Affiliate marketing commission rates vary across the board. Depending on whether you’re promoting digital or physical products, you can expect affiliate marketing commission rates to vary between 3% and even 100%!
Obviously you would think to opt for the 100% commission rate in this case. However, there’s a number of other considerations you might want to think about before making a decision on which products to promote.
Here’s a breakdown of Amazon’s affiliate commission structure for affiliates.
It’s widely known that Amazon’s rates aren’t great, even with their 24 hour cookie. The cookie gives you the opportunity to earn more from your referrals other purchases on the site, within 24 hours.
Should they buy more products within this time frame, (after clicking on your affiliate link), you’ll earn the extra commissions based on those purchases. If they put a product in their shopping cart, but don’t purchase straight away, you’ll still earn the commission if they checkout within 90 days.
Affiliate Marketing Commission Rates – eBay
eBay has a similar commission structure to Amazon. Here’s a breakdown of the commission rates you can earn by referring traffic to eBay:
eBay also offers an incentive credit for referrals to help offset the final value fee. Read more about this here.
Sites like eBay and Amazon are good for selling because there’s quite a lot of trust in these sites. Plus there’s thousands of products on them to choose from so it can be fairly easy to send the right people to products they want. Unfortunately the commissions are fairly low, so you can’t earn very much from a single sale. You need to drive a lot of traffic to make your efforts worthwhile.
Affiliate Marketing Commission Rates – Digital Products
Digital products are available from many affiliate programs and partner networks. You’ll find them on sites like Clickbank, JVZoo, Click2Sell and through independent sellers too.
Digital products typically pay much more in commissions than physical products; typically between 30% and 60% commission. This is because they can be sent automatically over the internet, so there’s no cost to post or handle.
Plus, once the digital products are created once, they can be sold again and again with no manufacturing costs. Physical products incur more costs and although can be easier to sell, they pay out much less to the affiliate. Selling digital products online is simply a matter of advertising (once created). This is why affiliates can earn so much more by promoting digital products, if they can sell them!
Selling digital products can be more tricky for affiliates than selling a physical product. For starters, many digital products are arbitrary products which people don’t know or understand. Plus, vendors (product owners) have less trust online than sites like Amazon and eBay.
But if you’re new to affiliate marketing anyway, you’re going to have a steep learning curve. It’s better to start with a business model and strategy which will give you the most benefits.
Recurring Income Products – Memberships and Software Products
One of the best types of products to promote as an affiliate marketer are recurring commission affiliate programs. With a recurring commission program, you promote something which gives ongoing value. Memberships and subscriptions to products used by online business owners are typically good for affiliates.
If someone purchases a product they will need to build a profitable online business, they’ll continue using that product potentially for life. If you can refer these products to those kinds of people, you’ll have a recurring income from each sale.
Even a small monthly income of $10, for example is great if you’re selling recurring income products. With 10 sales you’ll earn $100 a month passive income. With 100 sales you’ll be able to earn $1000 a month passive. Plus you can keep referring more sales once you’ve learned how to do it once!
Clickbank offers products which carry recurring income. You can find these using a strategy I share in the article Clickbank passive income.
High Ticket Digital Products
High ticket digital products give you the best of both worlds: high commissions (40% and above) plus a high price tag. You can earn up to $8000 on a single sale with a $20,000 products and a 40% commission, for example. However, with high ticket affiliate products there’s more investment involved. To earn the highest commission rates on the high ticket products, you’ll need to invest in the product yourself.
In order to earn 100% commission on a product, there’s often a recurring membership fee to join. Or to promote mastermind products and 1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching and mentoring subscriptions, you’ll need to invest in the products themselves.
An example of this kind of business is The SFM Digital Business System. The SFM offers multiple high ticket products within a product range. Each product is designed to help people learn some element of building an online business from scratch. You can join The Mentors program here and earn 100% commissions on the Mentors All In product. You’ll need to invest a monthly fee of $97 a month and pay $100 initial cost. (This comes with a 30 day money back guarantee).
For beginners setting out in affiliate marketing this is a great package including training and software. It’s all you need to get started out online. But if you’re already a seasoned affiliate and know what you’re doing, you may not want the training and support offered by the online business community if you’re already profitable.
