Affiliate programs are some of the most popular online marketing tools, and the same is true for WordPress affiliate programs: product creators can get free initial advertising and pay out only on performance and product promoters can get paid to recommend great products.
WordPress affiliate programs work very simply: you promote products on your blog, social media and/or email list using a unique link and if readers click your link and buy the product within a certain number of days (typically 30 to 60), you get a percentage share of the revenue.
The WordPress ecosystem has no shortage of great WordPress affiliate programs, but this world can be difficult to navigate, the ethics unclear and the whole setup is uncomfortable for some. How do you navigate through this and find the best proven WordPress affiliate programs, the best ways of managing and the best ways of promoting these?
We showed you how to monetize a blog in a previous article and this post will lift back the curtain on affiliate marketing. We’ll first look at the semantics of affiliate programs and then move on to how you should choose which products to promote, the most effective promotion methods and finally, some of the best programs to join. By the end of this post you’ll have a clear understanding of how the best WordPress affiliate programs work – and how you can take advantage of them.
📚 Table of contents:
- How should you approach promoting WordPress affiliate programs?
- Affiliate ethics and disclosures
- Affiliate programs for: WordPress themes, WordPress plugins, WordPress marketplaces, WordPress hosting, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Security and maintenance, WordPress resources and education, Email marketing, Website images, Miscellaneous
- Bonus: WordPress plugins to help manage your affiliate promotions
We’ve even included some performance notes from CodeinWP’s/ThemeIsle’s experience with these affiliate programs. Although we can’t hand out our data for privacy reasons, we’re happy to share which affiliate programs are our top performers, so keep an eye out for those!
How should you approach promoting WordPress affiliate programs?
Let’s first look at how this is going to work in practice for you. In other words, once you choose the WordPress affiliate programs you want to promote, how should you go about doing the promotion?
We’ll assume going forwards you have a blog and perhaps an email list and social media to support the blog. All of the content types fit nicely into this mould, regardless of the actual niche your blog sits in. Let’s first look at some general rules for creating blog posts which aim to promote WordPress affiliate programs:
- High quality content is the most important thing: you must always follow the rules for well researched, well written and well formatted blog posts. This means using and spending time with the product you’re promoting. It should be immediately clear to the reader that you are an authority on the product and topic at hand.
- Promotional content must be a good fit: any affiliate content needs to be in line with your usual content. Both your readers and Google will frown upon anything else. A post about SEO tools would look out-of-place on your philosophy blog, and the same applies to WordPress products. Only promote products which are a good fit.
- Tailor the content to your audience: think about how you can best relate the products you’re promoting to the topic of your blog and the interests of the people who read it. For example, if a food blog wanted to promote WordPress themes, you could write “How to Start a Food Blog” and include theme details – rather than just publishing “10 Best WordPress Themes for 2018”.
- Take SEO seriously: you don’t have to get too deep into the weeds on this. Just make sure you’ve done your due diligence on SEO research. This involves finding relevant keywords your blog post can target (use this tool to help), following SEO best practices when writing and tracking your rankings after. It can also be helpful to think about what questions the reader would be asking whilst you’re writing. You don’t have to become an expert, but make sure you do the basics right.
These general rules will make sure your affiliate promotional content is both well suited to your blog and audience and is actually effective. Effectiveness is, after all, very important here: a downside of WordPress affiliate programs is that all the risk is transferred onto you and if you don’t make any sales you’re not going to make a return or even cover the cost of your time.
With the general rules for affiliate content creation covered, let’s now look at the four types of post you can do in order to promote WordPress affiliate programs:
Product reviews:
In-depth reviews of the product you’re promoting. What are the pros and cons of the product? How does it work in practice? What have you been able to do with the product? Answer these questions, include screenshots and you’ll have the outline of a great review that’s useful to readers.
Roundups of a category of products:
These are highly effective affiliate posts, as they allow you to include multiple products in a single post. You should include plenty of screenshots and a short description of each product.
Behind the scenes posts of your blog:
Humans are curious creatures, and “behind the scenes” posts of how you’re running your blog are fantastic tools for fulfilling that curiosity – and promoting products you use on your site.
Recommendations in your usual posts:
This final one is great for those looking to more subtly promote WordPress affiliate programs, but note it’s likely to be less effective as a result. These recommendations will work best when the product is relevant to the topic in hand.
