Best SaaS Affiliate Programs To Try in 2023

Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable ways to monetize a website. 31% of publishers report it to be one of the top three revenue sources of their sites.

More and more industries are embracing this form of marketing, and more companies are announcing affiliate programs. So whether the industry your blog writes about is a staple in the affiliate marketing world, the odds are you can find plenty of companies offering to pay handsomely for leads.

Out of all industries that offer affiliate programs, SaaS is probably one of the more lucrative ones. Since many SaaS business models rely on scaling the customer base at a rapid pace, they’re more than willing to pay well for leads. 

If you’re thinking of getting into SaaS affiliate marketing, here’s your introduction. Here, you’ll learn about choosing the affiliate program that fits you and your websites and read about the top SaaS affiliate programs.

Best SaaS affiliate programs worth trying in 2023

With that out of the way, let’s see what SaaS companies offer the best conditions in 2023. Here are the eight best SaaS affiliate programs worth working with.

Coupler.io

Ecommerce businesses rarely use a single SaaS tool in their day-to-day operations. Coupler.io integrates these tools to help businesses process and store their sales and marketing data in a convenient way.

The selling point is pretty simple and convincing, and so are the terms of the affiliate program. For each subscription purchase, the lead makes within 30 days, you get a 50% one-time payment and a 20% lifetime revenue share.

On average, this will bring you from $150 to $500 depending on the subscription plan. If the lead you brought in buys the annual subscription for Coupler.io’s most popular plan, you receive around $600 as a commission for the first purchase and will receive 20% once they renew next year.

Combining two types of payments is a huge bargain, so if you don’t want to miss out, get an affiliate link and start working on your promotional piece.

SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a complete social media management platform and one of the closest HootSuite competitors that helps professionals, teams, and businesses automate their social media management.

SocialPilot offers a 20% recurring commission to their partners for up to one year. Partners can earn up to $306 for each customer (Yearly subscription) you refer to the SocialPilot. No joining fees or minimum commitments.

The SocialPilot affiliate program is handled by a dedicated team. It means you’ll get complete support, a variety of creative banners, and pre-written content that will cut down your promotion efforts. 

Join SocialPilot’s affiliate program and bring many customers on board, as their niche is vast.

Timecamp

A successful project should be delivered on time and within the accurate recourse usage. Time tracking helps you estimate the project’s profitability and then check if these estimates match the real world. Moreover, you can also keep track of your employees’ working hours and ensure them accurate payment. Win-win situation!

And so is TimeCamp’s affiliate program. It offers a 30% lifetime commission for every paying customer that registers using your affiliate link; you can place it wherever you want – in a blog article, social media post, or a Youtube video. Please remember it’s the highest rate among the lifetime commissions and will be free forever. 

All the promotional materials are easily accessible once you have access to TimeCamp’s Partner Portal on Kiflo.com, the platform TimeCamp uses to manage its partnerships. Once your application is approved, you’ll get your own referral link. 

Learn more here about their affiliate program and apply.

Systeme.io

Systeme.io is an all-purpose marketing platform that covers most stages of the sales funnel, from creating a website to doing email marketing. It boasts over 300,000 active clients and over $3,000,000 paid out in the affiliate marketing program.

The 50% revenue share with a decent monthly subscription cost is a bargain. Even with the cheapest subscription tier, you’re looking at $100 annually per lead. Even taking customer churn into account, if you stick with Systeme.io, you can build a pretty decent income stream over a year or two.

A great benefit of this program is that you don’t have to push for sales. You can start with promoting a free ebook, free subscription, or another initial step of the sales funnel where a lead can leave their contact details. Your affiliate ID is added to the lead’s profile, and you’ll receive a commission even if they make a purchase six months after the first contact.

On the flip side, the lead can slip away from you as System.io pays a commission to the last affiliate that directed a particular lead to the platform. So if you focus on the later stages of the sales funnel, you can snatch other affiliates’ leads.

LifeLock

NortonLifeLock is a publicly traded company with hundreds of thousands of clients and a solid reputation. However, unless your website is specifically focused on cyber security, it may be hard to sell their products. LifeLock offers protection against identity theft, and while it’s a great service, most customers are people who already know how widespread identity theft is.

LifeLock is also pretty cheap, which is a great selling point. But for an affiliate, this means you need a lot more leads to meet your financial goals, especially considering there’s only a single payment for each lead.

Privy

Privy is a marketing plug-in for Shopify that has 18,000 five-star reviews and a 700,000-strong customer base. Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms, so the potential audience size is huge. It’s best if your affiliate website is focused on Shopify specifically, but one that talks about eCommerce, in general, is great too.

The cheapest subscription plan is pretty low-cost at $15, which grants you a $1.5 per month revenue share. To get even $200 a month from this affiliate, you’ll have to bring in 130 paying customers, which may take a while. Privy also has a free plan, so any conversions made from your affiliate link are going to be diluted by people opting in for the free option.

On the flip side, privy is rather popular so you may have an easier time with conversions. Combine it with a non-competitor Shopify plug-in or two, and you may reach your financial goals faster.

