Best Affiliate Programs in India 2021

If you have a blog or website and is looking to earn some passive income from it, then affiliate marketing is one of the best option available in India. There are some best affiliate programs in India that allows you to earn every time a sale or lead happens though the unique affiliate link from your website.

As per the research, affiliate marketing accounts for 15% of all digital media revenue, and well-crafted affiliate marketing programs can boost revenue by 30%. It is also one of the largest and easiest sources of online income.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance based marketing where an affiliates refers someone to buy a retailer’s product and when that person buys the product based on affiliates recommendation, affiliates receive a commission.

If you want to learn how to create an affiliate eCommerce store, then read my previous blog How to Create an Affiliate eCommerce Store.

In simple words, affiliate marketing is referring a product or service to someone by sharing it on blog, social media platforms, or website. The affiliate earns a commission each time when someone purchase the product or service through the unique link associated with their recommendation.

Basically affiliate marketing is a partnership between a publisher who produces content and a retailer who has an affiliate program hosted by an affiliate tracking platform. After approval to the affiliate program, affiliates can log in to the retailer’s affiliate platform and get unique tracking links, commonly known as affiliate links.

Any time a visitor clicks on one of those affiliate links and makes a purchase at the retailer’s site, the publisher is entitled to a commission from the retailer for helping them generate a sale. Any time a visitor clicks a link, a tracking cookie is stored on the visitor’s web browser that informs the retailer which publisher sent the visitor to their site. 

Now, let’s see on how affiliate marketing works. It is a four-step cycle in the same sequence as listed:

1. The affiliate attracts visitors by promoting retailer’s product on blog, social media or eCommerce store
2. Visitors click on the link and navigated to the retailer’s store
3. Visitors buys the product on the retailer’s store
4. The affiliate gets paid a commission for the product as decided.

Why Affiliate Marketing In India

The eCommerce business in India is growing at very robust rate and is expected to surpass the US market and become the second largest eCommerce market in the world by the year 2034. Also India’s eCommerce industry is expected to touch $200 billion by the year 2026.

The initiatives taken by Indian government and cheap data plans has increased the internet penetration in India to approx 560 millions. This is second in world in terms of active internet users across the world after China.

Now people are ready to buy a range of products and services online in India. Also businesses are paying more attention to affiliate marketing to generate more sales.

So this is the perfect time to start an affiliate marketing as if you have passion you can grow in your niche.

Methods to Promote Affiliate Products

There are many methods available to promote affiliate products, some of them are as follows

1. Social Media

Billions of people uses social media across the globe and according to GlobalWebIndex almost half of adult Internet users research products on social networks.

This makes social media platforms a favorite method to promote affiliate programs. Affiliate marketers uses social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc to share their content and promote their affiliate products.

2. Blogging

Blogging is one of the most effective method to promote affiliate products. One can easily create a blog and write about the products you want to promote and include the affiliate links wherever you want.

A blog post can be of any form like product reviews, info graphics, tutorials, how to etc. The most important thing is to post high quality content consistently and create following reader base. Then you can earn quite good from your blog.

For example you have a travel blog targeting people who loves to travel new places. Then you can sell travel bags via your Amazon affiliate links. You just have to talk about the requirement of a travel bag for traveling and highlight the products you want to sell.

3. Email Newsletters

An email marketing is one of the most efficient way to build great relationships. An email list is a valuable assets because if anyone has has given a permission to receive your email, it means they trust you.

Emailing a recommendation of the products and tools that you personally use is a great way to get your affiliate link in front of your loyal and engaged audience. You can offer your audience exclusive deals and offers in the email newsletter with your affiliate links.

4. YouTube Videos

Videos are a great way to deliver the product information and features to your audience. As per the Zenith report, people spend an average of 84 minutes each day watching videos and is expected to reach 100 minutes by 2021.

As an affiliate marketers, you can use online video to announce new products, product demonstrations, tutorials, and product reviews and include your affiliate links in the process. There are two main ways to embed affiliate links in a YouTube video.

First method is to include your affiliate links in the YouTube video description. If you use this method, do remember to direct the viewers to this by verbally calling on your videos like “Click on the links in the description below” .

The other way is to use YouTube annotations, these are small boxes contains clickable text or images you can add to your videos to encourage viewers to take an action at specific points in your videos. You can easily add affiliate links in these YouTube annotations to monetize your videos.

5. Within your own products

You can also promote affiliate products along with your own products. For example you have an online course about a food recipe. Then you can easily suggest some ingredients to buy to your audience including your affiliate links.

You can easily become the affiliate for the products that compliments your own product and earn a commission when people buy that products.

6. Offer promos, coupons and deals

Everyone loves discounts while shopping online. As per research, 97% of consumers looks for deals when they shop online. Offering promo, discount coupons and loyalty rewards to your audience is one of the most effective way of promoting your affiliate products.

This is not only a great way to boost sales but promos and discount coupons also tend to get lot of shares on social media giving you more view and more sales! Popular coupon sites in India are Retailmenot, Coupondunia, Cashkaro etc

Choosing a good affiliate program

To be successful in affiliate marketing, you need to choose and promote the right products. More than 76% of new affiliate marketers fails to earn money from affiliate marketing because they do not chose the right product to promote.

