Best Affiliate Programs for Recurring Commissions in 2021

Contents:

• Introduction

• Web hosting

• WordPress Addons

• Funnel building software

• Email marketing software

• Shopping Carts/eCommerce

• VPN software

• Courses

• SEO

• YouTube Tools

• Image/Illustration

• Social Media

• Stock Footage

• Project Management

• Helpdesk

• CRM

• Webinars

• Link Tracking

• Membership

• Miscellaneous

Introduction

In terms of affiliate marketing, offers that pay recurring commissions are the closest thing you are likely to find to a real passive income. An initial sale could lead to many months or even years of recurring income from the same customer.

Many of the best recurring programs are software. The Software as a Service (SaaS) model has grown to prominence over the last few years – most likely because vendors find it more lucrative than the old one-off licence fee.

Let’s start with a product that many, if not most affiliate marketers are going to use themselves:

Web Hosting

You can find reviews of some other hosts here.

Web hosting is an evergreen affiliate product as pretty well everyone is going to want a website for their business at some point.

Many of the web hosting companies pay out a fixed amount for new subscribers. However, some offer a recurring commission.

Kinsta

While Kinsta only offers a 10% recurring commission this is in addition to the bonus you receive for the initial sign-up which can range $50 up to $500 for an enterprise plan.

Kinsta also has quite a high stick rate which means you would be receiving the commission for quite some time and is also a good indication that they offer a good product.

The lowest-priced plan is $30 per month so you would receive and then insure $50 and $3 per month that every customer you managed to sign up.

Cloudways

It is possible to receive a recurring commission from this host who offer three different payment structures. If you opt for their hybrid commission then you would receive $30 for every sale plus 7% of the monthly fee as a recurring commission.

The cheapest plan starts at $10 per month although you do get charged extra for off-site backups.

LiquidWeb

In the same vein as Cloudways, Liquidweb offers a one-off bonus plus a recurring commission model. They would pay up to $150 plus 10% on the monthly plan.

So for their $29 WordPress hosting package, you could receive $150 which is a pretty sweet deal.

The downside of course is it will be difficult to get your average starter blogger to pay $29 a month for hosting when someone like Bluehost would let you have an unlimited number of sites for around $6 or $7 a month.

TD Web services

They offer up to 35% commission through their own program or if you would prefer to go for one-off commissions this is run through Share-a-sale.

Apart from their micro plan they certainly aren’t the cheapest, which means you could generate a reasonable revenue by recommending them.

However, it will probably be difficult to sell to a newer blogger when compared with the likes of Bluehost or Siteground.

Rose hosting

Currently, they are offering a 10% commission on monthly payments with WordPress VPS hosting coming in at around $25 you would obviously be making around $2 50 per customer per month.

It does seem unlikely that you could convince someone to pay that much for hosting especially if you cater mainly to bloggers, especially bloggers who haven’t got a massive audience themselves and therefore require a more powerful hosting solution.

Nestify

Unusually Nestify will pay you a $50 bonus once your affiliate application is approved.  You will receive a 25% commission on the monthly fees that your leads pay.

The cheapest plan offered by Nestify is $9 per month although realistically $19 per month is probably the option that people would need to go for.

Virmach

Shared web hosting such as most people would use to run their WordPress blog starts from $5 per month and you could receive 40% of that as a commission if you promoted Virmach.

You can receive 30% to 40% on some of their more expensive plans or products as well, so this could quite quickly prove to be lucrative if you are promoting to the right audience

Jixhost

They are very low-cost providers charging only $1.98 per month for their shared hosting services and they payout 20% to affiliates so that were around 40 cents per month.

The advantage for you as an affiliate is it’s a lot easier to sell someone a $2 package than a $20 package so if you have a sufficient volume of traffic to your site this might be an option worth considering.

Constant Hosting

10% commission with pricing starting at $5 per month.

WordPress Addons (builders, themes, plugins, etc)

Beaver Builder

This is a drag and drop page Builder with prices starting from $99 and affiliates recurring commissions of 25%.

Thrive Themes

One of the best known in the business, they offer a decent commission structure of 35% on purchases and 25% on renewals.

Thrive memberships start from $19/month (when paid annually)

Elegant Themes

Producers of the Divi page builder and several other useful tools for WordPress websites.

Affiliates would receive 50% commission on initial sale and recurring commission on the yearly renewal.

With an $89 annual fee, you would be making $44.50. Not bad for something that WordPress users would likely find very useful.

MyThemeShop

The highest payout I have seen amongst WordPress affiliate programs. You receive 70%!

The product consists of 85 themes and 13 plugins and has an annual fee of $167.

ThemeIsle

A collection of 30 themes and 10 plugins plus many add-ons makes ThemeIsle one of the most popular WordPress clubs.