Capsulink

Capsulink is a custom short-link marketing platform that offers a range of features, including smart links, branded links, and an API URL shortener. The platform helps businesses increase their brand awareness, trust, engagement, and click-through rates by providing a tailored experience for their customers across all devices and channels.

Capsulink offers a 25% recurring commission for up to 12 months, with a 30-day cookie window. The program also has a dedicated manager to provide support, overall transparency, and flexible payout models.

Joining the Capsulink affiliate program can provide significant benefits to affiliate marketers

GoHire

GoHire is a recruitment software purpose-built for SMBs who want to simplify hiring now. The platform offers features such as the ability to post jobs to 15+ job boards from Indeed to LinkedIn, create a careers page, and manage candidates with jobs and pools. GoHire has a free trial and paid plans starting at $74.

The company presents an interesting affiliate program. They offer a 40% commission on all new businesses referred monthly for life. Also, receiving a double commission in the first 30 days is possible. GoHire has a long cookie window of 180 days.

Regarding supporting affiliates, there is a dedicated manager to help you out with the first steps and payouts. The manager also provides you with marketing assets such as screenshots, videos, and copies to use and promote the software.

Join the GoHire affiliate program and offer your audience a seamlessly integrated hiring software

Voluum

Voluum is itself an affiliate management platform. It allows users to run affiliate campaigns, track conversions, and pay their affiliates. It’s only natural that it runs an affiliate program of its own.

And this program seems like a pretty profitable one. Voluum offers a 20% lifetime revenue share, and its cheapest plan costs $89 per month. That generates $18 per month per client, which is a decent sum, especially considering, your monthly payments will quickly grow as you bring more leads.

On top of that, Voluum offers bonuses for larger volumes of leads. If you bring anywhere from five to twenty-five leads in any given month, you’ll get a one-time bonus of 10-25% from each sale. That’s a bonus from $134 to  $1200 bonus for each month you bring over five leads.

However, since the plans are quite pricy, it may be harder to achieve a conversion. But that’s not the toughest thing about this affiliate program. There’s no mention of cookie duration on the website or T&C’s so it may be limited to 24 hours. This can make converting customers even more challenging.

Salesmate.io

Salesmate is a SaaS sales platform that has a non-orthodox affiliate program. It may not be suited for everyone as Salesmate intends their affiliates to be much more involved in the client’s life than simply providing a link to the website. If you want a regular affiliate program that ends at directing traffic and creating a passive income stream, this one may not be for you.

However, if you’re a professional in sales who works with small and medium businesses, Salesmate is a bargain.

To start with, you’re making a 15% recurring commission on the client’s contract with Salesmate. The base price is pretty decent in itself at $50 per month per user for the most popular plan. That’s $100-$350 for an average organization. On top of that, Salesmate charges for add-ons like messenger, a dedicated IP server, and call credits. That alone can produce a decent revenue stream.

What differentiates Salesmate from most other affiliate programs is that it encourages affiliates to be involved in the lead’s sales process on the platform and charges fees for onboarding and setup.

Involve.me

Involve.me is a customer engagement software that has hundreds of templates from calculator widgets to personality quizzes to get your customer’s interest. The affiliate program spikes interest as well.

Involve.me goes the extra mile to attract affiliates with its offer. You can get a 30% lifetime revenue share for all purchases your leads make. The medium tier subscription sets customers back $75 per month, which gives you $22 per month as commission.

The platform also encourages affiliates to make money in creative ways and doesn’t require you to run a popular blog to be admitted.

The downside is that its product isn’t intuitive to many customers, and it may take some convincing on your part to secure a deal. After all, $75 for a pop quiz tool may seem like a lot unless you know how to use it to engage customers. You can focus your affiliate content on ways of implementing Involve.me to make a profit to spur interest in readers.

Unbounce

Unbounce offers a pretty popular set of marketing tools to customers and a bargain of an affiliate program to affiliate partners. It pays 20% off of every customer’s payment for the duration that they stay with the company.

With Unbounce’s recommended plan at $135 per month, you’re receiving $27 each month for every lead you bring. Sure, because that’s rather pricy, you may end up having lower conversion figures. But Unbounce is an established business that doesn’t require much introduction, which may help convince the leads to purchase.

Our list of the best SaaS affiliate programs will keep growing since new products come out, and the existing ones launch their affiliate programs. So, if you haven’t found the desired program from our list, you can try to find it yourself. Below, there are the best practices that we used for our selection.

How to choose the best SaaS affiliate program?

There are hundreds of SaaS affiliate programs out there, and many of them are offering a decent deal. But if you’re choosing a single one, you want to do your research ahead of time. Integrating affiliate ads in your website tends to take a lot of time, and it’s best if you don’t have to go over it all over again if you don’t choose the best SaaS affiliate program.

Here are four main steps to choose the best affiliate program and nail it the first time.

Is the niche related to your site?

Do you already have a website that you want to monetize? Then the best SaaS affiliate programs are going to be ones that fit your website’s niche.

You probably have a core audience who are subscribed to your newsletter. Selling something that is wildly different from the usual themes you cover would be hard. So make sure the SaaS affiliate program that you’re choosing is at least interesting to them.

