, asking a reader to make a purchase via your affiliate links is one thing, but asking them to do so every month or so is another. One of the most important aspects of affiliate marketing – solving problems – is paramount here if you are to convince your readers to sign up. Choose your affiliate sites accordingly.
- People generally will not take the risk of entering into an ongoing payment obligation if they don’t trust you or your affiliate site. Make sure the programs you choose are reputable and have good recourse options if the purchaser is not happy.
- Those who a little nervous – especially if there is a minimum sign up period involved – will need to know that the products you are promoting will fit in with their daily requirements. Make sure your programs can provide the products to back up the information that you are covering.
That said, stats show that people will spend money on subscription and membership based products online if it can make their lives easier so as long as you are meeting their needs and solving problems, then you are on the right track. And to give you a boost, let’s have a look at 13 programs that I have found below:
1. Wealthy Affiliate
Ok, let’s start with Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate is an all encompassing affiliate marketing site aimed at assisting people in building their own online business. Their product is very popular (over 2 million members) and includes:
- Training
- Web hosting
- Keyword search tool
- Domain purchase and registration
- Affiliate program search tool
There is even training within the platform about how to become an affiliate marketer for wealthy affiliate. The platform is free to join for a starter membership with access to affiliate links with premium memberships available at $49 per month. Recurring affiliate commissions are paid once a referral joins as a premium member and continue for the entire time that their membership remains active. There are also recurring commissions available should that member also upgrade their version of Jaaxy – Wealthy Affiliate’s keyword search tool – and for domain purchases within the platform.
Commission Rate: $23.50 per member for each month that they are active ($14 if you are a starter member)
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Lifetime – as long as your affiliate link is used.
Application required?: Yes – You will need to join the platform as a member to access your affiliate links. Email address only required.
Marketing material provided: Ad banners, text links, internal blogging activities
2. ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is am extremely well-known digital product for those looking to implement sales funnels. They have built their popularity on the back of Russel Brunson’s books and some solid funnel building software. For affiliates, their sales funnels have been built around making the funnel access almost secondary to the free offerings and upsells on offer including:
- Free books (user pays postage)
- Access to challenges
- Personalised training
As a recurring program, commissions are paid on a monthly basis for as long as one of your referrals remains a member. Membership options are priced at $97 per month for basic and $297 for Platinum. There are also once off commission available for the mountain of other products that Click funnels offers as either percentages or set payments (which can rise into the 1000’s). As an added advantage, Click funnels utilises ‘sticky’ cookies meaning that your affiliate link is added to the site cookies of your member resulting in commissions being earned on all future purchases or upgrades that they make.
Commission Rate: 40%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Lifetime ‘Sticky’ cookies
Application required?: Yes, You will need to enter personal information to apply.
Marketing material provided: Text links, banners, videos, email swipes
Note: The affiliate program is free to join with enough to promote their preset options however to access the full range of customisable links, funnels and management options, a platinum membership is required.
3. Aweber
Our next site is Aweber, an email autoresponder that offers recurring commissions as part of its affiliate program. Aweber offers a large range of functionality within its autoresponder software including
- Unlimited Emails
- Automation
- Segmenting
- Analytics
- Customer Solutions
- Sign Up Forms and Landing pages
- Integrations
- Image Hosting
- 6,000+ Stock Photos
- 700+ Email
- Templates
- Edu. Resources
There are a number of autoresponders out there that also offer recurring commissions however I have chosen Aweber in this instance due to the fact that they don’t tend to frown upon affiliate marketers (I had my account rejected by two others for this reason even though they themselves have affiliate programs). Membership prices range from $19 to $149 per month and commissions are paid for the lifetime of the active referral.
Commission Rate: 30%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 12 Months
Application required?: Yes, You will need to enter personal information to join their program.
Marketing material provided: Text links, banners and badges, test drive ads, video ads
4. moosend
moosend promotes itself as the “all-in-one marketing platform that your business deserves”. It offers a great range of online marketing tools to assist any business with its online endeavours including:
- Email Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Landing Pages
- Subscription Forms
- Newsletter Editor
- Ecommerce AI
- Personalization
- Tracking
- Reporting & Analytics
- Integrations
Incorporated into this is a fantastic range of information, tutorials, tips and free tools to assist any online marketer with their content.
This is a great site to promote if your niche has anything to do with online marketing with a paid recurring subscription model (hence its inclusion in this post) as well as a huge range of free tools to assist you with your reader’s needs.
Commission Rate: 30%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 120 days
Application required?: Yes, You will need to enter personal and website information to apply.
Marketing material provided: Banners, text links, access to a dedicated content/graphic team
5. Tapfiliate
Tapfiliate is an affiliate tracking software company based in Amsterdam. The Tapfiliate software is designed for Affiliate managers to assist them in managing all aspects of their programs including:
- Starting their affiliate programs
- Program tracking and growth
- Integration with E-Commerce and SaaS sites
- Affiliate recruitment and management
- Branding
- Development of Text links, banners and other creatives
If your site has anything to do with affiliate program management, training or setting up an online business, then this site would make a great addition. And to assist your readers, the site also offers a great blog, support pages and integration tools to ensure that they can make the most of their software – not to mention the post fodder this can provide for you to promote the product as well.
