For the Best Recurring Affiliate Programs. Affiliate sales can feel like you are the lead in a remake of Groundhog’s Day.
You keep reliving the same activities. Create great content, bring traffic to your site via search/SEO, Social Media, e-Mail etc. Optimize your content for conversions. You get the visitor to your offer …
Boom you get a sale! ……………… Right!
You get a single commission and go off and find more traffic. Your relationship with the customer generates a single commission.
Related Post: How to start an Amazon Affiliate Website
What if you could use the same traffic tools but get commissions every month from a single transaction? Commissions for the lifetime of the customer with the product.
That would be great right? Well, you can with recurring commission products.
Typical Affiliate
Sales-cycle
- Attract visitors
- Send visitor to offer
- Earn a commission
- Rinse & Repeat
Recurring affiliate
sales-cycle
- Attract Visitors
- Send visitor to your offer
- Earn a commission
- Get repeat commission every month for sale
Recurring Commission Affiliate Products
I am a big fan of Amazon’s affiliate program. It is inclusive and has products for any niche. They have a huge trust component which is a key factor in converting leads to sales.
But of course, they can only pay you once for each purchase. The same is true of all physical products found on ShareASale or CJ and other marketplaces.
These transactions are a single payment so single commission. What kind of products can have recurring commissions?
Related Post: The Most Profitable Niches for Affiliate Marketing
Products like:
- Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings,
- Hosting,
- Membership clubs,
- Payment processors,
- VPN providers,
- cloud storage
and are typically recurring commission affiliate programs. Products with recurring payments from the customer can have recurring commissions.
If the customer is paying the vendor monthly the vendor is able to pay you a commission monthly or a very high percentage of the initial purchase.
These programs are also sometimes called …
- Recurring referrals
- Residual or lifetime commissions
- Recurring passive income
Not all monthly service products pay a recurring commission. Some prefer to pay a one-time large commission to attract affiliates.
Hosting companies typically will do this. The commission on a hosting contract can exceed the initial payment by the customer. How can they do this?
Because the customers have a very high lifetime value.
This is how a hosting company might calculate the lifetime value of a customer:
- Average revenue of $240 a year with the company.
- Cost of goods sold (cogs) for a customer is $60.
- Average retention time is 5 years.
- Lifetime gross is $900 ($240- $60) x 5 years = $900.
- Commissions to affiliate or other acquisition costs are $250.
- Customer lifetime value = $650 ($900 – $250)
So even though the hosting company paid you $250 on $240 of initial purchase revenue, they are making $650 on the transaction.
In the SaaS world, it is similar. Many SaaS products have multi-year license lifetimes per customer.
The average length of LiveChat licenses exceeds 2.5 years.
The average Instabug account lifetime is two years.
Hosting, Cloud Storage & VPN Affiliate Programs
Best Hosting Affiliate Programs ( Recurring Affiliate)
Hosting companies pay affiliates well.
This does make it a fairly competitive space and people do bounce around from site to site resetting their affiliate cookie as they browse. Some pay on a recurring basis and others are front-end loaded with a high initial commission.
All hosting companies will have an affiliate program.
One idea is rather than continue to use the cheapest shared hosting plan, upgrade to a premium plan or even managed WordPress. You can check out our hosting for affiliate marketers recommendations.
After you upgrade or select a plan, create an epic post about your experience. Who you evaluated, how the migration went, etc.
Related Post: The Best Affiliate Programs for Affiliate Marketing
Sign up for affiliate programs for every hosting company mentioned in your post. It only takes 2-3 affiliate commissions to pay for an entire year of premium hosting.
This is a place where you can be helpful to your audience by recommending a great host while earning a healthy commission.
Some of the better hosting recurring commission programs …
1- LiquidWeb LiquidWeb targets the business market. With exceptional support and servers with very high uptime. The affiliate program pays up to $1500 commission per sale + 5% lifetime residual income.
