Affiliate Programs With Recurring Commissions

Affiliate programs with recurring commissions are the best kinds to promote. With a recurring commission affiliate program, you keep getting paid over and over again, for each sale. Beginner affiliates often miss out on this “gem” of wisdom. I was the same when I started doing affiliate marketing. Instead of using the most lucrative affiliate programs, I chose ones which only paid once, and which also paid badly!

affiliate programs with recurring commissions

Amazon is an example of a partner program which pays low commissions and only pays once. You can’t earn recurring commissions on physical products, (unless there’s a subscription involved somewhere). So with any program offering physical products, you won’t usually earn ongoing commissions. Amazon too only pays between 3% and 11% commission and it is notoriously poor for affiliates.

Affiliate Programs With Recurring Commissions

Affiliate programs with recurring commissions tend to be software or membership products which offer ongoing value. Ideally choose products which will offer lifetime commissions. Lifetime commission affiliate programs often are business tools used by affiliates themselves. When they build a successful business using the tools you referred to them, they’ll be a fan of it for life! And of course you’ll earn commissions for life if this happens!

Affiliate Programs With Recurring Commissions

Here’s a few affiliate programs with recurring commissions:

  1. The Six Figure Mentors – Digital Online Business Mentorship Program.
  2. Aweber – For email marketing
  3. Leadpages- For custom landing pages
  4. Get Response – Email marketing
  5. Elegant Themes – WordPress website themes
  6. Social Pilot – Social Media Tool
  7. SEM Rush – SEO tool
  8. Snip.ly – Conversion/opt-in tool
  9. HostGator – Hosting provider
  10. Shopify – Online Store Builder

Why Not Use Affiliate Programs With Recurring Commissions?

As an affiliate you want your work to pay you as much as possible. Many affiliate products will only pay you once. That’s fine if you’re simply adding a banner to your website and not doing much work. But if you’re committed to being a full time affiliate marketer, you’ll want your work to count.

Affiliate Programs With Recurring Commissions

If you could do the same amount of work for a monthly income as you could for a $10 commission, you would right? Often with what amounts to the same amount of work, affiliates will bust a gut just to earn tiny commissions! This is exactly the mistake I made in my early days of learning affiliate marketing. I would write for months around a Clickbank product, hoping to get some traffic.

Then, eventually I would earn one single commission, of $40; for months of work! With a recurring income product, all the work is worth much more. You can make a similar sale and earn $20 a month, for life, with the right products and customers. It pays to work smart and use affiliate products with recurring commissions.

Recurring Commissions & High Ticket Commissions

Another consideration is to choose products which offer high value and therefore a high commission. See highest paying affiliate programs list for a number of high paying affiliate programs. The best paying programs are typically digital products. Physical products usually pay between 3% and 11% commission so you’ll need to sell very high priced products to earn top commissions.

Affiliate Programs With Recurring Commissions

For example Hammacher Schlemmer have an affiliate program and sell flying hovercrafts! 8% of $190,000 would give you a massive commission of $15,200! However, you’ll need to find someone who wants a flying hovercraft and is willing to spend that much on it! Those people are hard to find!

Other large ticket products have a more global appeal such as business related products which help people earn online. The SFM’s product range includes business mentorship and training programs valued up to $20,000. You can even earn up to 40% commission on a product like this as a partner member of the SFM. That’s $8000 on a single sale!

affiliate programs with recurring commissions

Ideally, use a program which offers both recurring commissions and high ticket commissions for the best of both worlds. See also high ticket recurring commissions.

Multi-Tier Commissions

Recurring commissions and high ticket commissions are definitely worth considering if you’re starting out as an affiliate marketer. But there’s another option you can consider and it’s multi-tier commissions. With multi-tier commissions you get paid commissions based on sales made by your referrals. So if you’re in affiliate marketing for the long haul, it’s worth considering.

The SFM pays its partner members multi-tier commissions based on what their referrals sell. You can earn $10 a month per member and 10% of the high ticket products your referrals sell. (See chart below).

two tier commissions

A Product Range – Not Just A Single Product

By using a product range, affiliate marketers can benefit from later purchases made from existing customers. A single product can’t offer this and even with recurring commissions, you’re limited in earning power. With a product range, you can offer a range of up-sells to existing customers which also pay you commissions.

the six figure funnel

The SFM offers a built in sales team and product range which closes sales on your behalf. Once you’re referred a customer once to their product range, the customer can continue purchasing products up to a value of $20,000 (for the Mastermind Experience product). Depending on your positioning in the business system, you can earn from 5% to 40% commissions on later purchases.

DEA partner commission structure
Commission structure at DEA partner level of the SFM

Summary

Affiliate programs with recurring commissions are a great idea for affiliates. But there’s other considerations which can also massively impact your affiliate earning potential too.