With these guidelines and specifics in place, it’s really just a case of cracking on and creating the quality content which is going to get your affiliate links in front of people! Let’s now move on to look at the murky aspects of affiliate marketing which can hold people back – and how they can be reconciled.
Affiliate ethics and disclosures
You will need to make an important decision when deciding which products to promote: do you promote products you personally use or do you promote products with the highest commissions? This is a key dilemma in affiliate marketing and something which, when unsolved, puts a lot of people off taking advantage of the revenue stream.
These are, however, very much solvable problems. If authenticity is extremely important to you, then only promote products which you use and would recommend even without the affiliate link. If you authenticity is important to you but you want to make some money, consider switching to the products you’re planning to promote. If you want to err on the side of money, then go for the products with the highest commissions. Do whatever you’re comfortable with.
It’s also very important to think about disclosure. Guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) state you must clearly disclose your affiliate relationships on your blog in a way which can be easily noticed by readers. This means you need to make it very clear to readers from the outset that if they click the links in your post and purchase, you’ll get a commission. Note that having the disclosure after the post or on a separate page is considered inadequate; your disclosure must be clear and available before a reader starts looking at the post. The FTC guidelines apply to all websites promoting to US citizens – so if your site has US readers (it almost certainly does) you should comply.
Finally, a note about product reviews: these should be done honestly, thoroughly and fairly for products you’ve personally used and without the affiliate commission in mind when writing. Focus on the product review, and not the affiliate commission. Gushing about a poor quality product which your readers buy on the basis of your recommendation will hurt trust between you and your readers. Whilst in the short-term you may lose out on commissions, readers will know that when you do recommend a product it must be good and you can be trusted.
Okay, with all that said, let’s now list some of the best WordPress affiliate programs in the market … more than 30 of then, to be exact:
Here are the top affiliate programs for WordPress:
- Affiliate programs for WordPress themes
- Affiliate programs for WordPress plugins
- Affiliate programs for WordPress marketplaces
- Affiliate programs for WordPress hosting
- Affiliate programs for content delivery networks
- Affiliate programs for security and maintenance
- Affiliate programs for WordPress courses and education
- Affiliate programs for email marketing
- Affiliate programs for website images
- Miscellaneous affiliate programs
WordPress themes
Elegant Themes affiliate program
Elegant Themes is a very popular WordPress company working on a membership model, with 87 themes and six plugins. They are best known as the developers of the multi-purpose Divi theme. Their affiliate scheme is another solid option – Elegant Themes pay their affiliates a whopping $3 million every year.
In our experience, Elegant Themes is hands down our top performer when it comes to affiliate programs for WordPress. Not only does it convert well with first-time customers, but Elegant Themes tends to retain over half of its customers – and as they pay commission on renewals, that means you can earn from their affiliate scheme for years to come.
Affiliate commissions: 50% on all sales, plus renewal commissions
Product prices: memberships start at $67/year
Payment threshold: $200
Cookie duration: 180 days
Click for more details
Themeisle affiliate program
This is our own Themeisle affiliate program. With over 30 awesome themes and ten premium plugins (plus plenty of add-ons), ThemeIsle is one of the most popular WordPress clubs around, and one of the fastest growing theme stores on the market.
Customers pay a yearly fee, then receive full access to the entire Themeisle collection. From a customer’s perspective, this represents exceptional value; from an affiliate marketer’s perspective, the program is a reliable converter. Taking an objective view, our data shows that Themeisle is one of – if not the – best affiliate program for freemium themes. Plus, high price points at the top levels represent a seriously lucrative offering.
Affiliate commissions: 55%
Product prices: sales range from $69-$299
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 90 days
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StudioPress affiliate program
As home of the Genesis Framework, StudioPress has become one of the best-known theme developers currently operating. High quality products, high-priced packages mean you’ll find no shortage of great products to promote. Endorsing their Pro Plus Package at $499.95 could net you $174.98 per sale.
Affiliate commissions: 35%
Product prices: sales range from $59.95-$499.95
Payment threshold: $200
Cookie duration: 60 days
Click for more details
CSS Igniter affiliate program
CSS Igniter offers templates for almost any type of website, and the diversity of pricing options make this a great option for varied referrals. “All Access” Lifetime package comes in at $249, meaning you can earn $99.60 per commission.