Fees range from $14.99 up to $299 with affiliates eyeball to receive commissions of 55%.

CSSIgniter

Another collection of themes and plugins including some elemental starter kits for the hire costing plans.

Plans start from around $35 for an annual subscription and would pay out 50% commission on the initial sale I’ll and on future renewals.

Themeum

This is a WordPress theme shop with recurring commissions of 30% on all sales with products ranging from $39 to $149.

TemplateMonster

As well as WordPress templates and themes this site has many other add-ons for different CMS’s.

Affiliates will earn 30% for any visitors on their first purchase and returning visitors would net you another 10% on any purchases they make.

Apollo13themes

You wouldn’t 35% of the annual licence for anyone you manage to refer to purchase the theme provided by my Apollo 13.

SEOPressor Connect

A plug-in to handle SEO on your WordPress blog.

This costs the end-user $9 per month and as an affiliate, you would receive a 50% commission every month.

Given that yoast and rank math both have free offerings this could be a hard sell.

Premium Coding Themes

A collection of WordPress themes with commissions ranging from 35% – 50% recurring

Their annual plan starts at £83.

WordPress Support

AccessWP

WordPress support from $99/month but only 10% commission for affiliates.

Zen WP

Offering Support for WordPress users. $3000 for every 100 signups, 8% recurring commission.

Plans start at $79/month.

Landing Page/Funnel Builders

Next, we’re going to take a look at Funnel building software.  online gurus recommend Funnel building software to their audience.

Personally, I think funnel building software is probably most appropriate where you are trying to sell products from Clickbank, Jvzoo or WarriorPlus.

If you are attempting to create a long-term asset like a blog then I personally don’t think funnel software would represent money well spent.

However for completeness and because they do tend to offer very generous commissions I will include them here.

Clickfunnels

Arguably one of the most famous affiliate programs, certainly in the make money online space. Many of the gurus will be marketing this to their audience and they will often try to entice them with free funnels.

Clickfunnels has recently changed it’s commission structure. New affiliates will only receive a 20% commission on any monthly plans that they manage to refer.

However, they can apply to upgrade their payments to 30 or even 40% once they have achieved certain minimum referral targets. Given the cheapest Clickfunnels package is just under $100 this means if you can get yourself up to the 40% level one single referred customer would be earning you around $40 a month.

Also, Clickfunnels runs a very popular promotion for its affiliates where the best performers can receive additional payments towards the car of their choice.

Clickfunnels also offers some lower price items which you could offer and due to their cookie length if one of those customers went on to buy a Clickfunnels subscription you would receive the credit.

You should note however that if lead clicked on a different Clickfunnels affiliate link after clicking yours they would then be the live referrer and receive any commissions even if you sold one of the lower ticket items first.

Personally, I am not a fan of Russell Brunson and therefore would not promote Clickfunnels myself.

Kartra

Kartra is more of an all-in-one solution than Clickfunnels. In addition to the form building or webpage building, it offers you the ability to create membership sites, host webinars and many other features besides.

Kartra offers a two-tier commission structure to its affiliates so not only do you get 40% of any subscriptions that you managed to refer, and you also get 10% of any subscriptions but those people managed to refer. This makes it quite a popular program to join even if you aren’t actually using the software to run your business.

My own opinion is that your average blogger is wasting money on this type of software.

However, if you are looking to sell your own products then it has a lot of interesting features. Whether those features would be appreciated by members of your audience is a different question.

The cheapest plan on offer at the moment is $99 per month so you would be getting around $40.

Builderall

Is another all-in-one solution along similar lines to Kartra.

It has recently undergone some massive changes as they are upgraded to version 4.0. They have simplified (increased) the pricing plans to the point where they only have two paid plans now, with the cheapest costing $69.90 per month.

As an affiliate, you would take 100% of the first month’s payment and 30% of any subsequent payments as long as the customer remains subscribed. In addition, like Kartra, Builderall has a two-tier commission structure so you also get 30% on any sales that your affiliates have made except for the first month.

As you can imagine a successful Builderall promotional campaign could quite quickly lead to you generating a substantial income every month. Chad Bartlett is one of their top affiliates.

While I personally don’t believe that Builderall and Kartra are really that necessary for a lot of online businesses, they do offer quite a lot of value for money if you are going to be using several of the features included in the packages.

Some affiliates can generate a nice income just by focusing on one or other of these products for example Franklin Hatchett has made quite a tidy sum Clickfunnels and Liam James Kay has made quite a bit with both Builderall and Kartra.

Leadpages

Like Clickfunnels and Kartra, Leadpages allows you to build drag-and-drop sales funnels and landing pages and you also have the option of creating what they call Leadboxes (”pop-ups”).

Leadpages pay a 30% commission on packages starting from $25 per month up to $199 per month. You can also take advantage of the 14-day free trial to promote to your prospects.

