How to Sell Affiliate Products On Shopify — Apps & Pro Tips [2024]
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Selling affiliate products is one of the most cost-effective business models.
You don’t need to own, store, or even ship products to the customers. Basically, you need to take care of marketing, refer affiliate products to customers, and start generating revenue.
That said, you must build a solid foundation for your business and learn effective ways to market your affiliate products — and we’re here to help you do just that.
In this blog post, you’ll learn the basics of affiliate marketing, how it works, and the step-by-step guide on how to sell affiliate products on Shopify.
The Basics of Affiliate Marketing
Before jumping into the affiliate marketing world, you must have an idea of all the nitty-gritty details of affiliate marketing and how the business works.
Feel free to skip this and go to the guide if you’re already familiar with it.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
This definition is from a brand’s perspective that has an affiliate program:
Affiliate marketing is a strategy to grow the sales and revenue of a business through a revenue-sharing model. Meaning, a brand shares a certain percentage of revenue (i.e., commission) when an affiliate helps bring them a sale.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Here’s how affiliate marketing works for brands:
- A brand creates an affiliate program with the terms and conditions about how the affiliate commissions will be paid.
- Then, the brand recruits affiliates under the program.
- The affiliates would promote the brand’s products or services by sharing their product links on their website, social media, newsletter, etc.
- The audience of the affiliates may buy the product using the link that was shared by the affiliate.
- Thus, the brand gets sales through the affiliate links and generates revenue with the help of affiliates.
- Then, the brand pays a certain percentage of commission to the respective affiliate as agreed under the program’s terms and conditions.
Now, for someone who wants to sell affiliate products of such brands:
What Is Affiliate Products’ Marketing?
“Affiliate products marketing” is the practice of promoting products of other brands that have an affiliate program and are offering commissions for the products sold through affiliate links.
For example, Amazon has an affiliate program — Amazon Associates. When you promote Amazon’s products to earn commissions, it’s called affiliate products’ marketing.
Types of affiliate commission models:
Different brands may have different types of commission models.
- Percentage commission: You get a certain percentage of commission from every sale.
- Fixed amount commission: You get a fixed amount as commission regardless of the product value.
- One-time commission: It could be a percentage commission or a fixed amount, but you only get it once when the product is sold.
- Recurring commission: This applies to businesses with a subscription model. Here, you get a commission every time the customer is billed, e.g., monthly or annual commissions based on the customer’s subscription.
- Tiered commission: Affiliates are given hierarchal tier levels and the commission rates go up as the affiliate achieves a higher level.
Mostly, when we talk about affiliate programs, commissions are given for successful sales brought by the affiliate. But that’s not necessarily always the case. Some brands may offer commissions on other criteria such as:
- Clicks,
- Qualified leads,
- Installs,
- Signups,
- Downloads,
and so on.
How to Sell Affiliate Products on Shopify?
Mainly, there are two ways (or business models) to sell affiliate products on Shopify:
2. Selling affiliate products only
We have a detailed Shopify tutorial where you can learn about how to build a Shopify store to sell your own products. So, in this tutorial, let’s focus on how you can sell affiliate products on Shopify.
Step #1: Define Your Business Niche
Affiliate programs are being offered by many brands in various business niches or industries. But should you join all of them? Of course not!
First things first, you need to finalize what niche you’re going to target in your business. To do this, evaluate your area of interest and expertise or experience.
For example, let’s say you’re a sports enthusiast and love creating content around the sports niche. In that case, it could be a great idea if you sell affiliate products in the sports niche.
Just to be clear — it doesn’t necessarily have to be only one niche. You can combine more than one niche in a way that makes sense to your target audience.
Step #2: Research the Best Affiliate Programs
Find the best affiliate programs to join so that you get fair commissions for your efforts and make a profitable affiliate product business.
You can join different types of affiliate programs which could be either a network-based program or an individual brand’s affiliate program.
2.1 Joining an affiliate network
An affiliate network is a company that has tie-ups with multiple brands and it allows you to offer/sell products from multiple brands through a single program. It also makes managing all your affiliate transactions easy through a central platform.
There are several popular and reputed affiliate networks that gives you the opportunity to sell affiliate products of big brands as well. Here are the key statistics from the Datanyze report that show the market share of affiliate networks:
Now, let’s see examples of some of the best affiliate programs that you may consider if you’re planning to sell products:
- Amazon Associates — Amazon’s Affiliate Marketing Program
Amazon is the biggest affiliate marketing network in the world — thanks to Amazon’s gigantic eCommerce marketplace. As we just saw, more than 97,000 companies are offering affiliate products through this network.
