Twenty-Seven of the Best SEO, Marketing, Design and Blogging Related Products that have Affiliate Programs
If you want to monetize your blog or website effectively it's time to look into promoting on-topic products from other companies
We run down a list of 27 strictly top-tier high-quality marketing, SEO, design and blogging related services and products that offer affiliate programs. Not only giving you the opportunity to add value for your readers/customers by referring them to solid products that could help their blog or website become more successful, but also the opportunity to realize a potentially very lucrative new income stream for your own blog or website
Let's face it, monetizing your blog is hard-work, anyone that says otherwise is either lying or is one of those rare super-gifted types that just seem do everything without even trying. It wasn't always like that, in the past it was easier, as long as you had a decent amount of traffic you could just stick up AdSense and watch the moolah roll in, but AdSense doesn't pay-out liked it used to and getting a decent amount of traffic isn't as easy as it used to be either with the increasing amount of professionally run and highly-funded blogs vying for people's attention (and wallets).
Note: As the title suggests, this article is for people who blog about blogging itself (particularly blogging for profit), SEO, digital marketing, web design and similar related subjects, if you don't fall into one of those categories you probably won't be interested in the affiliate programs mentioned, but you still might be interested in the services themselves which have been picked for their value-of-use and quality.
Nowadays most successful bloggers make money in one of two ways; selling their own product or service, or referring readers to on-topic products by other companies and earning commissions in the the process (affiliate marketing). We're not covering the first type in this list (not because there is anything wrong with that method, but because it's such a vast subject we decided it deserves its own article), instead we are laser focused on affiliate marketing opportunities specifically for people who blog about marketing, SEO, and blogging itself; i.e. products and services with affiliate programs that actually add value for the readership of such blogs—we have carefully compiled a list of 27 such paid tools and services that we deemed very high quality and worthwhile in terms of ROI—which is crucial unless you want to lose credibility and subscribers—in fact these services are the sort you might consider using yourself to maximize your own (or clients') blog traffic and leads, but that's not the focus of this article otherwise we would have listed the plenty of other solid tools out their that don't offer affiliate programs; instead we've listed only high-quality tools/services with solid affiliate programs and fair to excellent pay-out structures, giving you the opportunity to monetize your blog using a well-proven and potentially—for you as it it for others—highly lucrative method.
In the list we have included the commission structure for each affiliate program in the description; but keep in mind some programs have complex commission structures that we've done are best to paraphrase but we might have missed out qualifying details, also consider commission structures are liable to change (although we will try keep the list updated and accurate), therefore we don't guarantee 100% accuracy and you should double-check the payout structure yourself before joining any affiliate program.
Finally, in no special order, here is the actual list of top-tier blogging, SEO, design and marketing related products and services with affiliate programs:
High Quality Email Marketing and Opt-in Products with Affiliate Programs
OptinMonster—OptinMonster is a tool, that has featured on Forbes, HuffPost, Inc. magazine among other places, designed to help grow your email list. Features include: drag and drop form builder designed with high-conversion rates in mind; lots of opt-in form options: timed pop-ins, floating-bars, scroll triggered and mobile specific opt-in forms; page-level behaviour personalization; a/b testing; and a reports dashboard. At time of writing their affiliate program offers a 20% (non-recurring) commission per sale.
AWeber—AWeber, chances are you've probably already heard them, is a top-tier heavy-weight email marketing tool that has been around a long time but still keeps up with marketing trends and opportunities by constantly adding to their feature set. It is ideal for small-businesses who don't want to manage the time-consuming technical aspects of handling email newsletters and marketing in-house. Key features include: auto-responders; easy integration with tons of major platforms such as Wordpress, Facebook, PayPal, Salesforce and Shopify; mobile ready sign up forms and email templates; and "industry leading deliverability." At time of writing their affiliate program offers a 30% recurring lifetime commission structure.
MadMimi—Mad Mimi is email hosted newsletter management solution, with an elegant and beautiful interface, that makes it easy to create, send, share and track email newsletters. Key features include: easy integration with CRM and Social networks; ready made email templates and web-forms; and "A+ Deliverability." At time of writing their affiliate program offers a 25% recurring lifetime commission structure.
