Most new publishers join the wrong affiliate programs first. They grab the biggest name, paste a link, and wonder why nothing converts. The operators who build real revenue match merchants to their audience, understand payout mechanics, and diversify before any platform changes terms.
I’ve been running affiliate sites for over nine years. Beginners who pick relevant, beginner-friendly programs early compound faster than those who chase the highest commission rate on paper. Below is what affiliate programs are, what to evaluate before you join, and the seven programs we recommend for operators just getting started.
Updated 2026.
Here is what the data shows about the scale of the channel:
- Affiliate marketing brings an average of 23% of the total revenue generated by merchants.
- An astonishing 81% of brands across the world use affiliate marketing programs.
- Revenue from affiliate marketing has grown by 52% since 2015. In 2019, it reached $6.4 billion and was expected to reach $6.8 billion by the end of 2020.
- The category of fashion accounts for 23% of all affiliate programs today. Sports and outdoor are second with 18%, followed by health and beauty with 14%. Something to keep in mind if you have not yet picked a blog topic.
If you are starting from zero, our affiliate marketing for beginners guide covers niche selection, keyword research, and the full setup playbook before you join your first program.
1What Are Affiliate Programs?
Affiliate programs (also called associate programs) are a form of marketing in which merchants pay affiliate websites to promote services and products. You send qualified traffic and earn a commission when a reader completes the action the merchant defines.
How Affiliate Programs Work
The person who owns a website, called the publisher, joins an affiliate program. He or she searches the available products and services looking for relevant things to the audience they are targeting. The publisher then promotes those affiliate products on their website and includes an affiliate link containing their unique affiliate ID. A reader then clicks on that link and performs the action desired by the merchant. It could be:
- Completing a sale
- Providing an email address (for future email marketing ads or newsletters)
- Signing up for a trial offer of a service or product
When that happens, the affiliate website is paid a commission by the merchant who may have an in-house affiliate program or be part of an affiliate network. Networks like CJ and ShareASale sit in the middle and consolidate access to many merchants from one dashboard. For a deeper look at how those platforms compare, read our guide to the best affiliate networks.
How Much Money Can You Make?
You can make a lot of
The average income for an affiliate marketer is $154,700.
Contrast that with the average income for a lawyer, $144,230. And affiliate marketers do not have to work as many hours as lawyers or have student loan debt.
2What to Look for in an Affiliate Program
There are dozens of affiliate programs, and if you are new to the industry, you will not know what separates the best from the ones to avoid. These are qualities the best affiliate programs have.
Relevance
It is a bad look to recommend products to your readers that have no relevance to your blog topic. It will look like what it is, a naked cash grab. Choose products that your audience can use in pursuit of your niche. To do that, you have to join programs that have affiliate offers that match your site.
Tip: It is why a lot of affiliate marketers join Amazon Associates and eBay Partner Network. Both sites sell such a wide assortment of products that they will fit almost any niche.
That said, there is wiggle room. A cooking blog can promote chef’s knives and cookbooks, then expand into wine pairings with wine glasses and decanters. You stay relevant while opening new product categories.
Free to Join
Hopefully, you are going to make an affiliate program
Ease-of-Use
Affiliate marketing is a two-way street. You market a company’s products or services for them, and they pay you. But really, you are the one doing them a favor. It is like our relationship with a bank. Yes, having your
Takeaway: With that in mind, you should not have to jump through many hoops to join or be a part of any affiliate program or affiliate network. And that includes the sign-up process. All interactions should be user-friendly for you.
A Recurring, High Commission Rate
Of course, high commission rates are a no-brainer but look for merchants that offer recurring commissions. Frequently these will come from merchants that use a subscription model for their products or services.
You will continue to get paid so long as the customer you delivered continues to pay for the merchant’s product.
That is not to say that all of your affiliate products should be recurring, that is limiting. But these programs can be your number one source of passive income even if programs are paying a higher commission.
A Long-Lived Cookie
A cookie is a file stored on a computer to track affiliate sales. If your reader clicks on one of your affiliate links but does not complete the purchase immediately but comes back later and does so, you only get credit for the sale if the reader’s computer’s affiliate cookie has not yet expired.
Payout Schedule
When and how you get payouts is essential. Some affiliate programs only pay out monthly, which can be a problem if you are having cash flow issues. Many bloggers started doing affiliate marketing because they needed a side hustle to bring in extra
3Joining Affiliate Programs
Once you have decided which affiliate programs to join, the process is pretty straightforward. Most affiliate programs do not have a lot of requirements. If you have a blog, that is about all you need. Most programs only require potential partners to submit a simple application or complete a form.
But keep in mind that some topics are not exactly advertiser-friendly. If your topic is among them, you may not be allowed to join. These are some of the things that Amazon considers off limits:
- Promote or contain sexually explicit or obscene materials.
- Promote violence or contain violent materials.
- Promotes or contains false, deceptive, libelous, or defamatory materials.
- Promote or contain materials or activity that is hateful, harassing, harmful, invasive of another’s privacy, abusive or discriminatory (including based on race, color, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age).
- Promote or undertake illegal activities.
Read each program’s terms before you embed links. Our Amazon affiliate program guide walks through signup, compliance, and link creation in detail.