Ideally choose a product to promote which offers as many of these benefits as possible:

  1. Recurring income from memberships/software
  2. Multi-tier sales – earn from your referrals’ sales
  3. High ticket products – allows you to more easily scale up and use paid marketing for promotion
  4. Built in sales team – closing sales on your behalf
  5. Product range – earn from existing customers when they purchase another product within a range of products.

The SFM Digital Business System gives access to all of these benefits. You can choose your “buy-in” level according to your budget too.

To access the SFM’s product range (to promote as an affiliate), click on the image below. You’ll also access an online community with step by step training.

Affiliate Programs With Recurring Commissions

Recurring Commission Affiliate Programs

Some of the best products to promote as an affiliate are offered by recurring commission affiliate programs. With recurring commissions, you sell a product once, and potentially make a lifetime recurring commissions from the sale. Typically these kinds of products offer ongoing value to the customer in the form of membership to a program or a software product of some kind.

Recurring Affiliate Programs List

Here’s a recurring affiliate programs list:

  1. The Six Figure Mentors – Digital Online Business Mentorship Program.
  2. Aweber – For email marketing
  3. Leadpages- For custom landing pages
  4. Get Response – Email marketing
  5. Elegant Themes – WordPress website themes
  6. Social Pilot – Social Media Tool
  7. SEM Rush – SEO tool
  8. Snip.ly – Conversion/opt-in tool
  9. HostGator – Hosting provider
  10. Shopify – Online Store Builder
recurring commission affiliate programs
The SFM business commission structure

Why Choose Recurring Commission Affiliate Programs?

It’s obvious why many affiliates choose to sell these kinds of programs. A recurring commission on a digital software or membership product is far better than a one-off sale of some kind. It’s especially better than selling physical products too, which typically offer far less in terms of commission than digital products; which recurring commission programs usually are.

Take a look at the list above. All the products are digital products which are accessible online. None of them are physical products. Although physical products sell well online, they are not so good for affiliate marketers because they usually offer only 3-10% commissions. Digital products on the other hand offer much more, up to 40-50% in some cases.

Recurring Commission Affiliate Programs – A More Sustainable Business Model

recurring commission affiliate programs

Recurring commission affiliate programs offer affiliates the opportunity to build a much more sustainable business by promoting their products. With ordinary products (and even digital products), it’s much harder to build a sustainable income over the longer term. Getting traction with an online business is the key to longevity. Many affiliate marketers quit because they just don’t know this or they can’t get the traction in their business to make it sustainable.

“High Ticket” Affiliate Products

Another consideration for affiliates is the use of high ticket affiliate products. With high ticket products, you can earn much larger commissions from your members with larger value product sales. A high ticket product, for example, can sell for up to $20,000 with up to a 40% commission attached.

High value digital products include mentorship programs which offer more personal training and one-to-one training structures. This kind of product in your ‘digital store’ can mean that it’s easier to use paid marketing to build and scale your business. With lower value items in your digital store, you need to focus on free marketing strategies instead. This means it can take much longer to generate traction in your online business. See High Commission Affiliate Programs.

Up-Sells In Your Sales Funnel

Another consideration is to use up-sells. “Up-sells” are products you can offer existing customers. Many products, including recurring commission affiliate products, only have the one basic item for sale. With a product range, you can use the benefit of multiple “up-sells” to generate commissions from ongoing sales to your customer based which are closed by an in-house sales team. See Ready Made Sales Funnel more more on up-sells and digital product suite.

Multi-Tier Sales – Commissions From Your Referral’s Sales

The Six Figure Mentors offers multi-tier sales at their top tier partner level. This means that you can earn a percentage of the sale value when your referral’s start generating sales in their online business. This also gives you an incentive to help people directly as they become more proficient at building their online business.

Marketing A Recurring Commission Affiliate Program

recurring commission affiliate program

How does a recurring commission affiliate program affect your marketing strategy? Knowing a single sale can bring in a monthly income gives you far more leverage than if you’re selling physical products from Amazon. This can mean you are able to use paid marketing strategies. Knowing your yearly return on investment from, let’s say 100 sales, can give you the confidence to spend money on an advertising budget. If you’re selling books from Amazon, you would be wasting your money!

Multiple recurring monthly commissions can soon mount up. Compared to a stand alone product which pays only once, you can see that recurring commission affiliate programs can give you a lot more flexibility when it comes to marketing. You still need to make the sale of course, but there’s more scope for using the different marketing platforms when you can more easily recoup your advertising budget.

With a good product range and built in sales team, there’s more options again for using the more expensive (and better) marketing platforms.

Checkout my review of The SFM (Six Figure Mentors) who offer a training and education platform, an online community and a range of high ticket products which offer subscription commissions, up-sells, multi-tier sales and a built in sales team.