How Many Affiliate Programs Should You Join? (Here’s A Simple Answer)

How many affiliate programs should I join? That’s a question bloggers ask me all the time.

I recommend beginners join no more than three affiliate programs. That way, you will have plenty of great products to recommend to your audience without getting distracted.

Once you feel the constraints of your current affiliate programs, you can branch out and find new programs as needed.

In this article, I’ll go into more detail about why joining multiple affiliate programs is a great idea and how to go about it the right way.If you’re ready to learn how many affiliate programs you should join, let’s dig in!

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Can You Be Part of Multiple Affiliate Programs?

Yes! In fact, joining multiple affiliate programs is a great way to diversify your income, so your business isn’t too reliant on one retailer. It’s also good practice to give your readers multiple purchasing options so they can choose who they want to buy from.

In fact, the Google Product Review Update says that a high-quality product review should:

“Consider including links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.”

You should absolutely join multiple affiliate programs. It’s a great way to make more money and better engage your audience. 

Further Reading:

• Best Affiliate Programs for Beginners Worth Joining Now

How Many Affiliate Programs Should I Join?

The golden rule for a new site is to join no more than three affiliate programs. After your site earns significant revenue, you can begin testing new programs and further diversifying your income. 

Here are some questions to ask yourself before looking for new affiliate programs to join:

Will it reduce my productivity?

Creating content requires time and effort. Sometimes joining more affiliate programs could distract you. So, the sweet spot is joining as many programs as you can promote without reducing productivity.

Can I find all of the products in one location?

Sometimes you only need one affiliate program because it has all the necessary products. Typically, these are affiliate networks, not programs.

Joining an affiliate network reduces the mental bandwidth of needing to track every program you belong to because they’re housed under one roof.

What’s my expertise level?

If you’re a beginner, start small. It’s the best way to build relationships with your affiliate managers and familiarize yourself with their catalog.

If concentrating on only one product feels limiting, here’s a suggestion. Pick three items from different categories relevant to your blog.

For example, if your niche is online marketing, you could choose from:

• Seo services
• Email marketing tools
• Web hosting providers

Select one from each.

Alternatively, experienced affiliate marketers will likely juggle multiple offers, and that’s ok. Your experience level will determine how many products you feel comfortable promoting.

Using our WordPress plugin Lasso, you can easily find affiliate programs inside your dashboard.

Head to Opportunities > Programs.

Lasso scans your site for potential programs you could join based on domains you already link to. This report displays:

• Additional affiliate programs
• Commission rates
• Potential links

Pick the ones most relevant and sign up for them inside your dashboard.

Alternatively, if you’re a content creator, check out our affiliate database with thousands of affiliate programs categorized by niche.

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How Many Affiliate Links Is Too Many?

Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller has repeatedly said that the number of affiliate links on one page is irrelevant. All that matters is whether the main content is useful to searchers. 

When asked this question directly, Mueller said,

There is no limit. From our side, it’s not that we’re saying that affiliate links are bad or problematic. It’s more a matter of, well, you actually need to have some useful content on your page as well. So that’s kind of the angle that we take there.

The simplest way to think about this is where can you add links so that they naturally fit into your content without sounding spammy.

Examining one of our 2,500-word product reviews from our personal finance site, we include affiliate links five times:

• 2x in the summary box at the top
• 1x in a comparison table
• 1x in our high-converting product display
• Once at the post’s conclusion

Too many affiliate links can ruin the user experience. In addition, since Google considers UX a ranking factor, this can negatively affect your site’s SEO and how search engines rank you.

Further Reading:

• Affiliate Marketing: An EPIC Guide for Beginners

How Many Affiliate Programs Should You Join? Final Thoughts

Any successful affiliate marketing strategy follows a couple of basic principles: publish regularly and create high-quality content that serves your readers’ needs.

The quality and consistency of your content will have a much greater impact on your site’s success than the number of affiliate programs you join. 

Your ultimate goal should be to serve your readers. With that in mind, you should join as many affiliate programs as you need to recommend the right products to your audience.

Lasso makes it easy to add new affiliate offers to your WordPress site. Click here to learn more.

Sean Brison is a dad, writer, business owner, and Content Lead at Lasso. He's spent the past several years in cahoots with Lasso's founder, Andrew, creating awesome things for people. He's also addicted to perfectly-balanced cocktails, the outdoors, and John Mulaney's stand-up comedy.