Unbounce

Unbounce tends to be targeted more towards marketing teams or agencies that are building landing pages or funnels for businesses, it has the obligatory drag-and-drop functionality and features such as split testing and CRM integration.

If you managed to promote this to your audience you would be looking at a 20% monthly recurring commission. The cheapest plan they offer is currently $80, so you may find it difficult to promote this to an audience that know about products such as Kartra which offer many more features. You can of course lead with their 14-day free trial and let your audience decide for themselves.

Instapage

Given its price, Instapage is most likely targeting small businesses or agencies rather than sole traders. If you are paying monthly it’s going to cost you $199 per month. while as an affiliate you can receive 50% during your first year and 30% in subsequent years you would have to think long and hard whether your audience is likely to want to pay this much for the features that it offers.

Wishpond

With their cheapest plan starting at $149 and a limit of 1000 subscribers, this is likely to be a tough sell in comparison with many of the other products available.

Sorry to harp on but you could get Kartra for $50 per month less and again have many more features available as and when you needed them. I am not trying to get you to sell Kartra but the more I look into this topic the better value it appears to become. It is also pretty good for affiliates with its two-tier structure.

If you did have an audience that might find Wishpond useful then you will be able to earn yourself a 30% commission or at least $45 a month.

OptinGun

Paying 60% on the first month and 10% after that.

OptinGun lets you build popups to capture emails for your email marketing campaigns.

Deadline Funnel

Funnel builder that costs the end-user $49/month. They pay 33%.

ConvertFlow

Landing Pages, surveys and quizzes are some of the features available.

30% recurring commission on prices starting at $29/month.

Ucraft

Website and landing page builder that costs from $10/month and pays 25% commission.

Landingi

The cheapest plan starts from $29 per month and quickly ramps up depending on the number of visitors you require or expect.

You can receive up to 30% commissions on the monthly fee.

Landingi seemed pretty unique in that they allow you to adjust the amount of commission you received to give a discount in effect to your leads.

Again it is difficult to see why one would purchase this product in comparison with one of the email marketing software products that also offer landing pages.

You are almost certainly going to want to automate your email marketing and therefore it doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay for two separate programs when one program can do both.

Email Marketing software

Getresponse

This pays a 33% commission on the monthly fee your customer is subscribed to. I currently use Getresponse for my own business. I find it pretty simple to use and it tends to get results.

It allows me to create the sort of marketing campaigns that I need.

Getresponse offers a 120-day cookie and you also have the option of taking a one-off payment of $100 rather than the recurring commission.

To be honest one of the reasons I plumped for Getresponse was their pricing structure which starts at $15 a month for 1000 subscribers. At the time this was the most attractive price for the features offered.

You might need to think about your audience before deciding on whether to take the one-off bonus or the recurring commission. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMB/SME) are less likely to chop and change providers so you would probably go for the recurring commission.

While individuals may well decide to change when they see what they perceive to be a better deal so in that instance you would be better off plumping for the $100 one-off payment.

Gist

They offer one of the best commission rates at 40%. They also offer chat functionality which is something that few other providers in this space are currently offering.

The pricing structure starts at $34 per month for the standard 1000 subscribers and you can offer a 21-day free trial to your audience.

Gist provides several promotional materials for affiliates such as email swipes and banners. If you can show that you have an engaged audience then they can go the extra mile by creating customised webinars or joining in podcasts.

Aweber 

Another of the major players this one is recommended by the Clickbank University team such as Justin Atlan.

A 365-day cookie is about as generous as it gets and they also offer the typical 30% commission.

Aweber starts at $29 per month for 1000 subscribers and offers a 30-day free trial.

They offer lots of promotional material for, would be, affiliates such as banners and have a strong affiliate team supported by the company management.

Drip

Offering a healthy 30% this is the choice of one of my favourite Elementor experts Dave Foy.

Activecampaign

Payments range from 20 to 30% depending on the level of business you have been referring to them.

Their cookie length is 90 days and they currently have a 14-day $1 trial

To use this service yourself would cost $29 per month based on 1000 subscribers.

Automizy

They pay particularly close attention to their open rates which is extremely important for email marketers since many people will simply delete the email or it will end up in the spam or junk folder and not be seen by the potential customer.

You get 90% commission on the first month’s payment and then 40% on any further monthly payments. The cookie length is only 30 days.

They offer a 14-day free trial and a generous 60-day cancellation policy. To use the service yourself would cost $29 per month based on 1000 subscribers

Autopilot

They offer the standard sort of tools like most other email marketing software.

However, they do tend to be a little more expensive their basic plan comes in at $49 per month although this is for 2000 subscribers and you do get a 30-day free trial

They do pay 30% commission on but the stumbling block with this software for many will be the fact that you actually have to be a user in order to receive the commissions.

