Affiliate marketing is a great way to increase your income, especially if you develop the right strategies to tackle the space. However, whether you’re considering becoming an affiliate marketer, or if you’re already experienced and looking to increase your earnings, you’ll need some real-life examples to ensure you’re doing things right.
Thankfully, affiliate marketing is not unknown territory, and many successful sites have generated millions in revenues and employ large teams. This article will highlight six of these affiliate marketing sites, review what they are doing right, and show prospective affiliate marketers what they can learn from them.
Table of Contents
6 successful affiliate marketing sites & what businesses can learn from them
The bottom line
6 successful affiliate marketing sites & what businesses can learn from them
1. Wirecutter (13.4 million estimated monthly visits)
Wirecutter stands out in the world of product reviews for its dedication to error-free and high-quality testing. Their reviewers have extensive experience with the products they review, investing significant time and resources into research and testing. But what makes them unique is their comprehensive tests.
For example, they have created obstacle courses for robot vacuums and smeared food on hundreds of dishes to review dishwashers. Because of this approach, Wirecutter has a great deal of credibility and trust from readers, resulting in higher conversion rates compared to affiliate sites that use less hands-on methods.
Wirecutter’s meticulous testing may seem extreme, but it effectively builds consumers’ trust. Many people specifically search for “vacuum Wirecutter” each month, indicating a strong reliance on their reviews. Some of their top affiliate programs include Wayfair, Amazon, Home Depot, and Walmart.
What can businesses learn from Wirecutter?
- Create a brand that people trust and seek out. While this lesson can seem excessive at first, it pays off significantly over time.
- If prospects are going into the product review side of affiliate marketing, thoroughly test all products before writing a review.
- Offer multiple buying options by providing links to two different marketplaces. Even if one offers a higher affiliate commission, offering both changes the question from “Should I buy?” to “Which store should I buy from?”
2. The Diamond Pro (251,000 estimated monthly visits)
The Diamond Pro stands out by using deal alerts, “ask an expert” forms, and creative ways to include affiliate links in education content, which boosts conversions and email collection. The Diamond Pro’s top affiliate programs include Ritani, Blue Nile, Leibish, and James Allen. Here’s how they do it.
Deal alerts
These are colored boxes that highlight discounts at popular diamond retailers. To get the discount code, readers must enter their email addresses—a great way to collect emails and drive affiliate traffic.
Ask an expert forms
At the bottom of each article, The Diamond Pro provides a form where readers can ask questions about diamonds, gold, or jewelry. Then, a diamond expert replies with advice, recommendations, and an affiliate link to the best deal, collecting emails and earning commissions.
Affiliate links in educational content
The Diamond Pro also embeds tools and quizzes within its content. For example, a gold pricing calculator in gold-related articles prompts readers to fill it out, and then offers a free quote from a gold buyer. They also use quizzes that show two diamonds and ask readers to choose the option that fits a description, redirecting them to a site where they can purchase it.
What can marketers learn from The Diamond Pro?
- Deal alerts are a great way to attract traffic and gather emails. By negotiating exclusive discounts with affiliate partners, marketers can offer these deals for free to boost commissions upfront or require an email signup to grow their list.
- Don’t sleep on targeted advice through forms. Placing this form at the end of articles or product pages allows businesses to offer valuable advice and recommend relevant products, increasing the chances of conversion.
- Educational content is a great template for engaging consumers. Utilize quizzes, calculators, and other interactive elements in informational posts to generate affiliate commissions.
3. PCPartPicker (29.05 million estimated monthly visits)
PCPartPicker excels at offering PC builders a suite of highly useful tools, making it the go-to site for this audience. Their standout feature is the PC builder tools, which allow users to select their desired parts, check for compatibility issues, and find the best deals. When users purchase recommended products, PCPartPicker earns a commission.
Beyond the PC builder, PCPartPicker offers predesigned builds, a user marketplace for completed builds, and a detailed database with information on every recommended component. Their innovative solutions for addressing compatibility issues and providing valuable tools have helped them dominate the PC component affiliate market. PCPartPicker’s top affiliate programs include GameStop, Amazon Affiliate, Best Buy, and NewEgg.
One more thing about PCPartPicker’s strategy. While they earn 100% of their revenue from affiliate commissions, they also allow their users to participate, benefit, and save money through their strategy. Users can earn money through PCPartPicker’s marketplace, share builds with other users, and find coupons for the cheapest options. The result of these tactics is a dedicated audience loyal to PCPartPicker.
What to learn from PCPartPicker’s strategy?
- Try simplifying complicated tasks. Before PCPartPicker, building a computer was daunting. If there’s a difficult problem in the target or current niche, think about creating a tool that simplifies the process.