Affiliate commissions: 40%
Product prices: sales range from $49-$249
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: N/A
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Themify affiliate program
Themify is a quality theme shop, stocking 52 beautifully crafted WordPress themes. They are also well known for their excellent Themify Builder plugin. Customers will find dedicated eCommerce, corporate, and restaurant themes. Our data shows that Themify is a reliable converter, too, and thus one of the top affiliate programs for WordPress.
Affiliate commissions: 40%
Product prices: memberships start at $59/year
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 60 days
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MyThemeShop affiliate program
MyThemeShop offers the largest affiliate commissions in the WordPress world – a whopping 55%. To date, they offer 85 premium WordPress themes, 13 premium plugins, and a club membership. Based on the experiences on our blogs, MyThemeShop is one of the better-converting affiliate programs for WordPress.
Affiliate commissions: 55%
Product prices: single membership costs $69/year
Payment threshold: no minimum payout
Cookie duration: 60 days
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TeslaThemes affiliate program
Not only does TeslaThemes offer a substantial 30% commission for every sale, but you also earn 15% commission from any sales generated by affiliates you recruit to the program yourself. This second tier makes it one of the best WordPress affiliate programs in terms of generating passive income. Top-end themes are at a slightly lower price point than its competitors, but at 50% you still stand to make $99.50 per commission on top-end sales.
Affiliate commissions: 30%
Product prices: sales range from $79-$199
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 90 days
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TemplateMonster affiliate program
TemplateMonster is a world-known veteran of the web design industry with over 14 years of experience. They offer templates for all the most popular CMS and eCommerce platforms, as well as HTML templates, WordPress themes, landing pages, ready-made brand identities, and more.
Their affiliate program features a transparent plan for commission rate increase starting from 30% up to 50% for each sale.
Affiliate commissions: up to 30% for each sale
Product prices: join from $13.25/mo.
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 60 days
Click for more details
Apollo13 Themes affiliate program
Apollo13 are the creators of Rife, the creative WordPress theme with pre-made designs, ready to import easily with one click, and lots of options to customize. The theme is available in monthly and yearly payment with 14 days of free trial..
Apollo13 offers 25% commision for their Rife theme, which is renewed every year. It just means that, if the customer extends the subscription for another year, you can earn 25% again from the same client. A good strategy to earn money in the long run.
Affiliate commissions: 25% + renewal commissions
Product prices: sales range from $39/monthly – 219$/yearly
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 90 days
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Themeum affiliate program
Themeum is a nice WordPress theme shop providing a modern and user-friendly collection of themes for all purposes. Most of their templates are optimized for the block editor and integrated with WP Page Builder – Themeum’s own drag-and-drop page building plugin.
Customers can purchase the company’s themes and plugins either in bundles (via their club membership plans) or as single products. The affiliate program comes with attractive offerings such as lifetime recurring earnings, real-time tracking, dedicated affiliate support, and hassle-free transactions.
Affiliate commissions: 30% on all sales (with recurring benefits)
Product prices: ranges from $79 to $199
Payment threshold: no payout limit
Cookie duration: 90 days
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SuperbThemes affiliate program
SuperbThemes is an online shop that creates themes focused on SEO optimization, page speed, and responsiveness. If you want to build affiliate websites or blogs, SuperbThemes is the place to look into. Their themes are updated monthly to make sure they follow the latest SEO and code trends.
The shop has more than 35 quality products available, in the form of both plugins and themes. Nordic companies are famous for their beautiful and minimal design; SuperbThemes are no exception when it comes to that.
Affiliate commissions: 60%
Product prices: $69-$149
Payment threshold: $200
Cookie duration: 30 days
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PremiumCoding affiliate program
With PremiumCoding affiliate program, you can go very niche-specific, promoting creative and modern WordPress blog themes. Of course, this is not the only type of themes they offer, but it’s the category they focus on the most.
PremiumCoding is a growing WordPress theme shop that keeps releasing simplistic, easy-to-use, and attention-grabbing themes on a regular basis. A user can either choose to purchase individual themes or sign up to yearly or lifetime plans. The latter two give a member instant access to 30+ cutting-edge themes that cover different industries out of the box.
Affiliate commissions: 40%-50%
Product prices: sales range from $86-$190
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 90 days
Click for more details
WordPress plugins
Beaver Builder affiliate program
Beaver Builder lets you build gorgeous custom layouts, without the coding know-how (check out our comparison). It ships with loads of stylish templates, nearly 30 powerful modules, and supports front-end editing so that you can build your website in real-time. Beaver Builder is one of our top-converting plugins, too.