It doesn’t have to fit perfectly, though. It just has to be related enough to your main niche. For instance, if the blog you want to monetize is about eCommerce marketing and you want to promote an integration tool, it could work. If the SaaS affiliate program is about design software, it’s not the best choice.

Does the program have a good conversion rate?

It’s impossible to know exactly how well users will convert to any given program. But still, it’s a good idea to take a look at the landing pages you’ll be linking to and try to gauge their quality.

In the top SaaS affiliate programs, affiliates are paid only once a user makes a purchase. So it’s best if landing pages look like they’re going to interest visitors. You want to see at least these things in a good landing page:

• Clearly communicated unique selling points
• Clear calls to action
• The page is scannable
• The page features social proof
• The page has little to no leakage points

The last point isn’t that important if SaaS affiliate programs offer cookies that extend over 30 days. Leakage points are links, whether internal or external, that can lead the user away from the conversion goal.

The best SaaS affiliate program uses cookies that allow them to attribute the sale to you even if it doesn’t happen right away. This makes having leaks on the page totally fine.

What’s the commission structure?

There is no single payment model that is better than others. You should choose the payment model depending on what the affiliate is and what audience you can bring in.

If you’re fairly confident that your audience can convert pretty well and the affiliate’s prices are on the higher end, you can go for the pay-per-action model or a revenue share. In the CPA model, you get paid only if the user performs an action — makes a purchase, or subscribes to a free plan. That can be in the form of a fixed payment or a percentage of the purchase.

Revenue share is an even better option for those SaaS affiliate programs with good customer retention rates. Under this model, you receive a percentage of the monthly payment either forever or for a long period of time. The drawback here is that if a subscription costs $15-20 and you’re getting paid 10% of that monthly, you’d have to generate hundreds of sales for the company to get a half-decent payout.

Both of these are great choices and can bring in plenty of revenue, but there’s an important condition. The leads that you guide to the website have to be converted into customers, and if they’re not that interested in the product, the conversion rate is going to suffer.

If you’re not sure you can bring highly relevant traffic to the affiliate website, but you’re sure you can bring a lot, you may settle for the pay-per-impression or pay-per-click model. Sure, these pay significantly less than CPA as the cost per click is rarely over a dollar. However, you don’t have to generate sales to get paid, so if you can direct thousands of people to the site, you can make good money.

The top SaaS affiliate programs should provide a way to track conversions. The affiliate program has to provide a handy admin panel where you can see how many leads you’ve attracted to the website and how many of them are approved. This helps with tracking your progress and prevents fraud on the affiliate’s part.

Does the company have a good reputation?

The last point is arguably one of the most important ones, especially if you’re working with a CPA or revenue share model. Your payout depends on leads converting and making a purchase within 30-60 days.

In that period of time, they’re almost guaranteed to research competition. If the company you’re researching has a bad reputation online, it’s going to affect the conversion rate, and your income as a result.

While you’re checking the affiliate’s reviews online, go ahead and check the reviews by other affiliates. The best SaaS affiliate program has to have a stellar reputation when it comes to payouts to the affiliate partners. If they don’t look so good and other affiliates report having problems with getting paid, you’d be better off choosing another program to promote.

Why become an affiliate in SaaS?

There are dozens of profitable industries that offer affiliate programs, so why choose SaaS over the others? Sure, if you already have a website you want to monetize that touches upon a SaaS-related topic, it’s a no-brainer.

In case you’re in the process of deciding what industry to focus on, you want to consider these two important factors.

Most SaaS affiliates have a great reputation. You can promote big brands, unlike in many other industries. Since the majority of users won’t be seeing those names the first time, the conversion rate may be much higher.

You won’t have to spend too much time trying to explain every little detail of the affiliate’s product. Your main goal when working with recognizable brands is getting your affiliate content in front of as many people as you can. The rest of the sales process will be largely done by their landing page.

What’s even more important, affiliate marketing is pretty popular in the SaaS niche. While this may mean the competition is higher than average, SaaS companies often offer great compensation. That means higher fixed payments per lead and higher percentages of revenue share.

On top of that, you can easily promote multiple SaaS companies from different industries. An affiliate program in the fashion industry will probably have a non-competition clause that stipulates you can’t promote competitors. With SaaS companies, you can promote an email marketing software company and an integration tool at the same time since they’re not direct competitors.

So, what’s the best affiliate program in 2023?

What do you promote in 2023 to build a stable revenue stream? The answer to that depends largely on the audience you have. Even if affiliate programs that may interest your audience don’t pay that well, you still have better chances of converting leads and earning a commission for a relevant product. In this case, one of the top SaaS affiliate programs within our list or beyond can be the best for you.

If you don’t have an audience yet and plan on creating affiliate websites from scratch, you should definitely go for the highest bidder. Choose a couple of affiliate programs from the list of the best SaaS affiliate programs above that pay the most and fit your knowledge and skills and give them a try.

Most affiliates don’t have the time to handle all the programs at once, so you can try promoting a couple of programs and stick with the one that ends up working best for you.

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