Affiliate marketing involves promoting products and services in return for a commission on any sales that are generated.
Affiliate links on your website contain code that allows 3rd party websites to know that you have referred a user to their website. You can then be paid a commission on any sales that are generated.
As a Divi web designer, there are already many ways to make money with Divi but affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn some additional, often passive, income from your audience.
This may come from providing your clients with affiliate links to buy themes, plugins, and hosting required for their Divi website, or by sharing affiliate links via your own website, blog, or online marketing channels.
In this article, I will list some of the best affiliate marketing programs in the WordPress and Divi niches you can join.
1. Elegant Themes (50%)
Elegant Themes offers a 50% commission on any membership sales which means you can earn up to $124 on a single lifetime membership sale. Commissions are also extended to renewals too so you can continue earning for years to come.
Their website states that the affiliate program has “30,000 affiliates and pays out over $3,000,000 per year”. This has not been updated for many years and is likely much higher.
Divi is the #1 WordPress theme in the world which means that conversion rates and customer retention for renewals are both high.
There is an easy-to-use affiliate dashboard that has a traffic log, custom link generator, and custom link reports for tracking individual links.
Assuming you hit the minimum monthly payout of $200, payments are made on-time every month. Unfortunately, payments are only available via Paypal, which means that any withdrawals to a non-US-based account will be hit by Paypals less than generous exchange rates.
- Affiliate commissions: 50% on all sales, plus renewal commissions
- Recurring income: Yes
- Product price range: Memberships start at $89/year
- Custom link generator: Yes
- Cookie duration: Unlimited
- Minimum payout: $200.00
- Payout options: Paypal
- Independent or network: Independent
Click this affiliate link for more details on the Elegant Themes affiliate program.
2. Elegant Themes marketplace (15% of the sale price)
The Elegant Themes general membership (see #1) and marketplace affiliate programs will be managed under the same Elegant Themes affiliate account, but the commission structure on each will work differently.
Because the marketplace is selling 3rd party developers’ products, your 50% affiliate commission is taken from the 30% cut that Elegant Themes take on any3rd party product sales, leaving you with 15%. This 15% is less than on offer from most of the 3rd party developers who all have their own affiliate program offering 20%+ commissions.
I link to the official Elegant Themes marketplace where possible rather than to individual 3rd party Divi developers as the marketplace lists all the best 3rd party products that have been pre-vetted by Elegant Themes to adhere to their product guidelines and to WordPress best practices.
Unlike a number of 3rd party Divi affiliate programs, commissions are paid out automatically every month once a minimum threshold of $200 is met.
- Affiliate commissions: 15% on the total sale price, plus renewal commissions
- Recurring income: Yes
- Product price range: Products start a $1.99/year to $219/year
- Custom link generator: Yes
- Cookie duration: Unlimited
- Minimum payout: $200.00
- Payout options: Paypal
- Independent or network: Independent
Click this affiliate link for more details on the Elegant Themes affiliate program.
3. Siteground ($50+)
Siteground is the only WordPress hosting provider that is recommended by Elegant Themes and WordPress. It is also the hosting platform I choose to host DiviThemeExamples.com and Divilayouts.com websites on.
The amount you can earn in affiliate commissions with Siteground depends on the number of affiliate sales you make per month, with the base payout set at US$50 per sale if you generate from 1 to 5 sales in a month.
As sales increase, so does your commission. For between 6 and 10 Sales per month, the commission will be $75 per sale. For between 11 and 20 Sales per month, the commission will be $100 per sale. If you can send enough traffic to generate over 21 sales per month you will be able to negotiate a commission in excess of $100 per sale!
Their affiliate program offers
- Affiliate commissions: $50+ per sale
- Recurring income: No
- Product price range: Products start a $6.99/month to $400/month
- Custom link generator: Yes
- Cookie duration: 60 Days
- Minimum payout: $50.00
- Payout options: Paypal or Wire
- Independent or network: Independent
Click this affiliate link for more details on the Siteground affiliate program.