High Quality Social Media Management Products with Affiliate Programs
Agora Pulse—Agora Pulse is Social Media Management platform that allows you to manage your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts all from one place. Features include ability to run custom contests and promotions using ready-made templates, customizable ready-made Facebook apps to add your Facebook page, benchmark reports against competitors, fan ranking and qualification, advanced statistics and personalized content recommendations. At time of writing their affiliate program pays out a 20% lifetime revenue share on referred sign ups.
BuzzBundle—BuzzBundle is a feature-rich Social Media Management Application for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Similar to HootSuite, it allows you to save time by managing multiple social media profiles from one place. You can quickly post to multiple social media accounts at once and keep tabs on all your social mentions and interactions all from one place. It supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube blogs and even forum posts. At time of writing their affiliate program offers a 33% non-recurring commission on sales.
Heyo—Heyo is a service that makes boosting traffic by running mobile-friendly Facebook contests and promotions a breeze. They offer easily customizable ready my multi-device friendly templates and widgets that you can and publish via their interface, all done without any coding needed. Everything about their product is designed to increase virality and engagement. Their affiliate program offers a flat payment structure of $100 for every customer you refer to them.
High Quality SEO Tools & Services with Affiliate Programs
UpCity—UpCity is a local inbound marketing solution for agencies, to help them generate traffic for their clients via SEO, local and social marketing. It includes automation, reputation management, lead generation and social content management tools. They also offer white-labelled reports and dashboards. At time of writing they offer 20% lifetime recurring commissions on referred sign-ups.
RankPay—RankPay is a SEO Service with a difference, they only charge you if you rank in at-least the top 30 (at time of writing) for your chosen keywords (based on a tier system, with price going up the higher you are ranked). Given how surprisingly low their prices our for such a service one can only assume the they have plenty of confidence in their ability to deliver or else they'd be spending a lot of time promoting sites for no pay. At time of writing their commission structure is 10% monthly recurring of customer's lifetime investment.
SpyFu—SpyFu is a tool that allows you to tap into your competitors' keyword strategies and find their most profitable organic and paid keywords and most profitable PPC ad copies. They've been featured on Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post among other places. At time of writing they offer 45.00% (non-recurring) commission per sale.
Scribe—A tool that offers "Superior Content Creation" by aiding in content research, analysing your content to offer optimization suggestions, and finding potential on-topic partner sites for link building and cross promotion purposes. At time of writing offers 33% recurring monthly commissions.
SEO PowerSuite—SEO PowerSuite is a very-comprehensive and powerful software package that allows you to track your search engine rankings, audit and analyse the SEO factors of your website, monitor and manage your link-building, perform keyword research, and analyse and break-down your competitors' linking strategy. It also provides insights and actionable blueprints to improve your rankings based on the collected data. SEO PowerSuite is downloadable software as opposed to a hosted solution. At time of writing their affiliate program offers a 33% non-recurring commission on sales.
High Quality CRM Software Solutions with Affiliate Programs
Nutshell—an elegant and easy to use CRM tool that automates your sales funnels, reporting, lead distribution, and other important tasks; and allows you to easily interact with your team and see their activity. Includes integration with lots of top-tier tools; such as Google Apps, MailChimp, Olark, Twitter, WuFoo, ZenDesk and more. At time of writing they offer $30.00 per lead.
InfusionSoft—InfusionSoft is a small biz CRM that's easy to use and feature packed. It allows you to manage contacts, schedule tasks, identify hot leads, automate personalised follow-ups, and much more. They also share video tutorials to help build your list and exclusive InfusionSoft market research results. They've featured on Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, among other places. Their basic affiliate commission structure pays up to $500 per sale but they also offer higher tier programs for trained/certified partners which pay more still and offer the chance to earn recurring commissions.
High Quality Premium Wordpress Themes and Frameworks with Affiliate Programs
SEO Design Framework—Is a highly SEO'd modern responsive Wordpress theme with lots of features and easy GUI based customization. At time of writing the affiliate scheme pays out 35% of first purchase.
Yosemite—is another excellent SEO'd modern responsive Wordpress theme with lots of features and easy GUI based customization. At time of writing the affiliate scheme pays out 70% of first purchase.
Thesis Theme—Another excellent SEO friendly theme that's very popular among bloggers and offers a high level of GUI based customization. At the time of writing offers 33% on all referred sales.