- Use Amazon’s “Add all to cart” feature, especially when promoting multiple complementary items. It makes it easy for users to buy everything with a single click.
- PCPartPicket didn’t stop at creating a PC builder tool. They kept adding new features, transforming themselves from a helpful tool into the central hub for PC builders.
4. Clever Hiker (100,000 monthly visits)
Clever Hiker’s standout affiliate marketing strategy is free video courses and detailed trip guides for popular wilderness destinations. These resources provide a unique traffic source and help Clever Hiker become more credible through the authors’ expertise. Plus, the video courses are beginner-friendly introductions to wilderness exploration, capturing interest early in the customer journey.
Unlike most affiliate sites that target high buyer intent, Clever Hiker focuses more on educating newcomers on the basics. As beginners learn and gain confidence, they are more likely to purchase recommended products. Additionally, Clever Hiker targets helpful topics instead of specific products to ensure their courses remain effective.
For instance, their video on ultralight shelters covers general tent categories instead of particular models. This approach has kept their content relevant for over eight years without needing constant updates. In addition to the video course, Clever Hiker offers complete guides to 49 popular destinations.
These guides include essential trail information, photos from the trails, trip planning resources, gear advice, and more. This extra content further enhances their authority and usefulness. Clever Hike’s top affiliate programs include REI, Walmart, Amazon, and Tentsile.
What marketers can learn from Clever Hike’s affiliate strategy?
- Create a free, helpful video course to teach the basics of the target niche. Like Clever Hiker, it will boost the business’s credibility and trustworthiness while allowing them to recommend products, creating a solid revenue stream.
- Although Clever Hiker didn’t use this strategy, offering a free course can be an excellent lead magnet for a paid course. Authority Hacker, for example, used this approach with its free training course for building authority sites.
5. Headphones Addict (221,530 estimated monthly visits)
Headphones Addict uses an advanced internal linking strategy to boost SEO rankings, establish topical authority, and increase revenue through product recommendations. This strategy also enhances their site architecture. They achieve this with over 150 pieces of informational content, which they link to extensively from both commercial and informational posts.
For example, a headphone review might link to 30 internal articles—20 providing detailed explanations and 10 offering relevant product reviews. All links are contextually relevant and only added where they make sense. Additionally, they provide individual reviews for each product in a roundup review, offering more detailed information for interested readers.
Note: Headphone Addict generates most of their income from Amazon, eBay, and Walmart affiliate programs. But marketers can click here to find other affiliate programs for the electronics niche.
What can businesses learn from Headphones Addict?
- Informational content is a great way to enter affiliate marketing. If the content is helpful and demonstrates knowledge in the niche, Google will reward the credibility with search visibility, which puts more eyes on affiliate links.
- Sometimes, readers may need more information on some terms and concepts. This allows businesses to add more links to other content on their side, driving traffic to other affiliate links.
6. This Is Why I’m Broke (5.86 million estimated monthly visits)
This Is Why I’m Broke showcases fun and interesting products, whether or not they have affiliate partnerships. The site is designed for users to endlessly scroll through unique finds, leading to many affiliate link clicks. They find many of these products through a pitch page where creators can submit their offerings, often discovering items other sites don’t have.
They also create gift guides for various occasions, which helps attract a lot of organic traffic from Google. The site’s revenue comes entirely from affiliate commissions, mainly from Amazon. When users click on an Amazon link, a tracking cookie records any purchases they make within a certain period, allowing the site to earn commissions on those products.
In essence, they turn window shopping into a revenue stream by directing high traffic to Amazon and leveraging its powerful conversion system. Despite making 66% of profit from Amazon, This Is Why I’m Broke also uses Etsy’s affiliate program.
What to learn from This Is Why I’m Broke’s strategy?
- Affiliate niches don’t always have to be serious. If marketers excel at finding fun novelty products, they can create a successful affiliate marketing site without needing in-depth reviews or rigorous testing.
- Product-focused websites can still generate income from affiliate marketing. Despite many recommendation-heavy sites being affected by Google updates, This is Why I’m Broke shows that this model works if businesses execute it properly.
- Don’t dismiss Amazon affiliate websites. Although Amazon commissions have decreased, marketers can still make good income by driving high traffic.
The bottom line
Affiliate marketing is a huge industry with a value of over USD 17 billion despite it being a fairly basic concept. Experts predict this value will reach USD 28.8 billion by 2027. This offers a great way for businesses to monetize their websites, and the best place to start is by exploring what strategies have already made the top affiliate marketing sites successful.
From the six examples above, businesses can see a few things each successful site has in common. Each example has a great website design, valuable and informative content for a niche/specific audience, a push for organic/paid traffic, and an intent to become a credible source among their audiences. Businesses can use these insights to craft their unique strategy and boost their income in 2024.