Affiliate commissions: 25%, including renewals
Product prices: from $99
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 60 days
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MemberPress affiliate program
MemberPress is a big name in the WordPress membership website industry. The plugin lets its users restrict access to premium content and charge for memberships using one of the PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net payment gateways.
Affiliate commissions: 25%
Product prices: prices from $179.50/year
Payment threshold: no minimum payout
Cookie duration: 60 days
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CSS Hero affiliate program
Love your WordPress theme but want to make cosmetic tweaks? Don’t know CSS? Then that’s exactly why you need CSS Hero. This fantastic plugin is super-easy to use and lets you customize any part of your website in real-time.
Affiliate commissions: 40%
Product prices: plans from $19/year
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 90 days
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WPForms affiliate program
One of the most powerful, user-friendly WordPress form plugins, WPForms is a great tool to promote if your blog comes down more heavily on the plugin than the theme side.
While the commission rate is much lower than our other top picks, remember that picking the right affiliate program for you is more important than simply the highest-paying plan – and with a top-end price of $299.50, you still stand to make $59.90 per referral.
Affiliate commissions: 20%
Product prices: sales range from $49-299
Payment threshold: no minimum payout
Cookie duration: 45 days
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WeDevs affiliate program
A lesser-known plugin developer up next: WeDevs. Don’t underestimate them, though. They develop some of the hidden gems of the WordPress world. My favorite of their plugins is WP Project Manager, which lets WordPress users – most notably freelancers – manage their entire business from the WordPress dashboard.
Affiliate commissions: 20%
Product prices: from $49
Payment threshold: $200
Cookie duration: 30 days
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Elementor affiliate program
Elementor is a premium page builder for WordPress, easy to use and offering perfect compatibility with any theme or page. Install it on top of your current WordPress theme and start customizing. If you want to switch designs, you won’t lose any of the layouts and templates built with Elementor.
With nearly a million downloads and counting, Elementor gives you a free hand in creating landing pages, homepages, posts, portfolios, products, carousels, social pages … you name it. No coding skills required!
Affiliate commissions: 50%
Product prices: from $59
Payment threshold: no minimum payout
Cookie duration: 90 days
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Barn2 Media affiliate program
Barn2 Media is one of the top WordPress agencies, based in the UK. Their affiliate program pays a generous commission on sales of their range of premium WordPress plugins.
Signup is free and takes less than 1 minute, with instant approval. This means you can start earning straight away through your own easy-to-use dashboard. Barn2 Media provides you with links and banners, but you are free to promote their plugins in other ways, including designing your own banners. They offer 30-day return cookies, meaning you will still get paid even if the customer ends up buying later, and they pay commission on a monthly basis with no minimum payouts.
Affiliate commissions: 30%
Product prices: $55 – $75
Payment threshold: no threshold
Cookie duration: 30 days
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LiveChat affiliate program
LiveChat is a cloud-based messaging app and help desk software desired for online sales and customer support. As one of the market leaders, LiveChat currently helps over 26.000 companies in 150 countries.
Joining the LiveChat Partner Program gives you access to unique discounts, a handful of promotional resources, and affiliate marketing knowledge. You’ll also receive a dedicated account manager to help you get started.
Affiliate commissions: 22%
Product prices: price range starts at 20$/mo.
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 120 days
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WordPress marketplaces
Envato affiliate program
When it comes to WordPress marketplaces, one name dominates above all others: Envato, the parent company responsible for seven popular marketplaces. You will definitely be familiar with their biggest two marketplaces: ThemeForest, which stocks over 6,500 WordPress themes, and CodeCanyon, with 4,000+ WordPress plugins.
With so many products to recommend, Envato is as close to a guaranteed converter as it’s possible to get – probably why they pay over $3 million to affiliates every year. We can vouch for this from our experiences promoting Envato products on our blogs! Certainly among the top WordPress affiliate programs.
Affiliate commissions: 30% on initial purchases
Product prices: themes typically cost around $50; plugins around $20
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 30 days
Click for more details
Mojo Themes affiliate program
Mojo Themes is another impressive WordPress theme marketplace, with a respectable 1,200+ themes on sale. They also stock dedicated Joomla, eCommerce, and Tumblr themes.