4. WP Rocket ($9.8+)
WP Rocket is a go-to caching & speed optimization plugin and with Divi being a resource-hungry page builder (just like other page builders) many people will be looking for ways to speed up their DIvi website. Siteground comes with a built-in SG Optimizer feature but for Divi websites on other slower hosts, the WP Rocket plugin can really help with optimizing the performance of the site.
As an affiliate, you can earn 20% for any sales generated via your affiliate links.
Their affiliate program offers a 20% commission on sales. A single plan sells for $49 which means you would earn $9.80, a plus plan sells for $99 earning you $19.80, and the Infinite plan sells for $249 earning you $49.80. Unlike the Elegant Themes affiliate program, there are no payments for renewals.
- Affiliate commissions: 20% per sale
- Recurring income: No
- Product price range: Products from $49/year to $249/month
- Custom link generator: Yes
- Cookie duration: 30 Days
- Minimum payout: $50.00
- Payout options: Bank transfer, mailed check Payoneer or Wire Deposit
- Independent or network: shareasale.com network
Click this affiliate link for more details on the WP Rocket affiliate program.
5. WP Buffs (10% lifetime)
A WordPress website needs to be maintained once it has been built and many of you will offer your clients a maintenance plan for your Divi websites. If you prefer not to offer website maintenance (or actually do the work) you can still make money by referring clients to a 3rd party maintenance business or using their white-label service.
WP Buffs offer website maintenance and support including plugin, theme & core file updates, emergency support, uptime monitoring, cloud backups, and much more. As an affiliate for WP Buffs, you can earn an ongoing 10% for any sales generated via your affiliate links.
Their affiliate program offers a lifetime 10% commission on all sales so you get paid for each month while their maintenance plan is active.
- Affiliate commissions: Lifetime 10% per sale
- Recurring income: Yes
- Product price range: Products from $67/month to $750+/month
- Custom link generator: Yes
- Cookie duration: 30 Days
- Minimum payout: $0
- Payout options: Bank transfer, mailed check Payoneer or Wire Deposit
- Independent or network: shareasale.com network
Click this affiliate link for more details on the WP Buffs affiliate program.
6. SEM Rush ($0.01-$200)
Your Divi website may look beautiful but unless people can find it, it may not be particularly great at generating an income. By using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and online marketing you can get your website ranking in Google for the desired keywords for your business.
SEM Rush is a subscription-based software that has a range of tools SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC, and social media marketing.
Their affiliate program on Shareasale offers a commission of $200 for every SEM Rush subscription sale and up to $10 for every new trial activation. There is a direct affiliate program called BeRiush but “Based on our affiliates’ feedback, the BeRush program with the first-click attribution model was not the ideal model for most of them and not up to industry standards.”
- Affiliate commissions: $0.01 for every new registration, $10 per signup or $200 per subscription
- Recurring income: No
- Product price range: Products from $119.95/per month to $449.95/per month
- Custom link generator: No
- Cookie duration: 120 Days
- Minimum payout: $0
- Payout options: Bank transfer, mailed check Payoneer or Wire Deposit
- Independent or network: shareasale.com network
Click this affiliate link for more details on the SEM Rush affiliate program.
Some final thoughts
Affiliate marketing is a great way to add an additional passive income stream to your existing Divi web design business. There are some great affiliate programs available from reputable businesses so you don’t have to worry about having to promote products or services you don’t actually believe in.
Start sending some traffic and start getting paid today!
Have you tried affiliate marketing before? Do you think it is worth it?
Elegant Themes has been good for me. I would not bother with 3rd party Divi sites.
I have an affiliate account for pretty much every site selling 3rd party Divi products but I mostly link to the official marketplace where possible. Some of these 3rd party Divi developers have of-so-sneaky 1-day cookies, some rarely make payouts without multiple chase-ups, and some are just producing total garbage.