2- CloudWays You can choose between two payment structures 1) get paid flat commission ( $50 – $125 per sale) or 2) $30 per sale + 7% residual commissions per month for the lifetime of the customer.
3- Kinsta You receive $50 – $500. recurring commissions are 10% commission of the renewal the customer makes every year for the lifetime of that customer.
4- Beyond Hosting The affiliate program has a 40% recurring affiliate commission per customer referred.
5- Vendhost 20% lifetime affiliate commission. Vendhost is a good value with three main offers — Value, Select, and Ultimate, priced at $5.49/month, $8.06/month, and $12.56/month respectively.
6- RoseHosting 50% commission the first month plus 10% recurring plus bonuses.
7-JixHost 20% recurring commission.
8- Nestify $50 initial commission plus recurring commission.
9- VirMach 15% recurring commission
10- Constant Hosting One time payments plus 10% recurring commission
Best VPN Recurring Affiliate Programs
VPNs allow you to appear to be coming from a different region than you are physically located in. Some services can not be accessed while out of the country otherwise.
A VPN can also hide your physical location if you are downloading from ThePirateBay etc. It provides a layer of privacy.
11- Hide My Ass 30% – 35% recurring commissions.
12- ZenMate 30% – 35% recurring commission.
13- PureVPN One-time payments and 35% recurring commissions.
14- Torguard 30% recurring
Cloud Storage Programs (Recurring Affiliate)
Cloud storage is used by almost everyone at this point. Some use cloud storage for backing up their computers, others for file sharing. But it is everywhere.
15-pCloud 20% recurring
16- Tapnet 65% plus recurring commissions
Marketing & Landing Page Affiliate Programs with Recurring Commissions
Marketing Automation
It helps you execute your digital marketing strategy. think of it as a way to avoid hitting the send button for every email message, twitter announcement, Facebook post etc.
Also, your marketing automation tools should help you segment your audience. This means you can create focused content that is targeting a specific group.
The automation tools may perform additional actions based on triggers like downloading a whitepaper or visiting a certain page.
17- ActiveCampaign commission. — 20-30% recurring
18- Ontraport commission. — 25% recurring
19- ActiveTrail 5% monthly recurring
20- Wishpond 30% recurring
21- Builderall SEO 30% recurring payments
22- Hubstaff 30% recurring
23- Snip Ly 20% recurring
24- Proof 10% recurring
25- Sumo 30% commission – lifetime recurring.
26- Click Magick 100% plus 35% recurring commission.
27- Ninja Outreach 20% recurring
Landing Pages – Funnels
Landing pages and sales funnels are used by internet marketers to focus a set on a specific offer.
Sometimes it is as simple as a product page other times it is a multi-stepped set of up-sells, down-sells etc.
It will focus just on a single offer and typically have no header or footer like is found on the website.
Nothing should distract from the offer.
28- LeadPages 30% recurring commission, Must be a member!
29- ClickFunnels 40% recurring payment.
30-Instapage 50% on first payment, 30% recurring
31- Landingi 15% to 30% recurring commission.
32- LandingCube 30% recurring payments
E-mail Marketing & ChatBots Recurring Programs
E-Mail Marketing Services (Recurring Affiliate)
The money is in the list.
Yes, a cliche. But still relevant.
What makes e-mail so effective is that you have an opportunity to have multiple non-intrusive conversations with the prospect.
After a series of emails with lots of valuable information provided, you have gained some trust from the prospect.
A warm prospect on more likely to convert than a cold one. Every Internet marketer has an e-mail service provider. They manage opt-in/opt-out, auto-responder sequencers and more/
33-Aweber 30% monthly recurring. Free 30-day trial,
34- Benchmark 25% recurring payment.
35-ConvertKit 30% monthly recurring 14-day free trial,
36- GetResponse 33% monthly recurring. Free 30-day trial,
37- MailerLite 30% monthly recurring
38- Sendlane 30% monthly recurring 14-day free trial
39- Sendloop 10% monthly
Chatbots
Chatbots are all the rage. You may have considered using them in your affiliate activities. Think of them as your own trainable Siri for your business.