It is very easy to find various type of programs on market that promotes a large variety of products. So we must choose the affiliate programs carefully that we can promote that offers relevant product and quality services to our audience.

1. Promote products related to your web content

The most important thing for a good converting affiliate is to choose and promote a products that are related to your web content. The readers must relate the products to the theme of your site.

For example, if your website / blog is about mobile phones and applications and you promote products related to fashion or food, you probably won’t get the same success as if you promote a products related to mobile phones or technology.\

2. Promoting products with good market acceptance

Do the market research first before promoting a product. Do a search online about the product and peoples opinions about the product. Promoting a product of low quality or that have poor market acceptance can ruin the image of your website.

If you want long-term success in affiliate marketing, you must make your customers happy and quality products plays a large role in this. A good quality product that is well accepted in market will give you good sales, because people have a greater tendency to accept quality products.

3. Test the product you want to promote

Choose a product to promote that you believe in and try to use them yourself first. This is the best way to certify the quality of the product by testing them out first yourself. If you use a product yourself, it will enables you to write about the product more knowledgeably and truthfully.

This will help you in easily tell the benefits and usage of the products to your audience. So if a product you have found personally valuable and it fits in your blog niche, then its a perfect candidate to promote.

4. Commission Rate Offered For the Product

The rate of commission offered is probably one of the most important factor when considering a affiliate program to join, after all earning passive money is the sole criteria for every affiliate marketers.

Different affiliate programs offer different commission rates, higher the commission rate the more you can earn per sale. Also another important factor to consider is that the product should have high conversion rates. Since affiliate marketing works on cost per sale (CPS), you must choose a product that have high conversion rate in the first place to be able to make sale and thus profits.

5. Nature Of Commission Offered for the Product

Another important factor while choosing a affiliate product is the nature of commission offered is recurring or not. Many affiliate programs like LeadPages, Udemy, Shopify etc offer recurring commission, thus benefiting you more.

There are some benefits of recurring affiliate programs like when your customers buy more, you keep getting profits. Also you won;t have to spend as much money, time and effort as getting them into the funnel in the first place. 

6. Method Of Payment offered by affiliate programs

The method of payment is also a factor to be considered while selecting an affiliate programs, Whether the payment is settled on monthly or weekly and how the payment is settled like direct bank account transfer or PayPal.

This usually depends on how short you are of funds and how urgently you needs it, then you must look for an affiliate programs that settles all pending payments quickly.

7. Cookie Life offered by affiliate programs

Cookie life also known as referral period, is the time period during which the affiliate is eligible to receive incentives for a referred customer.Lets says the affiliate program you are considering to join has a cookie period of 24 hour and the referred customer has made the purchase in 25th hour, then you won’t get your commission.

So even if the customer was referred by you, you could loose the potential commission in this case. So cookie life is and important factor to be considered while selecting an affiliate program. It can affect your income by a huge margin, longer the cookie life better your profit margin.

Best Affiliate Programs in India 2020

Almost every eCommerce business in India offers affiliate programs to increase their sales from travel to fashion, blogging to matrimony sites. You can easily join their affiliate programs and promote their products using various methods as stated above.

The real advantage of affiliate programs are that it doesn’t require any initial investment. You can join any affiliate programs in India by either directly on the merchant site or through any affiliate network.

Now lets see the best affiliate programs in India for each niche

1. Best Hosting Affiliate Programs In India

Hosting is one of the most popular and profitable niche among all affiliate programs because they pay highest commission to the affiliates.

Every websites or blog needs hosting services, so there are thousands of hosting providers are there waiting to grab more and more customers. This niche has very high competition so does the affiliate commissions.

Some of the best hosting affiliate programs in India are as follows:

• Bluehost Affiliate Program
• SiteGround Affiliate Programs
• Dreamhost Affiliate Program
• Bigrock Affiliate Program
• GoDaddy Affiliate Program
• Hostgator Affiliate Program
• Namecheap Affiliate Program
• Kinsta Hosting Affiliate Program
• Reseller Club Affiliate Program
• Inmotion Hosting Affiliate Program

2. Best Online Shopping/ E-commerce Affiliate Programs in India

Now more and more people are buying a wide range of products online from  like mobiles, clothes, accessories, shoes, electronics, home appliances, beauty products, perfumes, toys, books, stationery, groceries, and even furniture online. 

You can earn good commissions from the merchants by referring their products. There are already some of the big brands in this niche offering affiliate programs for affiliate marketers and bloggers.

Some of the best eCommerce affiliate programs in India are as follows:

• Tatacliq.com Affiliate Program
• Flipkart Affiliate Program
• Shein.com Affiliate Program
• Amazon India Affiliate Program
• Snapdeal Affiliate Program (Through Affiliate Network)
• Yepme Affiliate (Through Affiliate Network)
• Abof Affiliate (Through Affiliate Network)
• Myntra Affiliate (Through Affiliate Network)
• Jabong.com Affiliate Program (Through Affiliate Networks)
• Shopclues Affiliate Programs (Through Affiliate Networks)

3. Best Travel Affiliate Programs in India

The travel affiliate programs are very popular among travel bloggers to earn money. In India, the travel business is booming day by day and the number of people going for international travels are increasing each year.

