While many of the best affiliate programs offer one-time CPA payouts after a sale, others provide a recurring payout ever month. A recurring program is when an affiliate makes a commission for selling a site’s product on a recurring (or monthly) basis.
Here are my picks for the best recurring programs:
1. BUZZSPROUT.
This popular podcast host offers a 20% recurring payout, and they even provide new users with a $20 Amazon gift card to help increase conversion rates. I support Buzzsprout on my podcast hosting page, and they have an excellent marketing manager that can help with content ideas and promotions.
2. THINKIFIC.
Thinkific is another popular online course platform, and they offer a 20% recurring. I made $956 from a single Thinkific sale.
3. IPVANISH.
IPVanish makes this recurring list as well since they are the best VPN service on the market and have some of the best payouts in the VPN industry. They also have an outstanding affiliate manager.
4. LEADPAGES.
Leadpages is a famous landing page builder that helps users build dedicated web pages with forms and calls-to-action. Their affiliate program provides a repeating 30%.
5. TEACHABLE.
Teachable is an online course platform that allows bloggers and website owners to build their classes to sell to their students. They offer a 30% repeating payout.
6. GETRESPONSE.
GetResponse is another email marketing service that offers a 33% recurring commission. They are another excellent email marketing affiliate program.
7. AWEBER.
Aweber is an email marketing platform that is great for businesses and marketing teams because of their email templates and design features. They offer a 30% recurring rate.
8. CONVERTKIT.
ConvertKit is one of my favorite email marketing tools as it’s great for bloggers. They have a visual automation builder and can create triggers based on website actions and actions inside of emails. A friend of mine runs their program, and they offer a 30% per month.
9. ELEGANT THEMES.
Elegant Themes is a WordPress theme library consisting of 87 easy-to-use themes and over 550,000 customers. If you’re a blogger and want to recommend themes to your readers, you can send traffic to Elegant Themes and get a high ticket 50% recurring payout.
10. NINJAOUTREACH.
NinjaOutreach is an all-in-one influencer marketing tool. It helps you perform outreach, find influencer email addresses, build email lists, and grow your content promotion efforts. They used to offer 50% recurring but now provide 20%.
11. SEMRUSH.
SEMRush is an influential SEO tool website owners can use to track keywords, conduct site audits, and view competitive insights in their online marketing. Their program is called BeRush, and they offer their affiliate partners a 40% commission.
12. SPYFU.
SpyFu is another SEO tool focused on competitive insights. You can use their tool to download data on a competitor’s top organic and paid keywords. They feature a 40% persistent payment.
13. CLICKFUNNELS.
ClickFunnels is a popular landing page builder, and they offer a 40% payout on all sales. They have a lot of different ads and courses you can promote and an intuitive dashboard to grab your links.
When the payment is “recurring,” it doesn’t just occur once, but repeatedly as long as your commissioned user is still a paying customer. Recurring income programs pay their commissions monthly because of the customer retention rate. Most recurring programs are software as a service (SaaS) advertisers whose platforms require a monthly subscription.
With monthly subscriptions, a customer’s lifetime value (LTV) is much higher than the monthly sale price, as they continue paying every month until they churn.
Because of this, the advertiser can afford to pay one of two ways: a one-time commission higher than the monthly price, or a smaller recurring percentage over the lifetime of the customer.
Affiliates like both one-time payout and recurring models, and there are pros and cons to each approach.
One-time payout:
Pro: You get a more substantial payment upfront, sometimes as high as 500-1,000% of the monthly subscription cost.
Con: You lack consistency in your affiliate revenue stream, and may make less over the lifetime of the customer.
Recurring commission:
Pro: You generate consistent revenue each month and can better predict how much money you’ll make. Additionally, you may also make more over the lifetime of the customer if there are low churn rates and high retention rates.
Con: You make a smaller amount up-front, and the customer could churn quickly, eliminating your earnings.