They are scripted to mimic a conversation with a customer about your product in a tone that reflects your companies identity.
40- Tars — 30% monthly payments
41- Chitchat Chimp — 50% Commissions on Front End And Upsell (Pro-Pack) sales
42- CollectChat: –Recurring 30% plus $50 bonus every 10 customers.
Social Media & SEO Recurring Commission Affiliate Programs
Best Affiliate Programs for Social Media Automation (Recurring Affiliate)
For many companies, social media is difficult to manage without productivity tools.
Keeping track of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and more needs to be coordinated to keep the messaging clear.
Posts need to be scheduled and approved.
43- Crowdfire 35% recurring — up to $420 per customer.
44- AgoraPulse 20% recurring commission
45- ContentStudio 30% recurring payments.
46- Post Planner 30% commission recurring
47- SocialPilot 30% recurring commission.
48-SocialOomph 40% recurring payments.
49- Tailwind 15% recurring commission.
50- Tubebuddy 50% recurring lifetime
51- Backlink beast 15% recurring
52- Viraltag 20% recurring payments.
Best Recurring Affiliate Programs for SEO Tools
If you want to maximize your traffic from search, you need to pay attention to SEO.
If you are an affiliate marketer you will likely use some of these tools or be very familiar with them.
This can help in your content marketing strategy, Case studies, roundups, in-depth reviews that resonate with your audience are ideal.
53-SEMRush 40% recurring commission.
54- SpyFu 40% recurring payouts
55- SerpStat 30% recurring commission.
56- LongTailPro Up to 30% recurring commission.
57- SEOPressor Earn 50% recurring commissions
58- Linkody 30% recurring commissions.
59- SEOprofiler 50% lifetime payments.
60- Linkredible 20% to 30% recurring commission.
61- LoveClients $50 to $75 a month per client.
62- RankPay 10% – 20% recurring commission
e-Commerce Tools & Services with Residual Earnings
e-Commerce (Recurring Affiliate)
If someone is building an e-commerce site they are investing in inventory and will have other expenses. They need to turn over their inventory.
Their e-commerce backends and financial process companies are mission-critical applications.
People will spend on them.
63- Shopify 20% recurring commissions, up to $2000 per sale.
64- Samcart Up to 40% monthly commissions
65- SendOwl 20% recurring commission.
66- Ecwid 20% commission lifetime
67- Beeketing 20% recurring
68- Payhip 50% recurring commission.
69- Sellfy 25% recurring commission.
70- Wholesale2b 30% recurring
71- Shopio 25% recurring payments
72- EasyStore 100% first month, 20% recurring commission.
73- Podia 30% recurring commissions
74- X-Cart 15% recurring commissions
75- 3DCart 25% monthly recurring payments
76- UltraCart 20% -2% depending on tier.
Payment Processing
Payment processors handle the credit card and other financial relationships between you and your customers. It is how customers pay you. And how you get your cash!
77- National Processing 25% to 70% recurring
78- Authorize.Net 30% recurring lifetime
79- Eclipse Merchant Services 20% ongoing recurring revenue
80- Merchant Focus 30% recurring commissions
81- Volusion 20% recurring lifetime
Recurring Income from WordPress Tools & Services
WordPress Themes & Plugins (Recurring Affiliate)
There are many themes companies that are set up as a membership product. They typically have annual renewals but some are set up as monthly services.
You typically get access to a number of themes and perhaps some plugins.
Usually, you also get a support portal and sample content and templates.
82- Thrive Themes 25% recurring commission.
83- Elegant Themes 50% recurring commission.
84- CSSIgniter Themes and Plugins 50% for every sale plus renewal commission.
85- Premium Coding Themes 35% – 50% recurring commission.
86- Beaver Builder 25% is a flexible drag-and-drop page builder that works on the front end of your WordPress website.
87- MemberMouse Membership Plugin 20% recurring commission.