Convertkit

Convertkit’s tagline is “built by creators for creators”.

The company have recently switched to offering a free tier of membership (with limited functionality) but still offer a very generous 30% on their paid plans for anyone you refer. You get a 90-day cookie.

1000 subscribers will cost you $29 per month and they offer a 14-day free trial.

Legendary internet marketer Pat Flynn is their brand ambassador. Among their promotional materials, they offer webinars that you can use in your own sales funnel.

At the moment they are taking up to 6 weeks to respond to new affiliate applications which is somewhat of a concern.

Email Octopus

One of the lower-cost options at only $20 per month for 1000 subscribers and offering the standard 14-day free trial Email Octopus pay 30% commission for referred clients although their cookie length is a little stingy at only 30 days.

They offer the usual drag and drop editor, automation and templates. You should also note that the commissions are only payable for the first 12 months of a subscription.

Mailerlite

Another solution offering 30% – it would appear that is the sweet spot for Email Marketing software.

With 1000 subscribers costing only $10 per month, Mailerlite offers excellent value for money, though you are limited to 12000 emails.

The simple fact is it will be difficult to make a large sum of money from mailerlite as an affiliate product unless you have a large, engaged audience.

However, for a user $10 a month is excellent value given what they offer.

Moosend

Moosend pay the same standard 30%. Paid plans from $8/month.

SendLane

Offering the typical 30% commission and 30-day cookie. One of the unique features is SendLane Beacon which tracks your prospects’ actions. They also include SMS functionality.

Given that they are at the slightly more expensive end of the market, charging $35 for 1000 subscribers you would get around $10 per month for every sign up which is quite a nice bonus. You can also offer your prospects a 14-day free trial.

SendLoop

Will pay you 10% on plans starting at $9 per month.

OntraPort

Another well-known offering in this space Ontraport pays 25% at the moment.

Cookie length for Ontraport is relatively short 30 days. They offer SMS tools and also a CRM package and membership sites within their plan but it is very pricey at $79 per month for 1000 subscribers.

In order to justify that cost you really would need to be using some of the features that aren’t available in other products. You would have to ask whether your audience is likely to use those features such that OntraPort was an attractive option to promote to them.

Benchmark

25% commission on the monthly premiums paid for this email solution

Probably Benchmark’s outstanding feature is its built-in photo editor.

They are particularly centered on graphic rich email marketing.

Their free plan is particularly well-liked and allows up to 2000 subscribers and up to 250 emails per month.

Obviously, this is a major selling point if you are trying to gain recurring affiliate commissions for this product.

However, most experienced marketers would find 250 emails a month far too limiting and this may even put off even beginners.

If you go for one of the paid plans they start at $22 per month for the first 1000 subscribers.

Pabbly

Coming in at only $9 per month for 2500 subscribers, Pabbly offers superb value. As an affiliate marketer, however, the low price would make it difficult to generate a lot of commissions unless you have a large audience that buys into the product.

Pabbly only offers a 30-day cookie but pays a 30% commission. You will only make $2.70 per month for every one you get signed up but you could weigh that against the likelihood of someone quitting the plan at that price point.

They do offer good support to their affiliates and have many creative assets that you can use.

Rocket Responder

An interesting commission structure paying between 20 and 75% commissions depending upon the number of people you have referred.

So up to four referrals active per month would give you a 20% commission. This then ranges up to 75% commission if you were able to achieve 1250 or more active users in a month.

Given they currently charge only $20 a month and that is for an unlimited number of subscribers there could be a lot of potential with this particular program

They offer the standard email marketing lead capture and forms functionality.

You have the option of a free trial and the Cookie length is 30 days.

In the event you were able to get to 1250 or more active users you would be looking at $18750 per month in affiliate commission. That would be an incredible income for recommending email software.

ActiveTrail

Not likely to blow your socks off. 15% commission and their cheapest plans are $8 or $11 per month

Shopping carts/eCommerce

If you are looking to sell products on your website either physical or digital you will need some form of solution to take payment from your customers and if that also comes with a way of creating your own storefront then even better.

SamCart

One of the more well-known products in the sector they are currently offering 40% commissions on monthly plans that start at $49. While they aren’t only offering payment processing it doesn’t appear to be particularly good value when you consider products such as Kartra which include this functionality in their basic plan along with quite a lot of other features for only $99 per month.

Sendowl

At the cheaper end of the spectrum with plans starting from as little as $9 a month and commissions of 20% you probably won’t become a millionaire by offering Sendowl to your audience. However as a product, it seems better value then samcart.

Paykickstart

This package allows you to collect payments in the normal fashion such as credit cards and also allows you to set up payment collection systems for membership sites and you can even manage payments to your affiliates if you are selling products that way.