Commission Rate: 20% (for first 6 months of customer’s membership)
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 45 days
Application required?: Yes, You will need to enter personal information to apply.
Marketing material provided: Banners, text links, video
6. Promo Republic
Promo Republic is a social media management platform that “helps brands stand out on Social Media” with a range of tools to assist all levels of business from start ups to marketing agencies and multi franchise conglomerates. Their range of tools is comprehensive and includes:
- Social Media Calendar
- Content Organizer
- Work Coordinator
- Reporting Provider
- Content Services
- White Label
- Templates
- Automation
- Scheduling
- And so much more
Social media is such a powerful marketing tool in this day and age that this program is one that could be added to a large number of different niches centred around business development, marketing, online business development, sales and so on. Their program is definitely worth a look for those looking for good recurring affiliate income with pricing starting at $49 per month.
Commission Rate: 20-30% (recurring for 12 months)
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 120 Days
Application required?: Yes, You will need to enter personal and website information to apply.
Marketing material provided: Banners, test links, coupons.
7. Private Internet Access
In this day and age of internet scams, identity theft and pirated personal information, sites like Private Internet Access are becoming more and more popular. Private internet access provides all manner of internet privacy, protection and security tools including:
- Secure VPN Account
- Encrypted WiFi
- P2P Support
- PPTP, OpenVPN and L2TP/IPSec
- Block ads, trackers, and malware
- Multiple VPN Gateways
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- SOCKS5 Proxy Included
This program is probably not as lucrative as some of the others found within this post however in terms of sheer usage requirements, those in the internet security, or any other niches should be able to make a good little side income from this one. Their program is definitely recurring with memberships averaging $9.95 per month.
Commission Rate: 30%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Not stated
Application required?: Yes, You will need to enter personal and website information to apply.
Marketing material provided: Banners, videos, landing pages.
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8. SEMrush
SEMrush promotes itself as an “All-in-one Marketing Toolkit” with a huge range of tools to assist any online marketer, business operator or, as it turns out, affiliate marketers. In the day and age where SEO is a critical element to online marketing success, then SEMrush is definitely worth looking into as a promotional option with a good range of tools including:
- Keyword and back link analysis
- SEO tracking and intelligence
- Paid traffic analysis
- Social media analysis and management
- Brand analysis and optimisation
- Online market research
All tools can be utilised to not only improve your own site’s rankings and performance, but to analyse those of your competitors as well.
This is a great site to promote for anyone within the internet security, SEO or affiliate marketing niches (plus anything else in this general area) with a good recurring commission rate on memberships ranging from $99.95 to $399.95 per month.
Commission Rate: Up to 40%
Payment Terms: Twice Monthly
Cookie Duration: 10 years – Cookies work on a first in best dressed scenario
Application required?: Yes – You will need to enter personal and website information to apply. The program is free to join and all affiliates’ applications are pre-approved by BeRush.
Marketing material provided: BBanners, Text Links, widgets, special offers, promotional material (in 9 languages)
9. Cloudways
As the name may suggest, Cloudways is a cloud hosting site providing a number of hosting tools and services including:
- 24/7/365 Support
- Free SSL
- CDN Add-on
- Free Migration
- Unlimited Application Installation
- Team Management
- Dedicated Firewalls
- 24/7 Real-time Monitoring
- Automated Backups
- Staging Environment
- Optimized With Advanced Caches
- Auto Healing
- Regular Security Patching
- HTTP/2 Enabled Servers
- SSH and SFTP Access
Sites can be hosted on 1 of 5 well-known cloud service providers including:
- Digital Ocean
- Linode
- VULTR
- AWS
- Google Cloud
The affiliate program for Cloudways is actually quite interesting in that affiliates have the option to choose once off or recurring commissions as they go. AS this post is discussing recurring commissions we will discuss those here with the ongoing payments determined by the host and plans chosen – which range from $10 to over $1000 per month. Again, this is a good site for anyone in the ‘online niche’.
Commission Rate: $30 per sale + 7% lifetime commission
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 365 days
Application required?: Yes, you will need to enter personal and website information to apply.
Marketing material provided: Text links, banners, exclusive deals, and seasonal campaigns
10. Talkroute
Talkroute is a business phone company specialising in all things to do with workplace communications including:
- Phone Numbers
- Call Forwarding
- Text Messaging
- Call Menus
- Extensions
- Voicemail
- Desktop & Mobile
- Live Call Transfer
- Call Stacking
- Custom Greetings
- Call Recording
- Hours of Operation
- Users & Permissions
- Caller ID
This site would work for any marketers in the business management or IT niches with a large array of offerings to be promoted. The commission rates are recurring but do not kick in until over 20 sales have been made per month on packages ranging from $19 to $99 per month.
Commission Rate:
- $50 per sale < 20 customers per month referred
- up to $250 per sale + recurring commissions > 20 customers per month referred (secondary application required)
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Not Stated
Application required?: Yes, You will need to enter personal and website information to apply.