With Amazon Associates, you can earn up to 10% commission for qualifying purchases.
- Rakuten Advertising — Affiliate Advertising Network
With Rakuten Advertising, you get the opportunity to sell products and services from a range of industries including retail, travel, IT services, finance, and so on.
The popular eCommerce brand — Sephora — is also on Rakuten Advertising. Meaning, you can sell Sephora’s products on your Shopify store through Rakuten Advertising’s affiliate program.
As you must already know, eBay is also one of the biggest eCommerce marketplaces in the world.
It gives you the flexibility to choose the affiliate model of your choice. However, the commission rates are relatively lower. Here’s the global rate card for eBay Partner Network:
1.2 Joining individual brand’s affiliate program
Some brands may not be available on affiliate networks but offer affiliate program membership through their own program.
You can research the popular eCommerce brands in your niche to see if they have an affiliate program. Mostly you’d find the details about the affiliate program in the footer section of the websites.
Also, here are some popular SaaS (Software as a Service) brands that have affiliate programs — Shopify, Kajabi, Coursera, and Teachable.
Pro tip: If you want to earn high commission rates, you can join affiliate programs of brands that offer a SaaS product, online courses, or digital products. Since these brands typically have a higher profit margin — because there’s no physical product — they tend to offer generous commissions.
1.3 Shopify Affiliate Programs from Apps
Join the GemPages affiliate program. This could be a great idea if your target audience is small and medium-sized business owners, sellers, or aspiring entrepreneurs.
Why join the GemPages Affiliate Program?
GemPages is one of the top-rated apps on the Shopify App Store — with an impressive 4.8 rating out of 5 stars and over 4,300 reviews. Meaning, it’s easy to promote GemPages.
Earn up to 50% of recurring commission for every referred store subscribing to GemPages’ paid plan — no limit to how much commissions you can earn.
The GemPages affiliate program has quite a simple process:
2. Promote GemPages with your network with the affiliate link
3. Start earning commissions
Pro tip: If you’re currently a Shopify merchant, you must have been networking with other Shopify merchants through communities and virtual events. You can share your GemPages affiliate link with merchants in your close network. They’ll benefit from the awesome features of GemPages page builder, and you get to earn recurring commissions. Win-win for all!
Step #3: Join the Affiliate Program(s)
Once you’ve completed the research and shortlisted your favorite affiliate programs or network, it’s time to begin the joining process.
Before joining any program, make sure to properly review their commission structures and terms & conditions. You would want to join affiliate programs that offer generous commissions so that you can earn good profit for your efforts.
But more importantly, you must completely trust the product or service offered by the brand. Ideally, you should choose the products or services you’ve already used OR at least you have trust in the product or service based on their reviews and credibility in the market.
Some affiliate programs may have qualification criteria. Ensure that you’re meeting the criteria before you submit the application to avoid wasting your time. Some programs may put your application on hold for a few months before you reapply if you’ve failed to meet the criteria in the first attempt.
Step #4: Build & Design Your Shopify Store
It’s time to create the most important platform through which you can market and promote your affiliate products — your Shopify store.
Build a premium store that can impress the visitors and entice them to explore more on your website. Keep in mind — your Shopify store is not just to list your affiliate products but also to build the credibility of your business.
If visitors can’t trust your store/website, they’ll bounce off without clicking on any links. Your store must look professional and provide your audience with a great experience.
To enhance your Shopify store design, you can use GemPages — one of the most loved page builder apps for Shopify. GemPages has advanced features and templates that can help you create a stunning website design without any web design or coding experience.
Learn more: Shopify Tutorial: Everything You Need To Know For Success
Step #5: List Products with Affiliate Links
Once you get approval from the affiliate program(s) you signed up for, you’ll receive different affiliate links for different products. These affiliate links are the crucial element of your entire business. After all, your commissions depend on your affiliate links.
Carefully organize your affiliate links and start listing your products i.e., creating product pages on your Shopify store.
On your product pages, you’ll see the default call to action (CTA) buttons — “Add to Cart” and “Buy it now”. You need to replace those CTA buttons with the affiliate link and text description for the affiliate product, e.g., adding a “Buy on Amazon” button with the affiliate link leading to Amazon’s product page.