88- MemberPress Membership Software 25% recurring commission.
89- Pretty Links 25% recurring commission
WordPress Maintenance and Support Services
These companies provide you with a tech help desk. You can be a company of 1 and have your own it support desk for WordPress and more.
90- Access WP 10% recurring lifetime commissions.
91- Zen WP 8% Lifetime commissions — $3000 bonus for every 100th customer.
Customer Relationship Recurring Programs
CRM — Live Chat
CRM tools include all of the sales prospecting and forecasting tools.
Gone are the days where the salesman kept all of the contacts for the company in his Rolodex. The current generation has likely never seen a rolodesk.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
These are tools to help management and sales departments to follow a customer through there entire history with the company.
92- capsule CRM You earn 20% for the life of the customer.
93- Pipedrive Recurring commissions 35%
94- Salesmate15 % recurring
95- LoudReply $12.50 per customer per month — lifetime.
96- Answerbase – 50% commission initial order plus 15% recurring
Live Chat
97- JivoChat 30% recurring
98- Provide Support 30% recurring payments
99- PureChat 35% recurring commission.
100- LiveChat Inc 20% recurring payments
101- LiveAgent $5 bonus, 20% recurring
102- Chatrify 20% recurring payments
103- Online Chat Centers 50% of initial order plus 20% recurring
104- Crisp 20% recurring lifetime
Cryptocurrency Programs with Residual Earnings
Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency
Well, it’s trending … Many bitcoin and crypto companies offer recurring commissions. The one thing you can count on with crypto is volatility. But crypto enthusiasts are active participants and like shiny objects.
Some of these programs are lifetime recurring and others have a sunset.
113- BitStarz 25% – 40% depending on volume — 3 month sunset
114- CryptoTrader.Tax Affiliate Program 25% of transaction fees— Lifetime Commissions
115- PrimeXBT 20% of the fees. This is a multi-tier program so affiliates you recruit earn extra commissions — Lifetime Commissions
116- Bitbond 20% – 30%. Borrower 20%. Lender 30% — 2-year sunset
117- LocalBitcoins 20% of the fees collected. If the same person is the buyer and seller than 40% — 1-year sunset
118- Coin base 50% of the fees charged — 3 month sunset
119- Binance 20% of the trading fees. Large accounts go up to 40% on a sliding scale — Lifetime Commissions
120- Coinmama 15% of company’s commission — Lifetime Commissions
121- Ledger 15% of the transaction cost. — Lifetime Commissions
122- Covesting 20% – 40% depending on your referral volume. — Lifetime Commissions
123- Paxful 2% of the transaction value — Lifetime Commissions
Additional Recurring Affiliate Programs
Other Recurring Commissions
There were many recurring commission programs that did not fit neatly into a category. You will find those here.
Also, there are many dating-related, CBD and gambling programs with a recurring commission if that is your niche. A Google search should return them easily.
The best way to find recurring commission programs is to consider what your audience purchases that have recurring monthly bills. Then research these products looking for recurring commissions.
124- Talkroute 30% recurring commission.
125- CallHippo 25% revenue share
126- Talkroute 30% recurring commission.
127- Design Pickle 30% recurring commission.
128- CallHippo 25% revenue share – for life.
129- Villiers 30% Luxury travel – High ticket
130- Miracle Canvas 30% – 1-year cookie!
131- FreeUp Freelancers $.5 per hour for each referred worker – forever.
132- Strategic Profits $750 per sale plus $100 recurring
133- Teachable 30% recurring
134- Clicky 20% monthly recurring
135- Deadline Funnel 33% recurring
136- Demio 30% recurring
137- Earth Class Mail 25% recurring commission.
138- GetSiteControl 30% monthly recurring
139- Hiveage 30% recurring commission.
140- Hubstaff 30% monthly recurring
141- StoryChief .20% recurring commission.
142- SalesHandy 20% monthly recurring
How to Promote Recurring Programs
Strategies
Of course, you should be trying to dice sales via content marketing and your normal sales funnels.
