Recurring affiliate programs are one of the the best methods of earning a dependable income from affiliate marketing. Without them you only have single commission items. Recurring affiliate programs let you make a single sale and then benefit from continued commissions for the lifetime of your customer. For each sale you make, you can potentially make a lifetime income from the recurring affiliate commissions.
Some of the companies who offer recurring affiliate programs include:
- The Six Figure Mentors – Online Business & Marketing Mentorship
- Aweber – For email marketing
- Leadpages- For custom landing pages
- Get Response – Email marketing
- Elegant Themes – WordPress website themes
- Social Pilot – Social Media Tool
- SEM Rush – SEO tool
- Snip.ly – Conversion/opt-in tool
- Hostgator – Hosting provider
- Shopify – Online Store Builder
These companies offer commissions of 5-30% on monthly membership sales. It’s wise to have some recurring affiliate programs on offer if you really decide to go down the affiliate marketing route. You will also need to learn how to generate traffic and make sales in the first place, of course. Having the right products and business model, though, is often the last thing beginner affiliates think about.
Recurring Affiliate Programs – The Right Business Model
There are other considerations to think about too, when starting down the path as an affiliate marketer. Recurring affiliate programs are a consideration but so too are:
- High ticket products
- Back end sales
- The right training
High Ticket Products offer you the ability to make larger commissions on sales in the first instance. This means you can:
- Offset advertising costs more easily than low value items
- Scale up into larger figures more easily
- Build a realistic income more quickly
Back End Sales are similar to earnings made on recurring affiliate commissions. A recurring commission might be made on monthly membership fees. Back end sales are another way to earn from the same initial sale.
If you join a program which offers built in sales team and back end products you can benefit from commissions from later high ticket sales of up to $20,000. Back end sales are therefore another great way to increase earnings through affiliate programs.
The Right Training is probably the most important factor when it comes to building a successful online business. Even with all the right products, unless you can get the right people to these products through your online marketing efforts, you won’t even make a single sale. Knowing how to create content, advertise online and build a growing list of subscribers, you can easily struggle online.
Access a range of high ticket products and get the right training here.
Recurring Affiliate Programs Vs. Basic Affiliate Products
A recurring affiliate program is good as long as your referred customer continues to be a member of whatever company you have referred them to. They can of course leave and go elsewhere in which case you won’t continue to earn commissions.
Either way, you stand to earn far more from recurring affiliate programs than you would from selling individual affiliate products. With a basic affiliate product you only earn once for the initial sale. Most basic affiliate programs don’t offer back end sales or monthly memberships. Your earnings from that referral are therefore limited.
I wish someone had told me this years ago when I started out with affiliate marketing. I spent a lot of time selling (or trying to sell) digital products I knew nothing about. But they didn’t have a membership program and my sales stopped after the initial sale. If you refer customers to products who don’t offer recurring commissions, you only make one commission. You effectively hand over the customer to the product owner, who then goes on to make future commissions from their line of products, if they have them.
Lifetime Value Of A Customer
Most companies understand the lifetime value of a customer. As a beginner affiliate, I didn’t know about it. Making a sale was my first priority. I didn’t think any further ahead. Making a single sale of an item valued at $100 might make you $40.
This is all very exciting when starting out as an affiliate but not much good as a long term business model. By choosing products and services which you can promote online which give you commissions based on the customer’s lifetime value, you drastically increase your chances for success.
Lets say for a recurring affiliate program one of your customers pays $100 every month for their membership. You earn 40% of this as an affiliate commission or $40. Over 5 years that’s $2400 from a single sale. And as long as the customer is happy and continues to use the service, you will keep earning these commissions while you sell these memberships again and again. 10 customers would make you $24000 over the same 5 year period.
100 customers would make you $48,000 a year based on $40 a month from each commission. 100 customer x $40 a month x 12 months = $48,000 or $4000 a month.
Access a range of high ticket products which offer:
- Multiple up-sells
- Built in sales team
- Monthly commissions
- Training and education