6 Best Affiliate Programs to Make Money – See How this Mom Uses them to Earn $6,000/month
I am so excited to discuss affiliate marketing because it is truly one of the EASIEST ways to make money online. It’s not a simple process because there’s a lot of strategies that go into it, but this is what they mean when they say make money while you sleep.
Affiliate marketing is in my top 20 list of stay at home mom jobs because it does not require you to produce anything, deliver a service, be chained to the phone OR managed by the clock.
It was a pleasure to get to talk to April Lewis who is an Affiliate Strategist making up to $6,000 per month in affiliate sales. April shares with us the best affiliate programs to make money that she uses and exactly how she does it using Facebook.
I love affiliate marketing because there are so many ways you can use it.
My approach is different from April’s and I earn six figures! I talk about my approach in this video here
When you apply to Affiliate Programs many will require you to sign a W-9, instead of giving your Social Security Number be safe and apply for an EIN. It’s quick, free, and easy to do with the IRS online, you can click here to apply for an EIN.
Let’s first get started with the basics and then we’ll show you the best Affiliate Programs to make money.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is when you refer someone to a product or service online using a unique link and if they make a purchase through your link you earn a commission.
You know how you recommend different products or places to friends? Well, now you can get paid for it!
Companies want to get found in this crowded marketplace (the internet), and they need people to help spread the word about their product/service. So much that they will pay you a commission for referring people to their site that make a purchase.
How do I get a unique link?
You have to apply and become approved by the company before you can get started. Almost every company has an affiliate program nowadays.
When searching to see if a company has an affiliate program Google the “company’s name + affiliate program” and it will typically be one of the top 2 search results (if they have one).
When applying to become an affiliate they will almost ALWAYS ask if you have a website. If you don’t have a website, see my step-by-step guide on how I started this one for only $84.
Once approved, you will be given a unique link that you will use every time you reference the company.
Each company has different rules to become an affiliate, and some require a certain amount of visitors to your site each month.
Related: See how I get massive traffic using Pinterest
Affiliate Marketing works best when you have an audience that trusts you, and you promote products/services you’ve actually used.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link.
Real Life Example
April Lewis has a website and purchased ConvertKit (Email Marketing Platform) to capture leads to her site. She fell in love with the tool and signed up to be one of their affiliates (aka someone who gets a “cut” for each referral)
April receives $8.70 each time someone uses her link to purchase ConvertKit and she currently makes $600 per month from this product alone (she is involved in multiple affiliate programs).
Related: You can see how I made $500 and counting below with Milotree.
How does she use Affiliate Marketing?
Facebook Groups!
The way April promotes on Facebook is nothing short of AMAZING and has completely blown my mind on how simple it is yet I’ve never considered using Facebook this way. I wish I could tell it, but it really needs to be seen. April shares with us exactly how she does it in this Video on Social Networking.
April is no stranger to making money online, she also runs a digital marketing business and has been making money through affiliate marketing for the past two years.
Although April’s approach to Affiliate Marketing is brilliant, it’s not for everyone. If you’re looking to make $1,000+ per month using other avenues than Facebook DEFINITELY check out my absolute favorite blogger’s course Affiliate Marketing for Beginners. I have learned so much from her and she is a big reason for my blogging success.
I asked April some additional questions to help us better understand how this works.
Best Affiliate Programs (Companies April Use)?
I’m an affiliate for ConvertKit, Acuity, 17hats, Beaver Builder, Dia & Co, SunBasket, and for some masterminds and workshops that are high ticket offers.
Max here: Milotree (see below) is personally my favorite and EASIEST Affiliate programs to make money.
What social media platforms do you use?
Facebook exclusively.
Any cons to Affiliate Marketing?
It’s like a snowball, takes a bit to grow a decent sized stream, but when it does, it compounds nicely. Plus I teach my affiliate students the long game, which is content is king.
How many hours do you work a week?
The most are about 40 hours, but the average is probably around 30 hours/week. Sometimes even much less… depends on the season and if I’m growing a new initiative or income stream.
Any additional advice you’d like to provide for people wanting to get started?
I have a few different freebies that could help and a few different courses. They can all be found here: https://aprildlewis.com/made-easy-academy/.
