The average affiliate commission rate is between 5% and 30%. Physical products typically pay lower levels of commission than digital products. Amazon, for example pays typically between 3% and 10% to affiliates for referrals. This will vary depending on the product category. With digital product sales, affiliates can earn from 30%-40% and even more in some cases.
Digital products have fewer costs involved in the delivery and manufacturing process and can therefore reward affiliates more, since the affiliates take on the costs of advertising.
Average Affiliate Commission Rate: Subscriptions
One of the best ways to earn as an affiliate is through the sale of subscription products. With subscription affiliate products, affiliates can earn ongoing recurring commissions from products they sell. This can make a huge difference to earnings as an affiliate. Most affiliate products only pay you a “one off” commission, meaning you need to sell products over and over in order to keep making the commissions.
Subscription products offer ongoing value to customers. An example is an autoresponder. Autoresponders are used by online business owners to collect emails and deliver messages to promote their products. Because an autoresponder is a vital part of an online business, once they have been purchased customers often maintain their memberships/subscriptions for years. If you refer this kind of product it means you continue to earn from it as long as your referral maintains their subscription.
Average Affiliate Commission Rate: High Ticket Products
High ticket affiliate products pay much larger than average commissions because they carry a larger price tag. There’s both digital and physical high ticket items you can promote as an affiliate. Have a look at this item The Flying Hovercraft! It sells for $190,000 and Hammacher Schlemmer offers 8% commission to affiliates.
That’s a massive $15,200 in commission if you can make a sale. Many affiliates will presume that nobody buys such an item, but some people do. A single sale of a high ticket item like this is worth thousands of sales of a low value item. So even though fewer people buy large value items like this, it can be worth considering high ticket items.
High Ticket Vs Low Ticket Commissions
You might assume that most people won’t buy a high ticket item but some high ticket items sell really well; particularly if they offer huge value. For example, business training courses and 1:1 affiliate marketing coaching and mentoring courses are hugely popular. This is because a product which can be life changing, such as a business training course, is worth a lot.
With high ticket items, you only need a few sales to earn the same commission as you would with selling thousands of products sold from Amazon, for example.
Let’s take a typical product from Amazon like this one:
Given a 4% commission rate on this item you would only earn £2.20 (around $2.65) per sale! But with a $2497 business bundle you would earn $500, at (10% commission), or $1000 (at 20%).
Because Amazon only pays tiny commissions, you’ll need to sell thousands of items from Amazon in order to earn the same commission as just one high ticket sale.
By choosing both subscription products and high ticket items, you give yourself a better chance of succeeding with an affiliate marketing business.