But these products have more commission value to you so it may be worth investing extra time and even some advertising budget.
In general, consider being more aggressive with these products from a traffic and content standpoint.
Facebook ads, search ads, forum ads, guest posting, dedicated landing pages – these products pay more so you may want to spend a bit to try to capture the deals.
Here are some ideas for marketing these products.
1. Have a dedicated landing page for the better offers.
This will be where you will direct leads. These types of products are best marketed differently than Amazon products.
With Amazon you just get them to Amazon’s website. They are a conversion machine with great trust. With these programs you want to warm the audience. You are the one creating the trust.
2. Use them in your autoresponder sequence and direct the call to action (CTA) to the landing page.
Your autoresponder sequence should start with just information and add value. later in the sequence you can add a link to your landing page for the offer.
3. These are the perfect products to use with Facebook retargeting ads.
When someone comes to your site and reads about the product or a related one, target them when they are surfing Facebook.
Someone who is on your email list and checked out the product may be a good candidate to go straight to the vendor offer. Others it to your landing page for the offer.
4. Use these products in your cornerstone/pillar pages.
I like to write in clusters. Anchor a topic with a deep info page and then carpet bomb the topic with detailed posts. The topic page can have links to the product info page. These internal links also help with SEO.
5. Create e-book based training for the products and tools with affiliate links.
A good email capture campaign often uses e-books as a lead magnet. Another strategy is to make a killer e-book and sell it. You can establish a value for it and then use it in bonus offers.
6. Bonus Offers.
These programs pay well. This attracts many affiliate marketers including those larger and with more authority than you. Having a bonus offer of free templates, a free e-book, a few hours of training, free support, etc. can help your conversion.
7. Purchase very long tail cheap keyword Google ads.
Find keywords that are very specific to the products but not the head keywords. Direct them to your landing page for this offer.
Hosting Strategies–
I am a firm believer in using premium hosting. It creates a better user experience is a key SEO ranking signal. Premium hosting also should mean better backups, a staging site, and great support.
Sure you can probably get a much cheaper unmanaged service but are you a marketer or a hosting geek? There is only so much time in the day.
Rather than continue to use the cheapest shared hosting plan, upgrade to a premium plan or even managed WordPress.
You can check out our hosting for affiliate marketers recommendations. After you upgrade or select a plan, create an epic post about your experience.
Who you evaluated, how the migration went, etc. Sign up for affiliate programs for every hosting company mentioned in your post. It only takes 2-3 affiliate commissions to pay for an entire year of premium hosting.
This is a place where you can be helpful to your audience by recommending a great host while earning a healthy commission.
Tools you Use
In addition to hosting you likely use a number of tools to run your affiliate business. Things like …
Presumably you like and trust these tools. They help you make money. They are critical to running your business.
This makes them ideal products for you to represent. You should at least have a tools page but alone these don’t convert that well.
I would have a landing page for each of these. Make your tools page a topic cornerstone and link to your individual tools landing page.
How to Choose a Program
As an affiliate marketer, you are in the reputation and trust business. Never send someone to an offer that you wouldn’t buy for yourself just because it pays well. A few dollars of commission is not worth the reputational damage.
Start with products you use or have used in the past. Your hosting company, your email service, any SEO or Internet Marketing products you use. Write up how you use these tools, list them on a “resources used” page on your site.
For other products do thorough research. Most of these programs have free or low cost trials. Those that don’t have refund periods.
Reach out to your community and ask them. Have a poll about their favorite tool for “xyz”. This will create a little buzz of its own.
Wrap up
Recurring commission affiliate programs should be in every affiliate marketer’s toolkit. Recurring affiliate programs can be a good way to even out the typically lumpy revenue that affiliate’s earn.
The commission rate is typically high with these programs as they produce a high lifetime customer value for the vendors.
Well we went over a bit with 142 programs. But there is no best affiliate program, it depends on your audience and niche. This is an evergreen post that we will keep current. Also …