Affiliate marketing allows you to earn commission by making sales through your own website.
If people click through your website or make an application online, this is deemed as affiliate marketing traffic and is the source of income for some of the UK’s most well-known companies including:
- Money Saving Expert
- Money.co.uk
- Odds Checker
- Booking.com
- Skyscanner
- Trivago
If you provide a service or product, whether it is loans or beauty products, you need people to sell the product for you – and this is where you find affiliates and pay them a commission for every sale. Often, you can give them incentives and bonuses for hitting certain targets or “tiers.”
See also our guide on how affiliate marketing works.
Which affiliate industries generate the most sales?
Consumer Credit/Insurance
Websites like Compare The Market and Money Saving Expert offer great comparisons and advice for things like savings accounts, credit cards and car insurance – and they will receive commission every time someone goes through their site and applies. This could be through comparison tables or textual guides.
Depending on the affiliate deal, some companies will pay on a lead basis (just an enquiry) or a completion basis (funded basis). There is a huge demand for these kinds of products in the UK with people over the age of 18 likely to have multiple credit cards and every person in the UK requiring car insurance by law.
You can generate very good revenue if you can get deals that pay on renewals. This is particularly popular for car insurance, so if the customer buys through your site and renews again 12 months later, you can still earn a commission. Over 2,5 or 10 years, this can add up big time.
Casino and Gambling
Quite possibly one of the most lucrative affiliate marketing channels and includes things like online casinos, poker, blackjack, slots and more.
The customers are known as ‘players’ and affiliate websites will earn commission for players that sign up to new accounts or place bets with other casinos through their site, through the likes of Coral, William Hill, Play Ojo or Casimba. These affiliate websites come up with phrases like 888Casino offers promotions here to direct the traffic to the other main sites.
You can sometimes receive a flat fee for making the introduction or a percentage of the wager (but only if the person loses) and often you can continue to receive residual income if the player continues to bet with that specific company. Many casino affiliate millionaires still earn money through old players, several years later.
Beauty/Fashion
Usually promoted through blogs and social media accounts (think influencers), you can promote a variety of beauty and fashion products and receive a commission for every sale. This is also done by the likes of The Daily Mail.
Products include:
- Dresses
- Lipstick
- Make up
- Handbags
- Shoes
Food
Promoting food subscriptions and products is very popular. This includes things like snacks, protein products, drinks and more. Social media is a very good platform for this.
Ways to do affiliate marketing
You will usually need an affiliate link from the provider or company that you are selling from. This specific link will often have a little code at the end of the URL (known as a b tag).
Many companies that offer affiliate marketing will have their own portals and dashboards where you can check your clicks and sales.
Ways to do affiliate marketing include:
- Create a site, blog or store using wordpress, shopify, wix or weebly
- Create an instagram or facebook account and promote products
- Email newsletters and lists
- Text message and Whatsapp marketing
- Amazon and eBay – promote Amazon and eBay products through your site and earn commission
Affiliate Marketing Tips
- Try find industries that are growing or have huge demand e.g vegan snacks, protein, swimwear, sports betting around the world cup
- Try find industries with little competition (or maybe because they are so new) e.g vaping, cannabis related products, mattresses
- Be persistent – you have to drive a lot of interest or traffic to get affiliate sales. If only 5% or 10% of people convert into customers (or less depending on the product), you may need to get thousands of followers or visitors to your site every month to make it commercially viable
- Ask for advice – there are a number of companies that specialise in affiliate marketing, there are also courses and particular offers available to promote products.