StudioPress/Genesis Framework—Described as the "best of the best" among premium WordPress theme frameworks, the SEO'd Genesis framework/theme (and multiple themes built on it that are offered by StudioPress) is responsive, elegant, very fast, and ideal for people who want a clean-coded base to create their own themes. At time of writing offers 35% commision on sales and 5% two-tier program on Affiliates you refer.
ElegantThemes—ElegantThemes as the name suggest offer beautiful and elegant looking Wordpress themes (87 at the time of writing). To download a theme you have to be a paid member (paid per year or lifetime membership), which then gives you access to all the themes. At time of writing they offer 50% non-recurring commission on all sales.
High Quality Content Marketing and Creation Products with Affiliate Programs
BoostSuite—BoostSuite is a co-marketing platform for small biz. By contributing content you get your message carried on other on-topic publishers across the web. Earning traffic, quality inbound links, and new content for your site in the process. At time of writing they offer 25% commission on all referred sales.
BlogEngage Blog Management Services—BlogEngage Blog Management Services offer a paid blog post-creation service; for a fixed fee monthly fee they will research and write quality content posts for your blog and market them as well. The number of posts ranges from one per to five per week depending on subscription level. At time of writing they offer a 25% commission (non-recurring as far as I can tell) for each sale you deliver.
Scribe—A tool that offers "Superior Content Creation" by aiding in content research, analysing your content to offer optimization suggestions, and finding potential on-topic partner sites for link building and cross promotion purposes. At time of writing offers 33% recurring monthly commissions.
High Quality Stock Photo, Graphics and Vector Websites with Affiliate Programs
VectorStock—VectorStock is a New Zealand-based site specialising in providing high quality stock vector images, icons, backgrounds, symbols, illustrations, logos and design elements. Their library, which is added to regularly, has 60+ categories containing 200,000+ images in total. At time of writing their affiliate scheme pays out %20 on of the first sale for new sign ups.
PhotoDune—A marketplace offering HQ photos starting at $1. It's not clear how many photos they have in their library but since they charge on a per-photo basis this isn't a big deal. All the photos on their site appear to very high quality and you often here them mentioned by bloggers as a go-to source for when they need that perfect photo for their blog post. At time of writing their affiliate scheme pays out 30% on first sale.
Shutterstock—Probably one of the most well known stock photography websites. They offer over 50 million stock photos, vectors and also video and audio tracks. Their commission structure isn't very clear on their site, it simply states that they offer "20% on qualifying purchases - up to $300 each."
Other High Quality Products and Services with Affiliate Programs
Google Apps for Work—Offers for-business tailored versions of Google Mail, Calandar, Drive, Docs, Spreadsheets, et cetera. At time of writing pays out £10 for every sign up.
Olark—Olark is easy drop-in widget and combined server that allows customers to live chat with your company on your website, giving you an opportunity to learn what your prospects want to know in order to get them to buy, potentially saving leads who would have left otherwise. It's a great way to discover where you're going wrong so you can tailor your marketing better in the future. If no company rep is available Olark will prompt them to leave a message so you can back to them, so you don't need to worry about it being monitored 24/7. Finally, adding Olark to your site is super-easy, just paste in the block of code provided and your customer chat box is live. At time of writing their commision structure offers 25% revenue share for the life of the referred account.
PSD2HTML—PSD2HTML will convert your Photoshop page designs into functional XHTML and CSS pages along with adding relevant Javascript. Their resulting designs are made to be compatible with all modern browsers and devices. They also offer a service to convert your design into a Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento or Shopify theme. At time of writing their base commission structure ranges from 7% to 20% on sales and can go up to 20% - 35% depending on referral numbers and sales type.
We hope you found this list top-tier digital marketing, SEO, design, and blogging affiliate programs useful (it took longer to compile than you probably think especially since not all services advertise their affiliate programs on their site; or maybe we are secretly just lazy and disorganized, who knows?). If you think we missed off any utterly-essential product or services please let us know. Please remember to share this list on social media, it only takes a second or two and it means a lot to us.
P.S. If, like us, you have tons off affiliate sites and other web-based dashboards you regularly need to check, you might find our SiteLauncher, Firefox and Chrome extension useful as way to organize and access them quickly, it's totally free and you can group related sites together to keep things organized.
P.P.S. Finally, to celebrate your new found affiliate marketing success we thought a song was in order:
