Affiliate marketing has become a go-to strategy for brands of all kinds. Why? These days, joining a reliable affiliate marketing program is essential to increasing site traffic, building and enhancing your audience, and making the most of your business online.
Relying on organic traffic is no longer enough to generate significant revenue; businesses are implementing marketing strategies like this to create a more powerful revenue stream and earn passive income over time. In other words, affiliate marketing enables content creators, small businesses, and bloggers to monetize their traffic by promoting the highest paying affiliate products or services through unique affiliate links, earning a commission on resulting sales or leads.
Sounds great, right? It is—but choosing the right affiliate products is crucial for success. There are several considerations you’ll need to make in order for your affiliate marketing programs to pay off.
- Understand your audience. What are their interests and needs? What pain points can your product or service assist with? Answering these questions will help you determine what affiliate products make the most sense for your site or blog.
- Select products aligned with your values. Consumers value authenticity, so choosing affiliate links to products you would personally use or suggest is crucial to building credibility—especially if you have a blog. Carefully consider what type of products align with your values and personal brand to establish a trusted relationship with your audience.
- Prioritize quality and originality. If you want to stand out, you’ll need to emphasize quality and offer links to products that can’t easily be found everywhere else. At the same time, you should also consider the commission rate. For example, beauty products tend to have low commission rates, largely because they don’t typically cost much, whereas financial products are among the higher paying affiliate products. Whichever product category or affiliate marketing niche you choose, review your affiliate program from time to time to make sure it’s performing to your expectations.
What are the Best Affiliate Products to Sell?
According to recent reports, US retail e-commerce sales will reach a staggering $1.7 trillion by the year 2027 and represent more than 20% of overall retail sales. We can expect to see steady growth over the next few years, with an increase of more than 10% every year from 2024 to 2027. As much as affiliate marketing has expanded in recent years, the few will see even more rapid growth.
What’s more, almost half of US marketers at the executive level name affiliate marketing among their “top three revenue channels,” saying it provides better spend control and greater ROI compared with other paid marketing channels.
The value of this marketing strategy is clear—but what are the best high ticket affiliate marketing products? Let’s dig a little further into this key question.
When it comes to choosing which products to sell on your site, selecting items from a few different niches can work as long as there’s a logical connection between those products and the theme or subject of your blog. What’s most important, though, is understanding your audience’s expectations.
Let’s take a look at some of the best-selling products for affiliate marketing so you can determine whether they’re a good fit for your brand.
Financial Products
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Financial products are always in high demand because consumers are constantly looking for ways to save money, spend smarter, and protect their identity and savings. This is a wide-ranging niche that includes credit cards, insurance policies, mortgages, loans, and financial protection products.
For example, some financial products—like individual retirement accounts—pay an 8% commission. This means that if someone invests a couple hundred thousand dollars toward their retirement, you could earn a commission in the tens of thousands. Check out affiliate programs from brands like Credit Karma, Experian, SoFi, and Credit Sesame to find a good match for your site.
View Taboola’s case study with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance here.
Dating Products
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Dating products are another item that can yield impressive results. The reason dating affiliate programs are so effective is that online dating services are in high demand. For singles, swiping left or right has become a daily task as they search for that special someone, to the point where the online dating market in the US alone is expecting to have 64.5 million users by the year 2027.
Unlike some products that can become outdated, dating is an evergreen topic, so the investment you make in dating affiliate programs now can continue to pay off for years to come. Whether you promote top dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony or niche dating affiliate programs like Jdate and Christian Mingle, aligning your site with a dating brand can really pay off.
View Taboola’s case study with dating service Parship here.
Real Estate Products
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Buying a home is a big decision, and potential homebuyers need ongoing advice, access to listings, and related information from banks, home insurance companies, and mortgage brands. Considering that 97% of homebuyers used the internet while searching for a home, joining affiliate real estate programs can be a lucrative approach.
While this is a competitive affiliate marketing niche, programs tend to have high commission rates, making this one of the best products for affiliate marketing; with some big home listings, you can really cash in. Take advantage of this opportunity by recommending reputable real estate firms, banks with favorable mortgage terms, and homeowners’ insurance, and check out real estate affiliate marketing programs like Land Century, Nolo, Real Estate Express, and Architectural Designs.
View Taboola’s case study with 360 Realtors here.
Travel Product
From hotel stays to short-term rentals, domestic and international flights, and off-the-grid adventure trips, the travel space is once again booming—and travelers are looking to the web to research and book their trips. The travel market is steadily increasing, with the global online travel market expected to top one trillion US dollars by the year 2030.
All of this suggests that travel blogs will be in high demand as consumers look for advice, reviews, and recommendations online, so why not tap into this market by including travel affiliate links on your site so that visitors can easily book a trip while also generating revenue for your brand? Travel affiliate programs like Tripadvisor, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Kayak, and others that offer travel deals and hotel stays in destinations around the world can help you earn a passive income in both the short- and long-term.