I’d like to thank April for helping us better understand Affiliate Marketing through Facebook. For more information on April and her business, you can check it out at www.aprildlewis.com.
I’ve personally made $500 with Milotree and it increases almost daily.
I get so many followers with this pop-up that I wrote about here. Bloggers who want the same results sign up using my affiliate link and I get $20 per sign up AND I also get paid if someone clicks on the pop-up and makes a purchase even if they never read my article. I explain more in detail here but it is by far the EASIEST affiliate program to make money.
This is how Affiliate Marketing works. You find products that work for you, show others the value of it and you both win when they purchase through your affiliate link.
Related: How to Get Organic Followers Quickly
Affiliate Marketing can be done in a variety of ways. A lot of people use their blog and email list to promote different products and services or like April, just Facebook.
Here are some little-known ways to find out what affiliate programs your competition is using
Strike Out No Follow Links is a free Google Chrome extension that helps you figure out what Affiliate links your competition is using (or that’s at least why I use it) as long as they aren’t using a plug-in like Pretty Links or a plug-in that makes all of their links no-follow, but I can show you how to get around that also.
By downloading this Google Chrome extension it will automatically cross out any link that is a no-follow link (see example in the screenshot below) for any site you visit.
You see how Milotree is crossed out? That’s my affiliate link and it’s crossed out because I made it a no-follow link. This is also a good tool to use if you want to Guest post on a blog and see if they allow do-follow links (which you want) by looking at previous Guest post articles.
If someone is using a tool like Pretty Links you can tell if it’s an affiliate link when you hover over the hyperlink with your mouse on your desktop and see their domain name followed by whatever word they chose in the lower left-hand corner of your screen.
For example, I used the Pretty Links tool in this post. See what happens when I hover over “Fanatics”? If you look at the url in the bottom left-hand corner, you can see how I disguised the affiliate link url using Pretty Links. This is another little-known way to find out what affiliate program your competitors is using.
I hope you enjoyed this article, and if you liked this content be sure to subscribe to our mailing list for more content like this!
Have you considered Affiliate Marketing or do you do it now? Share your experience.
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Your blogpost is really helping, I’ll go for ConvertKit this time. MailerLite(Email marketting plateform) is also a good affiliate source.
Thank You
Thank you, I’ve heard great things about MailerLite as well.
This is really helpful! I love ConvertKit, and plan to use it again. Never thought of using Facebook as an affiliate promotion tool. I usually just use Pinterest(as most of my traffic comes from there).
Same here! I only use Pinterest but will start using Facebook as well.
Awesome post! I never thought of using Facebook. Do you think it would be smart to try Facebook if you’re still building a following? Just asking for my … friend lol. Thanks in advance 🙂
Lol You can definitely use Facebook now. If you watched her video you see that she uses Facebook groups, not her personal account so your following doesn’t matter. Hope that helps.
Nice information
Thank you!
I just started trying to up my affiliate marketing game. I scored my first sponsored pay-per-click post but am having a hard time getting people to click on my link. Any suggestions?
What’s your website? I’ll take a look at it and email my recommendations.
Awesome post. Really very helpfull for me .
Thank you! I’m glad it was helpful 🙂
This post has blown my mind that evn with a single product one can earn that huge amount.
Anyway Nice post and I liked April’s Freebies.
Thanks
Thank you glad you found this information helpful!
Hi Max,
I am a new blogger, it’s been around 8 months blogging and now i have built a good number of traffic and following that i need to get into affiliate marketing. Can i get some guide on which program i should go for that won’t make things complex for me a lot in beginning? Like so many on engine available I found this revglue company from UK which is 100& commission for affiliates and free affiliate CMS plugins(wordpress) ….. should i go for that or should i just keep searching or maybe you can suggest me something. I’ll try to link you with that tool list of theirs revglue(.)com/free-wordpress-plugins any sort of guide is appreciated.
I actually just updated this article with ways to find out what affiliate programs your competition is using. I recommend finding your affliate programs that way because if your competitors are using it, you know that it’s at least somewhat legitimate. Take a look at the bottom of this article and see if that helps.
A very informative post. Appreciated! I’m going to try your style here.
Thank you!