Affiliate commissions: 30% on initial purchases
Product prices: themes typically cost around $50; plugins around $20
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 30 days
Click for more details
WordPress hosting
WP Engine affiliate program
WP Engine is the biggest name in managed WordPress hosting. Their plans are a little pricier than the shared hosting services available, but WP Engine guarantees lightning quick speeds and top-quality customer service.
Affiliate commissions: $200 or 100% of first month’s payment (whichever is higher)
Product prices: plans from $13/month
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 180 days
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Flywheel affiliate program
Flywheel is another exceptional managed WordPress hosting option, with blazing-fast speeds and a knowledgeable team of WordPress experts on hand to resolve any problems you might encounter. A top-quality service with an affordable price tag.
Affiliate commissions: 300% of the first month’s payment on any plan, up to $500 per referral source
Product prices: plans from $13/month
Payment threshold: no minimum payout
Cookie duration: 90 days
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HostGator affiliate program
Although not everyone’s cup of tea, HostGator is undoubtedly one of the biggest players in the shared hosting game. Their low prices make them particularly attractive to newbie webmasters, ensuring their affiliate scheme converts consistently well.
Affiliate commissions: progressive commission rates between $50 and $125/referral
Product prices: plans from $4.50/month
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 60 days
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SiteGround affiliate program
SiteGround is arguably the best shared hosting service available to WordPress users. Recommend it to visitors who want high-quality hosting without breaking the bank. They also offer managed WordPress hosting.
When it comes to earning affiliate commissions from promoting hosting services, time and again, SiteGround comes out top for us, proving to be one of the very best affiliate programs for WordPress.
Affiliate commissions: progressive commission rates between $50 and $100/referral
Product prices: plans from $2.99/month
Payment threshold: No minimum payout
Cookie duration: 60 days
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Bluehost affiliate program
Bluehost is one of the four approved hosts over on the official WordPress.org website. As such, you know it can be trusted by both users and affiliates. You will earn at least 70% for each qualified sale.
Affiliate commissions: $20
Product prices: plans from $2.95/month
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 30 days
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DreamHost affiliate program
DreamHost is the final hosting service included in today’s list, and another of the WordPress.org recommended hosting providers. Founded in 1997, it is one of the more established hosting companies, having served more than 1.5 million customers during that period.
Affiliate commissions: from $10 for monthly shared hosting to $150 for annuals plans
Product prices: plans from $7.95/month
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 30 days
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Kinsta affiliate program
Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress hosting provider powered by Google Could Platform. Their hosting plans are available for a wide variety of users, from SMBs to high traffic site owners.
The affiliate program provides a one-time high signup bonus. The amount of this depends on the plan the referral signs up for: $50 for Starter, $100 for Pro, $150 for Business 1-4, $500 for Enterprise level plans. On top of that, there’s a monthly recurring commission of 10%. On the custom affiliate dashboard affiliates can track page-views, subscriptions, and payments.
Affiliate commissions: $50 to $500 plus 10% recurring
Product prices: starting from $24/ mo to $300/ mo
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 60 days
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InMotion Hosting affiliate program
InMotion is a cheap managed WordPress hosting provider, whose affiliate program received appreciation from more than 25,000 customers in 2018.
Their plans are decent for everyone’s pockets: from personal blogs to business sites and developer-friendly packages.
A great thing about InMotion is that it installs WordPress automatically for the user during the checkout process.
Affiliate commissions: progressive commission rates between $50/sale and $120/sale
Product prices: plans from $3.49/month
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 90 days
Click for more details
Content Delivery Networks (CDN)
MaxCDN affiliate program
For users looking to speed up a WordPress website, a CDN is an appealing prospect. MaxCDN is one of the best-known CDNs of all, making it a dependable converter. MaxCDN stores your website on multiple servers, located across the globe. Visitors connect to the geographically-closest server, reducing latency and improving load times.
Affiliate commissions: just over 2x first month’s payment
Product prices: plans from $9/month
Payment threshold: no minimum payout
Cookie duration: 180 days
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Optimole affiliate program
Optimole is an image optimization and CDN service delivered in the SaaS model. The main selling point of Optimole’s is that it can make your images weigh even 80% less while looking just as good. This improves your website performance significantly and results is better rankings in Google, among other things. Optimole also has a classic CDN service where all static content from your website is delivered via a distributed network. Again, this has a positive impact on performance.