View Taboola’s case study with Barceló Hotel Group & Jakala Iberia here.
Gaming Products
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The gaming industry has been booming since before the pandemic, but since then it has grown even bigger. New research shows the number of gamers worldwide is already over 3.3 billion, and global games market revenue has topped $184 billion.
With so many gaming-related products out there, from laptop and desktop computers to game controllers, gaming graphics cards, and in-game guides, there’s no shortage of potential affiliate program types to choose from. If your niche is related to the world of gaming, check out Logitech, Bose, Twitch, and GameFly to get started with affiliate marketing.
View Taboola’s case study with mobile gaming company SciPlay here.
Fashion Products
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Like gaming, the fashion world is a broad one with countless products that lend themselves to affiliate links. If your business is in the fashion space, selecting a fashion affiliate partner should be priority number one.
Fashion affiliate marketing sales can earn you anywhere from 5% to 50% in commission depending on the nature of the product. In addition to considering which fashion affiliate programs offer significant payouts, it’s wise to look into the average order value of their sales. For example, sales from luxury handbag brands are going to be significantly higher than those from belts, sneakers, or discount fashion sites, so keep that in mind when you’re picking a partner. Some brands to choose from include Newchic, Zappos, Hugo Boss, and TJMaxx.
Regardless of which type of affiliate marketing program you choose, don’t overlook the importance of conversion rate optimization. Improving your CRO will lead to better affiliate link performance and greater revenue, so incorporate tactics like A/B testing, landing page audits, and qualitative research into your affiliate marketing strategy.
View Taboola’s case study with online fashion store ABOUT YOU here.
3 Places to Find the Best Affiliate Marketing Products
Now that you know what affiliate marketing program options are available to your business or brand, it’s time to pick the right one for your audience. That decision should also take program effectiveness into consideration; the best partner for you isn’t just the one that matches your brand and will resonate with your audience, but also the one that’s most likely to perform.
Investigate each program to determine which offers the best products, commission, and payout structure, because bottom line? Not all affiliate programs are created equal.
ShareASale
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ShareASale is an affiliate marketing program that provides access to major brands to help businesses connect with their customers, generate sales, and boost revenue. ShareASale offers a user-friendly interface for setting up tracking and building your affiliate marketing program, plus a variety of marketing models.
AWIN
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Along with ShareASale, Awin—another affiliate marketing program—is part of The Awin Group, which works with more than 15,000 brands across a variety of product sectors, along with about 211,000 active publishers. Awin specializes in categories that include financial, fashion, home, and travel brands, and makes it easy and convenient to create affiliate links via tools like WordPress plugin or Google Chrome extension.
Taboola for Affiliates
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While all of the programs have their perks, Taboola for Affiliates can help any business—regardless of product category or niche—achieve their affiliate marketing goals.
Not only does Taboola partner with programs like Awin, Tradedoubler, and AdCombo to deliver the top-tier targeting capabilities, advertising at scale, and massive global reach, but we’re the web’s largest content network with 500 million daily active users and 500 billion monthly content recommendations, so we’re well-equipped to help our affiliate partners reach their revenue goals.
Amazon Associates
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Amazon Associates, Amazon’s affiliate marketing program, has a major claim to fame: it provides access to the biggest retail e-commerce company, which boasts a 38.7% market share. With this program, you can share Amazon products with your audience through customized links and earn commission on qualifying purchases. Amazon Associates uses a flat-rate commissions structure, along with additional perks like cart additions for a 90-day period and commissions on all items purchased within 24 hours.
Final Thoughts about the Best Affiliate Marketing Products
You may be raring to go with your affiliate marketing program, but there’s one more step in the process: boost traffic to your site so you can get more eyes in front of those affiliate links.
When AdCombo, one of the leading CPA (cost-per-action) networks, wanted to see a more consistent return on investment online, they came to Taboola and launched successful campaigns for dozens of affiliates, leading to a 32% decrease in CPA quarter-over-quarter and a 10% better approval rate than social (i.e. more qualified leads from Taboola than Facebook). In short, AdCombo’s clients learned to leverage high-quality publishers from Taboola, and generate high-volume traffic with lower CPA for AdCombo’s offers.
As you invest more time and energy in your own affiliate marketing, be sure to use SEO strategies and best practices to generate more traffic over time, along with paid advertising, native advertising, and programmatic advertising to expand your reach on the web and drive qualified shoppers to your digital door. Don’t forget that native ads garner 53% more attention and amplify purchase intent by 18%.
You can also convert more site visits into sales and increase your ROI by focusing on social media engagement, from learning more about your social media audience to building high-performing social media creative. Ready to get started? Contact Taboola today.