Marketing material provided: Text links, banners
11. Thrive Themes
Now, for those of you working in any niche to do with website creation within WordPress then you might want to check out Thrive Themes. Thrive themes is an all in one WordPress management site providing access to:
- Drag and Drop editors
- Email list, quiz and countdown campaign builders
- Access to ALL themes, plugins and widgets
- Comment, landing page and online course builders
To be honest, the list above probably does not do it justice as there is just so much there for those looking to build their site via wordpress. For affiliates, they offer a decent mix of single sales and recurring commissions with memberships ranging from $19 to $49 per month (paid annually). Once off purchases range from $67 to $97 for license packs.
Commission Rate: 35% per sale – 25% recurring
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 2 years
Application required?: Yes, you will need to complete an application quiz then personal and website information as part of the application.
Marketing material provided: Banners, Text Links, Swipes, Tutorials and page examples
12. Tailwind
Tailwind is a social media management platform designed to allow users to undertake automated and analytical functions on Instagram and Pinterest. Their functionality includes:
- Schedule Pins
- Analytics & Reporting
- Monitoring & Trends
- Tailwind Tribes
- Tailwind SmartLoop
- Management
- Scheduling
- Hashtag Finder
- Analytics & Reporting
- Smart.Bio
This is a great site for those in any online business, social media or digital marketing based niche especially when discussing automation. Recurring commissions are paid on monthly membership options costing $9.99 to almost $30 per month if all options are purchased.
Commission Rate: 15%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 90 days
Application required?: Yes – Tailwind’s affiliate program is managed by Share-A-Sale. You will be required to apply for an account and then for the Tailwind affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Banners, Text Links, specialised promotions and assistance
Note: Although it doesn’t mention it as mandatory, the affiliate page does strongly lead to the fact that affiliates should be members and avid users of the tailwind platform in order to effectively promote it.
13. TheBeneFITBox.com
And finally we get to a recurring commission affiliate platform that is not a digital product with TheBeneFITBox.com. This is a subscription based site that offers a range of supplements based on the requirements of the customer. In short, members subscribe to the program and select their requirements (weightloss, toning or muscle building) to receive a customised mixture of:
- Protein
- Pre-workouts
- Fat Burners
- BCAAs
- Creatine
- Glutamines
- Multi Vitamins
- Vitamin essentials
Obviously this site would work best within any supplements, health and wellness or general fitness niche with a good range of vegan and dietary restriction options as well. In terms of recurring commissions, these are paid for the lifetime of the membership with prices ranging from $59.99 Gold, $89.99 Platinum to $114.99 Diamond on a monthly basis.
Commission Rate:
1 – 99 boxes – Gold – $3, Platinum – $4, Diamond – $5
100 – 149 boxes – Gold – $5, Platinum – $6, Diamond – $7
149 + boxes – Gold – $7, Platinum – $8, Diamond – $9
Payment Terms: Monthly.
Cookie Duration: Not stated
Application required?: Yes – You will need to enter personal and website information to apply.
Marketing material provided: Text links and banners, specials/sales, free coupons
How to find your own affiliate programs
As stated earlier, by outlining the sites above I have really just tried to give you a good cross section of the types of programs that are out there by listing the really good ones in each ‘category’. To be honest however, for every ‘type’ of site I have listed here, there are probably 20 odd more in the same category that also offer recurring commissions. Luckily for us, there is a simple way to find these programs online.
All you need to do is enter “affiliate: niche type” into your search engine (substituting ‘niche type‘ for whatever product it is that you are choosing to sell).
There are recurring commission affiliate programs for everything else that we have listed at the top of this page as well – you will just need to have a look around until you find one or two that suit your site. Once you have completed your searches, you can look through and find programs that:
- Relate to your niche/problems that you are solving.
- Have quality products – your brand can be severely damaged if you promote poor quality products.
- Have solid payment and customer service arrangement.
- Pay decent recurring commissions.
- Have good testimonials covering commission payouts and quality of product.
In most cases, you will need to apply for the program before you are allowed to promote their products – don’t take this step lightly or you will be rejected. Affiliate programs will generally want to know:
- Your website name.
- Traffic levels.
- Why you want to join – (so I can make money by selling your web hosting services is unfortunately not generally a good enough answer).
- How you plan to promote their products.
Conclusion
So… There are 13 of the best recurring commission affiliate programs to work passively with this year. I hope it has been helpful for you as you commence your own affiliate marketing business and as usual, please do not hesitate to comment below if you have any questions, need some advice or have any experiences to share. Oh, and especially comment if you have any experience with these, or any other programs as well.
Until next time
Have fun
Paul
Note: If you make a purchase from this page, there is a very good chance that I make a commission from it – these commissions do not increase your sale price. This may include sales made via Wealthy Affiliate, ClickFunnels, Aweber, Tapfiliate, Cloudways or Bluehost.
Do you want further assistance with any of the above or need help to build your own affiliate marketing website?
Are you looking for a comprehensive training platform that can give you step by step training, 24/7 support, tools to develop and host your very own website, ongoing assistance with SEO and social media and access to some of the best affiliate marketing minds on the planet, then click on the following link to read more about Wealthy Affiliate.
