Wayfair Affiliate Program Review

Introduction

Many people will be unaware that Wayfair offers an affiliate program that would allow you to earn commissions on sales referred to them.

Wayfair is a US-based e-commerce company specialising in furniture and homeware. Originally founded in 2002 they now have a market capitalisation of around $30 billion. The business developed many separate e-commerce sites. Each store sold products in particular niches. In 2011 the owners of the business amalgamated all these stores into one called Wayfair.

As well as the United States they trade in Canada, Germany, Ireland and the UK.

Besides their main Wayfair site, they also run Joss & Main, AllModern, Birch Lane and Perigold brands.

Wayfair does a lot of their own promotion on TV and other media and are consequently very well known. For an affiliate this makes life a lot easier since your audience is already aware of the brand and it carries a certain amount of trust.

Wayfair Affiliate Program Details

According to their Commission Junction entry if you refer new customers you will earn 6% on sales. For returning customers that would drop to 4%. The rates are lower if the customer has some form of discount code or coupon. At the time of writing these are the rates for wayfair.co.uk, the rates for the parent site are very similar. Furniture and homewares can be quite expensive. This means that even these relatively low payouts could still generate a significant income. Although you would need to have a reasonable level of traffic to your site. The average sale is around $300.

If you are dealing with traffic going to the German version of Wayfair then you would actually receive slightly more commission. You would get 5% rather than 4% on returning customers. Foreign language SEO is generally much easier than English language SEO. So, anyone who speaks German might have more success with this particular program.

As an affiliate, you have a catalogue of 18 million products to promote. Unlike Amazon who only offer a 24-hour cookie with Wayfair you get 7-days. Although according to the details on their CJ page you get 30-days, so that would need confirming. Affiliates are currently making a little under £10 per click on average according to CJ. You will also earn a commission on sales referred to the other brands such as Birch Lane.

Wayfair currently operates only in 5 countries and do not ship outside of those areas. This is the biggest disadvantage with Wayfair, when compared with Amazon. If your traffic is not coming from those five countries then unfortunately the Wayfair affiliate program is not going to work for you.

In line with most other affiliate programs, there are a number of restrictions. You cannot use ‘wayfair’ or derivatives in domain names or use their branded terms in any advertising that you do. You are not allowed to directly link to their site from adverts. You must link to your own site and then on from there to the particular piece of furniture you are promoting.

Promotion Methods

You are allowed to promote Wayfair via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. You should avoid putting affiliate links directly on social media posts as that would be a breach of the terms and conditions. (for a number of sites anyway). Therefore, the only way would be to promote your blog via social media posts. Your blog would contain the relevant affiliate links.

Irrespective of the affiliate program, I think it is always best to put your links on your own site and then promote your site. For one thing, it is easier to keep your links up to date if they are all in one place rather than spread over disparate social media and forum sites.

You can also use email marketing as long as you abide by CAN-SPAM law. You must make it clear that your emails come from you and not Wayfair. You should also forward copies of any emails to them for approval.

US-based entrepreneurs won’t be able to sign up if you live in:

Alaska
Arkansas
Delaware
Hawaii
Idaho
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Louisiana
Minnesota
Missouri
Mississippi
Montana
North Dakota
Nebraska
New Hampshire
Oklahoma
Oregon
New Mexico
Nevada
Tennessee
South Carolina
South Dakota
Vermont
West Virginia
Wyoming.

This is due to US nexus tax laws and probably stems from the Supreme Court case that Wayfair lost – South Dakota v Wayfair et al 2018.

I would suggest that the best way to promote Wayfair would be to build an authority site. You should focus that site on furniture or another niche of products featured in the Wayfair catalogue:

Outdoor
Lighting
Decor
Textiles & Bedding
Rugs
Kitchen
Storage
Baby & Kids
DIY & Plumbing
Mattresses
Pet
Christmas

If you already have an email list interested in the sort of products that Wayfair sells then that is a great way to promote your blog content. You would be well advised to subscribe to Wayfair’s own promotional emails. You could then tailor the content of your own emails to feature current promotions or trends.

Alternatively, you can use social media such as Pinterest. It appears to be a popular choice for people in the Home Decor/Furnishing niche since it is primarily a visual medium. Remember though that direct linking from many social media platforms/forums isn’t allowed.

The key to success on social media is creating images that grab the attention of users scrolling through endless posts. Try to engage in groups specific to the niche you are targeting. Try to offer some value and build a reputation. This will make it more likely that people will look at your ‘money’ posts.

Create reviews, comparisons, how-to’s and guides. Educational/informational content is useful since you are unlikely to get links/social shares of product pages. Links especially are an important part of boosting your rankings in SEO. As the saying goes

“The best place to hide a dead body is on page 2 of the Google search results”

You should spend time trying to optimise your blog content for SEO. This is generally the goal as this would give you some free traffic should you manage to rank in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).

Given that Amazon is likely to be uppermost in online shoppers minds you might want to give your audience a choice. You could sign up to Amazon Associates and give your audience a way of comparing the two, where they sell the same/similar product. That way you have two bites at the cherry. If the reader isn’t happy with the price or delivery time from Wayfair then they may decide to buy from your Amazon link. It should be noted that any Amazon purchases will only attract a 1.5% commission if the link to Amazon is to a different category as the item purchased. Eg. someone buys electronic equipment after clicking on your link to an item of furniture.

Another interesting option is Wayfair Registry. This is a service created to cater to the wedding industry. For new Registry creations, you would receive a $5 bonus plus you would earn a 7% commission on any sales. This might be another angle you could use, by creating a wedding-themed blog and then promoting items from the Wayfair catalogue.

Looking at some comments online though you might need to have a decent amount of traffic (50k monthly visitors) before you will be accepted onto the program. So this program might not be for new entrants to affiliate marketing until you have managed to build up an audience.

What could you earn?

According to CJ over the last 3 months affiliates have been making just under £10 per click. So, if we assume you have 50,000 visitors per month (since this appears to be a minimum requirement). If you have a CTR (click through rate) of 0.1% that would suggest around £500 per month might be achievable.

Alternative Affiliate Programs

The obvious alternative in this niche would be Amazon Associates. For the Furniture/Household category you would be earning a 7% commission. If you managed to generate sales over £40000/month then that would rise to 8%. However if someone followed an affiliate link to a different product category before buying furniture then you would receive only 1.5%.

Another option might be One Kings Lane. They offer a generous 14 day cookie and a reasonable commission of 5%. To find out more take a look at their sign up page.

Wayfair Affiliate Program Review: Summary

I think Wayfair offers a solid alternative to Amazon if you have content in the Home & Garden niche. It is good business practice to diversify and affiliate marketing is no different. Being totally reliant on Amazon Associates long term is probably a bad idea. It would appear that Amazon seems keen to continually erode the commission levels paid to associates.

So, if you already have content that would fit in with Wayfair’s products then I would definitely recommend checking out this program. If you are thinking of starting a new site then Wayfair does offer a genuine alternative to Amazon.

James

Pros:

Decent commission up to 7%
Deep linking down to specific products
Strong Brand
Wayfair do lots of advertising
Lots of promotional offers
CJ is well known and trustworthy

Cons:

Approval may be difficult
Only available in five countries