The cheapest plan is $99 per month and you would be looking at a 30% ongoing commission so a fraction under $30 a month. Again, not sure what this is doing that you probably couldn’t do in Kartra.

X-cart

Unfortunately as an affiliate this only offers you a 10% commission and only for the first year. Clearly, another program that isn’t going to make you a millionaire.

Ecwid

This isn’t really just a cart, it’s actually a whole e-commerce platform. From a user point of view, it’s great because you can have 10 products in a store free forever. For an affiliate, you will get 20% lifetime commissions when someone upgrades to one of the paid plans which start at £15 per month.

If you have an audience in the e-commerce niche this might be a perfect alternative to Shopify for those starting with a very limited budget.

3dCart

This solution offers two different commission structures.

You can get 300% commission on a sale alternatively if you run an agency where you are referring clients you would be able to take advantage of their partner program which pays 25% recurring commissions on the monthly fees.

They are currently doing a sale with 50% off the first year’s fees for anyone signing up for their product. Normally the cheapest plan Comes in at $19 per month.

Shopio

This is another shopping cart/e-commerce solution where you can build a store and accept payment for products.

With plans starting from $19.95 a month it’s not a particularly high barrier of entry for your audience and you would receive a 25% commission on their monthly fees.

Shopio provides several creative assets to help you promote the platform.

Payhip

Payhip allows content creators to sell their digital products to their fans. It offers PayPal and Stripe as payment options and paid plans start at $29 per month.

Affiliates would earn a 50% commission on both the monthly payment plan and any transaction fees.

Now since even the free plan incurs a 5% transaction fee you could earn even if someone wasn’t paying for a monthly subscription as you would get 2.5% of any sales that they made through Payhip.

Depending upon the sort of product being sold this could actually turn out to be quite a lucrative option.

1Shoppingcart

As an affiliate for this program, you only get 10% recurring commissions and their packages start from $34 per month so this one is really for someone with a large engaged audience or someone who is just looking to make a little side income.

Again this offers not just payment functionality but the opportunity to create a store in which to sell your products.

So this would really apply why to someone with an audience looking to start dropshipping or print on demand,  or possibly even someone with digital downloads.

However, given the cost involved to the end user compared with more well-known platforms you might find this one a tricky sell.

Fesh

Another Shopify alternative.

From the end user’s point of view, it does have a very low entry point – $16 per month.

Although you will probably need to move up to one of the higher price plans quite quickly.

If you promoted this as an affiliate you would be looking at 30% recurring commissions even rising as high as 50% depending on the number and quality of leads that you referred.

Sellfy

Sellfy is an e-commerce/shopping cart system. Its prices start from $29 a month for the end-user.

While you do receive a commission as an affiliate it is only for the first 12 months at a rate of 25%. It would seem difficult to sell this one to your audience given it isn’t significantly cheaper than Shopify and doesn’t have their brand awareness.

The only advantage you would have as an affiliate for this product is a slight increase in your affiliate income if someone stayed on a paid plan for at least 12 months since Shopify affiliates only earn a $58 one-off bonus per sign up.

Podia

This service allows you to create a website to sell, digital products, courses, memberships or host webinars.

It offers a reasonable 30% on plans starting at $39 a month.

AShop

This is a payment processing system that you can add to your website.

Just by signing up, you become an affiliate and if anyone takes out a subscription to AShop via your link you would earn a $50 one-off commission.

The recurring element unfortunately is only 3% and this applies to anyone that you have referred who goes on to make their own referrals.

VPN Software

It’s probably fair to say that due to the relatively low-cost VPN software you are unlikely to make a very large monthly income from this unless you have a very large audience that might be interested in protecting their privacy.

On the flip side, recent security scandals by several companies, meaning that many people are now more interested in protecting their online privacy and a VPN is a great way to do just that.

I have a more in-depth rundown of NordVPN here.

NordVPN

This is the one that I personally use and I’ve been using it for around 5 years. In addition to the obvious VPN facility, they also include some secure online storage.

For me, the best selling point is their ability to close down programs automatically if your VPN connection should drop. You can add whichever programs you want into the list for their Killswitch. This should reduce the risk of your data being compromised.

They also offer a no-logs policy which is vitally important in a VPN.

I’m currently on a 3-year plan but they do offer plans even on a month-by-month basis.

For example, their monthly plan will cost you £9.20 per month but if you sign up for 2 years then it comes down to £2.86 per month, that’s a pretty big saving.

As an affiliate, you can earn up to 100% of the initial sign-up (for the monthly plan, 40% for the longer plans) and you will earn 30% if that customer renews their subscription. Since VPNs are relatively inexpensive there is a high likelihood that people will tend to renew unless the product has failed to perform for them.

HideMyAss

One of the more well-known VPN providers,  they have quite a generous commission structure. Paying between 45% and 65% on the yearly plans depending upon how many customers you have referred.