The affiliate program has generous commissions based on the per-acquisition model.
Affiliate commissions: $50.00 per referral
Product prices: $19.08 – 39.08 / month
Payment threshold: $150
Cookie duration: 30 days
Click for more details
Security and maintenance
WP Curve affiliate program
WP Curve is the ultimate solution to all WordPress headaches. For an affordable monthly fee, they will handle all the boring WordPress maintenance chores, plus their team of skilled developers will handle an unlimited number of small tasks on your behalf – a “small task” counts as any task that can be performed in under 30 minutes. A good example of quality affiliate programs for WordPress.
Affiliate commissions: $10/month for up to 12 months/customer
Product prices: plans start at $79/month
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: one year
Click for more details
ManageWP affiliate program
⚠️ The ManageWP affiliate program has been suspended since this post was initially published. We haven’t been able to get any information on when it might return, but we will update this post if it does.
Managing multiple websites is a bit of a nuisance, isn’t it? ManageWP streamlines the process by letting you manage all of your WordPress-powered websites from one handy dashboard. Their plans are affordable, plus the lifetime recurring commissions are bound to appeal to affiliates. A good selection among affiliate programs for WordPress users and developers.
Affiliate commissions: 30% lifetime salesProduct prices: individual plans from $1.50/month; business plans from $9/monthPayment threshold: $50Cookie duration: unlimited
Sucuri affiliate program
Sucuri is the WordPress security master, specializing in website anti-virus, firewalls, and malware removal solutions. Their service is also available to Joomla, Drupal, and Magento webmasters.
Affiliate commissions: 25%
Product prices: plans start at $199.99/year
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 30 days
Click for more details
WP Buffs affiliate program
WP Buffs is a popular performance, security, and maintenance company that focuses specifically on WordPress websites. Think of them as your new Chief Technology Officer and technical WordPress partner.
They handle unlimited edits, performance enhancements, daily health maintenance, and regular security troubleshooting. This allows you to make bold decisions when it comes to your website without hesitating due to technical restraints. With daily cloud backups, 24/7 uptime monitoring, complete optimization of your website’s speed and performance, and weekly reports, WP Buffs offers all-in-one packages that are hard to beat.
Affiliate commissions: $300 per referral
Product prices: plans start at $40/month
Payment threshold: $40
Cookie duration: 60 days
Click for more details
Learn WordPress resources
Udemy affiliate program
Udemy is a growing online marketplace for courses (among other solutions). Anyone can create a course, with courses covering just about everything. However, there is a strong focus on computing skills, with over 500 courses alone dedicated to learning WordPress. Note that your blog will require over 500 unique visitors per month to be eligible for the Udemy affiliate program.
Affiliate commissions: 10%
Product prices: WordPress courses from $20 (pre-discount)
Payment threshold: no minimum payment
Cookie duration: 7 days
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WP101 affiliate program
WP101 teaches the full range of WordPress skills, packaged as multi-part video courses. Students can also seek more specific help on the WP101 member-only forum.
Affiliate commissions: 20%
Product prices: monthly access start from $12/mo.
Payment threshold: no minimum payout
Cookie duration: 90 days
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Email marketing
OptinMonster affiliate program
OptinMonster is one of the best tools at converting visitors into email list subscribers (we’ve tested it). It builds beautiful pop-ups and opt-in forms, plus it was one of the first tools to feature exit intent technology. Our experiences promoting OptinMonster on our blogs confirms that this one is a solid converter and one of the top affiliate programs for WordPress.
Affiliate commissions: 20%
Product prices: memberships start at $9/mo.
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 45 days
Click for more details
Brevo Affiliate Program
Brevo is our email delivery service of choice. We’ve moved to Brevo a while ago after our MailChimp costs have grown a little too high (read all about it here). Feature-wise, Brevo offers all you’d need, and the affiliate program is no slouch either, with very good commissions, on par with the market.
Affiliate commissions: 30% commissions
Product prices: plans from $25/month
Payment threshold: 100 EUR
Cookie duration: 90 days
Click for more details
Aweber affiliate program
Aweber is, along with MailChimp, the world’s most popular email marketing service. Unfortunately, MailChimp’s affiliate rewards have no cash value, and can only be redeemed against MailChimp costs. Therefore, if you want to earn money by recommending an email marketing service, Aweber is one of the top choices among affiliate programs for WordPress users.