4The 7 Best Affiliate Programs for Beginners
As affiliate marketers ourselves, these are the best affiliate programs for beginners, but remember, the most critical factor is if a program offers products and services relevant to your niche.
1. Amazon Associates
No surprise here. Amazon Associates is not the biggest or the best affiliate program for many reasons, but it is one of the best affiliate programs for beginners. Amazon sells millions of different products, millions of people shop via Amazon, and with Lasso, you can join the program outside of the U.S. too. Other countries have the internet also. When someone from another country clicks an Amazon affiliate link, Lasso automatically sends them to their country’s local Amazon store. Sign up for Amazon affiliate programs including those in the United States, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom. And if you already have an Amazon account as a buyer, you are halfway done with the application process.
Commission Rate: 1% to 10% Cookie Duration: 24 hours
2. Rakuten Linkshare Affiliate Program
Rakuten is a marketing company based in Japan, and it acquired the affiliate marketing company LinkShare in 2005. While it is not as familiar to most people as some of the other affiliate programs, it is natural for beginners. The company has partnered with more than 1,000 brands and businesses that sell products in dozens of categories. The Rakuten partner program has a simple interface that makes it easy to do things like finding the best affiliate programs available, and the payout threshold is $50.
Commission Rate: Varies Cookie Duration: Varies
3. Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate)
CJ is an affiliate network, which means it acts as the middleman between you and merchants and manages the relationship. It is great for those new to affiliate marketing, as it saves you a lot of time. CJ works with more than 2,500 merchants across a variety of product categories. The company works with lots of big brand names and smaller businesses offering more specialized products and services, which is excellent for those of you in tiny niches who might sometimes struggle to find relevant products to promote. There is one caveat. You will sign up with CJ, and then you must apply directly to specific merchants, and the process varies both in terms of hoops you have to jump through and how long it takes to be approved or denied.
Commission Rate: Varies Cookie Duration: Varies
4. ClickBank
ClickBank does $3 billion a year in sales, which is especially impressive when you consider that it focuses on mostly digital products. Its inventory includes apps to teach social media users how to use their pages to make
Commission Rate: 10% to 75% Cookie Duration: Unknown
5. ShareASale
ShareASale has some of the industry’s best payouts, a few hundred dollars per sale in some cases. The company works with some 5,000 affiliate programs, but rather than all overrepresented big-name brands in affiliate marketing, there are smaller but more lucrative partners. It is an excellent benefit for those who have sites in very competitive niches like travel and beauty.
Commission Rate: Varies Cookie Duration: Varies
6. Etsy
Etsy has a straightforward commission structure; it is 4% across the board. That is far from the highest commission rate on this list, but the Etsy affiliate program has other benefits. The cookie duration is 30 days, which is excellent, and for those of you in specific niches, gifts, handmade things, or vintage items, for example, you will be able to promote products that will appeal to your audience. And you will be helping to promote a small business that, in most cases, is someone’s passion. And that is a nice thing, a good thing for the world.
Commission Rate: 4% Cookie Duration: 30 days
7. eBay Partner Network
Many people think that eBay only sells used items, the crap someone cleaned out of their garage. But that is not true. The vast majority of eBay sales are new items. And while Amazon sells almost anything you can think of, it is mostly everyday stuff, clothes, beauty products, towels, etc. eBay sells “weird” stuff! People sell haunted dolls, grilled cheese with the face of the Virgin Mary on it, and someone infamously once tried to sell their soul! You probably do not have a blog about holy sightings of food, but you might have a site about collecting stamps. If you search Google for “stamp collecting items Amazon,” you get 2,580,000 results, but the same search replacing Amazon with eBay gives you 60,100,000 results. And as an eBay affiliate, you will make a very nice commission rate!
Commission Rate: 70% Cookie Duration: 24 hours
5Join More Than One
We talked about not choosing too many affiliate partners when you first start your affiliate marketing online business, but you do not want to join too few. Many people consider Amazon to be the best affiliate marketing program; that is debatable, and “the best” anything is subjective. But even if it is the best program for your needs and you do not want to be a full-time affiliate manager, putting all of your eggs in one basket can be dangerous:
Amazon reduced the commissions it pays affiliates who advertise and link to the eCommerce giant’s products on their websites.
And while Amazon’s partner program never paid the highest affiliate commission in the industry, the cut was big. Furniture and home improvement products saw their commissions cut from 8% to 3%, and grocery items fell from 5% to 1%. There are seven affiliate programs on this list that we consider to be the best affiliate programs for beginners and seven is a manageable number.
6Lasso Helps Promote and Manage Affiliate Links
Maybe your website is a passion project, or perhaps you started it solely to make
Lasso: The All-In-One WordPress Plugin for Affiliate Marketing
A WordPress plugin that lets you add, manage, and display your affiliate links from any program, including Amazon. Increase conversions. Find new affiliate link opportunities. Earn more revenue! Less than 5 minutes to set up.
Lasso creates custom displays and presents your links in an attractive, clickable box like the above example. Sign up for Lasso today.
Run an Opportunities Scan once your programs are live. Most sites have product mentions sitting unmonetized in posts that already rank.
Jamie I.F.
Jamie heads up marketing at Lasso, runs a portfolio of niche sites, and tweets a lot about affiliate marketing and SEO.