You will then receive 30% of any renewal payments. Again the monthly amounts are quite small, the three-year plan currently works out at £2.39 a month so you would get around 70 pence per month for a renewal

That still works out at about £25 on the 3-year plan though, so if you had a steady stream of people signing up from your audience then you could still turn that into a nice little side income.

Zenmate

Offering affiliates 40% of the initial sale and 30% of any renewals Zenmate charges some of the lowest monthly fees for a VPN. Offering an 18 month deal for less than £2 per month means as an affiliate you will only make £14 though.

PureVPN

Quite a well-known VPN. They offer 35% recurring commissions and up to 100% on initial sales. They have a handy little calculator which shows you the sort of earning potential you might have depending on your traffic source.

With their annual plan costing $70, this would earn you just under $25 for new customers and on a recurring basis.

Panda security

Their affiliate program is run through CJ Affiliates.

They currently pay up to 50% commissions on their VPN products including on renewals.

Panda’s three-year plan would currently cost a customer a little over £2 per month so you would be picking up around £30 per customer on the 3-year plan.

TorGuard

Currently offering 30% recurring commissions for the life of the subscriber this represents a solid option for an affiliate marketer with an audience who might be concerned about their privacy online.

Torguard plans start from $9.99 per month but have quite large reductions if you buy an annual plan. This tends to be fairly standard across most of the VPN products with a large monthly payment that is drastically reduced for increasingly long sign up periods.

OVPN

You will receive 50% of your clients first month’s payment and you will also receive ongoing commission if they retain their subscription. Your audience would need to stump up approximately $4.99 per month if they go for a yearly plan.

Hide.me

This is more promising from an affiliate marketer’s point of view as the monthly subscription is that bit higher, even their two-year plan comes in £4.61 per month and you would receive 25% commission for the lifetime of that customer.

Your difficulty, obviously, would be to justify to your audience why they should pay almost double what many other companies are charging for effectively the same service.

Perhaps if your audience is comprised of SMEs or if you are doing some form of consulting then you may find it a little easier to recommend hide.me.

Courses

Wealthy Affiliate

Long-running training program offering affiliate commissions up to 47% on their paid programs

Teachable

A site for hosting/selling courses. Their cheapest plan costs you $29. You would get a 30% commission on leads you referred.

Thinkific

A course hosting site. Plans start at $39. Affiliates earn 20%.

Legendary Marketer

I have to be honest this product has always seemed a bit scammy to me but there do appear to be a lot of affiliates promoting this product and should you be successful at it then you could make an awful lot of money.

Initially, commissions are quite low somewhere between 10% and 30%.

Once you have reached a higher level of sales you could be bumped up to 50%.

Given the price of some of the courses in the Legendary Marketer stable, you could be talking well over $1,000 for just one sale.

On their cheapest monthly plan, you would earn between $9 and $18 per month recurring, depending on how far up the ladder you’ve managed to climb.

SEO

Long Tail Pro

Every blogger is going to need keywords in order to rank in Google. Long Tail Pro is one of the many keyword tools that may help you find those elusive keywords to get onto page 1.

Affiliates will be able to earn 30% commissions on the monthly fee which starts at $25 per month.

SERanking

Offering tools such as competition analysis and website audit for as little as $18 a month you could expect to receive 40% on any leads that took out a subscription and this would be on a recurring basis.

SEOProfiler

As an affiliate for this product, you will receive 50% of the initial monthly fee and 10% of the ongoing fees.

This would increase to 20% if the lead paid annually.

Raven Tools

Paying out 40% on the initial sale and on the recurring monthly subscription plans.

Their cheapest plans start from $79 a month.

Raven offers several different tools in the SEO space but I would suggest they are probably more directed towards those with significant SEO knowledge already.

Mangools

Another suite of SEO tools such as a keyword finder and site audit. With their basic subscription starting at $49 and 30% lifetime commission you would be earning just over $14 a month from even their most basic plan.

Serpstat

30% recurring commissions for life on plans starting from $69.

Linkody

Software used to analyse your backlink profile. You can also remove unwanted links using it.

Affiliates will earn a 30% commission and the monthly plans start at €13.90 per month.

SpyFu

Offering a variety of SEO and PPC tools and reports from $39 per month you will receive 40% recurring commissions for the life of the customer as an affiliate.

Linkredible

Backlinks and SEO Content creation. You could receive commissions of 20%-30% but only for the first 60 days. Products start from around $39.

YouTube Tools

TubeBuddy

A very useful free tool that also offers paid subscriptions for more features. Affiliates earn 50% on plans starting from $9 per month.

VidIQ

Another useful YouTube add-on where you can pay a monthly subscription to receive additional tools.

Affiliates will earn between 15% and 25% depending on the number of referrals they have made on plan starting from $7.50 per month.