Affiliate commissions: 50%
Product prices: plans from $20/month
Payment threshold: $30
Cookie duration: 365 days
Click for more details
Website images
ShutterStock affiliate program
Images can make or break a website. Shutterstock offers a collection of 80 million gorgeous, royalty-free, stock photographs, videos, and vectors. They sell a staggering four images every second, too.
Affiliate commissions: 20%
Product prices: five image packs $49; plans start at $169/month
Payment threshold: no minimum payment
Cookie duration: 30 days
Click for more details
Depositphotos affiliate program
If you want an alternative to Shutterstock, Depositphotos is arguably the only stock image website to rival it. It also boasts stunning stock images, videos, and vectors. Its collection is smaller than ShutterStock’s (“only” 30 million strong), but more competitively priced.
Affiliate commissions: 15% to 20% for existing customer; 30% to 90% for new customer purchase
Product prices: five image packs $29; plans start at $36/month
Payment threshold: $50
Cookie duration: 30 days
Click for more details
Miscellaneous
Time Doctor affiliate program
A popular tool among WordPress freelancers and remote teams, Time Doctor is great at tracking your projects and working time. The tool is very efficient because it automatically creates daily/weekly reports and handles one’s payments based on the worked hours.
Their affiliate program includes second tier rates, which offer a 30% recurring commission to your affiliate’s affiliates (customers that are referred by an affiliate you refer to Time Doctor).
Affiliate commissions: up to 30% recurring commissions
Product prices: From $5.9/user per month
Payment threshold: $100
Cookie duration: 60 days
Click for more details
Amazon affiliate program
Let’s finish with the world’s most popular affiliate program. I’m talking, of course, about Amazon. Okay, so this one might not be specifically for WordPress users, but there are products in every niche, and the respected Amazon name ensures high conversion rates. And if you want to promote WordPress-relevant products, Amazon stocks laptops, home office equipment, and WordPress learning resources like books.
Affiliate commissions: up to 10%
Product prices: anything and everything
Payment threshold: $10
Cookie duration: 24 hours, or, if product placed in shopping cart, 90 days
Click for more details
Bonus: WordPress plugins to help manage your affiliate promotions
Here’s a useful takeaway WordPress tip to help you manage your WordPress affiliate programs: use a plugin such as Thirsty Affiliates to standardize your affiliate links so they appear as yoursite.com/go/product/ or yoursite.com/recommends/product/.
Not only do these look more professional and stop your posts being filled with unsightly unique affiliate URLs, but these can also be changed later.
This last point is important as this gives you easy flexibility: if you no longer want to use the affiliate URL, the program is discontinued or the program switches providers and thus changes its URLs, you’ll only have one link to update.
Final thoughts 🏁
And that concludes our in-depth look at the world of affiliate marketing in the WordPress ecosystem.
You’re now well equipped to choose from the best proven WordPress affiliate programs, create the content which will resonate with your audience and search engines, and start earning commissions!
Affiliate marketing can be an immensely helpful passive revenue generator for your business alongside your regular content. Doing your research can really (literally!) pay off when you promote and speak with authority on the WordPress products you use regularly.
We know that’s probably a lot to take in, but we’re here to help.
If we had to point you in the direction of just three top affiliate programs for WordPress, we would recommend:
By far our top-converting affiliate program, Elegant Themes is the best program for premium WordPress themes. Comes with a nice sweetener, too: our data shows that over half of our referrals go on to renew their memberships, and Elegant Themes pay out the same rate on renewals.
This one might look a little biased, but this recommendation is based on cold, hard data we’ve compiled. This is proven to be the best affiliate program for freemium themes.
Hosting providers tend to pay generously, and SiteGround consistently earns us our biggest affiliate cheques from the hosting world. Bluehost is another strong performer.
Of course, your experiences may differ to ours, so test out a variety of options to see what works best on your site. Just make sure you’ve tested the product extensively before you endorse it!
Today’s list is by no means exhaustive. If you’d like to recommend an affiliate program, you can do so in the comments below. We’d also love to hear your thoughts on any of the affiliate programs for WordPress featured today!
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Original text by Shaun Quarton, Alex Denning and Karol K.
Layout and presentation by Karol K.
* This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then purchase the product, we’ll receive a small commission. No worries though, you’ll still pay the standard amount so there’s no additional cost on your part.