Stay at home mom looking to make some extra cash. I’m not overly experienced in the techi world. Can I do this without a blog and/or a website?
You certainly can but for most affiliate programs they like to see that you have a website, so I do highly suggest if you want to get into Affiliate Marketing you start a website. I’m not very techy either, I had NO experience starting a blog but through a lot of trial and error I figured it out and what once seemed so difficult is now easy.
Thank you for great post. I read you articles and found them really helpful especially for beginners looking for help.
I got here looking for guidance as well, was searching articles on affiliate marketing and ended up here. As a new blogger i am grateful for all the information i got and can get.
I am trying to make some money from blogging as well but the competition is on rise and it is tough just working with adsense alone.
Hope you can help me with some relevant question, i would like to ask you about affiliate programs, you even mentioned and discussed some a little too.
Thing is I want to integrate with this monetizing method too but i am having some hard time choosing an program that suits my need.
There are so many out there in the market but so many different policies and rules, some do not accept new comers and some are just too complex to work with as starter.
My content is based on multi niches products and that being that i need multiple niche product feed too so if you can suggest me something that would be great I will really appreciate it.
Hi Henry. First off, thank you! I agree, relying on Google adsense to make money is tough especially if the traffic is not there. Affiliate marketing is definitely the way to go. I like to use Affiliate Marketing by writing about helpful products or courses. Show the value and then tell the readers why it can help them too. If the product/service can really help the reader they will more than likely make a purchase through your link. When looking for what affiliate programs you should apply to study your competition and use the tools in this article to see what links are affiliate links and consider applying for those programs. I had a couple of programs that did not accept me in the beginning but as my traffic increased I applied later and got accepted. So don’t get discouraged, just keep working on increasing your traffic so that you can apply again. I hope that helps.
Can I just say what a relief to find someone who actually knows what theyre talking about on the internet. You definitely know how to bring an issue to light and make it important. More people need to read this and understand this side of the story. I cant believe youre not more popular because you definitely have the gift.
Thank you, I really appreciate it!
I am nearing retirement and don’t understand a lot about what I can do online. I’m on Facebook and Pinterest, but don’t get how to make money. I need to know more.
I recently wrote a post on a number of ways you can make money from home and even into retirement that explains more here https://triedandtruemomjobs.com/make-money-from-home/
I would love to try my hand at affiliate marketing, however, I don’t want to blog so what other type of website can I start…….any suggestions?
You can use social media outlets to promote products and when they click on your affiliate link you can make a purchase. That’s a way to do it without starting a blog.
Hi Max,
I like your post. I’m trying to automate my opportunities for finding affiliates truly interested in long term commissions. What would you suggest?
Cheers, Warren
I’m not sure how you can automate your opportunities for finding affiliates, are you in any Facebook blogging groups? I use them all the time for resources. You can ask them if they know of any, I highly recommend joining the BTOP Ultimate Blogging group
There is so much great info in this post! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you!
This was really informative. I’m still not clear on what exactly the no follow tag means. Should I be looking to remove it from my links? Is there a way to do any of this without WP plugins? My site isn’t on WP. I’m both a little confused and intrigued.
Thanks for any answers.
Hi Cynthia, I’m really not sure. Unfortunately, I only know WordPress but you could certainly contact whatever platform you’re on and ask. They should be able to help.
Love the post Max, great content!
Thank you!
Can I ask you what plugin you use for the no follow on your WordPress. I’m not finding a “good”/”recommended” one.
I use the Rel Nofollow Checkbox plug-in for my site.
Hi Max! Thank you for the great information that you share. Do you have an email list?
No problem, yes! you can sign up here https://www.subscribepage.com/TTMJ
Hey Max, can I apply for Affiliate Programs even if I don’t live in the US? what about the EIN? I live in North Africa. Thanks in advance.
EIN is probably for U.S. only. You should definitely be able to apply to different affiliate programs outside of the U.S. as long as the company does business outside of the U.S.
Affiliate marketing can be really profitable, but it takes time to build up a quality website.
For anyone starting with affiliate marketing, I recommend learning a lot about SEO first.
Great tips on affiliate links. May I know where to download a no follow plug-in for affiliate link if I’m not using WordPress?
I’m not sure if there is one unfortunately.