Image/Illustration

Stencil

Offering 30% commissions on monthly plans starting at $15 per month. This program allows users to create beautiful images for their websites or social media campaigns.

Snappa

An online design tool in the same vein as Canva. Paid plans start from $10 and as affiliates, you would earn 30%.

Pic Monkey

Allows you to design social media posts, ads, covers and banners. Affiliates earn 30% of the initial sale and 15% of renewals.

Design Pickle

With plans starting at $399/month, your income could soon add up even with only a 15% commission.

The question is do you have an audience that is looking for qualified graphic designers and has deep pockets.

Social Media

NinjaOutreach 

You will only earn a 20% commission.

However, with the cheapest plan starting at $119 per month any referrals will quickly mount up.

This package attempts to connect you with influencers on YouTube and social media or bloggers that would allow you to reach your potential audience to grow your presence online.

So this would be attractive as a product to pretty well anyone trying to grow an online presence.

Socialoomph

Quite a generous affiliate program offering 40% commissions. As a bonus, if you refer someone who starts signing up affiliates that will add 5% of their commissions on top.

While the prices start from $15 per month anyone who has multiple sites or accounts is going to need one of the more expensive plans.

TailWind

A social media management solution. it allows you to schedule posts to Pinterest or Instagram. The affiliate commission is a little on the low side at only 15%.

However, Tailwind costs $9.99 per month for each account so even a blogger with only one site and an Instagram and Pinterest account would be paying $20 a month to use tailwind.

SocialPilot

Makes managing your social media accounts easier. Post scheduling and analytics are amongst its features.

Monthly plans start from $25 and you would earn 30% as an affiliate.

Instato

Another social media bot to help you maintain social engagement. The end-user pays $29.95/month and as an affiliate, you will receive 25%.

Agora Pulse

Social Media management tool for scheduling your posts on several platforms. It will cost users from $79 a month and as an affiliate, you would get 20%.

Stellation Media

If you have an audience looking to grow their Instagram following then this might be the program for them and as an affiliate, you get a 25% commission.

Fomo

Adds social proof to your website for $19/month and up. You receive 35% of your referrals.

Morevago

Social proof tool.

50% commission. The starter plan is $14.99/month.

Proof

Social proof from $79 per month with 30% conversions.

Stock Footage

DepositPhotos

Depositphotos is arguably a rival to the more famous Shutterstock. As an affiliate, you would receive 30% of your customers’ first purchase, with 15% payable for repeat visits.

Project Management

Time Doctor

In addition to the basic 30% recurring commission on the monthly fee you will also receive 2% for any lead that you have referred who have managed to generate their own referrals.

This is a project management tool that is quite popular in the WordPress community.

Helpdesk/Chatbot software

Jivo Chat

Starting from £11/month per agent you get a 30% commission as an affiliate.

Crisp

20% commission on plans which start from £25/month per website.

Provide Support

Starting at $15/month for a single user and with a commission of 30%, you would see $4.50/month.

Online Chat Centers

With 50% for the first month and 20% recurring on $5 plans you aren’t going to be riding off into the sunset with saddlebags filled with gold but every little helps!

LiveAgent

Affiliates earn 20% commission with the most basic plan starting at $15/month per agent.

Pure Chat

25-35% commission depending on the volume of referrals.

LiveChat

This is a cloud-based helpdesk app that offers affiliates a 20% recurring commission on monthly fees starting at $19 but that could get $1,000 per month or more.

OLark

20% commission on paid plans that start from $19 per month (per agent).

Olark allows you to offer a live chat facility on your website.

Opesta

This Facebook messenger chatbot actually pays a two-tier commission.

40% on leads you have referred and 5% on anyone they refer. Plans start from $49.

Chit Chat Chimp

Chatbot that you can customise. Low-cost entry point and 75% commission on the whole of the funnel. $19.95 for the main offer.

Tars

With business plans starting from $499/month and 30% commission this could be a great choice if you have the right type of audience/customers.

Collect.chat

Their Lite package starts at $24 and you would earn a 30% commission plus $50 for every 10 sales.

CRM

Pipedrive

CRM package that pays 35% commission recurring to affiliates with users being charged £12.50 per month on their cheapest plan.

Sales Mate

This is a CRM package offering you a 15% commission on plans starting at $12 per month.

Webinars

Demio

Demio can host live or automated webinars from $34 per month and pays affiliates a lifetime recurring commission of 30%.

Link Tracking/Behaviour Tracking

Trck.me

Trckme charges from $39 per month and will offer affiliates a 30% commission on those payments. This is another link tracking and analysing package.

ClickMagick

A way to track, test and improve your online marketing. The starter plan comes in at $27 per month, affiliates will earn a 35% commission recurring.

RedTrack

With monthly prices from $49 this link tracking package pays you 10% as an affiliate.