To do this, you can install a third-party app from the Shopify App Store. Here’s a brief overview of some of the popular apps:
App 1: Outlink External Links Button
This app will help you edit the text of the CTA button and redirect your website visitors to the affiliate link. Here’s how it looks like:
Also, you can list multiple affiliate links on a single product page.
Pricing:
App 2: Amazon Importer Spreadr App
This app allows you to import and sync products from Amazon to your Shopify store with just a few clicks. It'll also let you replace the "Add to Cart" button with the "View on Amazon" button.
Side note: Alternatively, you can also dropship Amazon products by managing shipping on your own. But that’s whole different business model. We just wanted to let you know it’s also an available option on this app.
Pricing:
App 3: Reputon Amazon Importer
Here’s one more app to import and sell affiliate products from Amazon. Reputon has an overall rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars from more than 500 reviews. It has the Built for Shopify badge too.
Similar to the last app we reviewed, this one also has an option to dropship Amazon products.
Pricing:
- Make your product pages look professional and authentic to build trust.
- Display the social proof for the product as available through the brand, e.g., mentioning the star rating, press features, etc.
- Add great visuals and compelling copy to increase conversions.
- Create an FAQ section so that the customers have no doubts whatsoever.
- Use GemPages to design product pages that look highly professional with eCommerce design elements and FAQs.
Step #6: Prepare Your Store for Marketing
Just like any other business, when selling affiliate products, you need to put great effort into marketing.
Prepare a solid marketing strategy based on your target audience research. Plan where and how you’ll be investing time and money to market your affiliate store.
There are many thing you can do to start preparing your store for marketing — right from the get-go. Here are the important aspects you should work on:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
Shopify is an SEO-friendly eCommerce platform. It takes care of many SEO aspects by default. But you still need to work on other major factors. For example, your store’s meta titles, meta descriptions, and content keywords play a crucial role in SEO.
- Blog content
Start a blog and create valuable content for your niche. It will not only help with SEO but also help you build credibility and authority in the market.
- Configure analytics tools
You must analyze your store’s performance to see if there are any areas of improvement. For example, tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google Search Console, and Lucky Orange Heatmaps & Replay can help you analyze your store’s performance and customer behavior.
- Image and video optimization
Images and videos help customers visualize the product. However, you need to ensure they don’t impact your store’s speed. Slow page load speed can impact your store’s SEO as well as customer experience.
Step #7: Launch & Start Affiliate Marketing
Once your store is built, and the product listings are ready, it’s time to launch the store.
Remember that you need to offer value to attract and keep the audience. Let’s be real — they won’t start buying products with your affiliate links if you don’t have anything else to offer.
Start creating valuable content for your audience. Help them with expert insights, tips, and best practices, or share entertaining content — depending on your audience.
For example, if you’re listing outdoor and camping products on your affiliate products store, you can start publishing content for camping enthusiasts. When they’ll love reading your content, they’ll happily purchase products using your affiliate links.
Pro tip: Start a newsletter and share weekly/bi-weekly/monthly editions with quality content for your target audience. Include your product page link or affiliate links directly. You can even create a dedicated landing page for better conversions.
Important Factors to Consider When Selling Affiliate Products
Affiliate Disclaimer Requirements
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires you to include a clear disclaimer/disclosure for affiliate products. Also, some affiliate programs may have a requirement to provide the affiliate disclaimer.
You can use tools like Termly to create your affiliate disclosure. Make sure to research and ensure that your store meets the legal requirements based on your country/region.
Follow the Guidelines of Affiliate Programs
Some affiliate networks or individual brand’s affiliate programs may have their own set of rules and policies that need to be followed when promoting their products. Make sure you’re aware of them and follow them accordingly.
For example, Amazon Associates has its own policies and participation requirements. Similarly, you must check policies or terms and conditions for the program you’re planning to join.
Build Credibility of Your Brand
Whether you’re selling the affiliate product under a brand name or with your personal branding, your audience must have trust in you and/or your brand. Build authority in the market by consistently showing up and providing value to your audience.
Final Thoughts on Affiliate Products Marketing
With affiliate marketing, people often promote the idea of passive income or making money while you’re sleeping — which is partially true. You can make money while you’re sleeping but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to work at all.
And it doesn’t happen overnight. To build such a passive income business, you need to work on creating a lot of content, provide value to your audience, and then things start to become a bit easier with time.
Build a solid foundation of the business and use the marketing strategies to grow your business. And we’re here to help you with all the resources you need. Also, join GemPages Facebook community to network with like-minded entrepreneurs and experts in the eCommerce world.
