Affiliate marketing has seen tremendous growth in recent years, with the industry now valued at $9.56 billion, offering plenty of opportunities to make money online. It's a mutually beneficial setup: brands gain a cost-effective way to boost sales, while affiliates earn commissions for referring customers. However, not all affiliate programs are the same. Some may offer low commissions, while others present the chance to earn substantial payouts.
In this article, we'll explore what affiliate programs are, their benefits, how to pick the right one for you, and a curated list of 15 best-paying SaaS affiliate programs available out there.
What is an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is a marketing arrangement where a company rewards individuals or businesses (called affiliates) for promoting its products or services.
The company you partner with will provide you with a unique affiliate link. When potential customers click these links and sign up for the service or make a purchase, you earn a predetermined commission.
Benefits of an affiliate program
An affiliate program offers numerous benefits for both businesses and affiliates, making it a powerful marketing strategy. This mutually beneficial relationship can lead to long-term growth for both parties. Below are some key benefits of affiliate programs:
Benefits for affiliates
Passive income: Affiliates can earn money without creating their own products or managing customer service.
Flexibility: Affiliates can work from anywhere and choose products they’re passionate about.
Low start-up costs: Affiliates don’t need to create their own products or services. They can start earning commissions by promoting products from other companies, often with minimal initial investment.
Benefits for businesses
Extended reach: Affiliates help businesses tap into new audiences and markets.
Cost-effectiveness: Businesses only pay affiliates when a sale or lead is generated, making it a performance-based model with low upfront costs.
Enhanced credibility: Affiliates, especially influencers or trusted figures, can build brand credibility by promoting products or services to their loyal audiences.
What to look for in an affiliate program?
If you are planning on joining an affiliate program, you can't just pick up any affiliate marketing business and promote it to your audience because that might not be relevant to them. Consider checking for these aspects before joining affiliate marketing.
1. Relevance of the product
The product you choose to promote should fit your niche. If you write a lot of articles about email marketing, it makes more sense to recommend the best email marketing platform to your readers.
Alternatively, if you write about marketing in general, you can promote automation tools, analytics tools, or anything related to the marketing industry.
2. Competitive commission
You should not spend your time, money, and effort promoting a product that won't get you a better affiliate commission. Pick a high-priced product that will get you more returns per sale.
Also, it doesn't mean you should skip low-priced products for expensive products. You should find a balance to cater to a wide range of audiences.
3. Product/brand reputation
Your reputation will be at stake when you promote a poor product to your audience. Conduct complete research about the quality and reputation of the product you wish to promote while executing your marketing campaigns. Look up consumer reviews of the product on review websites, and if you can, test the product out to see if it fits.
4. Promotional content
Some affiliate programs provide tools and resources, such as blogs, landing pages, banners, videos, email templates, etc., to help you execute your marketing strategies effortlessly. Having these assets in hand will help you get up and running faster.
5. Cookie duration
Cookie duration refers to the time a tracking cookie remains active on a user’s device after they click an affiliate link. This cookie ensures the affiliate is credited with any sales or actions taken during that period. Affiliates should consider cookie duration when choosing affiliate programs, as longer duration gives customers more time to make a purchase or complete an action, which can increase the chances of conversions and commissions for affiliates.
When considering an affiliate program, it's essential to understand the unique needs of your niche. Among the various affiliate programs for different niches, SaaS (Software as a Service) affiliate programs stand out for their recurring revenue opportunities. Let’s dive into SaaS affiliate programs and take a look at the best SaaS affiliate programs you can join.
What is a SaaS affiliate program?
A SaaS (Software as a Service) affiliate program is a marketing initiative in which individuals or businesses promote a subscription-based software product in exchange for a commission on sales or leads generated through their referrals.
15 high-paying SaaS affiliate programs to promote
Here's a list of some of the best affiliate programs in the SaaS niche that you can leverage to make money.
1. Mailmodo
Mailmodo is an email marketing platform that enables marketers to send app-like interactive emails with calendars, forms, shopping carts, and more inside an email.
AMP email is our forte and USP. Marketers love us as they get 3x ROI on every email sent. This explains why our free trial-to-paid conversion rate is 30%.
Read how one of our customers - Pixl increased their conversions by 137% with Mailmodo.
You can make up to $5000 per referral with our affiliate program, which is one of the highest amounts you can earn being an affiliate in the SaaS sector.
Commission: 20% recurring commission
Promotional content: Available
Cookie life: 60 days
Register here: Mailmodo affiliate program
2. Thinkific
Thinkific is an online course creation platform that lets course creators, entrepreneurs, thought leaders or anyone who likes to share their knowledge can use their platform to create and publish online courses.
Thinkific already has huge customers like Later, Hootsuite, Keap, and much more. They are killing it with their user-centric features like an easy-to-use course creation platform, dedicated support, and course website templates, so it won't be that hard for you to promote their product.
By joining Thinkific's high-ticket SaaS affiliate program, you could earn up to $1,700 per referral.
Commission: 30% recurring commission
Cookie life: 90 days
Register here: Thinkific affiliate program
3. Social Champ
Social Champ, a comprehensive social media management tool, empowers you to efficiently schedule your content across 10 major social media platforms, including Bluesky. Its feature-rich interface and sleek user dashboard enhance your productivity and effectiveness.
With Social Champ's affiliate program, you can earn higher commissions by introducing new customers. To start earning, simply join the program, share the content about affiliate products, and connect with potential customers.
Commission: 30% recurring commission
Cookie life: 30 days
Bonus: $50 bonus (if you can maintain five new active referrals)
Register here: Social Champ affiliate program
4. Kinsta
Kinsta is a WordPress hosting provider that WordPress enthusiasts use to speed up their websites and provide a reliable experience to their website visitors.