Today people are more comfortable in online booking of flights, hotels, car rentals or any other complete travel packages rather than a manual booking. You can earn a good percentage of commission if you can successfully sell travel deals form top travel affiliate programs.

Some of the best travel affiliate programs in India are as follows:

• Tripadvisor Affiliate Program
• Skyscanner Affiliate Program
• Travelguru Affiliate Program
• RedBus Affiliate Program
• Yatra.com Affiliate Program
• Booking.com Affiliate Program
• Agoda Affiliate Program
• Airbnb Referal Program
• Expedia Affiliate Program
• Goibibo Affiliate Program (Through Affiliate Network)

4. Best Health and Fitness Affiliate Programs in India

Health and fitness are always in great demand and if you are passionate about health and fitness, there are some great affiliate programs available for you to earn money. This niche covers a range of products like sports nutrition, vitamins and supplements, health food and drinks, Ayurvedic herbs, and exercise and sports equipment etc.

Some of the best health and fitness affiliate programs in India are as follows:

• Fitbit Affiliate Program
• Medlife Affiliate Program
• Healthkart Affiliate Program
• India herbs Affiliate Program
• SellHealth Affiliate Program
• Market Health Affiliate Program
• Stayfit Affiliate Program
• PharmEasy Affiliate Program (Available only through affiliate networks)
• 1Mg Affiliate Program (Available only through affiliate networks)
• NetMeds Affiliate Program (Available only through affiliate networks)
• Practo Affiliate Program (Available only through affiliate networks)

5. Best Job Affiliate Programs In India

A Hundred and thousands of people are looking for jobs so job searching, career building, online resume submission is also one of the leading businesses in India. These businesses are shelling out a large sum of money to those who bring them job seekers. If you send them job seekers though your affiliate links, then all profits will be yours.

Some of the best job affiliate programs in India are as follows:

• Naukri Affiliate Program
• MonsterIndia Affiliate Program
• Shine Affiliate Program
• Fresherworld Affiliate Program
• Timesjob Affiliate Program
• Indeed Affiliate Program
• LinkedIn Affiliate Program
• Cutshort Affiliate Program
• Instahyre Affiliate Program
• CareerBuilder Affiliate Program

6. Best Matrimonial Affiliate Programs in India

Online matrimonial sites are very popular in India and people uses it to find perfect marriage partners for themselves, their family members, relatives and friends. The success of matrimonial sites are growing in India and you can find some of the best paying matrimonial affiliates programs.

Some of the best matrimonial affiliate programs in India are as follows:

• Shaadi Affiliate Program
• Jeevansaathi.com Affiliate Program (Through Affiliate Network)
• BharatMatrimony.com
• Angelmatrimony.com
• Shaadisaath Affiliate Program
• SimplyMarry.com Affiliate Program (Available only through affiliate networks)

7. Best VPN Affiliate Programs In India

A VPN or virtual private network, helps keep internet secure and safe. VPN was earlier only popular among computer geeks, but now it has a lot of markets from security-conscious parents, people who avoid to pay for streaming service that uses geoblocking, to others who simply want to remain anonymous online.

Some of the best VPN affiliate programs in India are as follows:

• ExpressVPN Affiliate Program
• TunnelBear VPN Program
• Nord VPN Affiliate Program
• Windscribe VPN Affiliate Program
• PureVPN Affiliate Program
• SaferVPN Affiliate Program
• IPVanish Affiliate Program
• ZenMate VPN Affiliate Program

FAQ about Affiliate Marketing in India

When you are looking to start a new affiliate programs, its natural that some questions may arise in your mind. Here are some of the frequently asked questions about best affiliate programs in India.

Is affiliate marketing profitable in India?

There is tremendous income potential in Affiliate Marketing in India, as some of the biggest affiliate programs are exclusively available only for India.

The amount of money you can earn entirely depend of your niche and how how much efforts you are putting in it.

What is the highest paying affiliate program?

Hosting affiliate programs are one of the highest paying affiliate programs in India. But do remember that this is very competitive niche and you need to have a good number of followers and traffic to earn in this niche.

How to start affiliate marketing in India?

Starting an affiliate marketing can be accomplished in a few easy steps:
1. Select a domain name and register it
2. Pick a niche of products you want to promote
3. Join the affiliate programs that are suitable for you
4. Promote the affiliate program on your website
5. Drive traffic to your website

Can you get rich from affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative business, but its not a get quick rich trick. You need to invest time and dedication even before you earn a single buck.

It takes 5 months to several years to start earning money from affiliate marketing. You can earn a handsome money in long term if you can generate good affiliate sales.

Can I do affiliate marketing without a website?

Of course, You really don’t need a website to start affiliate marketing. You only need traffic or audience and you can do affiliate marketing on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. You can learn various method to promote affiliate products above in this blog.

Conclusion

So in this post I have covered everything you require to join a best affiliate programs in India. Now its over to you to join one of the affiliate program and start earning money online.