ClixTrac

Another Link Tracking tool pays from 10% to 50% depending on your subscription level. Subscription prices are quite low so you would need to do a large volume to end up with a significant income.

Voluum

With prices starting from $69 a month and conditions of 20% of that, this link tracking package could prove to be a steady earner.

Post Affiliate Pro

This is an affiliate management system allowing you to better control all the affiliate programs that you are subscribed to.

With a minimum monthly fee of $97 and a 20% recurring commission, you could generate reasonable revenue from this product.

However, you would need an audience that are or are about to become affiliate marketers and ones that are going to take on a decent amount of affiliate programs so that they could justify spending $97 on the software.

This might prove to be a bit of a barrier to generating significant sales.

ProrankTracker

Rank tracking and reporting that will pay you 20% on plans that start at $25/month.

Mouseflow

User behaviour tracking offering affiliates only 10% on plans starting from 24 euro.

Inspectlet

25% commission for affiliates on this tool to analyse how visitors interact with your website. Plans start at $39.

Membership

MemberMouse

Allows you to build a membership site. Pays 25% but only for the first year. Subscriptions start at $33.17/month.

Backup/Cloud Storage

pCloud

A cloud storage solution with a 20% commission for plans starting at $4.99.

BackBlaze

Backup solution for personal or business starting at $6 per month and offering you a 10% commission as an affiliate.

Miscellaneous

ShortStack

Want to create contests/giveaways as promotions on social media or your own landing pages then this product starts at $99 and affiliates earn 30% on the 1st month and 10% recurring.

ResponseSuite

A survey builder costs end-users from $49/month. Affiliates can make up to 30% recurring.

Klenty

Describes itself as a sales engagement program. Prices start from as little as $3.

Social Animal

40% commission on plans starting from $41/month. Social Animal is a content research and curation tool.

HubStaff

An employee management package that starts from as little as $7 per month which makes it an easy sell. As an affiliate, you would receive a 30% commission every month. Probably not that many people with an audience for this product though.

Answerbase

This software allows businesses to create question and answer type forms for their website.

The payout for affiliates is 50% of the first payment and then 15% of any recurring payments. The lowest-priced plan is $19 per month.

Freelancer

Unfortunately, as an affiliate, you would only receive a 10% commission on referrals. However, some people might end up spending quite a lot of money on the site so it could still work out as a nice little earner.

SEOClerks

This site hosts advertisements for services such as SEO, social media likes, content production, etc.

The commission is only 10% but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that someone could spend a lot of money on SEO clicks over the years.

Improvely

This tool is designed to help you analyse your digital marketing efforts and also how your audience interacts with your website. You would receive 50% of the first monthly subscription and 10% of subsequent ones.

Propeller Ads

Another low-value proposition with only a 5% commission.

Clicky

Web Analytics costing $9.99 per month or more and pays affiliates 20%.

RightMessage

Personalise your website to suit different visitors and increase your conversions.

Their cheapest plan is $229/month and pays 20%.

Tapfiliate

Software to manage affiliates selling your products. A slightly disappointing 20% for only 6 months. With end-user prices starting at $69.

LeadDyno

Another package to manage your affiliates. This is also offering 20% on sales from $49/month.

Udimi

Solo ad marketplace. 15% commission on ads, 25%-50% for prime members.

OnlineJobs.ph

Should your audience be looking for a low-cost virtual assistant from the Philippines then this could be the program for you. 40% commission on plans that start $69/month.

Content Studio

A package that allows you to search for content that is trending or ranking and gives you tools to help you produce new content across multiple platforms more quickly.

You will receive a 30% recurring commission. Prices start from $49/month.

UpViral

Nice commission of 50% on the first month and 30% of recurring payments for this viral marketing software.

Viral Loops

Viral marketing software starting at $34/month and paying out 30%.

Designrr

50% commission on this ebook and flipbook creator that starts at $29.

Privy

Privy will help you grow your list with many eye-catching options for your site.

10% recurring on $30/month

GetSiteControl

30% commission but only for the first 12 months.

Users will pay from $7/month.

Powr

A library of widgets to add to your website.

Starting from as little as $4 with a 30% commission.

Rescue Time

Time tracking system to help you see where you are wasting time. You could earn 15% on $12/month.

Best Affiliate Programs for Recurring Commissions in 2021: Final Thoughts this

I think a lot of the software listed here is really designed to be recommended by agencies rather than say in a blog so you should be selective in what you decide to promote.

There are two ways to use this list of best affiliate programs for recurring commissions in 2021.

Pick one or two products with a decent price point and commission structure, preferably ones that fit with your existing audience and then go all in to promote those with lots and lots of content.

The other option would be to create content that fits your audience but where applicable provide affiliate links either to the software that you use, which is the best way, or maybe to one or two alternatives as well taken from this list.

James

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