They offer 99.9% uptime and 34 data centers to serve your website faster. And 24,400+ companies worldwide use their hosting service. Speed, security, and support are the three core pillars of their business.
You can earn up from $50 to $500 for each referral based on the subscription your customers choose.
Commission: $50 to 500 per new referral + 10% recurring commission
Register here: Kinsta affiliate program
5. Shopify
You all know Shopify. If not, here's an intro to them. Shopify lets you create your online ecommerce store to sell and ship products you love.
Millions of businesses in over 175 countries use Shopify to set up their online business and sell their products online. Shopify integrates with 6,000+ apps to provide you with a holistic ecommerce experience.
Shopify's referral program is one of the high-ticket programs that affiliates can register to earn more passive income.
Commission: $150 per new referral
Register here: Shopify affiliate program
6. Brand24
Brand24 is a social media listening and analytics tool that allows businesses to monitor online reputation, track competitors, and engage with customers in real time. 3800+ clients from over 150 countries use their services to find brand mentions and turn them into insights.
The company offers a partner program that enables individuals and businesses to earn substantial income by referring new customers to Brand24. As a partner, you can access marketing resources, dedicated support, and a paid plan that rewards your efforts.
Commission: up to 30% recurring commission
Register here: Brand24 partner program
7. Podia
Podia is a creator platform that helps creators create websites to sell their digital products and build a raving community.
Over 150,000+ creators sell courses, e-books, webinars, consultations, and more educational materials using Podia. You can earn up to $267 monthly commission by partnering and contributing to affiliate sales.
Commission: 20% recurring commission
Product review: Podia review
Register here: Podia affiliate program
8. Hotjar
Hotjar is a behavior analytics platform that helps you understand user behavior on your website.
With Hotjar's analytics and feedback tools, you can improve your site's online presence and performance and optimize conversion rates.
Over 900,000 websites in 180+ countries use Hotjar to provide a better online experience for their users.
By signing up for Hotjar's SaaS affiliate program, you will have an opportunity to earn around 1000$ per referral every year.
Commission: 25% recurring commission
Register here: Hotjar affiliate program
9. LeadSquared
LeadSquared is a complete marketing automation and CRM software for businesses. Since their inception in 2011, they have gained revenue by 100% YoY. And they just raised $153 million in Series C funding.
And for the past year, their brand search has increased by 126%. The only limitation in joining their affiliate network is that you have to be a LeadSquared customer.
Commission: 15% recurring commission
Register here: LeadSquared affiliate program
10. Kajabi
Kajabi is a SaaS business management platform that allows entrepreneurs, coaches, and tutors to monetize their services through coaching programs and online courses.
They offer a complete course creation and growth platform for content creation, marketing, and sale of digital assets. Kajabi has nine partner tiers with exciting rewards each time you level up.
Commission: 30% recurring commission
Register here: Kajabi affiliate program
11. Gusto
Gusto is a SaaS payroll, benefits, and human resource management platform that helps 200,000 businesses manage their payroll.
Gusto offers bonuses and incentives for their affiliate partners every month as a part of their SaaS affiliate program. And Gusto is loved by accountants worldwide, so if your customer base is accountants and HR professionals, it would be easy to market to them.
Commission: $200+ per new referral
Cookie life: 120 days
Register here: Gusto affiliate program
12. Supermetrics
Supermetrics helps marketers manage their data better. It helps marketers move data from popular marketing tools such as Facebook, Google Ads, and HubSpot to their favorite platforms like Google Sheets, Data Studio, Excel, etc.
Their growth has been incredible since a Series B funding ($46M) from Highland Europe. They have around 500,000+ users and generate 40M euros in ARR.
By partnering as an affiliate, you get to promote a product that's in high demand and loved by people in the marketing industry.
Commission: 20% recurring commission
Register here: Supermetrics affiliate program
13. EngageBay
EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support software company designed for small businesses and startups. With EngageBay, you can automate most of your tasks through a visual workflow builder. You can also add landing pages, signup forms, 2-way email sync, and more.
EngageBay is designed especially for small businesses, with highly affordable pricing and an easy-to-use interface. Around 50,000 SMBs and startups around the world use EngageBay to grow their business.
EngageBay’s affiliate program offers a 30% recurring revenue for each new signup. This means that you can earn a lot per referral every year.
Commission: 30% recurring commission
Register here: EngageBay affiliate program
14. Jotform
Jotform is a dynamic form builder with more than 20 million users that allows you to collect and manage data effortlessly. Among its most useful features are an intuitive design interface, thousands of templates, advanced options like conditional logic, and a handy analytics tool.
The Jotform Affiliate Program offers a one-year 30% commission for every new subscriber you refer. This means you can earn up to hundreds of dollars monthly payouts as Jotform has use cases for everyone from bloggers to businesses.mon
Commission: 30% per new referral
Register here: Jotform affiliate program
15. Capsulink
Capsulink is an ultimate URL shortener and link management platform. It offers advanced features to optimize and track your links effortlessly. Capsulink encourages building trust with your active users by supercharging your links with dynamic link routing destinations according to their geographic location, language, device, and time.
Affiliates enjoy a generous 25% recurring commission for up to 12 months per referral. Capsulink provides dedicated support, transparent reporting, and flexible payout options.
Commission: 25% recurring commission
Promotional content: Available
Cookie life: 30 days
Register here: Capsulink affiliate program
Takeaway
With a plethora of affiliate programs available, we have hand-picked these high-ticket SaaS affiliate programs that will yield better returns for your effort and time. Start with a good-selling, high-return product or service if you are truly passionate about moving forward.
Are you not sure how to promote a product through affiliate marketing? Read our guide on affiliate marketing for beginners to get started.
