The average commission for affiliate programs is between 5% and 30%, depending on the product. Physical products from Amazon, for example, will pay out between 1% and 11% commissions to its affiliates. Digital products typically pay much more – between 20% and 100% in some cases but on average around 30%.
Digital products can be accessed online which means there’s less cost involved in their delivery. There’s also less manufacturing costs with digital products. Physical products carry more costs such as manufacture, handling and postage. Commissions are therefore much lower with physical products than for digital products.
Average Commission For Affiliate Programs – Commission Types
There’s three main types of commissions you can receive as an affiliate marketer:
- One-Time payment – most affiliate products pay you only once for the referral
- Subscription – Subscription products will pay a recurring monthly income for referrals based on memberships and software type products.
- High ticket – high ticket products carry a larger price tag and therefore pay the most amount out to their affiliates for each purchase made
Average Commission For Affiliate Programs – Product Ranges
You can also combine the three main types of commission structure when using a high ticket sales funnel. A good funnel offers multiple products from within a range which you can earn from. See SFM Digital Business System. With a product range, you can earn from later purchases made by your referrals. This gives you more earning potential as an affiliate than through selling only one time commissions.
Most affiliate programs only pay once for a referral. So as an affiliate you need to keep referring new customers in order to continue earning commissions. Once you have referred the customer, you have handed over your customer to someone else; who could potentially benefit from a lifetime of customer purchases. But with a product range your referrals have the option of purchasing something at a later date for which you can benefit.
So to earn more as an affiliate, it’s worth choosing a product range to promote rather than just a single “one-off” product.
Subscription Products
Subscription affiliate products don’t necessarily pay the most amount of commissions percentage wise. For example, Aweber offer a free autoresponder software for affiliate marketing. Their affiliate program pays out 30% commissions for referrals which amounts to $5.70 a month for new paid accounts. While this doesn’t seem like much on the surface, this is a recurring payment which will continue as long as the customer maintains their membership.
Subscription affiliate programs are powerful because they can compound your income over time. With a $5.70 a month recurring commission for each customer, 100 customers will give you a monthly income of $570. Compare this to selling 100 “one time” affiliate products which offer the same commission and you’ll only earn $570 in total. Monthly recurring commissions can soon mount up once you start making sales regularly.
Digital Versus Physical
The average commission of a physical affiliate product is much lower than that of a digital product. Some affiliates will say that physical products are easier to sell. Most people know what they’re buying with a physical product. Digital products on the other hand can be less tangible. However when you consider that the average physical product sale will generate only 5% commission compared to 30% with the average digital product, it’s worth taking note.
You’ll need to sell a lot more of the physical product (in this example) to earn the same amount as for the digital product. With digital products you have the added benefit of recurring commissions which can make a massive difference to your business.
High Ticket Products
There are also high ticket digital and physical products which can make a huge difference to your commission potential. A high ticket product is a product with a much larger price tag than most products.
As such the commission is much larger. Selling a single high ticket product can make you as much in commissions as through selling hundreds of lower value products. Even though many affiliates think this will be more difficult, it’s not 100’s of times more difficult and therefore can be a smarter way to do affiliate marketing.
Summary
The average commission for affiliate programs varies from 5% to 30%. There’s a huge variety of products to choose from and your choice will affect your commission structure. Physical products tend to pay far lower levels of commissions than digital products. Amazon, for example is one of the first stop shops for new affiliates. They pay between 1% and 11% commissions on their products. Clickbank is another affiliate hot spot for new affiliates and Clickbank’s commissions will vary from 20% to 50% in general.
It’s worth considering using subscription affiliate programs too, which pay recurring commissions on your sales. These can make a massive difference to your bottom line over time, as can high ticket products. Using a product range is another option too. With a product range, you automatically have a number of products to sell to your referrals. A customer might upgrade their purchase even months after your initial referral and you’ll still get the commission for the up-sale.
Product ranges are good too for new affiliates because you can benefit from a built in sales team who close sales on your behalf. For more information on affiliate marketing click on the image below for a free video series.
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